Despite all types of asbestos being banned in the UK since 1999, it still kills thousands of people every year.

One of the UK’s biggest manufacturers of asbestos and the industry bodies that it co-founded historically withheld information on risks posed by the carcinogenic material, playing down the dangers while lobbying the government for product warnings to be moderately tempered. 

Asbestos Research Council (ARC), of which Cape was a founding member, from 1966 successfully lobbied the government for regulation of asbestos products to be on a “maximum allowable concentration” basis rather than the “no dust policy” that had been proposed.

Documents also show Cape’s in-house sampling data threw up significantly higher dust counts than industry standards for accepted levels of exposure, but data unfavourable to Cape was withheld. Cape began to label its product in 1976 with a “take care with Asbestos” warning, it said “breathing asbestos dust can damage health”, but made no reference to the risk of mesothelioma. In a 1976 booklet by the Asbestos Information Committee, of which Cape was also a founding member, said: “The normal use of asbestos products should not be a cause for anxiety.”

Harminder Bains whose father died of mesothelioma said she felt “revulsion and anger” when going through the documents. 

“They clearly show that Cape knew of the high risk of fatal disease, yet deliberately withheld information and lobbied the government to protect their profits,” she said. “As a result of their greed, many men and women, including my father, have lost their lives.”

UK asbestos maker withheld information on material’s risks, court papers show | UK news | The Guardian

 In a recent speech, Putin very much parroted the propaganda tool of Herman Goering.

Putin declared, “… the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and simply spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into their mouths, spit them out on the pavement.” 

 Older people face the prospect of “pensioner poverty” due to the rising cost of living and the falling value of the stock market.

 Interactive Investor show its customers withdrew a quarter more from their private pensions in January as the cost of energy, food and petrol went up. The figures have prompted concern that pensioners will not have enough money to see them through retirement. In January, the average withdrawal from an Interactive Investor pension was £1,944, up 25% on the average for the same month in previous years. In February, the average was £1,910, up 7% on the same month in previous years.

Former pensions minister and campaigner Ros Altmann says these higher withdrawals are a “danger signal for the future”, particularly if they are taking their retirement savings early. “As the cost of basic essentials, such as food and heating have soared, people need higher incomes to cover their bills. Pay increases are far lower than current 30-year record high inflation rates, and people may be searching for other ways to make ends meet,” she says.

“For the over-55s, this could mean being tempted to take more money from their pension funds. This is worrying because private pensions are meant to support people after they finish work, rather than topping up pre-retirement earnings. Higher pension withdrawals now risks rising pensioner poverty in future and lower long-term growth.”

Becky O’Connor, head of pensions at Interactive Investor, says the average monthly withdrawal before the pandemic was £1,782. It then dropped to £1,534 as lockdowns were imposed and people were spending less. The combined pressure of a need for cash to cover higher living expenses, and the falling stock market, leads to a “double depletion” effect on savings, she says, and an anxiety for pensioners. 

“It’s the existential angst perennially faced by retirees on limited means, whose pensions have to last the rest of their lives. But it’s worse now than ever as a result of diminishing stock market returns and high inflation, which both erodes the value of the pot and puts pressure on people to withdraw more,” says O’Connor. “Withdrawing more from a diminishing pot means a higher risk of running out of money later on. You may take the view that you need it now, whereas you might not need it in 10 or 20 years when you reach your 80s. That might turn out to be true, but even when you are 80, there can be unexpected calls on your income that you could need to cover.”

‘Pensioner poverty’ alarm as older people raid pension pots | Money | The Guardian

 One in five people think they will end up in debt this year and won’t be able to pay it back, a survey has found.

 The median gross weekly wage of someone aged 18 to 21 has fallen by almost a fifth in real terms since 1997, while last week, the Office for National Statistics said that average wages in Britain had fallen at the fastest rate since 2014.

According to chartered financial planner Rosie Hooper, young people face a “triple whammy” of tax increases, with a portion of any wage rises they are able to negotiate disappearing before they are paid.

 Dubbed “generation precariat” (that is, they are living precariously without security)– typically rents and earns less in real terms than those who were young adults in the late 1990s.

The cost-of-living crisis is biting across the generations, but the under-30s are likely to be among the hardest hit. A recent report from the Intergenerational Foundation thinktank suggested the age group will bear the brunt of Covid and the health and social care levy. 

In common with other workers, they face rising prices and bills. But those with student debts face another cost – millions can expect higher bills on student loans next year after the government froze the thresholds at which repayments start.

Under-30s pay the highest price for the UK’s cost-of-living crisis | Household bills | The Guardian

 While we welcome the reception Ukrainian refugees are given, this forum has also highlighted how different that response has been for other vulnerable peoples. 

The Biden administration has continued to deport asylum-seekers under pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic. The U.S. has since carried out 1.7+ million expulsions, denying people the right to request asylum. The devastating impact has put lives in danger.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said in a statement that “asylum-seekers have found America’s golden doors shamefully slammed shut on them for two years too many.”

“As recently as this week, Ukrainians have also been barred from entry, joining Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, El Salvadorians, Brazilians, and Haitians as the victims of this enduring refusal to recognize their dignity and right to seek protection,” she noted. She continued, “Despite the president’s promises of a humane immigration system, this policy subjects children and families to a litany of horrors in Mexico, including kidnapping, rape, trafficking, torture, and other violent attacks.” She added, “It is long past time we live up to our values and legal obligations by welcoming these children, families, and individuals with dignity and due process.”

While many rushed to the Ukrainian border to help transport people to Poland and Germany, they would be committing a criminal offence should they pick up someone fleeing from Afghanistan instead. 

 Rather than allowing refugees to apply for asylum once they entered Europe, refugees are pushed back out.

 Marx and Engels did support certain nationalist movements and some wars but this was TO BRING CAPITALISM TO FEUDAL STATES or to give the CAPITALIST CLASS POLITICAL POWER so it could create the prerequisites of socialism, an actual working class within an industrialised society. So Marx and Engels sided with Prussia against the Slavs, Britain and France against Tsarist Russia and even Prussia against France so as to strengthen the unification of Germany. Such policies are no longer valid in our own time. Capitalism is now the predominant system and its the working class that is the decisive class, not the capitalists.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union the despotic empire that came into being, in many ways, preserved the most reactionary traditions of Tsarist Russia.  The new ruling class had no need of any human rights, freedom or democracy. To safeguard their stolen assets the ideology most suitable to cultivate for this purpose was nationalism.

Socialists are opposed to war because under capitalism wars are always about capitalist access to sources of raw materials, markets, trade routes, investment outlets or strategic points and places to control these.  War is caused by the struggles between national capitalist Powers over markets and economic resources. This can only be cured by the abolition of capitalism. The world is dominated by a system based on conflict – conflict over resources of all kinds, conflict between competing property interests and the states that represent them.

The parties of the World Socialist Movement are unique in opposing all war – not just certain types of war or certain situations. This is based on a recognition that the interests of the working women and men who usually make up the cannon-fodder and collateral damage of war can never be aligned with states and governments. We oppose the monopoly that the global owning class have over ownership of the Earth’s productive resources that are the usual spoils of armed conflict. 

Socialists are not against peace movements within capitalism. We know that the world faces problems of the greatest urgency and we know that the global social revolution is not an immediate prospect. We have no wish to hold human survival hostage to the attainment of our ideals. Please go ahead and prove us wrong by abolishing war without abolishing capitalism. Nothing, apart from socialism itself, would make us happier. The trouble is that we simply cannot conceive how it can be achieved.

That is why we see no alternative to working for socialism. We predict that unless the war machine that is capitalism is politically challenged by a majority – armed with an understanding of how it works – then in the years ahead we will still have wars raging around the globe, with ever more sophisticated weaponry. 

The fate of Russia and Ukraine is inseparable from the fate of humanity, and we can struggle for a better world for ourselves only by trying to build a better world for everyone.

The pacifists have no answer to this question. What is our attitude to war? We are not pacifists. War is always barbarous and brutal, horribly so. Think of the bombing and the atrocities perpetrated. War is always evil and it generates other evils too. The soldier himself is a slave hired by the ruling class to shoot other slaves. Whoever defends any form of militarism, any arming for wholesale killing, defends the most damnable feature of capitalism and can have no part or parcel in the doctrine or movement of socialism. The socialist revolution, which will put an end to capitalism, must be international. Therefore, the workers must not think so much of their country as of their solidarity with the workers of all countries.

1. Modern wars are part and parcel of the capitalist system.

 

2. Capitalist economy must continually expand or the nation suffers from depression, unemployment and internal revolt.

 

3. Each capitalist nation is continually driven to seek new markets, new sources of raw materials and new areas for investment.

 

4. The capitalist need to expand continually makes each industrially developed power an imperialist aggressor – whether it is Britain, Russia or the United States.

 

5. There can be no end to imperialist wars without an end to capitalism.

 

6. Permanent peace is only possible when planned production for use has taken the place of competitive production for profits. Planned production for use on an international scale means a World Socialism

It is a crude naked struggle for economic power, raw materials, spheres of influence, strategic areas.

“It’s a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight,” was once a common slogan. Our position is one of irreconcilable opposition to any war waged by the capitalist ruling class. The struggle against militarism is the working-class struggle against capitalism itself.

Let the working class be realistic. Let it likewise trust only its own organised power. The international solidarity of labour is the only world organisation that can block new wars. The enemy is the same – vested interests, capitalism, and there will never be peace, freedom, equality, justice until THE SYSTEM is swept away. The only campaign for peace, if it is not to be a Utopia, must consist in the socialist organisation of the workers of the whole world for the overthrow of capitalism. When things are no longer produced for profit, but for the use of those who make them, then there will no longer be any necessity for capitalist armed forces. When millions of workers are set free from making munitions and provisions of warfare, then they will be able to turn their attention to building themselves better houses, producing more and better food and clothing for their families. It is either capitalism and military hell, or socialism and cooperative and peaceful enjoyment of the bounty of the earth. 

The time is here to choose.

 The annual World Happiness report found that Afghanistan came last out of 149 countries examined in the survey.

Should we be surprised?

1.5 million is the number of children who have fled Ukraine as refugees since 24 February, and countless others have been displaced by violence inside the country.