29/10/2025
The Rio de Janeiro favelas Alemão and Penha haver been invaded by the regional state’s civil and police in an Operation Containment, leaving at least 132 people dead with numbers still rising. The stated goal has been to contain the expansion of the Comando Vermelho criminal faction. We know that ‘gangs’ exist in areas where state provision is of the skinflint variety and that they can be violently coercive, but their links to the political class are also known, as revealed in Haiti and Ecuador. There is also a history of ‘landgrab’ in the city with a significant number of Rio’s 1000-odd favelas cheek by jowl with some of the fanciest real estate in Brazil. More than 90 percent of the Vila Autódromo´s population for example, were forcibly evicted after pressure from local government at the time of the 2016 Olympic Games. This time, as with past police ‘operations’, residents of Alemao and Penha have talked of extra-judicial executions of civilians.
WealthofNegations is pleased to say the Brazil Supreme Federal Court (STF) Justice Alexandre De Moraes, already sanctioned and punished by the Trump Administration, ruled on October 28th that Rio de Janeiro Governor Claudio Castro must appear in a hearing on November 3rd to justify the conduct of Operation Containment. We wish the hearing all the best and that it will bring some justice to those killed and terrorized.
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17/10/2025
At least 16 people, the lowest paid cut-and sew textile workers in the world, were killed and many affected by life changing injuries in a fire at a garment factory in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh. The factory was next to a chemical warehouse and the deaths on the second and third floors of the building are reported to be due to locked grilled doors. This is a reversion to a series of such deaths in the region 30 years ago and even further to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City early in the 20th century. A common factor was locked gates and doors as a result of the owners obsessed with the possibility of worker cloth theft. The factory is said to provide US retail chains.
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16/08/2025
There have been 24 cases and 8 deaths in China from bid flu; 66 cases and one reported death in the USA; 54 deaths in Vietnam; and at the very least one death in Cambodia, a 2-year old child
“Calculated use of starvation as a weapon of war”. This strategy is being circulated among land and resource grabbers worldwide. No amount of “outrage“ has prevented its continued use in Gaza. The city of El-Fasher in Sudan fought over by mass-sized rival armed groups of men for two years. It is under siege by one, the “rebel” soldiers of the RSF.
Mothers and children are dying from hunger while MSF (Médécins sans Frontière) estimates 100,000 cases of cholera with 2,470 feats.
It has been estimated that there were 300,000 “excess” deaths in Britain as a result of the policy given the name Austerity, like we were all going to made into better monk-like people). It was an attack on the poor that saw cuts in Welfare payments and other public services for all. The exhaustive analysis from the London School of Economics described one category as “Deaths of Despair”.
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05/08/2025
The double pressure for metals to be mined: copper for the electricity infrastructure needed by the demands of the digital world augmented by the A1 boom; and gold demanded by the always nervous Investor as a safe bet, involve cutting corners in excavation at the expense of miners. Five have lost their lives at the world’s biggest copper mine, El Teniente in Chile when part of the structure, in an area prone to seismic shock, caved in. It is officially recognised that there were earth tremours and these may well have been caused by the intensity of mining activity. Back in 2010, 33 Chilean miners were rescued from a collapsed mine in the same area. This was rightly celebrated and even made into a Hollywood film but the mine was unsafe, they should not have been there in the first place. This media-submerged reality was described in Curse 398. August 2010. CVA/TIPPA (London)
The recent mine collapse in Chile occurred around the same time as news emerged of five Bolivians killed at a state-owned Amayapampa mine in Potosí, the same Potosi whose silver financed the colonial and industrial “revolutions” of 450 years ago. There have been 73 mining deaths in Potosi already this year. The most recent were described as not being official employees, as if that made any difference, but had permission to collect residual ore. This when the price of gold is at record levels.
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30/07/2025
A Security Guard company employee armed with the assault rifle favoured by USA’s mass murderers let loose with his weapon in New York City killing 4 people. One was Wesley LePatner, the CEO of Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust which owns $53 billion worth of primarily rental housing in the USA as well as large swathes in Berlin and other global cities. Some tenants are calling this Poetic Justice.
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11/07/2025
Montse Aguilar. A healthy 51 year old died after working a 2 to 9.30pm shift in extremely high temperatures cleaning streets in Barcelona for a company, FCC SA, outsourced by the city council to keep its streets clean. In yet another case of “the consciousness that always comes too late” the city hall introduced safety protocols after her death, but as her union pointed out they leave all the responsibility to the worker to “decide whether they drink water once or a hundred times.”
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30/06/2025
Since May 27, 583 Palestinians have been killed and 4000 injured in Gaza at queues for food at unaccountable aid centres set up by the Israel-USA axis after a systematic and strategic smearing of the UN and other independent aid agencies left them with the monopoly power to save or starve. The deaths have been daily, through the last 2 weeks of June: 59 deaths on one day, 6 another, and 17 the day after that. Real people, really killed.
At least 34 workers have died in a fire and explosion and many more left with “life-changing” injuries at a Sigachi Industries pharmaceutical factory in the Indian state of Telangana. Most had migrated from North and East India to work there. In recent years there has been a merciful drop-off in deaths and injuries in textile factories in South Asia mostly due to the campaigning by victims and relatives but this is not the first such disaster in chemical factories.
Of the many thousands of children killed in Gaza since the Israeli invasion the majority are between 6 and 11, too heavy for their parents to carry, too slow to escape the bullets or the bombs from the skies.
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23/06/2025
Attacks on hospitals by state armies and a host of well-financed militias are all the rage. Military men seem to avoid killing each other but prefer as if by agreement to kill and maim civilians and destroy their health facilities. An attack on the Al-Mujlad Hospital in the Kurdofan state of Sudan resulted last week in the deaths of forty people many of them children, doctors and nurses. Most atrocities during the three years of violence in the country has been ascribed to the UAE-backed RSF. This time the evidence points to the “regular” Sudanese army. Both are violently making claims on the land and riches of the country.
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18/06/2025
Swiss -re, the giant re-insurers (basically insuring insurance companies themselves and thus needing to keep an eye on all “threats”) published its “Emerging Issues” report. II highlighted extreme heat “events” that are more frequent than ever. Death from heat stress is one consequence that might involve an insurance pay-out. Other consequences of these events are fires and crop destruction. It notes the proliferation of extreme heat products like parametric, which pays out if certain temperature thresholds are crossed, for data centers.
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18/05/2025
WoN is saddened by the death of Pépé Mujica, former political prisoner and the President of Uruguay. We celebrate the life of a true socialist & internationalist along with his humble modesty & courage, how he acted honestly in accordance with his professed beliefs
WoN notes that the United Arab Emirate (UAE) has escaped any responsibility for its role in the deaths of thousands of adults and children in the Sudan in a case at the International Criminal Court, all on a technicality. In neighbouring Saudi Arabia migrant workers are dying from electrocution, decapitation and falls from buildings while working in hazardous conditions on construction sites for its ambitious “giga-projects,” including building the infrastructure for the 2034 FIFA Men’s World Cup. These are likely to exceed the deaths of migrant worker in the construction of stadiums for the Football World Cup of 2022 in neighbouring Qatar. In the same region the killing of thousands of Gazans by the drunk-on-impunity Israeli state, its pilots and artillery units, is a horror beyond what any of us could have imagined.
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20/02/2025
The increasingly likely end of a habitable planet for humans has been made clear by the reduction of the ‘sea ice’ in the Arctic and Antarctic regions and the acceleration of this process over the past few years. The Arctic no longer captures CO2 but produces it. This is part of a vicious circle as the lack of ice as a reflector will increase global temperature at the Planet’s Poles as well as elsewhere. In the Arctic region the melting is going to release trapped methane gases whose emissions are even worse in the short run in their effects than CO2 emissions. In the Antarctic the reflector effect is similar and will have immediate consequences for people whose lives will be ruined by rising sea levels and the increasing frequency & intensity of storms in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres and in the cycles of drought and flood reported daily here in the linked Telegram disaster channel.
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In the still habitable world, Paraguayan doctors are warning that sustained extreme temperatures as are being experienced there, as well as through most of Latin America India, China, parts of the USA & Europe, are liable to prove fatal to those with heart conditions.
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In Western Mali, a country with a powerful and creative cinematic industry 48 people died when an “illegal” gold mine collapsed. At WealthofNegations we note that when gold miners die it is always in “Illegal” mines and that there is no stopping the demand for gold by the Western international investor class, as well as India and China’s, investors always anxious about their money.
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The number of deaths from the so called “19th century” disease of cholera in the year 2024 is between 21,000 and 140,000, and the number of cases up by 50% from 2023 to one million and counting. As there is only one company which finds it profitable to produce a vaccine for this disease and with the demand ever greater, there is a worldwide shortage as reported by the World Health Organisation. WealthofNegations fears that with the accelerating incidence of flooding and a shortage of safe drinking water even in modern cities, there will be many more cases.
17/01/2025
For egomaniacs, especially the very rich, Death is a personal insult. Some are looking to escape to other parts of the universe, leaving behind our shared planet earth, whose precious atmosphere they have mostly already destroyed. WoN’s Prick of the Month however is tech-centimillionaire Bryan Johnson, who spent most of his waking hours ingesting bucket-loads of healthy stuff to slow the aging process, including blood transfused from his 17-year-old son and 70-year-old father as part of the “world’s first multi-generational plasma swap”. Working under the slogan ‘Don’t Die’, Johnson claimed to have the heart of a 37-year-old, the skin of a 28-year-old and the lung capacity of an 18-year-old. No such figures have been made available for Johnson’s brain, although rapidly progressive dementia can’t be ruled out…..
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Official figures say that 46,707 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli war of destruction in Gaza. This amounts to one in fifty of the population. Officially they were all entitled to die either as Terrorists or in more elastic BBC terms, militants and activists. The respected medical journal, The Lancet, gives a higher estimate of between 55,798 and 78, 529, while admitting that collecting data is difficult due to the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. This also points to the likelihood of 10,000 corpses beneath the rubble and the probability of longer-term casualties from injuries, malnutrition and injuries untreated by a destroyed health service.
11/09/2024
It has to be said that as an old geezer AND total failure at being property-rich, death pops up these days as more than just an idea. This isn’t helped by looking after friends and family even more enfeebled than myself and being subjected to cheerily guilt-tripping online adverts for funeral insurance. Fuck that, I’ve been thinking more about what music to play when the coffin slides into the furnace behind the velvet curtain. How about Long Shot Kick de Bucket or Another One Bites the Dust for starters:
“You kiss Kitty Kay while you minus plus. Another one bite di dust. You kiss Kitty Kay while you minus plus. Another one bite di dust (General Saint & Clint Eastwood. Greensleeves Records 1981)
No such joy, instead we see a cheerful looking man out in the garden in immaculate cords with a not-heavy wheelbarrow telling a stunner from the past who still looks good, about how he sleeps good at night since he’s taken our such a plan, that it won’t be a burden on the kids and she replies- admiring that male foresight, how fab that is.
A good pal tells me it’s six grand for a basic funeral package but some local priests accept a bung (cash in hand) for the service and you can cut out the inflated industry costs. For those with the available conscience and cash to support the burgeoning Green Funeral industry, there’s always the option of a water cremation or ‘aquamation’ but who wants to pass on the misery of more debt to the indebted young?
The still existant COVID and its variants made all this real: three years ago, Mass Death arrived in Ecuador on the asymptomatic body of so called ‘patient zero’, a retiree returning home (along with 20,000 others who arrived in Ecuador from Spain, Italy, and the United States in early February 2020, before collective health measures were put in place. So catastrophic and fast was the spread, that there were corpses piled high on the streets: “We see them burning bodies… Nobody is picking them up at the houses…The only option is to leave their loved ones on the street or at the hospital [if they died there].”. Then there were the funeral pyres nearly everywhere in India as urban migrant workers returned to their home villages, many carrying the disease, as the middle & upper classes & upper castes in the country evicted them from their homes & workplaces. Or New York where freezers full of bodies stunk up neighborhoods and prisoners were enlisted to dig mass graves.
Latin America showed that necessity was the mother of invention in Colombia as a bright-eyed entrepreneur developed cardboard hospital beds that doubled as coffins. When your time’s up, a few folds here and there and you’re safe in your repurposed box and of no interest to woodworm. In Bolivia a mobile crematorium was designed with a 5m x 2.5m oven that would fit on a trailer powered by liquified gas – three canisters of the stuff would do the job in 30-40 minutes its inventor claimed.
Photo: Fernanda Vergara, AP:
Yet death is important to the community whether in a village or your city friendship network.
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Not only human collectives but even animal communities share in the need & desire to mourn or celebrate the lives of those now departed. Sydney aquarium in Australia recently filled with song as sea birds mourned death of gay penguin Sphen…a ‘very beautiful’ singing took place as Sphen’s partner, Magic, and the gentoo colony were taken to see Sphen’s corpse. There wasn’t a dry eye among staff as Magic & his fellow gentoo penguins were crying out, mourning the loss of their fellow penguin in an emotional scene never before witnessed by employees. (Guardian, August 2024). We now know that Elephants and many simians grieve their lost family & friends for months & even years after their deaths.
Of course you yourself don’t want to be forgotten as soon as you kick the bucket and for the community the funeral puts a brake on the non-stop of the routines of life. A time to stop and think, remember the dead person and think of one’s own life in a moment when you really know it doesn’t last forever. All this hit home even further with me when recent news broke of a 61 year-old, Rick Jacobs, who died of a heart attack in the Amazon warehouse in Colorado, USA on nightshift. Managers surrounded the body with cardboard cartons, said nothing, and got the morning shift started as normal.
So if you’ve got the money, bugger the expense, bugger the inheritance, have a Bloody Good Wake, singing and drinking around one’s presentable corpse in the coffin. It costs a fair bit more, all that back and forth with the body, but what the hell! Death is real, the unmoving corpse is not coming back.
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Photos, film, videos and statistics fail to convey this FINALITY effectively as we know from all the images & numbers emerging out of Gaza and the Ukraine, and far less from unreported horror in Sudan; still less so with the absence of collective rituals of grief & mourning & funerals for so many of the dead; either because there have been too many deaths or because any funeral rituals are regarded as subversive by the killers and their masters.
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The Mpox epidemic has killed 500 people to date is centred on the gold mining town of Katimuga in the Democratic Republic of Congo where there is also a camp for 4.2 million Congolese refugees who have escaped the armed greed of states and militias for the country’s minerals which service modern communication tools and the anxious investor with an instant and pressing demand for gold as a Safe Asset. Kastyimuga is a centre of the most dangerous style of gold mining that becomes ever the more risky as the gold price increases which it is doing as the anxious “investor” looks for security in a dangerous world.
Epidemics are of course not just the business of “darkest Africa”. In the same week in August 2024 when the more dangerous version of Mpox was declared a global emergency by the WHO over 1000 people died of SARS2 (Covid) in the USA. By even official figures, Summer 2024 has brought one of the worst waves of the entire SARS2 pandemic which continues to kill many thousands weekly. That’s not counting the number of people dying of cerebral aneurisms & heart failure caused by the sequelae of COVID infections and those becoming permanently disabled by LONG COVID. Excess death rates post 2020 remain far higher than the deaths officially attributed to ‘light COVID cases’. Viruses do travel.
Spain: Madrid’s regional leader Isabel Ayuso signed orders denying any medical attention at all to those sick with covid in care homes (mostly privatised), killing 7291 residents with no pain relief & a later study has revealed that 4500 of those who died/were killed, would have been saved if they had received medical treatment. Ayuso callously responded to criticism of this eugenic & neoliberal abandonment as official state policy with “See iban a morir igual” (‘They were going to die anyway’). 7291 is now spray painted in Spain as a shorthand to denote the State’s sadistic condemnation to death for those judged unworthy of productive life.
LIFE Expectancy
Europe 81-3
India 67
Indonesia 66
Myanmar 66
Afghanistan 53
Central African Republic 53
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2.3 million people a year die from “Workplace accidents”
‘We will see a death’: advocates fear for children inside maximum security Perthprison after boy swallows glass.
Austerity linked to 120,000 extra deaths in England since 2010
There is robust evidence across multiple studies showing significantly higher mortality rates among lower social classes, with some variation by specific cause of death and interactions with other demographic and geographic factors. The relationship persists over time and appears to have cumulative effects over one’s life course.
A new study of assisted dying now permitted in Ontario, Canada shows a predominance of those who are poor and lack housing & reveals vulnerable people face ‘potential coercion’ or ‘undue influence’ to seek out assusted suicide.
Can we honestly pretend no-one in the UK would resort to Assisted Dying because of the lack of palliative, NHS & social care meaning their life isn’t worth living? If we really care about dying people, why aren’t we shouting from the rooftops about the appalling underfunding of palliative care?
UK ASSISTED SUICIDE:
Market leader Atos Healthcare, was contracted by the Department for Work & Pensions to test the disabled for ‘fitness to work’ and withdraw the income of those declared ‘fit’. At least 24 post-test suicides have been documented so far (October 2012)*; meanwhile 6 per cent of neighbourhood doctors report test-related suicides or attempts by patients, 21 per cent report patients with test-induced ‘suicidal thoughts’ and 84 per cent say the testing has caused ‘mental health problems’ among patients.
Atos CEO Thierry Breton once had the same job at France Télécom, now Orange, where he initiated the ‘cost killing’ programs blamed years later for a slew of worker suicides, necessitating anti-suicide nets be placed outside corporate windows, in a style similar to Foxcon in China in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But by then Breton had moved on, acquiring new powers over life and death as Chirac’s finance minister and new ones again in his current role.
France Telecom/Orange CEO Conviction:
DEATH