Asbestos is banned in 70 countries which have deemed that this construction material is a “silent killer” since its fibres are carcinogenic.

According to the World Health Organization, all types of asbestos cause “lung cancer, mesothelioma, cancer of the larynx and ovary, and asbestosis [fibrosis of the lungs]”. Exposure to the fibres and handling or inhaling them could also result in death.

In 2011, India banned asbestos mining and asbestos waste used in ships. But it continues to trade in raw asbestos and asbestos-based products, commonly found in the roofs of houses, especially in poorer regions of the country.

Aaron Cosbey, a development economist and head of Small World Sustainability, a consultancy, said that trade goes on because commercial interests have been prioritised over human welfare.

According to a November 2021 report by the Indian government, between 2019 and 2020, India imported 361,164 tonnes of asbestos, a 1 percent decrease compared with 364,105 tonnes in the previous year.

The report noted that almost the entire import was chrysotile asbestos, with 85 percent of these fibres coming from Russia. About 3 percent also came from Brazil, Kazakhstan and Hungary each, and 2 percent came from Poland and South Africa respectively.

India also exports asbestos. The Indian government’s November 2021 report noted that most of the exports went to Bangladesh, and 7 percent to Sri Lanka.

Gopal Krishna, an environmental lawyer and co-founder of the Ban Asbestos Network of India, explained:

 “The trade continues because nobody in India has time to deal with health complaints when money is involved and there is a lewd relationship between the Indian government and the asbestos manufacturers in the country…The Indian government is aware of the harmful impacts of asbestos, but is heavily influenced by the profit-inducing capacity of the industry…” He added, “These business enterprises don’t operate on logic. They operate on profit.”

Why does India still use and trade asbestos? | Health News | Al Jazeera

Thirty million people in the UK will be unable to afford what the public considers to be a decent standard of living by 2024, according to a study from the New Economics Foundation. 

The thinktank said rising prices, below-inflation increases in earnings and projected increases in unemployment would result in 43% of households lacking the resources to put food on the table, buy new clothes or treat themselves and their families – a 12 percentage point rise compared with 2019.

The NEF said its calculation that by 2024 almost 90% of single parents and 50% of workers with children would fall below a minimum income standard.

Sam Tims, economist at the New Economics Foundation, said: “A decade of cuts, freezes, caps and haphazard migration between systems has left the UK with one of the weakest safety nets among developed countries. Millions of families were already living in avoidable deprivation and hardship but as we enter the greatest living standards crisis on modern records, the day-to-day experience of low-income families is set to become even more desperate.”

30 million in UK ‘priced out of decent standard of living by 2024’ | UK cost of living crisis | The Guardian

 A government-commissioned report by the King’s Fund health thinktank says years of denying funding to the health service and failing to address its growing workforce crisis have left it with too few staff, too little equipment and too many outdated buildings to perform the amount of surgery needed.

A “decade of neglect” by successive Conservative administrations has weakened the NHS to the point that it will not be able to tackle the 7 million-strong backlog of care the report concluded. 

One of the experts consulted, said: “We have essentially had 10 years of managed decline. This is not a Covid problem. This is an austerity problem.”

“Though Covid certainly exacerbated the crisis in the NHS and social care, we are ultimately paying the price for a decade of neglect,” said the King’s Fund chief executive, Richard Murray. “The sporadic injections of cash during the austerity years after 2010 were at best meant to cover [the service’s] day-to-day running costs. This dearth of long-term investment has led to a health and care system hamstrung by a lack of staff and equipment and crumbling buildings. These critical challenges have been obvious for years.”

He continued, “The NHS in 2022 faces many of the same challenges it faced in 2000: unacceptably long waiting times and a service hobbled by staff shortages. To that is now added a cost of living crisis, industrial action by staff and a backdrop of a weak economy and weak public finances.”

The promises made earlier this year in NHS England’s “elective recovery plan” are highly unlikely to be met. They included pledges to end waits of two years, 18 months and one year by the summer, next spring and 2025 respectively.

Decade of neglect means NHS unable to tackle care backlog, report says | NHS | The Guardian

 Food prices in the Netherlands have jumped by 15.7% in November compared to last year, data shared on Thursday by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) shows.

The consumer price index (CPI) was 9.9% up in November from the same month last year. Experts point out that bread, cereals, meat and dairy products in particular have contributed to the price increase.

According to the European harmonized consumer price index (HICP), services and consumer goods in the country were 11.3% more expensive in November than in the same period in 2021.

In its latest quarterly report released on Monday, Dutch financial services company Rabobank downgraded its estimates of an “impressive recovery” from the Covid pandemic after growth stalled in the third quarter, and has said the country’s economy will “barely” grow in the coming years.

Rabobank economist Nic Vrieselaar noted that the Dutch economy had reached its limits this year and pointed to “staff and equipment shortages everywhere.” Production capacity is also strained by surging energy prices leaving no room for growth, according to the report.

“High inflation and increased rates are putting pressure on consumer and business spending,” he added.

After this year’s expected growth of 4.2% analysts predict weak performance for the Dutch economy, with just a 0.6% advance next year, and are forecasting a 1% GDP increase in 2024.

RT 11/12/22

Dave C.

  A Catalan government programme to relocate refugees in depopulated villages called Operation 500 because it involves villages with fewer than 500 inhabitants, is being run jointly by the regional employment agency, the equality commission and the Association of Micro-villages.

The scheme, which runs for one year, provides participants with a home and a salary of €19,434 (£16,700) paid via the local authority, which also organises work for them. The programme is open to refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants who are legal residents.

“Up till now the system of dealing with refugees has been very centralised and focused on major cities,” said Oriol López Plana, a facilitator at the Association of Micro-villages, which helps participants integrate, learn the language and become independent. 

First refugees arrive in tiny Catalan villages under repopulation plan | Spain | The Guardian

WAGE SLAVERY

 As workers across the UK prepare for strike action over pay, it has emerged that 2022 has been the worst year for real wage growth in nearly half a century.

 The Trades Union Congress (TUC) found that real wages – the amount people earned in relation to their cost of living – fell by an average of £76 a month in 2022 as a result of pay not keeping pace with inflation.

Key workers in the public sector are now £180 a month worse off in real terms than they were a year ago, it said. It means workers have seen the sharpest fall in real wages since 1977 and the second worst on record since the end of the second world war. 

Nurses’ real pay fell by £1,800 over the last year, while paramedics’ real pay fell by £2,400, according to the TUC. Nurses are earning £5,000 a year less – in real terms – than they were in 2010.

 And for midwives and paramedics the figure rises to more than £6,000.

TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said the current wave of industrial action in Britain is the result of workers “being pushed to breaking point” by years of pay austerity. She also accused ministers of being more interested in escalating disputes than resolving them.

“Family budgets have been shredded by soaring bills and more than a decade of pay being held down. The Conservatives have presided over the longest real wage squeeze in over 200 years,” she said. “The Tories’ failure to get pay rising has left millions of households brutally exposed to the cost of living emergency. It’s time to reward work – not wealth. We cannot be a country where NHS and teaching staff have to use food banks, while City bankers are given unlimited bonuses.”

Workers have faced food inflation running at over 12% and annual energy bills more than £1,000 higher than last year. Despite this, ministers have been actively blocking pay offers by employers – in the case of the rail dispute – or refusing to intervene in others.

2022 the UK’s worst year for real wage growth since 1977, TUC says | UK news | The Guardian

 The nine main water and sewerage companies had paid out £65.9bn in dividends in the last three decades. They have also taken on debts of £54bn.

Ofwat said Northumbrian Water and Portsmouth Water had paid dividends which were significantly higher than the regulator’s expectations and the companies’ financial resilience. Northumbrian dividends in the past year were £181.5m and Portsmouth Water paid £5.1m to shareholders.

David Black, the chief executive of Ofwat, said: “In too many areas, water and wastewater companies are falling short when it comes to looking after customers, the environment and their own financial resilience. We are clear; these companies need to address this unacceptable performance as a matter of urgency. For some companies poor performance has become the norm. This cannot go on. We are requiring the worst performers, including Thames Water and Southern Water, to return around £120m to customers.”

“In 2021-22 the number of serious pollution incidents increased and there was a deterioration in the compliance of treatment works. Only four companies met the performance level to reduce sewage flooding in customers homes … Companies urgently need to improve their performance on this measure. There are cases of sustained poor performance over a number of years, such as South West Water.”

Poor performance now ‘the norm’ for some water firms, warns Ofwat | Water | The Guardian

 From mid-2019 to the end of 2020, U.S. wealth grew by about $20 trillion. 

The richest 10% (who are roughly speaking America’s millionaires) took $15 trillion of that.

The average millionaire in America gained about $600,000 during that year and a half. 

The “poorest millionaires” gained about $200,000. The 25,000 very richest Americans (the .01%) each took an estimated $80 million during that time.

According to Americans for Tax Fairness and IRS data, over a recent five-year span the 25 wealthiest billionaires paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 3.4% when their wealth growth is counted as income. 

Meanwhile, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers was 13.3% in 2019.

More than 11,000 children are known to have been killed or maimed in Yemen’s civil war since it escalated nearly eight years ago.

“The true toll of this conflict is likely to be far higher,” said the children’s agency UNICEF “Thousands of children have lost their lives, hundreds of thousands more remain at risk of death from preventable disease or starvation.”

 2.2 million Yemeni children are acutely malnourished, one-quarter of them aged under five, and most are at extreme risk from cholera, measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases, UNICEF said.

UN report: More than 11,000 children killed or maimed in Yemen civil war (france24.com)

 The media headlines are prominently declaring Morocco has made sporting history by becoming the first African nation to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup.

There has, however, been very little news coverage over the conflict between Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) which is aspiring for independence for Western Sahara. Morocco had tried to annex the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara in 1975 and a bloody civil war ensued. An UN-brokered ceasefire has been in place since 1991 with a planned referendum left in limbo leaving the conflict unresolved.  Much of the population has been expelled by force, with many tens of thousands living in refugee camps in the desert. Morocco’s occupation is against international law, which accords the Saharawi people the right to self-determination. Over 100 UN resolutions have called for this right to self-determination. Furthermore, the International Court of Justice has stated that there are no ties of sovereignty between Morocco and Western Sahara,

Morocco has become one of the Arab League countries to agree to normalise relations with Israel. In return, the USA under Trump recognised Morocco’s claim over the disputed Western Sahara territory.  Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. government would maintain that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara and is one of only a few Western countries to recognise Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Africa’s wealth is being appropriated by foreign interests whose operations are leaving a devastating trail of social, environmental and human rights abuses in their wake and mineral-rich Western Sahara is a key example.  

Despite the Sahrawi people’s claim to self-determination and for control of the resources and international criticism, foreign nations are signing trade deals with Morocco. Nations are being allowed to fish in the territorial waters of the Sahrawi Republic. Oil companies are receiving permits to drill on Sahrawi land.

More important, is the presence of phosphates which along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer for farming. This gives Morocco a powerful influence over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is largely about the presence of natural resources—especially phosphates.

Another neglected aspect is the future renewable green energy potential of the region.

There is a planned £18bn project to provide 8% of Britain’s energy supplies through a 2,360-mile undersea cable linking a vast wind and solar farm in the Sahara with the UK, powering 7m homes by 2030. The solar and wind site will be in the Guelmim-Oued Noun region which is located in a part of the disputed area of Western Sahara claimed by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Perhaps, the Moroccan national football team will go on to make even more World Cup history. But the media will persist in its ignorance and hypocrisy of relegating the struggle of the Sahrawi people to irrelevance.