Nemesis Project: Corporations that kill people: the sourge of asbestos

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Corporations that kill people: the sourge of asbestos

Perth, the city where I live is the asbestos cancer capital of the world, with the highest known incidence of asbestos related disease in the world.

The events that caused this situation constitute perhaps the greatest industrial and corporate crime in Australian history.

Asbestos is a deadly substance, a carcinogen that has taken millions of lives world wide, leading to it being banned or restricted in 52 countries. Global estimates are that between 5-10 million people may die as the result of exposure to asbestos and asbestos related products.

Despite the millions who have died and will die in the future as a result of exposure to asbestos, the asbestos industry continues to grow around the world. When it comes to asbestos, corporate power and industry greed for huge profits are insatiable.

Here in Western Australia, the human cost of exposure to asbestos is a legacy of the Wittenoom asbestos mine where asbestos was mined from the 1940's to the late 1960's, and the presence of many industries that processed, manufactured and used asbestos, for example in construction.

Groups such as the Perth based Asbestos Disease Society of Australia have been tireless in the pursuit of justice for the people affected by asbestos.

Perth based writer Miriam Miller's book Shattered Lives: The Human Face of the Asbestos Tragedy is a searing expose of the human consequences of the reckless and callous disregard shown by many corporations in WA, including CSR and James Hardie, and the industries that prospered on the use of asbestos, all of whom placed profit and greed ahead of human wellbeing.

Miriam Miller's fine book continues the tradition of Ben Hill's Blue Murder, his 1989 book on the history of the Wittenoom mine and of the men and women who worked in the mine or lived in the town, and Matt Peacock's Killer Company, a shocking expose of the evils perpetrated by James Hardie, the building products company that spent years covering up the dangers of its asbestos products.

A new report Dangers in the Dust: Inside the Global Asbestos Trade has found that asbestos industry lobby groups have spent some $100 million since the 1980's to preserve and grow the asbestos market in developing nations. They have been hugely successful. In India the asbestos market grows 25% each year, the result of a powerful, New Delhi-based trade group that spends millions on pro-asbestos ads, lobbying, and counteracting critical science on the mineral. China is now the largest exporter of asbestos in the world where demand for the substance is booming.

In countries like Russia and Brazil where asbestos is mined, powerful connections between the asbestos industry, corporations and sovereign governments exercise control over asbstos mining.

Western governments, such as Canada, continue to fund and support the mining and export of asbestos to Mexico, China and India. The Canadian Government is a staunch defender, supporter and funder of the asbestos industry (The Canadian Resources Minister is a former President of the Canadian Asbestos Chamber of Commerce).

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Reflections

“A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.”
Wendell Berry

"Corporations are to democracy what a T-Rex is to your checkers game"
Rebecca Solnit

"Political systems merely reflect the society which gives rise to them. And we live in a society-and a world-where the power of corporations is much greater than that of "ordinary people". Corporate power can readily be seen in our homes, our workplaces, our public spaces and our national debates"
Josh Fear

"The deep irony is that it is the unfettered rise of corporate power that presents the biggest threat to free markets, and to the ability of free markets to promote individual freedom, equality before the law and equitable prosperity"
Stephanie Blankenburg and Dan Plesch

" Wealth privilege remains embedded in the ancient institution of the corporation. It is a privilege out of step with market ideals, which has led to wealth disparities that threaten our political ideals. We can never really have political democracy without economic democracy".
Marjorie Kelly The Divine Right of Capital

"Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities... A functioning democracy must often defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens.."
Chris Hedges

"The privatization of public services and functions manifests the steady evolution of corporate power into a political form, into an integral even dominant partner with the state"
Sheldon Wolin, Democracy Inc: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism

Limited liability is at the heart of this rise of corporate power: it constitutes a blanket exemption of a special-interest group from accountability for the actions of their companies. While the mantra of "no rights without responsibilities" is used to regulate the behaviour of poor people who benefit from social-security payments, "the unaccountable few" enjoy feudal privileges"
Stephanie Blankenburg and Dan Plesch

"The economic, political and cultural signs of corporate colonization are increasingly abundant and readily visible in the contours of daily life"
Carl Boggs, The End of Politics

"Adult working Americans are more likely to die young as a result of organized corporate crime than any other form of criminal activity"
Michael Woodiwiss, Gangster Capitalism

"Without doubt corporate power and wealth shape politics today more than ever- in corporation's very growing presence in the economy, their extensive lobbies and influence over legislative activity, their ownership and control of the mass media, their preponderant influence over election campaigns, their capacity to secure relief from regulatory controls, their massive public relations apparatus, their general subsidies to the two parties.."
Carl Boggs The End of Politics

Our Agenda

The Nemesis Project is a Western Australian based civil society project that aims to shed light on everyday examples of corporate power and bring corporations under civil society and citizen control. We aim to highlight the ways that people are affected on a daily basis by corporate power.

We comprise a network of people and groups concerned that corporations and business have become too powerful and dominant within our society. Corporations and business have extended their power and influence into many sectors and aspects of life that should be preserved for the public good.

Corporations now exercise control over most aspects of the economy and society and use their power and money to exert control over the democratic process. In many cases the power and wealth of corporations and business have outgrown the restraints of democracy.

Although there is considerable concern about these issues efforts to address the problems have been limited and when they exist, fragmented. Strategies are needed to explore and structurally challenge the power exercised by corporations and business. The Nemesis project aims to develop an agenda to address the underlying causes of problems generated by corporate power and domination.

This blog is the first step in developing a citizen's agenda to re balance the relationship between corporate power and the power of ordinary Australians.

The Nemesis Project is an initiative of the WA Social Justice Network.

Nemesis Project

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Corporations that kill people: the sourge of asbestos

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