London’s Metropolitan Police are looking into allegations of sexual and domestic abuse involving approximately 800 officers, Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has revealed. The statement came shortly after a member of the force, David Carrick pleaded guilty to 49 such offences, including dozens of rapes.

Rowley revealed that 1,633 cases of alleged sexual and domestic abuse over the past ten years are currently being looked into. On top of that, all 45,000 Met personnel will be rechecked to see if any past offensives were missed, he said.

Carrick, whose case has brought a spotlight on the problem, admitted to six more counts of sexual abuse on Monday, bringing the total to 49. The officer is believed to have committed the crimes against 12 women across two decades.

Commissioner Rowley apologized to the victims for the Met’s failure to investigate Carrick for so long, adding that the latter “should not have been a police officer.”

“We’ve let women and girls down, and indeed we’ve let Londoners down,” he said.

He added the force is aware that the high-profile case has likely shattered the trust in Met officers among many women in the British capital, something 10 Downing Street also said, on Monday.

Rowley admitted the police force has not “applied the same sense of ruthlessness to guarding our own integrity that we routinely apply to confronting criminals.”

Questions were raised after it was revealed that multiple complaints against Carrick had in fact been filed with the police from as early as 2000 all the way to 2021.

Accusations previously made by the man’s former partner also did not prevent him from successfully passing the Met’s vetting procedure back in 2001. He even faced claims by another ex-partner during his probationary period – but the mounting complaints did not get in the way of Carrick’s subsequent vettings.

Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman described the revelations as “sobering” for the Met and “the whole policing family throughout the country.””

RT 17\1\23

Dave C,.

 The US’s transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market, causing needless water shortages, Indigenous land grabs, and ecosystem destruction inside and outside its borders, new research by the Climate and Community Project and the University of California finds.

It warns that unless the US’s dependence on cars in towns and cities falls drastically, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles by 2050 will deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining – and may even jeopardize the 1.5C global heating target.

The global demand for lithium, also known as white gold, is predicted to rise over 40 times by 2040, driven predominantly by the shift to electric vehicles. Lithium deposits are geologically widespread and abundant, but 95% of global production is currently concentrated in Australia, Chile, China and Argentina. Large new deposits have been found in diverse countries including Mexico, the US, Portugal, Germany, Kazakhstan, Congo and Mali. Grassroots protests and lawsuits against lithium mining are rising from the US and Chile to Serbia and Tibet amid rising concern about the socio-environmental impacts and increasingly tense geopolitics around supply. Lithium mining is, like all mining, environmentally and socially harmful. More than half the current lithium production, which is very water intensive, takes place in regions blighted by water shortages that are likely to get worse due to global heating. 

Lithium extraction has a track record of land and water pollution, ecosystem destruction and violations against Indigenous and rural communities. In the US, only one small lithium mine, in Nevada, is currently operational, but the drought-affected state has at least 50 new projects under development, opposed by some environmentalists, ranchers and Indigenous tribes. In Chile and Argentina, the world’s second- and fourth-largest lithium producers respectively, broken promises by corporations, water scarcity, land contamination and the lack of informed consent from Indigenous groups has fueled resistance and social conflicts.

Transportation is the biggest source of carbon emissions in the US – and the only sector in which emissions are still growing. Over half of the nation’s car sales are predicted to be electric by 2030, and states like New York and California have passed laws phasing out the sale of gas cars. This is good news but there’s a catch: lithium.

Electric vehicles are already the largest source of demand for lithium – the soft, white metal common to all current rechargeable batteries. Mining lithium because of the demand for EVs is contributing to more social and environmental harm – and global supply chain bottlenecks. If Americans continue to depend on cars at the current rate, by 2050 the US alone would need triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market, which would have dire consequences for water and food supplies, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, according to the report Achieving Zero Emission Transportation With More Mobility and Less Mining. How much lithium depends on policy decisions taken now, according to the report.

 Policies investing in mass transit, walkable towns and cities, and robust battery recycling in the US would slash the amount of extra lithium required in 2050 by more than 90%. In fact, this first-of-its-kind modeling shows it is possible to have more transport options for Americans that are safer, healthier and less segregated, and less harmful mining while making rapid progress to zero emissions. The largest reduction will come from changing the way we get around towns and cities – fewer cars, more walking, cycling and public transit made possible by denser cities – followed by downsizing vehicles and recycling batteries. 

If Americans can’t wean themselves off cars with big lithium batteries, increasing the density of metropolitan areas and investing in mass transit would cut cumulative demand for lithium between 18% and 66%. Limiting the size of EV batteries alone can cut lithium demand by up to 42% by 2050.

 Despite the cultural addiction to driving, fewer cars on the roads would not mean a sacrifice in the quality of life, convenience or safety for Americans, according to coauthor Kira McDonald, an economist and urban policy researcher.

 In addition, expanding mass transit systems would improve pedestrian safety and air quality, generating health and economic benefits.

Revealed: how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc | US news | The Guardian

 Britain’s poorest households are among the worst hit by the cost-of-living crisis as living standards are struggling to keep up with inflation, according to the latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Household Finances Survey on Wednesday.

The median disposable income for the poorest fifth of the population dropped 3.8% in the financial year through March 2022, while wages and benefit payments also failed to keep up with skyrocketing inflation.

The data exposes how the squeeze is increasing inequality in the UK as an unbridgeable gap opens up between the highest- and lowest-income households. It also shows the struggle to raise living standards since the nation voted to quit the European Union in 2016 as Britain’s slowing economy weighs on wages.

The median household disposable income declined by 0.6% from the 2021 financial year, with worse expected to come as inflation topped four-decade highs last November. By the end of the period covered by the ONS data, inflation had surged to 7%.

Meanwhile, the richest fifth enjoyed 1.6% growth versus a 3.8% drop for the worst off and a 2.4% slump for the second-poorest fifth of households.

Since the Brexit vote, living standards in Britain have barely increased. The poorest fifth have seen their median disposable income plunge from just above £16,217 ($20,027) in 2016-17 to £14,508 ($17,918) in 2021-22. By contrast, the richest fifth have gone from £63,201 ($78,044) to £66,002 ($81,503).

During the latest year, the increasing divide was driven by wages and salaries, which dropped 7.5% for the poorest households and grew by 7.8% for the richest.”

https://www.rt.com/business/

Dave C.

 According to a report released Tuesday by the Food and Agricultural Organization and other United Nations agencies growing numbers of people in Asia lack enough to eat as food insecurity rises with higher prices and worsening poverty.

Nearly a half-billion people, more than eight in 10 of them in South Asia, were undernourished in 2021 and more than 1 billion faced moderate to severe food insecurity, the report said. 

 The report says nearly a quarter of children in the Asia-Pacific are affected by stunting, or small height for their ages.

One-third of women in Asia aged 15-49 are affected by anemia, which causes fatigue and, in its most severe forms, can cause lung and heart damage.

In Afghanistan, 70% of people are facing moderate or severe food insecurity as the economy has collapsed after the Taliban seized power in August 2021, driving millions into poverty and hunger as foreign aid stopped almost overnight.

In Cambodia, half of the population faces moderate or severe food insecurity.

 Nearly one in 10 Thais were undernourished in 2019-2021, according to data in the report — a higher proportion than several years earlier

For the world, the prevalence of food insecurity rose to more than 29% in 2021 from 21% in 2014.

Nearly 2 billion people — or almost 45% of people living in Asia — cannot afford healthy diets, contributing to problems with anemia and obesity as well as hunger.

FAO: Rising prices, food insecurity add to ranks of hungry | AP News

 Marx’s axiom that history repeats itself, the second time as farce,is, unusually for Marx, incorrect. If the current conflict situation is allowed to continue then the result will be, as in the first time around, a tragedy of  cataclysmic proportions. So called ‘leaders’ of many States are irresponsibly throwing as much inflammables on to the conflagration as possible.

The German ‘Green’ Party, demonstrating that it is as supportive of capitalism as any  other Party, is pushing , successfully, to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine.

The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, “We  we are fighting a war against Russia.”

“Arguing in favour of sending tanks to Kiev, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said EU countries were fighting a war against Russia. US and EU officials have previously gone out of their way to claim they were not a party to the conflict in Ukraine.

“And therefore I’ve said already in the last days – yes, we have to do more to defend Ukraine. Yes, we have to do more also on tanks,” Baerbock said during a debate at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Tuesday. “But the most important and the crucial part is that we do it together and that we do not do the blame game in Europe, because we are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other.”

While Chancellor Olaf Scholz has insisted that Germany ought to support Ukraine but avoid direct confrontation with Russia, his coalition partner Baerbock has taken a more hawkish position. According to German media, her party – the Greens – has been in favour of sending Leopard 2 tanks to Kiev, and eventually managed to pressure Scholz into agreeing. Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht, who was reluctant to send tanks to Ukraine, was pushed to resign.

This is not the first time Baerbock has made waves with her position on the conflict. She told an EU gathering in Prague last August that she intends to deliver on her promises to Ukraine “no matter what my German voters think.”

Quoting Baerbock’s words on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the West just keeps admitting that they had been planning the current conflict for years.

“If we add this to Merkel’s revelations that they were strengthening Ukraine and did not count on the Minsk agreements, then we are talking about a war against Russia that was planned in advance. Don’t say later that we didn’t warn you,” Zakharova insisted.

Former German chancellor Angela Merkel told German media in early December that the 2014 ceasefire brokered by Berlin and Paris was actually a ploy to “give Ukraine valuable time” for a military build-up. Former French president Francois Hollande has confirmed this, while Ukraine’s leader at that time, Pyotr Poroshenko, openly admitted it as well.

Russia’s operation in Ukraine was a “forced and last-resort response to preparations for aggression by the US and its satellites,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev claimed on Monday.”

RT 25\1\23

Dave C.

Emergency Call Out

Accident and Emergency is crammed

While ambulances queue in the car park,

A triage nurse frets, trying to make work

This seized up system, regularly damned

By comfortable commentators who

Cite bed blocking elderly for lying

In hospital beds rather than dying.

Others claim they’d have more funds flowing through

To pay for enhanced social care, and yet

Every penny paid towards such cost

Is a unit of capital’s profit lost.

So stringent limits will always be set

Whichever party does the fashioning:

Whatever the need there’ll be rationing.

D. A.

 Union Pacific, one of the largest rail corporations in the United States, successfully fought off workers’ demands for paid sick leave.  Union Pacific was one of the major rail carriers involved in White House-brokered contract talks late last year that produced an agreement without any guaranteed paid sick days, rejecting a central demand of rail workers. Labor unions representing a majority of U.S. rail workers rejected the proposed agreement and threatened to strike, but Congress intervened in the long-simmering contract dispute in December to impose the White House-backed deal on employees

It said that it brought in record revenue and profits last year.

The company reported $7 billion in net income for 2022 as a whole and said it spent a whopping $6.3 billion repurchasing its own shares—significantly more than the $4.6 billion it spent on employee pay and benefits last year.

“Instead of buying back their own stock, UP should be investing in their employees by offering paid sick leave, reasonable schedules, and a better quality of life for railroaders,” Ed Hall, the newly elected president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, responded.

“President Biden campaigned on a week of paid sick leave for all working people, and then he had the opportunity right here but didn’t take action. He favored the corporations,” Matt Weaver, a rail worker and member of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division (BMWED) in Ohio.

While Blocking Paid Sick Leave, Union Pacific Spent More on Stock Buybacks Than Workers (commondreams.org)

 “Banks in Argentina are suffering from a shortage of space to store the quickly depreciating national currency banknotes, Bloomberg reported, citing sources in the banking industry.

According to the report, Banco Galicia and the local unit of Spain’s Banco Santander have been forced to install additional vaults to store peso bills. Banco Galicia has already added eight vaults for cash storage over the past year to the two it had since 2019, and reportedly plans to set up two more in the coming months.

Argentina, which boasts the second biggest economy in South America after Brazil, has been plagued by economic instability for decades but the situation has worsened in recent years. The country has once again defaulted on its debt in 2020, and has had to resort to capital controls to protect its currency. Inflation is currently approaching 100%, while Buenos Aires also owes roughly $40 billion to the IMF.

Argentina’s largest denomination banknote – 1,000 pesos – is currently worth around $5.40 on official exchanges, but barely reached $2.65 when valued at informal exchange rates last week. Amid the surge in prices, Argentinians have been forced to carry hundreds of banknotes to pay for ordinary purchases, with transactions becoming increasingly difficult due to the need to use a greater number of bills.

Since 2019, the amount of money in public circulation in the South American state has soared from 895 billion to 3.8 trillion pesos, according to the Central Bank. The country’s banks and business groups have been calling on the regulator to print higher-value bills for years, saying it would make the system more efficient for banks, businesses and citizens.

“Transporting, mobilizing and withdrawing a greater number of bills every time increasingly provokes unsafe situations beyond creating complications and expenses,” Fabian Castillo, head of the Federation of Commerce and Industry of Buenos Aries (FECOBA) said in a statement earlier this month.

The president of the Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Services (CAC), Mario Grinman, also stressed that there should be at least 5,000 peso bills.

“Since its appearance in November 2017, the 1,000 pesos has lost almost 100% of its purchasing power. In 2017 it covered almost half of the basic basket and today it does not reach 6%. Today to go to the supermarket you have to carry a bag of banknotes. Logistically it is a disaster,” he told news outlet La Nacion.

However, the central bank said last week that no announcement was expected on larger-denomination bills and declined to comment on the requests for them.”

https://www.rt.com/business/

Dave C.

 Len Wallace of the Industrial Workers of the World and of the Socialist Party of Canada

Work, in all its forms, is what keeps society running. At best, our own work can be interesting and creative, if we’re not stuck in an unfulfilling role. Capitalism turns work into employment, with our job roles shaped by how profitable or cost-effective they are likely to be, more than by how useful or manageable they are. Even so, countless important tasks rely on volunteers and other unpaid labour.