Prior to the pandemic, birth rates in Italy were already among Europe’s lowest. Now, Italians are having even fewer children.
Preliminary birth rate figures for Italy show that in December 2020, 15 Italian cities recorded a 21.6% drop in fertility rates compared to 12 months earlier.
Italy's birth rate is the lowest out of all European states. The number of new marriages has halved, too.
Italian women had around 2.5 children in the 1960s. Today, that rate has fallen to a mere 1.27.
"So many little towns are at risk of disappearing," said demographics researcher Choi One-lack at the Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI). "The pace of ageing and birth declines is the worst here among the OECD."
In India up to 96 million people who may be living with more than 7,000 illnesses defined as rare diseases are not so lucky. India has no budget for rare diseases and health insurance companies do not cover them. Charitable programmes provide for only a very few.
Half of rare diseases appear in children, of whom a third will die before they turn five. Only 5% of such diseases have a cure. But with medicines for management, patients can have a better and longer life.
“A majority of medication for rare diseases is exorbitantly priced and none is manufactured in India,” says Prasanna Shirol, co-founder of Organisation of Rare Diseases India (ORDI), a non-profit umbrella group.
Newborn screening could diagnose many disorders at birth, since 80% of rare diseases are genetic. But barring a few Indian states, it is unavailable in government-run hospitals, where, in 2018, almost 55% of women gave birth.
Next-generation sequencing – a blood test that can diagnose a human’s entire genetic makeup – is now offered in some private laboratories, shortening the journey to diagnosis. But given the prohibitive costs, it may not be enough.
It has been 10 years since peaceful protests against Bashar al-Assad’s government turned into a full-blown civil war. Far too many have died or been crippled. Millions have fled their homes and millions have ended up in poverty.
This blog has followed the developments in Syria from the promise of the Arab Spring to the disastrous destruction of the country by the government’s repressive reaction to the intervention of Islamist terrorists and calculating cold-bloodedness of foreign powers.
SOCIALISM OR YOUR MONEY BACK: Revolution Without Leaders
Our blog’s first report was one of optimism.
“This is the purest people’s revolution there ever was,” said a Damascus-based activist who is affiliated with two of the groups engaged in encouraging protests. Leaders are nonexistent, he said, and they wouldn’t be welcomed.
Efforts by exiled opponents of Assad to form a united front have faltered because of an acute awareness that the Syrian street is driving the uprising. No one, least of all the Syrians wants to see a repeat of the Iraq experience, in which exiled leaders with no street credibility are foisted upon those living inside the country.
“The people who are on the streets don’t want a leader,” said Dhia Aldeen Dugmosh, a protest organizer who was detained twice and escaped to Beirut. “Not only the Syrian people, but all the Arab people, are fed up with having a leader.
SOCIALISM OR YOUR MONEY BACK: The Syrian Struggle for Democracy is on Two Fronts
But, sadly, it was not to be. In due course, the blog was carrying accounts of developments did lead to the formation of self-appointed leaders from various organisations setting up a Syrian National Council, seeking support from such outside parties as "the Friends of Syria" and also the birth of the Free Syrian Army, financed, armed and trained by the Gulf States as well as various Western powers. Into this mix came the growth of the Muslim Brotherhood and fundamentalist Jihadist Islamic groups, operating under various guises, creating religious sectarianism.
"We are still many who want a peaceful revolution,” an activist who calls herself Celine says via Skype from Damascus. “But since it became an armed conflict, many people who were sympathetic to our cause have dropped out.”
“Peaceful resistance is a must; if we use weapons we will not be able to succeed as we do not have enough weapons or soldiers,” said Khalaf Ali Al-Khalaf, a Syrian activist from Aleppo. “The military option will increase people’s pain. Providing people with arms will only increase death. The opposition must convince those requesting arms that there is a different method of resistance. We are facing an unusual regime so we have to use unusual methods.”
"The SNC claims to be representative of the Syrian people. That’s just not true," says Ms. Nseir, a SNC's spokesperson in Lebanon but nevertheless a critic of it. "They talk only about arming the rebels. They never talk about nonviolent resistance and they certainly do not speak for the ramadieen, or grey people, the silent majority who support neither the regime nor the armed rebels.”
‘Safinas’ explains. "Our revolution has been stolen from us...We are fighting two regimes and two armies now."
Many Syrians who had embraced the opposition now felt alienated by its drift toward extremism and aligned with neither side. The opposition movement once offered hope of a more democratic future. Now many Syrians worried that they could be trading one repressive regime for another.
SOCIALISM OR YOUR MONEY BACK: Syria - A Plague Upon Both Houses
"We won't be with the regime, but neither are we with the opposition," said Ahmed, a journalism student at Damascus University. "People like me are still here," he said, "but who listens to the voice of reason when guns are shooting all the time?"
The non-violent movements that had gathered momentum early on has become side-lined by the Free Syrian Army. The Syrian regime's bloody crackdown on dissent pushed many Syrian protesters into an armed uprising and call for foreign military intervention. The FSA began as a collection of soldiers who refused to fire on peacefully protesting civilians, who then left the army and began to form militias aimed at protecting these demonstrators. Soon, this purely defensive function gave way to raids and ambushes of government troops, thereby fuelling the regime's claims that protesters are not peaceful, and that they cannot be dealt with peacefully. We witnessed how the militarisation of the Syrian protests lessened the democratic nature of the opposition by placing the power into the hands of the armed exile groups who have ended up serving the interests of rival nations because it is they who arms them, rather than expressing the genuine will of the Syrian people.
The Syrian civil war had transformed into a proxy war for regional dominance and remains so to this day. There were the hawks who masqueraded as doves justifying military interventionism by saying that it’s necessary to save people from the tyranny at the hands of their own government.
SOCIALISM OR YOUR MONEY BACK: War by Proxy
Rim Turkmani, a member of the Syrian Civil Democratic Alliance, explained :
“Nowadays, people don’t talk about democracy anymore.You don’t talk about the original rights and freedoms, which the people two years ago went to the street to protest for. We’re talking more about ending a war.” A peaceful resolution to the conflict is not something international actors with regional ambitions, such as Saudi Arabia, are interested in,
Our blog’s constant message has been that any war is brutal and it is dehumanising and the majority of victims will always be the innocent unarmed civilians. Eating the hearts of prisoners and slitting the throats of children should not surprise anyone. Nor should we expect that the atrocities are to be committed solely by one side and not the other.
Our alternative is simple and involves no partisanship or bias towards either side in the conflict. Cease fighting and stop shedding blood for those who share not a shred of concern for your welfare and who for their own vested interests want warfare. Peaceful resistance does not mean no resistance. It does not mean non-action. It involves direct action, like general strikes, which is capable of paralysing the country. Despots depend on the population’s cooperation and submissiveness - and if the people effectively withhold their consent, even the strongest of regimes can collapse. Without the consent of working people - either their active support or their passive acquiescence the ruling class would have little power and little basis for rule. Non-violence is not passive, nor is it a way of avoiding conflict. Any non-violent movement that takes on a well-entrenched dictatorship will suffer casualties. Nor is there any guarantee of success, even in the long run as we have seen in Syria. However the other option, entails an even greater price in lives lost and ruined.
Today, it is the turn of the people of Myanmar, Hong Kong and elsewhere to learn the harsh lessons that if you go over to violence, the soldiers will not mutiny. They will be loyal to their officers and the Tatmadaw will have a good chance to survive. An armed response from the protesters will not succeed, as the regime is invariably stronger on the military front. As soon as you choose to fight with violence you're choosing to fight against opponents in possession of the best weapons. The state's police and army are better trained in using those weapons. And they control the infrastructure that allows them to deploy them. To fight dictators with violence is to cede to them the choice of battleground and tactics. Using violence against experts in it is the quickest way to have a movement crushed. That is why governments frequently infiltrate opposition groups with agent provocateurs—to sidetrack the movement into violent acts that the police and security agencies can deal with.
Non-violence is an aspect of resistance that the normal forces of coercion are ill-prepared for. The success or failure of any peaceful revolt largely depends on the campaign’s ability to undermine the regimes supporters and weaken the allegiance of its civil servants, police and soldiers to the regime; to persuade those neutrals sitting on the fence to join the opposition. The worse the regime suppresses protests, the more steadfast ought the opposition be in its commitment to non-violence and the more the people resist, the more we will realise our own collective strength.
Another new talk via our online 'Discord' platform -
‘Socialism, Free Speech and Cancel Culture‘
A talk by Stephen Harper, 20th January 2021.The pursuit of happiness is a phrase penned by the American Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence. Since it has never even come close to being achieved, the American people have sought their own means.
$150 billion is spent in the USA on illegal drugs each year and a comparable amount on alcohol.
Nearly one in five people in the USA aged twelve and older (19.4%) took illegal drugs in 2018.
In 2018, an estimated 10.3 million people aged 12 or older misused opioids in the past year, including 9.9 million prescription pain reliever misusers and 808,000 heroin users. Approximately 506,000 people misused prescription pain relievers and used heroin in 2018.
19.1% or 47.6 million people in the USA had a mental illness, an emotional disorder or a behavioral one in 2018 while representing an impaired state of being so severe that it impinged upon the quality of life.
One in seven adolescents (14.4%) or 3.5 million had a major depressive episode in 2018
Amongst young adults aged 18 to twenty-five 13.8% or 4.6 million had a major depressive episode.
Concerning substance abuse treatment in 2018, “an estimated 21.2 million people aged 12 or older needed substance use treatment.
This number translates to about 1 in 13 people who needed treatment (7.8 percent). About 1 in 26 adolescents aged 12 to 17 (3.8 percent), about 1 in 7 young adults aged 18 to 25 (15.3 percent), and 1 in 14 adults aged 26 or older (7.0 percent) needed treatment.”
Drugs, Substance Abuse and Mental Issues in the USA | Countercurrents
Almost half of its sales went to the Middle East, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.
US exports increased 15% compared to the 2011-2015 period.
Middle Eastern countries accounted for the biggest increase in arms imports, up 25% in 2016–20 from 2011–15. Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest arms importer, increased its arms imports by 61% and Qatar by 361%. United Arab Emirates recently signed an agreement with the United States to purchase 50 F-35 jets and up to 18 armed drones as part of a $23 billion package.
SIPRI: Saudi Arabia largest importer of arms, US biggest exporter | News | DW | 15.03.2021
During the build-up towards the 2003 invasion of Iraq there was a sustained attempt by the pro-war advocates to influence the investigations of both Hans Blix's WMD inspectors and the El Baradei nuclear weapon inspectors. Both agencies were targeted by US and UK governments to undermine their independence.
It now appears that a very similar strategy was undertaken at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in its search for the truth about the 2018 use of chemical weapons at Douma in Syria, which the OPCW final report suggested was the result of a Syrian government attack.
Dissenting opinions at the OPCW have been in effect silenced and those officials criticised and discredited by the organisation itself.
It has resulted in a pushback by them when they became signatories of an open letter accusing the OPCW of being unduly swayed by outside political actors - the US, UK and France.
A “Statement of Concern” was signed by five former OPCW officials, as well as the first Director General of the OPCW, José Bustani, along with leading political commentators.
This blog has no way of knowing the real truth of the toxic gas attack at Douma but now from past experience has less confidence in the objectivity and neutrality of various international organisations.
For further background
5 former OPCW officials join prominent voices to call out Syria cover-up | The Grayzone
The problem isn’t that there isn’t enough food to go around, but that more and more people are unable to afford to purchase it.
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) recently released a report predicting that the number of people facing extreme hunger could soar to 270 million by the end of this year — effectively doubling. It isn’t a lack of availability — it’s that many people simply can’t afford to purchase food.
The world population is crashing, and it doesn’t look like we’re even going to reach the 12 billion which was projected just a couple of years ago. Now it looks like 8 or 9 billion is going to be the leveling off for the population. So, you can’t argue that we need to double production because we already produce too much to begin with. And yet, this is what we hear over and over again. So, this is really sort of how capital politicizes the discourse around hunger in order to colonize new markets.
Taken from here
Capitalist Economies Overproduce Food — But People Can’t Afford to Buy It (truthout.org)
Everybody thought that 2020 would be the baby boom year. But that's unlikely. And the reason is not the coronavirus. Elke Loichinger, researcher at Germany's Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB), told DW that it would "be inadequate" to connect the estimated decrease in the number of births in 2020 to the pandemic. She said there was a different cause: "Already before the pandemic, the number of potential mothers, as well as the total fertility rate, has been decreasing."
Italy recorded the widest gap between births and deaths since the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918. The country recorded an estimated 400,000 births and more than 746,000 deaths. On top of that, number of marriages fell by more than half, which suggests that there will be fewer babies in Italy in 2021.
France has noted a decrease of 1.8% in number of births in comparison to 2019.
Germany recorded zero population growth for the first time since 2011. The number of births fell from 2019, and the number of deaths increased noticeably. The estimations are that there were 755,000-775,000 births and at least 980,000 deaths in 2020.
Loichinger said the increased number of deaths in 2020 was partly connected to pandemic, but added that the overall negative deficit between the number of births and deaths is not a surprise. "We have seen this since the 1970s in Germany. More people are dying than babies are being born."
Migration was also a reason for the changes to Germany's population in 2020. Among other things, restrictions on international travel hampered international migration, people moved less, and as a result fewer people migrated to Germany.
"The reason that the population in Germany has not by now declined noticeably is migration," Loichinger said, adding that with exception of few years, more people have immigrated than emigrated during the last three decades. It is expected that the population in Germany is going to decline from the mid-2020s, largely because of the effects of migration. "The future population of Germany is likely going to decline, but at what speed and in what timeframe is hard to say. It will highly depend on migration," Loichinger said.
The same goes for the whole European Union. According to Eurostat projections, the EU's population will peak at 449.3 million in 2026 then gradually decrease to 416.1 million by 2100.
What is certain is that "the German population is aging, with or without migration," Loichinger said.
The amount of economic advantage passed down from one generation to the next is much higher in the US. Approximately 50% of a father’s income position is inherited by his son. In contrast, the amount in Norway or Canada is less than 20%.
In the US, 8% of children raised in the bottom 20% of the income distribution are able to climb to the top 20% as adults, while the figure in Denmark is nearly double at 15%.
American life expectancy varies by up to 20 years depending on the zip code of residence.
Quality of education also differs widely depending on the wealth of the neighborhood that families reside in.
And the chances of being victimized by a crime, exposed to environmental toxins or having unmet healthcare needs is far greater for America’s poor than those impoverished in all other OECD countries.
Currently, those in the top 20% of the income distribution earn nearly nine times more than those in the bottom 20%. This difference is far greater than in the European Union or the United Kingdom.
Wealth inequality is even more skewed. In the United States, the top 5% of the population own three-quarters of the entire financial wealth of the country, while the bottom 60% possess less than 1%.
The 'American Dream' of upward mobility is broken. Look at the numbers | US news | The Guardian
The Socialist Party has revealed the lie about the humanitarianism of sanctions as humbug. We see their detrimental effects upon working people around the world when they are imposed on the so-called "pariah" states, with the subsequent effect of reducing them to "failed" states.
The medical journal, The Lancet has pointed out that "although sanctions do not seem to be physical warfare weapons, they are just as deadly, if not more so. Jeopardising the health of populations for political ends is not only illegal but also barbaric."
In February, Alena Douhan, a UN special rapporteur, published her preliminary report on the impact of US and European sanctions upon Venezuela which concluded that the long campaign of economic warfare had impacted upon Venezuela's economy, thwarting the government's ability to provide basic services both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The government's revenue was reported to shrink by 99%, with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income," Douhan found, impeding "the ability of Venezuela to respond to the Covid-19 emergency." She then urged, "the governments of the United Kingdom, Portugal and the United States and corresponding banks to unfreeze assets of the Venezuela Central Bank to purchase medicine, vaccines, food, medical and other equipment."
Her findings supported an earlier study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) that estimated that sanctions were responsible for over 40,000 deaths in Venezuela in 2017–18. While accepting sanctions were not the only factor driving economic hardship, CEPR found that they:
"...exacerbated Venezuela's economic crisis and made it nearly impossible to stabilize the economy, contributing further to excess deaths. All of these impacts disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable Venezuelans."
Most of the mainstream media attributes sole responsibility for economic and humanitarian conditions to the Venezuelan government of Maduro, thereby using the misery provoked by sanctions as the rationale to validate even more stringent sanctions.
The former US Attorney General William Barr gloated that the pandemic was:
"good timing, actually. The [Trump] administration is taking a kind of "kick them while they're down" approach, seemingly with the hope that by piling on sanctions and other actions, the administration can capitalize on the virus in Iran and Venezuela to spur greater public opposition to the incumbent governments and perhaps regime change."
The media typically presents the effects of sanctions as mere accusations and allegations of Maduro such as he claims "…US sanctions were hurting his administration's ability to buy medicines and foodstuffs" or implicitly blames him, for example, "continuing chaotic situation under Nicolás Maduro leaves hospitals and health services desperately unprepared."
The media would rather suggest that all of the 4 million Venezuelans who have now fled the economic and humanitarian chaos was because of the corruption of this regime without any mention of the complicity of those nations engaged in economic warfare against it. Neither the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post nor BBC carried reporting of Douhan's findings.
Sanctions (other than against specifically named individuals) is collective punishment which is a crime against humanity under Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. Sanctions constitute violations of international law.
Adapted from here
Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty from the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics reported, India's top 1 percent in today's "Billionaire Raj" have a similar share of the national income as the top 1 percent did under the British Raj.
A majority of the population lives in poverty.
On the 2020 Global Hunger Index, India is 94th out of 107 countries
India's National Family Health Survey for 2019-20 showed that in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat, 39 percent of children under the age of five have had their growth stunted by malnutrition.
Approximately 25 percent of all hungry people live in India, where around 195 million people are undernourished.
Thousands per day, perhaps a million per year, die of malnutrition in India, most of whom are children.
India’s right-wing government is so hungry for profit it will risk a famine - Alternet.org
Roads occupy less than 1% of the country yet 94% of Britain has some traffic pollution above background levels.
The most widespread pollutants are tiny particles, mostly from fossil fuel burning, nitrogen dioxide from diesel vehicles, and noise and light. More than 70% of the country is affected by all of these, with the only land to escape road pollution being almost entirely at high altitudes.
Road pollution affects 94% of Britain, study finds | Pollution | The Guardian
On September 8, the Air Force gave the defense company Northrop Grumman an initial contract of $13.3 billion to begin engineering and manufacturing the missile, but that will be just a fraction of the total bill. The government will spend roughly $100 billion to build the weapon, which will be ready to use around 2029. $100 billion could pay 1.24 million elementary school teacher salaries for a year, provide 2.84 million four-year university scholarships, or cover 3.3 million hospital stays for covid-19 patients.
The GBSD is designed to replace the existing fleet of Minuteman III missiles; both are intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. Like its predecessors, the GBSD fleet will be lodged in underground silos, widely scattered in three groups known as “wings” across five states.
America’s nuclear arsenal is presently 3,800 warheads. Russia has about 4,300 nuclear warheads, the only arsenal on par with America’s, and is also up-grading to new nukes.
William J. Perry, Secretary of Defense during the Clinton administration, argued in 2016 that “we simply do not need to rebuild all of the weapons we had during the Cold War” and singled out the GBSD as unnecessary.
And for practical purposes, such numbers are superfluous and surplus to requirements. “Once you've dropped a couple of nuclear bombs on a city, if you drop a couple more, all you do is make the rubble shake,” said Air Force Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Robert Latiff, a Bulletin Science and Security Board member who once commanded a unit of short-range nuclear weapons in West Germany.
James Mattis, the former Marine Corps general who would go on to become Secretary of Defense, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2015 that getting rid of America’s land-based nuclear missiles “would reduce the false alarm danger.” Whereas a bomber can be turned around even on approach to its target, a nuclear missile launched by mistake can’t be recalled.
Currently around £56.1-billion of the NHS annual budget goes on staffing costs. A 1 percent pay rise would cost approximately £561-million. That’s almost the same amount the Ministry of Defence (MOD) spent on missiles for its new fleet of F-35 Lightning fighter jets in January. A week after the missile spending was announced, the MOD said another £76-million would be spent maintaining the F-35s.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said Britain now has the fourth-largest defense budget in the world, ahead of Russia, France and Germany.
Only the U.S., China and India spent more on their militaries than the U.K. , with the Pentagon accounting for 40 percent of the world’s defense expenditure.
The IISS said the Russian defense budget for 2020 was $60.6-billion, down $1-billion from 2019. Russia is 70 times the size of the U.K. and has more than twice as many inhabitants.
Other spending announcements during lockdown this year include £180-million on armored vehicles for the British army, £102-million on a surveillance system for soldiers and £98-million for shoulder-launched missiles.
The British government was likely to spend more than £200-billion over the next decade to fulfil its pledges on military procurement for equipment such as new nuclear-armed submarines, aircraft carriers and combat aircraft. In addition, other costs for the Trident nuclear weapons system could reach up to £164-billion in the 40 years to 2061.
Britain overtakes Russian military spending — but onl... (dailymaverick.co.za)
For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,Warren Buffett has been up there near the top of the world’s wealth league for decades. Now, his net worth has exceeded $100 billion.
Berkshire Hathaway, the source of virtually all of Buffett’s wealth, has had a good start to 2021. The firm’s A shares are up 15% this year, outpacing the 3.8% gain of the S&P 500 Index. That’s been helped by Buffett’s recent push to spend record amounts buying back Berkshire’s own stock, a notable shift for an investor who has preferred to use the $138 billion cash pile to buy other businesses. In 2020, Buffett spent a record $24.7 billion on buybacks and filings indicate he’s already bought at least $4.2 billion worth of stock through mid-February. Buffett added $1.9 billion to his fortune on Wednesday as Berkshire Class A shares hit a record high, h
The staggering amounts accumulated by the ultra-wealthy – $1.8 trillion by the world’s 500 richest in 2020 alone – highlights the K-shaped recovery that’s taking place as the U.S. emerges from the pandemic. While millions of disproportionately poor, working-class and minority people remain unemployed, the rich have seen incomes and net worth levels jump thanks to a buoyant stock market.
Meanwhile, more than 8 million Americans — including many children — fell into poverty in the second half of last year.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented economic emergency among garment factory workers when the retail brands began cutting orders and refusing to pay for those already in production. The result has been mass job losses and pay reductions.
The extreme vulnerability of garment workers was highlighted because they are located in countries that often offer no social security or safety nets. They are desperate, unable to pay rent or support their families.
The first missed paycheque immediately sent many families from poverty into destitution. Workers are in need of immediate relief cannot and cannot wait for protections to be put into place.
In April 2020 industry stakeholders launched a Call to Action (CtA) as a coordinated response. Some of the brands that have signed the CtA are now using it to excuse their ongoing inaction. Progress has been painstakingly slow. The CtA announced “successes” in Bangladesh, where the European Union and the German government committed 113 million euros ($135m). It led to less than 2,000 workers receiving direct income support.
The industry hide behind initiatives that use public money to fill the gaps they have wilfully profited from for decades. Instead, they should reach into their own pockets to address the issues in their own supply chains.
The garment industry is ignoring the plight of its workers | Opinions News | Al Jazeera
1%
The premier and his cabinet gathered
Weekly, sober-suited and applauded,
National Health Service workers they lauded,
“Heroes of the NHS!” they blathered:
Then, soon as they could, showed their true intent.
In gratitude for not being unemployed
Hospital staff should all be overjoyed,
Receiving a rise of a whole one percent.
Meanwhile, two members of the family firm,
Hard pressed and harassed multi-millionaires,
Revealed the depths of their tragic affairs,
How the nasty media made them both squirm.
Nurses, don’t fall for the clap-trap, resent
That you’re being cast with the wrong one percent.
D. A.
The chilling prediction of the Grenfell fire came at a presentation attended by a marketing manager from Arconic who had been "very impressed" by a presentation on fire safety which he attended in 2007.
Gerard Sonntag sent an internal memo suggesting the company stop selling the flammable version of its product. It never happened and the fire, made worse by Arconic's cladding, killed 72.
A consultant, Fred-Roderich Pohl set out the risks of the plastic used to make aluminium composite cladding (ACM), which he said had the same "fuel power" as a 19,000-litre truck of oil. The plastic, polyethylene or PE, is highly flammable. Mr Pohl showed pictures of a fire in Doha, Qatar, which developed quickly in the cladding system.
In his memo about the presentation, Mr Sonntag said Mr Pohl warned: "What will happen if only one building made out of PE is on fire and kills 60 to 70 persons."
It was a chilling prediction of the exact circumstances of the Grenfell Tower fire.
Mr Sonntag's response to the 2007 presentation was to recommend the company stop selling the PE version of the cladding in favour of a fire-retardant (FR) type. He also said Arconic should cut production costs so that the FR version could be produced at the same price as the cheaper PE version. The company kept the PE version on the market until after the Grenfell fire, when the role of the product in allowing flames to spread had become clear.
In June 2011, Arconic warned a Spanish customer not to use its PE panels because they achieved the low fire performance rating E, which the customer remarked was “close to spontaneous combustion”. But in 2014, Arconic sold the same panels to the Grenfell project on the basis of a UK fire performance certificate that suggested the materials were rated B.
In the months after April 2015, when Arconic processed a purchase order selling the PE panels for Grenfell, executives shared technical reports about 10 high-rise fires in different parts of the world using similar cladding panels, warning of the risks.
In a report about a 2014 cladding fire in the Lacrosse building in Melbourne in early May that warned about the “speed and intensity of fire spread”, rising from the eighth to the 21st storey in no more than 15 minutes and penetrating rooms on each floor, a similar pattern to the fire’s progress at Grenfell. The same report showed eight other high-rise fires with very similar cladding around the world.
In October 2015, colleagues sent Arconic’s technical chief, Claude Wehrle pictures of a cladding fire at a medical centre in Saudi Arabia that had used fire retardant panels, where the fire was limited to the lower storeys. Wehrle remarked: “In PE, the fire would have spread over the entire height of the tower, while in this case only the area near the fire is affected..."
In January 2016, after a cladding fire at the Address hotel in Dubai involving PE panels, Wehrle emailed colleagues saying: “I hope that PE will be gradually excluded from facade cladding.”
Later that month there was another fire in the Wolleck tower in France, only 10 metres from a building clad in Reynobond PE. Wehrle told colleagues they were “very lucky” the wind had not changed direction and spread the fire. “We really need to stop proposing PE in architecture! We are in the ‘know’, and I think it is up to us to be proactive … AT LAST.”
Grenfell Tower caught fire 17 months later.
Grenfell Tower inquiry: Fire predicted a decade before, memo shows - BBC News
