Racism, xenophobia and discrimination are “fundamental influences” on health globally but have been overlooked by health researchers, policymakers and practitioners, the Lancet suggests. Racism is a “profound” and “insidious” driver of health inequalities worldwide and poses a public health threat to millions of people.

Inaccurate and unfounded assumptions about genetic differences between races also continue to shape health outcomes through research, policy and practice, the review of evidence and studies found.

“Racism and xenophobia exist in every modern society and have profound effects on the health of disadvantaged people,” said the lead author, Prof Delan Devakumar of University College London. “Until racism and xenophobia are universally recognised as significant drivers of determinants of health, the root causes of discrimination will remain in the shadows and continue to cause and exacerbate health inequities.”

The reasons why ethnic minorities are at greater risk have received “inadequate scrutiny” from health professionals and researchers, and there is a tendency to assume these inequities are genetically determined and unchangeable, said the Lancet. Its review challenges this notion and the argument that disparities can be explained by patterns of socioeconomic deprivation among racial and ethnic groups.

“Racism is a health issue,” said Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of the Lancet. “Our structurally racist societies are unsafe for too many communities, families and individuals.”

In August, it was revealed that black and Asian people in England have to wait longer for a cancer diagnosis than white people, with some forced to wait an extra six weeks. 

The analysis of NHS waiting times and the world’s largest primary care database by the University of Exeter and the Guardian discovered minority ethnic patients wait longer than white patients in six of seven cancers studied. The results were described as “deeply concerning” and “absolutely unacceptable”.

Racism poses public health threat to millions worldwide, finds report | Medical research | The Guardian

 As the Qatar world cup progresses to its climax, a new report warning that its huge expansion of gas extraction could push the planet into catastrophic global heating. Should Qatar exploit all of its oil and gas reserves it will eventually add an enormous 50bn metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere once burned, which is more than the entire annual emissions of the whole world.

Qatar’s vast oil and gas resources have greatly enriched the small Middle Eastern country, which this year became the world’s largest exporter of liquified natural gas (or LNG), superseding the US and Australia. It is now looking to further cement its position by ramping up production from a vast offshore gas deposit called the north field, which will account for 70% of the emissions growth according to the new report by BankTrack, an NGO that used data from BP to ascertain the extent of Qatar’s “carbon bomb” projects.

Henrieke Butijn, climate campaigner and researcher at BankTrack. “What’s happening in Qatar is awful in terms of these projects and also worker conditions, but there is a level of hypocrisy here because Qatar isn’t acting alone.”

QatarEnergy has signed recent partnership deals with western oil giants including Shell, Total, ConocoPhilips, Exxon and Eni in order to boost output of the north field by 60% over the next five years. Separate deals have been struck in the past month with Germany and China to provide the countries with gas amid concerns over supplies disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

No new fossil fuel infrastructure can be built if the world is to avoid breaching the 1.5C limit, the International Energy Agency has warned, but despite this there has been plenty of financial support for Qatar’s gas expansion. JPMorgan Chase, Citi, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, MUFG, Credit Suisse and Bank of America have all backed planned projects in the north field, providing nearly $12bn in bond underwriting services to QatarEnergy.

The emissions from Qatar’s oil and gas resources will cause $20tn in damages and 11m deaths around the world, BankTrack said. Qatar’s 50bn tons of emissions will occur if it allows all of its deposits to be burned. While this may not happen if other countries move decisively away from fossil fuels as an energy source, there is currently no commitment from Qatar that it won’t completely exhaust its reserves. In previous years there have been claims Qatar’s gas reserves could last more than 130 years.

“Fossil fuels are weapons of mass destruction, carbon bombs ticking against the time we have left to avert the very worst of the climate crisis,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International.

Qatar’s gas output increase could cause catastrophic global heating, report says | Qatar | The Guardian

 Wars – or even more – climate disaster represent a great business opportunity.

A couple of dozens of companies involved in manufacturing the most inhuman weapons of mass destruction– the nuclear warheads, have been supported by over 150 big banks by lending them money or underwriting bonds, according to the Nobel Peace Laureate International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

Its Don’t Bank on the Bomb report also shows that another 186 institutions seek to profit from holding shares or bonds. And that altogether 338 financial institutions have made more than 685 billion US dollars available to the nuclear weapon industry since 2019.

In its report “Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending,” ICAN reveals that in 2021 –the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine– nine nuclear-armed states spent 82.4 billion US dollars on these weapons of mass destruction, that’s more than 156,000 US dollars… per minute!

The prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently revealed that, right now, of the total inventory of an estimated 12.705 warheads at the start of 2022, about 9.440 were in military stockpiles for potential use.

Of those, an estimated 3.732 warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, and around 2.000 —nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA— were kept in a state of “high operational alert,” SIPRI adds in its Yearbook 2022.

 But there is another highly lucrative business: climate change.

“The world’s richest people emit huge and unsustainable amounts of carbon and, unlike ordinary people, 50% to 70% of their emissions result from their investments,” reveals a global movement of people who are fighting inequality to end poverty and injustice–OXFAM International.

“A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person.”

Its recent major study: Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, reports that a new analysis of the “investments of 125 of the world’s richest billionaires shows that on average they are emitting 395 million tonnes of CO2 a year, more than a million times the average for someone in the bottom 90% of humanity.”

The study also finds billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement are double the average for the Standard & Poor 500 group of companies.

“Billionaires hold extensive stakes in many of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, which gives them the power to influence the way these companies act.”

In either case, wars and climate catastrophes cause vast destruction, let alone unspeakable human suffering, and death.

Both of them further sharpen the world’s unprecedented food crisis. Also here, market lords continue to make high profits.

In fact, a ”small number of corporations exercise a high degree of influence over the global industrial food system, powered by mergers and acquisitions of one another to form giant mega-corporations, which enable further concentration horizontally and vertically, as well as influence over policy-making and governance nationally and globally,” as already reported by IPS.

On the current energy crisis, the UN chief António Guterres in mid-September 2022, stated that it is “absolutely unacceptable to see that, when people are suffering so much in different parts of the world and, namely, because of the high costs of energy and high costs of fuel, to see fossil fuel companies having the largest profits ever or at least in the recent past.”

Why not: in addition to speculating with the energy markets, these companies have been largely funded by governments. In fact, politicians have spent six trillion US dollars from taxpayers’ money to subsidise fossil fuels in just one year: 2020. And they are set to increase the figure to nearly seven trillion by 2025.

 Then comes the great business of reconstructing all that the money-making business has been greatly contributing. Buildings, highways, bridges, hospitals, schools, universities, etcetera, let alone in further synthetic food.. all of these are to be paid for by the victims.

But there are more business opportunities, like continue buying vast fertile lands for monoculture and intensive agriculture, a money-making practice that by the way further opens the door for high technology corporations.  A production that, also, by the way, is being greatly disrupted due to both wars and climate disaster.

Don’t Be Fooled: Climate Disasters Are Highly Lucrative | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Via RobertS

India’s capital, Delhi usually makes headlines for having dangerous levels of air pollution during the winter months.

Environment activist Derek Wall of the Green Party has received favourable reviews from the Socialist Party, albeit not fully endorsed, here,  here, here, and here, for instance.

The following are extracts from an interview he conducted discussing  his article entitled “Imperialism is the Arsonist: Marxism’s Contribution to Ecological Literatures and Struggles,” about Marx’s contribution to ecological thought.

Engels, for example, wrote The Condition of the English Working Class in the 1840s. While this is near to the beginning of his writings it was already indicating that air and water pollution were an environmental threat. His notion of social murder encompassed hunger and poverty and such the effect of poisonous pollution, social murder is a concept that might cover the deaths from extreme weather we are already encountering from climate change.

In his ‘Letters from Wuppertal’ written back in 1839 Engels notes both air and water pollution as serious ills, ‘Work in low rooms where people breathe more coal fumes and dust than oxygen — and in the majority of cases beginning already at the age of six — is bound to deprive them of all strength and joy in life.’

At various points in Capital Marx addresses problems that might be identified by environmentalists today such as food additives and deforestation. Capital provides perhaps the clearest application of Marxist thought to the environment, when Marx notes in volume three of our duty to future generations:

“Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations as boni patres familias [good heads of the household].”

Engels, while not using the then newly coined term ‘ecology’, reveals his understanding of the science, based on relationships between species, that can lead to unexpected effects. This is from his text The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man:

“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel the first. The people who, in Mesopotamia, Greece, Asia Minor and elsewhere, destroyed the forests to obtain cultivable land, never dreamed that by removing along with the forests the collecting centres and reservoirs of moisture they were laying the basis for the present forlorn state of those countries.”

Marx, Ecology, and Politics: An Interview with Dr. Derek Wall — Hampton Institute (hamptonthink.org)

Via RobertS

The European Union as of 2021 has 447.2 million inhabitants, out of which 23.7 million, that’s 5 percent of EU’s total population are non-EU citizens and 37.5 million, almost 8.5% of all EU inhabitants were people born outside the EU.

“The European way of life, for many it’s about being Christian and about being white. So anyone who doesn’t fall into those categories is seen as not belonging to Europe,” says Shada Islam, Brussels-based specialist on European Union affairs. “There are about 50 million people of colour, European of colour across the European Union, that’s a huge number of people, not just a small minority, and that means, migrants are part of that & refugees are part of that. The narrative of Europe is so out of date and out of touch with the reality of the diverse and multicultural Europe that there is today,” 

Islam says while Europe has opened its arms, homes, schools and hospitals to millions of Ukrainian refugees, migration policies continue to remain hardened by European leaders against refugees, especially from the Middle East and Africa. “It’s a sense of compassion, empathy and solidarity that we see towards refugees from Ukraine, but why can’t we show that to people fleeing wars, hunger and climate change from other parts of the world? Why are they kept in camps, why are they pushed back from Frontex, our border control. Why can’t they be welcomed with the same sense of compassion and empathy,”

In response to the Ukrainian crisis, the government of Bulgaria took the first steps to welcome Ukrainian refugees. At a time of one of the worst humanitarian catastrophe, this move by Bulgaria was most welcomed by all, however many human rights activists raised questions of discrimination and double standards when Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said, “these are not the refugees we are used to. This is not the usual refugee wave of people with an unclear past. None of the European countries are worried about them,”.

In February 2022, the refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border had worsened with reports of migrants staying in a camp being forced out, pushed back by security forces with water cannons and tear gas

Thousands of people fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and other areas tried to enter the European Union through Lithuania, Latvia and Poland from neighbouring Belarus. The situation at the borders had become critical during the winter months, with hundreds of people stranded for weeks in freezing conditions. According to Polish border guards, 977 attempts to cross the border were recorded in April 2022 and nearly 4280 since the beginning of 2022, far fewer than November 2021 when between 3000 – 4000 migrants had gathered along the border in just a few days. All at a time when the European Union had promised to accept everyone coming from Ukraine.

In Italy, life was tough for asylum seekers, as most were denied refugee status, barred from legal employment and regularly faced discrimination. In the lead-up to the recent elections, there were reports of several violent attacks against asylum seekers and migrants, including the killing of Alika Ogorchukwu, a Nigerian man living in Italy who had sent shockwaves across the country and sparked a set of debates on racism. Earlier in November, the Italian government refused to allow about 250 people to disembark from two non-governmental rescue ships docked in Catania. Human Rights organisations called out the move by the Italian government that gave the directive to the rescue ships to take them back to international waters stating it put people at risk and violated Italy’s human rights obligations.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been vocal about his anti-refugee views and stance when he refused to take in refugees in 2018 and called them “Muslim invaders”. His most recent comments said that countries “are no longer nations” if different races mix.

Despite international laws and obligations, or the very concept of political asylum, “Europe has displayed the arbitrariness of its borders, both internal and external”. Creating a system that other individuals based on colour, race, and religious background, it continues to reinforce the bias towards human lives.

People who flee their country of origin, flee for a reason, either due to armed conflicts, economic distress, war or political instability, and International law guarantees each person fleeing persecution the right to request asylum in a safe country. Asylum laws differ in each European state because the EU considers immigration law a matter of national sovereignty. What we see being used for people fleeing and reaching out to European countries are terms like “invasion”, “flooding” and “besieging”.

“Europe needs foreign labour, Europe needs the talents of all its citizens, we are going into a recession, an economic slowdown, and we need all hands on the deck. If you are going showing so much discrimination at home, you are hardly in a position as the EU to stand on the global stage and talk about human rights, and the rights of women and ethnic minorities. You are losing your geopolitical influence and edge that you could have in this very complicated world,” says Islam.

Europe and the Refugee Crisis: It’s all About Tackling Racism & Discrimination | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

The figures from the 2021 census show that 37 percent declared that they had no religion

We’ve all heard  Jesus was a  socialist and even of Mohammed, the socialist. In truth, religion has slavishly adapted itself to the needs of the hour. The need of the hour for us is to put before the workers the knowledge which will enable them to recognise the class nature of society and its government as the true explanation of social chaos. As socialists, indeed, our main attack must be against the entrenched political power of capitalism, and to this, all else must be subordinated; but the war on religion, which is the power of inertia of human development, is part of the work that must be done in that great struggle. Furthermore, we assert that it has been consciously used as a bulwark to discourage active thought by the workers on the why and wherefore of capitalist supremacy and privilege. We do not dispute the fact that socialism cannot be achieved by a working class that believes in the supernatural. Socialism is based on the scientific interpretation of history. Religion is part of that history and is the result of man’s ignorance of natural forces. With their progress in the knowledge of socialism, the workers must, therefore, shed their superstitions and become materialistic in their outlook.

The revival of authoritarian churches is a growing problem. Socialists oppose religion for its anachronistic premises, and for the barrier, it presents to scientifically examining and controlling our own lives and destinies. We refute religion because the working class cannot move forward to a better society while their minds are in the chains of religion. The claim has sometimes been made that religion in the modern world is a unifying force rising above national barriers. The war in Ukraine has shown again how little truth there is in this with the  Orthodox church now divided between pro-Russian and pro-Ukraine churchmen.

Socialism arouses the workers’ will to struggle, it appeals to their understanding; it demands their knowledge and confidence. Religion blunts their faculties and turns their minds to celestial happiness. In common with other religions, Christianity makes virtues of meekness and poverty. This degrading teaching has served well in keeping the workers docile and submissive. We have never underestimated the power of religion when used by an unscrupulous ruling class to mystify the minds of those they ruled

 UN launches record $51.5 billion humanitarian appeal for 2023 [EN/AR/ES/FR/RU/ZH] – World | ReliefWeb

It will take four generations – 132 years – to achieve global gender parity.

 Globally, 388 million women and girls live in extreme poverty.

Sen. Rick Scott (R – Florida)

The former governor of Florida was elected to the Senate in 2019.

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida started his career in business, which is where he made the bulk of his wealth. He created one of the largest hospital networks, the Columbia Hospital Corporation.

Scott has an estimated net worth of more than $300 million as of 2022.3

Sen. Mark Warner (D – Virginia)

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is one of the wealthiest members of the U.S. Senate and in fact of the entire Congress. As of the latest information, from 2018, his net worth is approximately $215 million.4

Born in 1954, Warner grew up in a middle-class family. From as early as his college years, Sen. Warner had political aspirations. At one point during his time as a political science student, he even suggested to his parents that he would one day become president.

The bulk of Warner’s wealth came from Columbia Capital, a venture capital firm he founded shortly after graduating from law school. Under his direction, the firm made several successful early investments in companies in the telecommunication industry, including XM Satellite Radio and Nextel Communications.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R – Utah )

Sen. Romney needs no introduction, having been the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012. The U.S. senator for Utah is the third-wealthiest senator, with a net worth estimated at $175 million.5

Like most of the wealthiest senators, Romney made his fortune in business before he got started in politics. He co-founded and ran the private investment firm, Bain Capital.

Mike Braun (R – Indiana)

A former Indiana representative in the House, Mike Braun is now the state’s junior senator. Worth an estimated $137 million,5 Braun earned his millions as the CEO of Meyer Distributing, a maker of truck parts and equipment.

Today, he is one of the wealthiest, and also most politically conservative senators.

Sen. John Hoeven (R – North Dakota)

Sen. John Hoeven has served as the senior U.S. senator from North Dakota since 2011. Before that, he was the state’s governor for 10 years. Hoeven’s net worth has been estimated at $47 million.6

Sen. Hoeven worked in banking before he started his political career, and served as the CEO of First Western Bank and the Bank of North Dakota. Sen. Hoeven remains an owner of First Western Bank and sits on its board of directors.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D – California)

California’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s estimated net worth was estimated at $88 million.5

Blum Capital, a private equity firm founded in 1975 by her husband, Richard Blum, is the source for most of that wealth.7

Sen. Ron Johnson (R – Wisconsin)

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson started out in the late ’70s as an accountant at PACUR, a Wisconsin-based polyester and plastics manufacturing company owned by his brother-in-law. He moved up through the ranks, and became the company’s CEO by the mid-’80s.

Sen. Johnson has an estimated net worth of $78 million.8

Sen. James E. Risch (R – Idaho)

James Risch has been the junior senator from Idaho since 2009. He was previously the state’s governor.

He has an estimated net worth of $42 million, much of it in farm and ranch land in Idaho.9

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky)

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, currently the minority leader of the U.S. Senate, has an estimated net worth of $34 million as of 2018.10

McConnell has been a senator since 1984. The bulk of his wealth comes from a gift his father bestowed on him in 2008. He and his wife, Elaine Chao, also reported a gift of between $5 million and $25 million from her family in his 2008 disclosure.11 Chao, who is an economist, was a cabinet secretary in the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump.

Most of McConnell’s wealth is reported to be held in a Vanguard 500 Index fund.

Steve Daines (R – Montana)

Steve Daines of Montana is estimated to be worth $33 million, rounding out the top 10 wealthiest senators of the 116th Congress. Before becoming a politician, Daines was an executive at Proctor & Gamble, before becoming an executive vice president at cloud services startup RightNow Technologies in 2000. That company went public in 2004, and was acquired by Oracle in 2012, a windfall for Daines.12 That year, Daines first ran for office.

Water companies have outstanding borrowing of almost £54bn accrued since privatisation.

When the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher sold off the water industry in 1989, the government wrote off all debts amounting to £5bn and granted the water companies a further £1.5bn of public money, known as a “green dowry”. As of this year net debt of the main water and sewerage companies was £53.9bn.

Customers are paying on average £80 or 20% of their water bill towards servicing debt and rewarding shareholders, according to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

They have been running ratios of debt to capital value from 60% to more than 80%, according to Ofwat data,  raising concerns about their financial stability as interest rates rise.

The main water and sewerage firms in England have paid dividends to shareholders of £65.9bn up to 2022.

More than 70% of all water companies in England are owned by international investment funds, private equity, banks, the super-rich, and in some cases businesses registered in tax havens.

David Hall, visiting professor at the Public Services International Research Unit at Greenwich University, who has updated groundbreaking research by Karol Yearwood, said the evidence suggested the high level of gearing was being taken on in order for the companies to pay dividends, rather than to fund investment.

“It is very different from a more traditional company structure, where the operating expenditure comes out of the flows of revenue from customers but the investment in plant, machinery etc is paid for by investing capital from shareholders and creditors. Dividends are then paid out of the company’s profit, as a return on their capital investment

“With the water companies, since day one there has been hardly any shareholder capital put into the companies. Customers pay for everything, and the companies are borrowing to pay the dividends often to themselves, because their shareholders are parent companies.”

 Ofwat is belatedly trying to curb the excesses of the water companies and question whether a regulator is able to control an industry now managed in the interests of offshore investors, not the public and the environment.

Dr Kate Bayliss, of the department of economics at Soas University of London, said: “I can’t see that regulation is going to manage it in the interests of society and the environment when you have these very powerful interests making returns for their investors. The assumptions of the regulator are really quite limited compared to the financial sophistication of these investors.”

Water firms’ debts since privatisation hit £54bn as Ofwat refuses to impose limits | Water | The Guardian