Where the Nuclear Weapons Are and Who Has Them

Miles A. Pomper & Vasilii Tuganov

A U.S. Air Force jet performs a test drop of a B61-12 bomb in December 2021. That bomb can contain a nuclear warhead for use in wartime. Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has raised fears among the public about the use of nuclear weapons in Europe or against the United States. This level of concern has not been seen since the end of the Cold War.

NATO countries have been taken aback by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s implied threats to use nuclear weapons against “whoever interferes with us” in Ukraine, and his placement of additional nuclear officers on shifts under a “special regime of combat duty.”

Both Russia and the U.S. have thousands of nuclear weapons, most of which are five or more times more powerful than the atomic bombs that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These include about 1,600 weapons on standby on each side that are capable of hitting targets across the globe. Those numbers are near the limits permitted under the 2011 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, often called “New START,” which is the only currently active nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the U.S. Their arsenals include intercontinental ballistic missiles, better known as ICBMs, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, as well as missiles launched from specialized aircraft. Many of those missiles can be equipped with multiple nuclear warheads that can independently hit different locations.

To ensure that countries follow the limits on warheads and missiles, the treaty includes methods for both sides to monitor and verify compliance. By 2018, both Russia and the U.S. had met their obligations under the New START, and in early 2021 the treaty was extended for five more years.

Both nations’ nuclear arsenals also include hundreds of shorter-range nuclear weapons, which are not covered by any treaty. Currently, Russia has nearly 2,000 of those, about 10 times as many as the United States, according to the most widely cited nongovernmental estimates.

About half of the roughly 200 U.S. shorter-range weapons are believed to be deployed in five NATO countries in Europe: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey – though the U.S. does not confirm or deny their locations. In wartime, allied planes would take off from those locations and fly toward their targets before dropping the bombs.

Two other NATO members, France and the United Kingdom, also possess their own nuclear arsenals. They have several hundred nuclear weapons each – far fewer than the nuclear superpowers. France has both submarine-launched nuclear missiles and airplane-launched nuclear cruise missiles; the United Kingdom has only submarine-launched nuclear weapons. Both countries have publicly disclosed the size and nature of their arsenals, but neither country is or has been a party to U.S.-Russian arms control agreements.

The U.S., U.K. and France protect other NATO allies under their “nuclear umbrellas” in line with the NATO commitment that an attack on any one ally will be viewed as an attack on the entire alliance.

China’s nuclear arsenal is currently similar in size to the U.K. and French arsenals. But it’s growing rapidly, and some U.S. officials fear China is seeking parity with the United States. China, France and the U.K. are not subject to any arms control treaties.

India, Pakistan and Israel have dozens of nuclear weapons each. None of them has signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, in which signatories agree to limit the ownership of nuclear weapons to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, each of which possessed nuclear weapons before it was signed.

North Korea, which also has dozens of nuclear weapons, signed that treaty in 1985 but withdrew in 2003. North Korea has repeatedly tested nuclear weapons and the missiles to carry them.

There used to be nuclear weapons in other places, too. At the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the republics that became Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan had former Soviet nuclear weapons on their territory. In exchange for international assurances for their security, all three countries transferred their weapons to Russia.

Fortunately, none of these weapons have been used in war since the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. But as recent events remind us, the risk of their use remains a frightening possibility.

War Crimes Will Only Make Things Worse for Russia as Ukrainians Prepare for a Fight to the Bitter End

Patrick Cockburn

Emergency servicemen carry a dead body found under rubble in Malyn city, Zhytomyr Oblast, after a Russian airstrike. Photograph Source: State Emergency Service of Ukraine – https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=329249785909584&set=pcb.329249925909570 – CC BY 4.0

As the bodies of Ukrainian civilians murdered by Russian soldiers are discovered in the streets and cellars of towns around Kyiv, the chances plummet of a compromise peace in the Ukrainian war. The likelihood of this happening was never high, but the slaughter will persuade many Ukrainians that they have no choice but to fight to a finish or at least until Russia troops are forced out of the country.

Massacres are the all-important staging posts of history – their influence often greater than that of famous battles – because they send a message to whole communities that their existence is threatened by a common enemy. If the aim of a mass killing is to intimidate a whole population, then experience from Amritsar to My-Lai shows that it usually has precisely the opposite effect. The death of 410 civilians at the hands of the Russian army in the town of Bucha outside Kyiv may well join the grisly list of massacres that permanently shape relations between nations.

Why did the Russian army carry out these crimes? They are much against the interests of the Kremlin, which five weeks ago had persuaded itself that part of the Ukrainian population would welcome Russian intervention with open arms. The atrocities were the more-or-less inevitable outcome of this ill-conceived invasion plan, rooted in wishful thinking and carried out by ill-disciplined and ill-trained troops. Poor-quality soldiers like this facing a hostile population are particularly dangerous in my experience, because they quickly come to believe that they are being spied on, sniped at and generally betrayed by the local population.

An example of this is reported from Motyzhyn outside Kyiv where the head of the village, her husband and son were killed and buried in a shallow grave in the sand by Russian forces. “There had been Russian occupiers here,” said a Ukrainian interior ministry official who showed reporters the bodies. “They tortured and murdered the whole family of the village head. The occupiers suspected they were collaborating with our military, giving us locations of where to target our artillery.”

This is typical of troops who come under fire and are in a high state of paranoia as they look for somebody to blame. But, though the decision to execute an innocent villager is made on the spot by some frightened 20-year-old, this does not absolve the generals and politicians who have a fair idea of what is going on even if they have not given direct orders for the killings. They may privately imagine that “a whiff of grapeshot” will suppress local opposition, blind to the fact that it promotes it and legitimises it.

Massacres everywhere have common features, but those carried out by Russian troops in north Ukraine are typified by feckless violence by troops, frequently drunk going by the number of discarded vodka and whiskey bottles around their positions, who see all civilians as hostile and fair game, even when they are obviously families in flight.

Paradoxically, the corpses of the dead are only being found now because Russian negotiators announced last week during peace talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul that it was pulling back its forces around Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north of the country as a gesture of goodwill. It is a measure of the disconnected nature of the Russian war effort that no attempt was made to remove evidence of atrocities before the retreat took place, aside from a few botched attempts to burn bodies.

Images of these ill-concealed murders are horrifying the world, but diverting attention from an undoubted Russian failure in north Ukraine. A few Russian troops were said to be still present on Monday around Chernihiv, which is close to the Belarus border, but they have gone from around Kyiv. These forces are likely to be moved to reinforce Russian positions in the Donbas in south-east Ukraine but are reported to have suffered heavy casualties and loss of equipment so they will need to refit and reorganise.

The Russian retreat and the revelations about atrocities and possible war crimes will impact the way other nations view the war, tipping the balance towards those who want to see Russia defeated in Ukraine, and against those who want a compromise peace with President Putin, allowing him to say that he achieved something by his war. Meanwhile, those who argue for a total ban on the import of Russian oil and gas into Europe will be strengthened and will have greater popular support.

Such a furious reaction to the latest butchery may be understandable, but it will not necessarily be good for the 44 million Ukrainians. Monstrous though the killings are, the war could get a lot worse yet if Russia engages in so-called “meat-grinder” tactics in south-east Ukraine, pounding cities into submission or destruction. Russia may have done badly on the battlefield so far, but it is by no means defeated. It has tactics it has not used – such as destroying the Ukrainian electricity grid as the US did in Iraq 1991. It has vast reserves of manpower it could still mobilise. If Putin used poison gas, Ukraine refugees fleeing to the rest of the Europe would be numbered in the tens of millions.

Most important, there is no sign of Putin changing his mind about the war or being influenced by who would like to change it. Opposition to his invasion in Russia has ebbed since the period immediately after it had taken place because of wall-to-wall propaganda in state-controlled media, repression of open dissent – and a sense among Russians that they are all bring targeted because they are Russians, and not just because of Ukraine.

Oligarchs who once lived partly in the West have been forced back to Russia, making them more dependent than previously on the Kremlin. Prolonged economic sanctions and consequent unemployment might eventually cause discontent, but Russia is self-reliant in oil, gas and foodstuffs.

The only way to stop atrocities in Ukraine is to end a war which is unlikely to produce a clear winner. But in the wake of the latest killings this looks less and less likely. Russia, Ukraine and its backers all have reasons to end the war, but perhaps even stronger motives for fighting even harder.

German federal and state governments end coronavirus protection measures

Tamino Dreisam

The last coronavirus protective measures expired across Germany over the weekend, even as around 300 people are dying every day from COVID-19 with more than 200,000 infections. The federal and state governments are taking their policy of deliberate mass infection to extremes in the interests of big business. They are making it clear there can be no restrictions whatsoever that may limit profit maximisation—even if this costs hundreds of lives every day.

On March 18, the Bundestag (federal parliament) passed a new Infection Protection Act that reduces the pandemic measures to so-called “basic protections” consisting of mandatory mask wearing and testing in a few places. The federal states were allowed to adopt a two-week transitional rule consisting of mandatory mask wearing, which most states did, with rules for accessing certain public venues for 2G individuals (those recovered or fully vaccinated) and 3G (those recovered, fully vaccinated or with a negative test). This expired on April 2.

Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (right) and Chancellor Olaf Scholz (both SPD) (Photo: SPD/Twitter)

From now on, masks will only need to be worn in nursing homes, hospitals and local and long-distance public transport. Masks are not compulsory in shops, nurseries or schools. In Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, state Education Minister Yvonne Gebauer (Liberal Democratic Party, FDP), explicitly instructed schools to no longer make masks compulsory. With an incidence rate of over 2,000 per 100,000 in some schools, this is tantamount to a policy of deliberate infection.

The new Infection Protection Act provides for the possibility of stricter measures in so-called “hotspot areas,” but even these are limited to mandatory FFP2 masks in more areas, a 1.5-metre social distancing rule indoors and 3G and 2G regulations. These are all completely inadequate measures, as the current wave of infections shows.

Moreover, the decision as to when a region is considered a hotspot lies in the hands of the state parliaments, and they are signaling their refusal to do so. Up to now, only two federal states, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, have declared that they will resort to the hotspot regulation. Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein have explicitly ruled this out.

The ruling class is fully aware of the consequences of its policies. A particularly foul role is being played by Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democratic Party, SPD), a trained medical doctor and epidemiologist, who regularly warns of the consequences of mass infections, which he then organises himself.

On Wednesday, he wrote on Twitter: “Long COVID leaves tens of thousands chronically ill, that doesn’t make it flu. We have no treatment. Even vaccinated people infected with Omicron are getting hit, so be careful.” And on Saturday he said the risk of getting infected had “rarely been higher than it is now. Epidemiologically, it would have been right to stick to the mask wearing requirement. But legally it was not possible ...”

He could hardly have been more brazen. The “legal” basis for ending compulsory mask wearing and all other measures was created by the coalition government itself. Their first official act was to end the legal designation of a “national epidemic emergency.” Lauterbach’s public crocodile tears over coronavirus deaths—“That is not acceptable. It’s a plane crash every day,” he recently declared—are hypocrisy of the first order. He and the entire ruling class are responsible for these deaths.

With the government’s latest decisions, many more will be added to the nearly 130,000 coronavirus deaths in Germany. The situation is out of control, and both the number of infections and the number of severe outcomes are increasing rapidly. Within one week, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) registered 1.5 million infections. The nationwide incidence rate is over 1,500. Some 123 districts have an incidence level of over 2,000, with 7 even over 3,000.

The actual numbers, however, are far higher. The overloading of public health offices and the lack of public testing capacities mean there is a very high number of unreported cases. Lauterbach himself recently admitted that the infection figures were actually “more than twice as high.” Moreover, individual states such as Baden-Württemberg and Brandenburg do not report their data every weekday.

The drastic levels of infection are also reflected in the peaking of sick leave due to illness with the virus. According to an evaluation by the Barmer Institute for Health Care Systems Research (BifG), for example, 52,100 people were unable to work due to infections in the week from February 13 to 19. At the crest of the first wave, the number was 25,100. On a national average, 139 out of 10,000 people are currently unable to work.

The ruling class, which sees the maximisation of profits endangered by high labour absences, is increasingly concerned. But instead of responding with protective measures, quarantine and isolation, rules continue to be adjusted to force even infected and potentially infected people into work.

In January, the quarantine period was shortened to 10 days, with a release option after 7 days. Now, a draft regulation by the federal Health Ministry and the RKI, which was sent to the federal states on Wednesday, envisages reducing quarantine for infected persons and contacts to as little as 5 days. The formal ordering of quarantine by the health authorities is to be dropped, effectively making quarantining purely voluntary.

Scientists and epidemiologists warn of the dramatic consequences of the present government course. “Infections [will] thus also be carried back into the layers that have been able to protect themselves well up to now—in nursing homes, workshops for the disabled, i.e., the vulnerable groups,” explained infection modeler Thorsten Lehr, professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Saarbrücken.

There is already an increase in severe outcomes, which disproves the myth of Omicron as a “milder variant.” On March 31 alone, 2,061 people had to be hospitalised. The adjusted hospitalisation rate is already close to 15 per 100,000, which corresponds to about 12,000 hospitalisations per week.

Intensive care units are also filling up. Currently, 2,332 people require intensive care, and between 200 and 300 new people enter ICUs every day. At 9.4 percent, the proportion of free intensive care beds is already below the 10 percent level considered the threshold for hospital responsiveness and which hospitals try not to fall below.

The German Hospital Federation (DKG) also expects an even stronger increase in the number of intensive care patients. DKG Board Chairman Gerald Gaß told Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland: “We will also see a stronger increase in the number of patients in intensive care units in the coming weeks.” The many staff absences are also particularly problematic. “Three out of four hospitals must restrict services because staff are absent,” he said. “This is due to infections, quarantine, or care for children who have tested positive.”

There is widespread popular opposition to the government’s herd immunity policy. A survey by the opinion research institute Forsa (Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis), commissioned by broadcaster RTL, showed that a clear majority rejects the relaxation of the coronavirus protective measures: 65 percent consider the lifting of nationwide uniform measures premature; 69 percent think compulsory mask wearing should remain in place in most areas. While 61 percent think the introduction of compulsory vaccination is the right thing to do, only 16 percent believe the government will introduce it.

UK: British ruling elite imposes “historic shock to real incomes” of the working class

Robert Stevens & Chris Marsden

Every household in Britain was hit by a crushing rise in energy bills on April 1. A staggering 54 percent rise means an average annual increase of £693 (from £1,277 to £1,971), or £57.75 a month. For the 4.5 million of people on pre-payment meters, the poorest in society, the price hike is worse, at £708, taking an average annual bill from £1,309 to £2,017 (an extra £59 a month).

Another rise in the cap by a projected 42 percent this October will cost a further £830 a year, cumulatively doubling the average annual bill to around £2,800.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak leaves No11 Downing Street to deliver his 2021 Budget to the House of Commons. 27/10/2021. (Picture by Luca Boffa / No 10 Downing Street/FlickR)

Many customers have reported suppliers more than doubling direct debit payments. Several supplier websites crashed Thursday as customers tried to submit meter readings to pre-empt price rises.

The energy price increase is regressive, with the poorest and most vulnerable hardest hit—those on benefits or with severe medical conditions, the disabled, the working poor, single people and pensioners. Many pensioners now face starvation.

The energy price increase follows Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spring budget that merely reduced fuel duty by a negligible 5 pence a litre, a measure quickly negated by price rises at the pumps.

Faced with a hike in fuel bills dwarfing any one-off cost of living increase in history, Sunak delivered another kick in the teeth. He would only grant households £200 off their energy bills in October, but this must be paid back to the state by households at a rate of £40 a year over five years from 2023.

The price hike takes place even though between 2016 and 2020 Britain’s main five energy companies pulled in £7.7 billion in profit. It spearheads a broader cost-of-living crisis dragging millions over the edge when 14 million in Britain are already classed as living in poverty.

As the government fully reopened the economy last summer, Sunak cut the £20 weekly uplift in the Universal Credit benefit relied on by the poorest, including over two million low-paid workers. It was the largest ever one-off cut to welfare benefits in history. What is coming is far worse, and many people will be unable to heat their homes, buy food or travel.

Inflation is surging towards 10 percent, its highest in 40 years. Already between January 2021 and January 2022, food prices increased by five percent. Many food items have surged by over 10 percent and up to 16 percent. Lateral flow tests are now to cost £3 each, or £20 for a box of seven. Broadband, phone, and TV contracts are rising by at least £42 a year.

Petrol is up 39 percent, or £23 per tank. The cost of filling an average family car is now above £90 for the first time. The highest train fare rises for nine years came into force in March after a 3.8 percent rise. An average commuter will now pay £3,263 for a train season ticket, 49 percent more than in 2010.

Among other measures set to seize hundreds more pounds annually from workers are the 10 percent increase in national insurance taxation from April 1 and a rise in the VAT sales tax. VAT in the hospitality sector was reduced to five percent during the pandemic. But last October the cut was partially reversed, going to 12.5 percent, and this week it was back to 20 percent.

Council tax is set to rise by around 3 percent, with payments for those in properties in the average Band D rising by £67 to nearly £2,000 a year. Overall, water bills will increase by 1.7 percent from April, by £7 to £419, but some regions are seeing hikes of up to 10.8 percent.

Bank of England interest rate increases will hit the average family in the pocket by £295.

Taking every increase into account, households face a staggering and unaffordable increase of £2,620 in their bills and other costs.

De facto fuel and food rationing is already taking place, with the Office for National Statistics stating that 34 percent of those reporting rising living costs are using less gas and electricity at home and 31 percent are cutting their food shop. Half have cut back on non-essentials.

Low-income households that spend a far larger proportion of their income on energy and food will be significantly more impacted. The Resolution Foundation estimates an extra 1.3 million people will fall into absolute poverty in 2023, including 500,000 children.

The money being gouged from the working class is meant to claw back the hundreds of billions in public spending during the pandemic, most of which was handed over to the corporations and super-rich. Last week, Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey declared that events in Ukraine had accelerated the stagflation crisis and Britons faced an “historic shock to real incomes”.

Bailey only last month insisted that the cost-of-living crisis meant that workers’ pay rise demands should be opposed.

Friedrich Engels, the co-founder with Karl Marx of scientific socialism, wrote in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845 that due to the “social warfare” of the bourgeoisie against the working class, “every man’s house is in a state of siege”. He described the “barbarous indifference” of the ruling class to the distress of the population. These observations sum up the agenda of the ruling class today.

It can only organise and impose this historic assault on living standards because it is the agreed policy of not just the Conservative government, but its de facto coalition partners, the Labour Party and the trade unions.

Labour now advances itself as the party of “low taxation”, with Sir Keir Starmer telling the Confederation of British Industry in November that he represented “the party of business… We really don’t think that the solution to every problem is to throw cash at it.” In line with this pledge, Starmer is only calling on the Tories to implement a “windfall tax” on North Sea oil and gas producers “to reduce those energy bills by up to £600 pounds for those that need it most.” He stressed that this would be a “one off” tax to “deal with the immediate crisis”.

Starmer’s proposal is made only to conceal the fact that workers are being impoverished by companies making a financial killing from the real killing taking place in Ukraine, due to rising global fuel prices. Exxon Mobil Corp’s first-quarter production results, for example, are set for a seven-year quarterly record, with operating profits of up to $9.3 billion. This takes place as the Centre for Economics and Business Research has warned of four more years of massive energy bills, until 2026, due to a war deliberately provoked by NATO, with household energy costs likely reaching £400 in a single month next winter.

In this desperate situation for workers, what is offered by the still acknowledged head of the Labour “left”? Former party leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke Saturday at a tiny protest outside Downing Street organised by the People’s Assembly, offering as his proposed solution a “price cap on gas and electricity bills and for energy companies to be taken into public ownership”—a policy just as anathema to his own party as it is for the Tories.

UK COVID infections rise massively after end of mitigation measures

Thomas Scripps

A conspiracy of silence between the Conservative government and the Labour Party is covering up an unprecedented spread of coronavirus in the UK.

Officially recorded infections have always significantly underestimated the prevalence of the virus. Now, however, the government’s “living with COVID” policy, including the scrapping of universal free testing, self-isolation, and sick pay support, has rendered the daily figures next to useless.

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [Credit: Neil Hall Pool via AP]

A real picture is only available once a week when the Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes its coronavirus infection survey. The latest report shows 4.9 million people had infections in the week to March 26—up 600,000 on the week before and a record since the survey began in April 2020. According to the ZOE COVID Symptom Study run by King’s College London, whose funding is threatened, 333,000 people are catching the virus every day.

Infection rates are so high that workplace and school absences due to self-isolation are increasing, despite the Johnson government’s efforts to force people to stay on the job.

The most up-to-date data from the Department for Education reveals that 202,000 pupils were off school March 17 due to the virus, triple the number two weeks prior. Another 108,000 staff were absent, 9.1 percent, up from 5.8 percent two weeks earlier.

COVID absence rates range between 2-3 percent in the food and agriculture, transport and logistics, and manufacturing and constructions sectors; 2-4 percent in hospitalist, retail, health, education, and social care; and 3-4 percent in the civil service, IT, finance, and arts and recreation. A construction executive told the Financial Times the virus is “spreading like wildfire… people are working as they need the money and re-infecting each other”.

Absences in the National Health Service have risen by 86 percent in three weeks since the week ending March 6, according to the BMJ. They increased in acute care trusts by more than a fifth last week.

International travel is also affected, with scores of flights cancelled yesterday and today due to shortages of airport and airline workers. There were over 1,100 cancellations between March 28 and April 3, over five times the amount for that period in a normal year.

The surge in cases which began among children and younger adults is now passing into the older and more at-risk age groups. An estimated 6.6 percent of the over 70s were infected with the disease during the period of the most recent ONS survey (a record), up from 5 percent a week before. Among the 50-69 age group, the rate increased from 5.6 percent to 7.2 percent.

Vaccination has substantially reduced the rate of severe disease caused by COVID. But thanks to the ruling class’s pandemic policy, the wave of disease against which the wall of immunity in the population must hold has massively increased.

More than eight million people have yet to take up the offer of a third booster shot, thanks to the government and media effort to downplay the threat posed by Omicron. Immunity from vaccination wanes over time, especially in older people. A UK Health Security Agency study of more than 15,000 care home residents, published last month, found a sharp one-third reduction in protection against hospitalisation and death just three to seven months after vaccination.

The rollout of a fourth jab has only just begun and is limited to the over-75s, care home residents, and the immunocompromised.

Hospital admissions of patients with COVID are now outstripping the January Omicron peak, particularly among older age groups. Scotland last week had more COVID patients in its hospitals than at any other time in the pandemic. Increases in hospitalisations mean increases in deaths over the next several weeks.

The seven-day average of daily COVID deaths in the UK has already risen above 150. The disease was the third leading cause of death in England in February.

There is a rise among patients admitted primarily for COVID complications (roughly half of the total) as well as those admitted with COVID. Attempts to write off those patients not primarily being treated for coronavirus as irrelevant to discussion of the pandemic’s impact are a malicious fraud. A recent study published in the Lancet showing co-infection with flu and COVID increases the risk of death by 2.4 times highlights the serious dangers posed by an underlying infection.

University College London’s Clinical Operational Research Unit director Christina Pagel commented last week in the Guardian, “We are currently pushing existing vaccines to their limits with high infection levels, but we should instead be supporting them by reducing transmission.”

The idea that the UK had “somehow ‘finished’ our vaccination programme, and there is no point in waiting to return to normal” was the third of the “three big myths about Omicron”, she explained.

The first is that “coronavirus is now endemic”, when the UK and the rest of the world are still suffering huge, unpredictable waves of disease. Pagel adds, in any case, “endemicity certainly does not necessarily mean mild. There is a significant global burden of ill health and death, for instance, from endemic diseases such as TB and Malaria.”

The second myth is “that coronavirus is evolving to be milder, and each new variant will be milder than the last until it becomes a common cold”, when in fact, “most game changing new waves we’ve seen have come from variants that have evolved completely independently from each other…There has been no progression through successive variants, and no building towards ‘mildness’.”

The current surge in cases in the UK and elsewhere is being driven by the BA.2 strain of Omicron, with a much higher R rate than the original Omicron variant, making it roughly as infectious as measles. Yet more variants are already in circulation, including Deltacron, a combination of the two previous variants, and XE, a “recombinant” of the BA.1 and BA.2 strains. So far, more than 600 cases of XE have been identified in the UK and it is presenting a growth rate higher even than BA.2.

With such high levels of transmission, increases in the virulence or immune evasiveness of the virus would rapidly produce a catastrophe.

Speaking about the risks of new variants, University of Leeds virologist Dr Stephen Griffin told the Express, “We are behaving as though this has become some kind of endemic, seasonal virus—which it clearly has not… Just relying on vaccines on their own is wrong.”

In addition to 188,000 COVID deaths, government policies have produced a huge increase in debilitating long-term illness. Professor Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, told the Guardian COVID could “totally” lead to a generation affected by disability. Observer analysis of ONS data last month highlighted a 1.2 million rise in the number of people with a long-term health condition over the two years of the pandemic. The number had previously been increasing by 275,000 a year.

The Institute for Employment Studies’ Labour Market Statistics briefing for March explains, “There remain nearly 600 thousand fewer people in work… than before the pandemic began,” noting, “a worrying shift towards worklessness due to ill health”.

A survey of employers representing 4.3 million employees by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found 26 percent list Long COVID as a main cause of long-term sickness absence. Queen Mary University of London researchers have found testing positive for COVID is associated with a five fold increase in someone’s chances of reporting long-term absence from work and a 39 percent increase in their likelihood of reporting inadequate income to meet basic needs.

Every faction of the ruling class is on board with enforcing this effective war on the working class. Not one politician speaks for the swathes of the population who have suffered more than two years of these conditions and are determined to see the pandemic ended.

According to the Hansard parliamentary record, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has not uttered the words “COVID”, “virus” or “pandemic” in the House of Commons since Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared the beginning of his “living with COVID strategy” on February 21. Except for one tangential reference in a short contribution focused on sick pay, the leader of the Labour “left” Jeremy Corbyn has not used these words in the chamber since October 21, 2021.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett puts Israel on a war footing against the Palestinians

Jean Shaoul

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s right-wing prime minister, has utilised a string of terror attacks that have killed 11 people over 10 days as a pretext to launch a vicious crackdown on the Palestinians. He has placed Israel’s security forces on high alert in an operation named Break the Wave tantamount to declaring war on the Palestinians.

Bennett’s actions have sparked widespread anger among the Palestinians in Israel and in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

IDF Paratroopers Operate Within Gaza [Credit: IDF, Wikimedia Commons]

On Wednesday evening, he issued a video statement saying, “Whoever has a gun licence, this is the time to carry it.” He added, “Israel is facing a wave of murderous Arab terrorism” as he convened a special review of the security situation.

Defence Minister Benny Gantz announced he would send 1,000 soldiers to reinforce police and security forces within Israel and deploy 14 battalions to the West Bank and Israel’s border with Gaza. Police have reportedly switched their attention to surveillance and counterterrorism in the expectation of further attacks. Gantz warned that “all means are legitimate to end this wave, and we will utilize any means that we think are proper to use,” including calling up thousands of reservist soldiers.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi said the IDF must be prepared for “Guardian of the Walls 2,” a reference to last May when Israel launched a murderous 11-day assault on Gaza. This was Israel’s response to Palestinian protests in East Jerusalem over an expected decision of the Supreme Court, still to be announced, on the eviction of six Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah and the harassment of worshippers and storming of the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, during Ramadan.

The Wall Street Journal reported, “Israeli Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel said Israel may soon need to launch a wide-scale military operation similar to Operation Defensive Shield of 20 years ago, in which Israeli soldiers entered Palestinian towns to arrest or kill militants and seize their weapons,”

This was a reference to the murderous assault on Jenin area in April 2002 that killed at least 52 Palestinians, including many civilians.

Earlier this year there were gunfights between Israeli forces and the Palestinians in the Jenin area and its refugee camp, with the Palestinian Authority’s security units unwilling to enter the camp. The city has been a focus of mass opposition to President Mahmoud Abbas’s corrupt Fatah-dominated PA for its role as Israel’s subcontractor in its efforts to permanently subjugate the Palestinians in their own land.

In the last fortnight, there have been four attacks on Israeli Jews that have killed 11 people. Islamic State (IS), possibly linked to IS’s affiliate in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, which has for some years witnessed IS attacks on Egyptian security forces, claimed responsibility for two of them—in Hadera and Beersheba. The shooting of two policeman in Hadera took place as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was holding talks with Bennett and leaders from Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco—all signatories to the US-orchestrated Abraham Accords—and Egypt in the town of Sde Boker in the Negev desert. The talks centred on Washington’s relations with Iran and its proposal to remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from its list of terror organisations.

Israeli troops stormed and searched a house in the West Bank city of Jenin belonging to the family of the man they believed was responsible for a separate attack in Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv, that killed four Israelis. The soldiers vandalised the property and arrested some of his relatives and friends. When confronted with armed fighters and later civilians protesting the raid, the soldiers fired, killing two young Palestinians and injuring 15 who were throwing stones at the soldiers.

Israeli soldiers also killed three members of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which had claimed responsibility for one of the attacks in Israel, during an ambush at a checkpoint near Jenin city, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed to eight.

Within Israel, the security forces have arrested dozens of suspects in the predominantly Palestinian towns in the central regions of the country and the Negev, with the number expected to grow as they target people suspected of links to IS and other Jihadist groups. They are expected to initiate a crackdown on the Palestinians, in the name of combating crime and the high incidence of gang murders and armed robbery that have swept the poverty-stricken towns, with the government on Thursday announcing a $60 million increase in the police budget.

The uptick in violence comes in the run up to Ramadan, set to run between April 2 and May 1 and which this year coincides with Easter and the Jewish Passover. Israeli authorities have reportedly agreed to allow armed settlers, led by Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir, to enter the al-Aqsa Mosque compound en masse under police-protection during Passover.

There have been reports of dozens of incidents of damage to Palestinian property in Israel by right-wing extremists.

On Sunday, Israeli police used mounted forces, rubber-coated steel bullets, stun grenades and batons to disperse crowds that traditionally gather outside the Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem after Ramadan evening prayers, injuring at least 19 Palestinians, and arresting ten during a second night of clashes. It follows the arrest of four Palestinians in the Old City the previous night.

The police crackdown came shortly after Foreign Minister Yair Lapid made a provocative visit to the Damascus Gate and the Old City to show support for the police.

Israel’s Palestinian political parties and groups, including the Ra’am party which is a member of Bennett’s fragile, eight-party coalition government, condemned the IS attacks of March 22 and 27. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also issued a condemnation of the Bnei Brak attack, presumably a nod towards his meeting with Blinken last week. On Wednesday, King Abdullah of Jordan also condemned “violence in all its forms” as he hosted Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in Amman.

In Gaza, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated group that controls the besieged Palestinian enclave, held its traditional Land Day event marking the loss of Palestinian lands along the seafront, away from the Israeli border in order to prevent any escalation in violence.

The UN humanitarian agency (OCHA) reported that in 2022 up to March 21, 18 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, and 222 Palestinians injured, in Gaza and the West Bank.

None of this will cut across Israel’s plans for widespread repression.

No less a factor in Bennett’s de facto declaration of war on the Palestinians is his determination to divert attention away from Israel’s economic and social crisis, as the cost of living, already one of the highest in the advanced countries, makes it hard for Israelis and Palestinians alike to put food on the table.

Last month, the national tax revenue report revealed that people in the bottom decile pay 47 percent of their income in taxes, while those in the top decile pay 40 percent. Half of Israeli workers do not earn enough to reach the minimum income tax threshold, leading workers to demand wage increases in strikes that the trade unions have done everything they can to sabotage.

This explosive situation is set to deteriorate further as sanctions imposed by the US and major European powers on Russia have hit Israel hard. Much of Israel’s food and energy comes from Russia and Ukraine. With their own agricultural exports to Russia now unsold, Israeli farmers are preparing to destroy their produce.

Mass shooting in Sacramento, California, leaves 6 dead and 12 injured

Sebastian Greene & Gabriel Black

Six people are reported dead and 12 injured after a mass shooting in downtown Sacramento, California, early Sunday morning.

Police responded to the sound of automatic gunfire at 2:00 a.m. at a popular cluster of nightclubs near 10th and K streets, not far from the State Capitol building. Six victims—three male and three female—were pronounced dead at the scene.

Authorities search area of the scene of a mass shooting with multiple deaths in Sacramento, Calif. Sunday, April 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Multiple videos have been posted to social media showing the incident. In one video, a crowd of partygoers was fist-fighting on the street outside a club, when in the distance gunshots began to be fired and the crowd began running. One eyewitness told the Sacramento Bee that he heard one gunman fire and then another gunman return fire.

In another video, at least 76 gunshots are heard in just 54 seconds as a crowd of people ran from the scene. Over 100 bullet casings were found on the scene, and several buildings and cars were hit.

On Monday, police arrested a 26-year-old man in connection with the incident.

Sacramento Police Chief Kathy Lester told local news KCRA 3 after the arrest, “[T]his is a complex investigation, and we’re looking for multiple suspects.”

Sacramento County District Attorney Ann Schubert also stated Monday, “The investigation is highly complex involving many witnesses, videos of numerous types and significant physical evidence.”

According to a report in Forbes, the victims’ bodies were still lying on the ground Sunday well into the afternoon, almost 12 hours later. Police claimed this was necessary to understand what had happened.

This latest horrific mass shooting comes amidst a wave of violent incidents in the United States. Just this past weekend between April 1 to April 3, the following took place:

• Three people were killed and two injured in multiple shootings on Sunday in Baltimore, Maryland.
• Two people are dead and one injured in two separate shootings in Arkansas Sunday night.
• Two people are dead and three people injured in four separate shootings in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
• Eighteen people were shot in Chicago over the weekend in multiple incidents. One of those people shot was killed by police officers during an alleged hostage situation near a mall on the city’s Southside.
• One person was killed and five injured in four different shootings in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
• Four people were shot in two separate but related shootings in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Just this year alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 117 mass shooting incidents in the United States. Mass shooting incidents are defined as incidents with at least four gun injuries or deaths.

The Gun Violence Archive reported that through April 4, this year has seen nearly 11,000 gun deaths, 6,204 which were suicides, 4,745 homicides, murders or other shootings, including accidents. Among children under 11, 79 have been killed by gunfire, while for those between 12-17 the figure stands at 323. Year after year, the United States resembles a killing field with an average of 47,858 annual deaths by gun violence since 2014, including approximately 1,000 people shot and killed by the police.

The shooting in Sacramento was the second instance of mass gun violence to occur in the area this year after a father fatally shot his three daughters, their chaperone, and himself during a supervised visit at a church in February. In May of last year, the nearby San Francisco Bay Area saw its bloodiest mass shooting in history when a Transportation Authority employee opened fire on co-workers at a light rail maintenance yard, killing nine, before committing suicide.

The wave of gun violence in the US is, fundamentally, an expression of a deep social crisis. Across the United States, and most of the world, social tensions are at a breaking point.

Decades of declining income share to working people, the evisceration of stable well-paying jobs and ongoing cuts to social infrastructure have all contributed to a climate of desperation. On top of this the COVID-19 pandemic has killed over 1 million people and sickened millions more. The American ruling elite, in allowing so many to die, has made clear that it places no value on the lives of workers, the elderly and the immunocompromised.

Meanwhile the cost of living is surging at rates not seen in four decades, with the US Commerce department estimating costs will be $5,200 more for the average family this year compared to last. This has placed immense pressure on the millions who live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford even a $400 emergency. The US-NATO drive to war against Russia threatens to drive prices even higher.

Violent acts, whether a wanton killing or a crime over money or revenge, are some of the sharpest and most disoriented expressions of this general social tension. They are similar, in ways, to so-called “deaths of despair,” drug overdoses and suicides, in that they reflect the immense instability and difficulty faced by broad masses of the population. In 2020, 93,000 people died of drug overdoses in the United States and about 46,000 by suicide. About 5 to 7 percent of overdose deaths are believed to be intentional.

The incident Sunday comes as the Biden administration announced a policy of “fiscal responsibility” last Monday for the 2023 budget proposal, which features the largest ever US military spending at more than $813 billion and a substantial increase for domestic police repression while slashing social spending critical for the mental and physical health of the American working class. The Biden administration is using the war in Ukraine as an excuse to continue the decades-long assault on social programs and is cutting off funding to cover COVID-19 testing and vaccination for the uninsured.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, California) released a statement Sunday responding to the Sacramento shooting declaring, “Too many families and communities across the nation have been shattered by the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our nation, which steals more than 100 beautiful souls each day.” She added that the “House Democrats have passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act and the Enhanced Background Checks Act: common sense and urgent action that will help end the bloodshed.”

The Democrats often campaign on gun control but never stop for a second to present a deeper analysis of what are the root causes of these persistent and seemingly chronic occurrences of mass shootings in America precisely because doing so would require adopting a critical attitude towards capitalism, which Biden, Pelosi and all the corporate politicians defend. Empty verbiage following each new shooting and increases in police budgets are the only significant actions taken by these figures.

The Democrats and Republicans have overseen 30 years’ worth of mass shootings while seeking to offset the decline of America’s economic dominance by deploying the military to kill millions and destroy entire societies in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. This naked resort to violence and its presentation as an effective solution to the problems one faces has had its own nefarious effect at home.

Meanwhile, an understanding of gun violence must take into account the mental health crisis in the United States, of which mass shootings are often a symptom. The pandemic and the dislocation the homicidal response of capitalist governments has caused for billions of people around the globe has significantly intensified this health crisis.

In Sacramento, before being called off in a last-minute deal late Sunday night, nearly 5,000 teachers and school workers were on strike in the Sacramento City Unified School District over COVID-19 safety concerns, severe understaffing issues, low pay, and cuts to health care benefits. The teachers joined a growing strike wave which included Chevron refinery workers in Richmond, California, and other struggles across the country and world by workers who are demanding an increase in their living standards which have been eroded by inflation.