Of all the people who leave for work on any given day, about 1000 do not return home—they die in workplace accidents. 

This is stated on the basis of the total number of occupational accident fatalities in a year, the WHO/ILO estimate for which is 360,000 in a year.

Deaths in a year from occupational diseases are over four times higher (1.54 million) than the fatalities caused by occupational accidents.

The ILO says over 600,000 workers die due to exposure to hazardous substances in a year. 

Long hours spent in unhealthy, stressful work conditions are another factor of serious concern, with excessive working time being a cause of as many as 750,000 or almost one-half of the total number of occupational disease fatalities in a year, WHO/ILO estimates.

Worldwide about 300 million occupational non-fatal accidents take place in a year while about 150 million contract work-related diseases. 

Levels of workplace violence are also very high in several countries.

 According to the European Working Conditions Survey, 6 million workers are exposed to workplace violence in a year in the European Union.

 If verbal violence is included, this number rises to 30 million.

 In the USA on average, about 670 workers die and 106,000 have to be taken for hospital emergency treatment due to workplace violence a year.

In the USA and Europe, various surveys reveal that in the course of their career, over 50% of women and over 15% of men are exposed to sexual harassment.

In the USA 76% of workers reported at least one symptom of a mental health condition (anxiety, depression), an increase of 17% in just 2 years, and 84% of respondents reported at least one workplace factor that had a negative impact on their mental health. 

Although an average employee spends 81,396 hours at work, adequate efforts do not appear to have gone into making working time healthy, friendly, involving and creative. 60 per cent per cent of the workers are emotionally detached while 19 per cent are miserable, while only the remaining 21 per cent can be stated to be engaged. 

 In Europe those engaged are only 14 per cent. 

If the survey asked did you feel worried at work yesterday, 56% are likely to say yes.

 If asked did you feel stressful at work yesterday, 59% are likely to say yes. 

When asked if the worker felt physical pain a lot of the day, 33% will say yes.

 31% would admit to have been angry. 

Few would venture to call this happy or creative working environment.

Jobs Without Joy| Countercurrents

The G20 represent two-thirds of the world’s population and four-fifths of the world’s economic power.

 G20 world leaders have failed to take definitive action to tackle poverty, hunger, climate, debt and deprivation that is crippling millions of people around the world, says Oxfam.

“In the midst of a debt, austerity and inequality crisis we expected far more from the world’s largest economies, especially given the meteoric rise of billionaire wealth in their backyards,” said Oxfam’s  Joern Kalinski. “The world needs concrete action to avert economic disaster for poor people and countries, but all we were left with was recycled assurances, a simmering debt crisis and vaccine and health steps as useful as putting a band-aid on a broken leg.” Kalinski continued, “There was no sign of a collective resolve to address the world’s problems including climate crisis, growing hunger, rising poverty figures and gaping economic and social inequality.” 

Oxfam’s press release states, “The G20 reiterated often-heard promises of addressing world hunger but makes no new funding pledges to match that ambition nor commitments to support a shift to a more local and sustainable food production. Our food system has for years perpetuated inequality, impoverished small-scale farmers while wreaking havoc on the climate…The world continues to slide towards uncontrollable catastrophic warming which is exacerbating poverty, hunger and injustice worldwide.”

“The G20s theme was “Recover Together, Recover Stronger” but how can that be realized when this summit did nothing to bolster public goods like public health systems or make tangible new commitments to fix all the breakages in nations’ education systems?” said Kalinski. “…The G20 has shown an unfathomable ability to forget the scale of the economic, social and health crisis caused by the neglect and under-resourcing of health systems which are now more geared towards eyewatering profits over patients.”

 “…With so much at stake, this G20 summit finished largely empty and bereft,” said Kalinski.

G20 verdict: Oxfam criticizes G20 for lack of action to tackle extreme inequality | Common Dreams

Environmentalist Naomi Klein this week urged civil society organizations to boycott the 2023 COP 28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates — one of the world’s largest oil producers.

She pointed to the failure of COP27 and its “weak climate agreement that protects polluters”

Klein argues that “now is the time to decide not to do this all over again next year when the summit will be in the UAE. Of all places.”

“Civil society should announce a boycott and instead hold a true people’s summit…Let’s try something new.” Klein wrote.

At COP27, civil society was suppressed, spied upon, and sidelined by Egypt’s authoritarian government while lobbyists from Exxon, Chevron, and other fossil fuel giants, responsible for record-high greenhouse gas emissions fought off efforts to include a fossil fuel phase-out in the summit’s final text.

‘Let’s Try Something New’: Naomi Klein Calls for Boycott of Next COP Climate Summit (commondreams.org)

 Texas Governor Greg Abbott is seeking President Biden to invoke the invasion clause of the US Constitution to protect Texans from refugees and migrant workers.

Abbot wants the president to treat poor people without weapons as a military invasion.

On November 16 Abbot wrote a letter to Biden informing him that he has not lived up to the promise of Article IV, § 4, that the federal government “shall protect each of them against Invasion.”

Since, according to Abbott, the federal government isn’t treating poor immigrants like an invading army, Abbott will now invoke Article I, § 10, Clause 3 of the US Constitution, which allows states to “engage in War” when they are “actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

 Last year, Texas passed Operation Lone Star, which militarizes the border by giving Abbot authority to deploy the national guard.

Thanksgiving food for thought: Immigrants are not ‘invading’ the United States – Alternet.org

 As Saudi Arabia celebrates victory over Argentine in the World Cup, praised by the football pundits, none  mentioned that on the very same day of the match Saudi Arabia football executed two Saudi citizens for drug offences

It brought the total number of executions in the past fortnight to 17 (10 being foreigners).

Saudi Arabia has executed 130 people this year.

The next victim may be Hussein Abo al-Kheir, a Jordanian, who was arrested in 2014 for smuggling narcotics when crossing the Jordan border into Saudi, and says he only confessed when he was tortured, including being suspended from his feet and beaten on his stomach and legs. 

An appeal court acquitted Kheir in March 2017, but the government ordered a retrial six months later, leading to a guilty verdict and he was re-sentenced to death in November 2017.

Much has been said about Qatar and its dismal human rights records regarding homosexuality. Iran’s team members were rightly applauded for their solidarity with their nation’s protests but silence on Saudi Arabia and other countries involved in authoritarian and totalitarian behaviour. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/22/saudi-execution-spree-continues-as-fears-rise-for-jordanian-on-death-row

 The 2018 World Cup in Russia released more than 2 million tons of CO2 and the 2016 Olympics in Rio emitting 4.5 million tons

FIFA World Cup 2022 Qatar organizers have called it the first carbon-neutral tournament in history. But climate critics say the claims are misleading. 

 Carbon Market Watch questioned the carbon-neutral label, saying organizers have dramatically underestimated emissions.

The World Cup will emit some 3.6 million tons of CO2, according to official figures. That’s roughly equal to the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s annual emissions.

Qatar said it has cut planet-heating emissions by installing solar-powered lighting and cooling systems, and constructing “energy-efficient stadiums.” Emissions it can’t avoid, it will be offset with local green projects. 

Most of those greenhouse gases will come from flights and accommodation for the more than one million visitors, as well as the construction of seven new stadiums, among other infrastructure, say organizers. 

Stadium construction is one area where organizers got creative with their carbon accounting, underplaying emissions by at least 1.6 million tons, said Gilles Dufrasne, author of the Carbon Market Watch study.

Only a small portion of construction emissions have been included in official estimates, as organizers say the stadiums will be used for other events. But the calculation ignores the fact that these stadiums would not have been built were it not for the World Cup.

51% of emissions will come from transport, according to official estimates. But that doesn’t include the shuttle flights set to ferry spectators into the desert city each day, said Dufrasne. Because of a shortage of accommodation in Qatar, 160 flights a day will take off from neighboring countries, including Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Carbon Market Watch analysis also criticized plans to offset these “unavoidable” emissions from transport and other areas, questioning their legitimacy. Only about 200,000 of the planned 1.8 million tons of credits have been issued. They all come from renewable energy projects in Serbia, Turkey and India through an organization more or less established by Qatar itself, rather than under internationally recognized and independent standards. 

Greenpeace question the idea of offsetting altogether.

“It does not work,” said Julien Jreissati , program director at Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa. “This whole idea of offsetting is merely a distraction away from real climate action, which is reducing fossil fuel-based emissions at the source as fast as possible.”

Emissions aren’t the only environmental concern. Water use is another, and especially concerning given Qatar’s scarce water resources.

Qatar’s freshwater comes from desalination plants produced in an energy-intensive process that uses mainly fossil fuels. The plants also release salty, hot brine that is toxic to marine life back into the sea.

Waste is another problem.  Event organizers say 60% of the waste generated during the event will be recycled, while 40% will be turned into energy. But burning waste for energy releases greenhouse gases.

Is the Qatar FIFA World Cup really carbon neutral? – DW – 11/21/2022

 “Our team belongs to the people, not the Islamic regime.”

The Iranian players declined to sing their national anthem before their World Cup match with England in an expression of support for anti-government protests.

Iran state TV cut its coverage of the anthem. 

Iranian fans present in the stadium could also be heard chanting “Ali Karimi” in reference to the former footballer who is one of the most outspoken critics of the Islamic Republic.

The fans could also be heard chanting “Be-Sharaf”, which means dishonourable in Persian. This slogan protesters use against security forces in Iran. 

Many Iranian women in the crowd wore T-shirts with the phrase “Woman, Life, Freedom”, which has become the rallying cry for protestors and had their hair fully on display. 

 In 2021, Global Forest Watch placed Bolivia third in the world for loss of primary forest, behind Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ranked by population, Bolivia is highest.

Bolivia, today, has roughly 4m hectares of cultivated land and 10 million cattle. By 2025, the government wants 13m hectares and 18 million cattle. For Bolivia its agribusiness is booming.

Most of this deforestation is happening in Santa Cruz and Beni. But it is in Beni that a unique archaeological civilisation heritage is at risk.

“Archaeology is everywhere in Beni,” said Umberto Lombardo one of a handful of academics who study the archaeology of Beni. “They say if you put up a roof, you have a museum.”

In the Amazon basin a growing body of research has found traces of a vast network of earthworks predating the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas and implying the existence of large, complex societies.

In Bolivia the archaeologist Heiko Prümers and his team began flying over the Llanos de Mojos by helicopter in 2019, mapping the land beneath them with a laser. They then digitally stripped away the vegetation, revealing the topography of the ground underneath. In a paper published in Nature, they described settlements built around monumental mounds, some 20 metres high. Smaller settlements surrounded the larger ones, linked by causeways running for kilometres. Canals and reservoirs show how the people shaped the land for agriculture.

For most of the people that live here and work the land – whether Indigenous communities, settlers, Mennonites or agribusiness – the archaeological remains are so common they are barely remarked on, much less preserved. Roads slice through monumental mounds. Farmers flatten them. People build huts on top of them. In one case near the Mennonite colony, the state road company was taking earth from a mound to fill in potholes.

“For most people here, these mounds don’t have any special value,” said Lombardo. “There are so many things to study. If these sites are destroyed, we may never have the answers.”

There are no incentives for people to report them to the state – nor any experts that could readily be sent to study them. There are just a handful of archaeologists studying the Llanos de Mojos, and none lives in Bolivia. In an ideal world, he says, the government would educate locals about the importance of the mounds, pay to preserve them and set up an archaeological faculty in Beni.

Unchecked deforestation destroying evidence of lost Amazon civilisation | Bolivia | The Guardian

 US government records obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Guardian show farms producing beef for meat packing firms Cargill, JBS, and Green Bay who in turn supply McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Walmart are risking public health by still using antibiotics classed as the “highest priority critically important” to human health (HP-CIAs). The findings have prompted condemnation from public health experts and campaigners.

Such drugs are so essential to human medicine that their use in livestock farming should be stopped, the World Health Organization has warned. HP-CIAs are often the last line or one of limited treatments available for serious bacterial infections in humans. The overuse of such antibiotics means they can become less effective. There is no ban on using antibiotics for treatment or to prevent disease, although farmers now need a veterinary prescription for many medically important antibiotics that were previously available over-the-counter and added to water and feed. There is a ban in the US on using antibiotics for growth promotion, which has been in place since 2017.

Cory Booker, a US senator has advocated for stricter controls on how antibiotics can be used in food production, explained:

 “Giant agribusinesses have built a system that is dependent on this misuse of antibiotics to maximise their profits, with no regard to the serious harm they are causing.”

 US cattle farmers still routinely use antibiotics often for months on end. Their use – and overuse – risks enabling bacteria to develop resistance, meaning the drugs stop working.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the gravest global public health threats. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is responsible for more than 35,000 deaths in the US each year, and 1.3 million globally.

McDonald’s and Walmart beef suppliers criticised for ‘reckless’ antibiotics use | Meat industry | The Guardian

 The Iranian international team captain Ehsan Hajsafi spoke out against the situation in his home country before his nation’s opening game against England at the World Cup.

“We have to accept that the conditions in our country are not right and our people are not happy,” he said.

“Before anything else, I would like to express my condolences to all of the bereaved families in Iran,” Hajsafi said. “They should know that we are with them, we support them and we sympathise with them.”

“We cannot deny the conditions – the conditions in my country are not good and the players know it also.” 

“We are here but it does not mean that we should not be their voice, or we must not respect them. Whatever we have is from them. We have to fight, we have to perform the best we can and score goals, and present the brave people of Iran with the results.

“And I hope that the conditions change to the expectations of the people.”

World Cup 2022: Iran’s Ehsan Hajsafi speaks out over conditions in his home country – BBC Sport