The WHO updates its terminology for pathogens that transmit through the air

Benjamin Mateus

More than four years into the COVID pandemic, on April 18, 2024, the World Health Organization (WHO) updated their terminology on airborne transmissions of pathogens in a way that finally aligns it with the evidence that had been presented to the UN health agency by scientists, including aerosol physicists, at the beginning of the global outbreak. The report acknowledges that the virus that is causing COVID is, indeed, airborne. Other airborne pathogens listed include influenza, MERS, SARS and tuberculosis, among others.

Notably, it was on December 23, 2021, during the initial surge of the Omicron variant, when the WHO, after repeated denunciations of the airborne mode of transmission was forced to accept this simple premise. At the time, there had been 5.4 million confirmed deaths and over 17 million excess deaths. 

Quietly, they updated their guidance, writing, “Current evidence suggests that the virus spreads mainly between people who are in close contact with each other, for example at conversational distance … the virus can also spread in poorly ventilated and/or crowded indoor settings, where people tend to spend longer periods of time. This is because aerosols can remain suspended in the air or travel farther than conversational distance (this is often called long-range aerosol or long-range airborne transmission.”

World Health Organization Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (center) declaring the coronavirus pandemic a Public Health emergency of International Concern in March 2020. [Photo: Fabrice Coffrini]

The new consensus was reached after the WHO consulted with multiple agencies and several hundred experts from a broad range of fields across a span of two years, and vetted by the CDCs of Africa, China, Europe, and the United States. Not surprisingly, much about the global technical consultation report “on proposed terminology for pathogens that transmit through the air” falls short of what is required from such a document. 

Foremost, the new nomenclature, “through the air transmission,” which has been substituted for the straightforward and commonly used term “airborne,” seem intentionally laborious and clumsy, and, in the final analysis, muddles what is a simple concept in a way that will only sow further confusion and effectively forestall or prevent implementing the necessary public health measures to make indoor spaces safe from pathogens. 

As the report explicitly noted, “[The] process aimed to be a starting point for what is anticipated to be difficult and complicated discussions on a topic with enormous complexity, which would form the basis for common language across disciplines. However, it would likely require further work in order to operationalize and implement within pathogen-, discipline- and setting-specific contexts.” [Emphasis added] 

This gets at the crux of the problem of the definition of airborne and goes a long way to explaining the WHO’s persistent refusal, well into the COVID pandemic, to acknowledge the mode of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 as the implication would have been profound.

By way of an example, the recent attempts by the federal advisory committee, HICPAC, which is dominated by the hospital industry, to weaken infection control protections in healthcare as cost saving measures, are only strengthened by such caveats, which will have an impact on how airborne precautions are implemented in other aspects of society. As Dr. Jose-Luis Jimenez, professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado-Boulder, recently noted on social media, “Medical infection prevention and control still DOES NOT want airborne protections used more widely. And they want the POWER over WHEN they should be used (as @microlabdoc points out).”

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However, if it is acknowledged that the airborne transmission is the dominant mode by which respiratory pathogens infect people, then appropriate equipment and infrastructure are needed to prevent the transmission of respiratory pathogens anywhere. These become urgent social priorities.

A study published in The Lancet last year found that children who developed lower respiratory infections before the age of two were twice as likely to die prematurely from respiratory diseases. The findings persisted even after they adjusted for socioeconomic factors and adult habits, such as smoking. Chronic respiratory diseases account for nearly 4 million deaths annually, 7 percent of the global figure. 

As the lead author, Dr. James Allinson from the National Heart & Lung Institute at Imperial College London said, “Current preventative measures for adult respiratory disease mainly focus on adult lifestyle risk factors such as smoking. Linking one in five adult respiratory deaths to common infection many decades earlier in childhood shows the need to target risk well before adulthood.” 

In other words, it is not just preventing pandemics and epidemics. Eradicating all respiratory infections becomes a primary goal for public health. Failing to “operationalize and implement” broad airborne precautions as a public concern of international scope represents public health negligence of a criminal character.

Perhaps one positive aspect of the consensus report is that it did away with the previous construct that only particles five microns or less can become airborne and all larger particles are therefore transmitted through “droplet transmission,” and would fall to the ground under gravitational force within one or two meters. This was the basic erroneous dogma that had been in place for more than a century as Dr. Jose-Luis Jimenez explained in July 2021 in an interview with the World Socialist Web Site.

The WHO declares that “infectious respiratory particles [IRPs]” that travel “through the air” are of any size across any distance. They also acknowledge that IRPs can be released not just through coughs or sneezes, but through talking and exhaling. Under the mode of transmission labeled “through the air,” these are further subcategorized as “Airborne transmission/inhalation” and “direct deposition,” which is the new term for droplet transmission.

More than just awkward usage, presenting the two terms as subcategories of a larger unit, instead of making them separate modes of transmission only perpetuates the misleading characterization of how COVID is transmitted. Direct deposition has not been the dominant route of sustained human-to-human transmission of COVID, characterized by superspreading events and the mass infection of hundreds of millions of people each year. 

It has taken two years and 52 pages to acknowledge the airborne nature of COVID-19. Moreover, the document fails to promulgate any guidance on what needs to be done to protect populations from pathogens that transmit “through the air.” Anticipating the political difficulties the WHO would face in acknowledging the airborne nature of respiratory pathogens, they concluded their executive summary with a backhanded apology for their oversight on issuing any guidance. 

They said, “This consultation is the first phase of the global scientific debate led by WHO. From which the next steps will require further technical and multidisciplinary research and exploration of the wider implications of the updated descriptors before any update on infection prevention and control or other mitigation measures guidance is issued by WHO.” 

The implication of this admission by the WHO, even as COVID continues to mutate and infect millions of people across the world, means that despite having accepted the airborne nature of SARS-CoV-2, they will not issue any guidance to prevent and mitigate the spread of this disease or any other respiratory pathogens present and future. 

Clearly, the inability by member states to agree on the text of the “first-ever” global pandemic accord, being voted on at the end of May at this year’s World Health Assembly, means that the world is even less prepared to address future global outbreaks than on the eve of the COVID pandemic. This includes equitable sharing of technical information on therapeutics and vaccines and their distribution to populations. 

Speaking with Human Rights Watch, the legal adviser at Amnesty International, Tamaryn Nelson, said, “Creating a new pandemic treaty could offer an opportunity to ensure that countries are equipped with proper mechanisms for cooperation and principles to prevent the level of devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rights violations resulting from government responses. By failing to ground the treaty in existing human rights obligation and inadequately addressing human rights concerns arising during public health emergencies, governments risk repeating history when the next global health crisis hits.”

The former chief scientist at the WHO, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, an Indian pediatrician, who left her position in mid-November 2022 after a series of high-profile departures, has not fully explained why she resigned. But in an interview with Science Insider she expressed regrets over the UN agency’s handling of the COVID pandemic. 

She said, “We should have done it much earlier, based on the available evidence, and it is something that has cost the organization. You can argue that [the criticism of WHO] is unfair, because when it comes to mitigation, we did talk about methods, including ventilation and masking. But at the same time, we were not forcefully saying, ‘This is an airborne virus.’ I regret that we didn’t do this much, much earlier.”

Higher for longer interest rates hit the global economy

Nick Beams

If one had gone by so-called “market expectations” at the start of the year, then it was going to be relatively plain sailing for the world economy.

Inflation was coming down, there were going to be as many as six interest rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve this year, and at least three, the stock market boom would continue on the bank of the potential of artificial intelligence and there would be a “soft landing” for the global economy.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell at news conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2023, in Washington. [AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin]

Four months on, this happy scenario is in tatters. The latest data from the US, reflected in other countries as well, indicates that inflation after falling from its previous high levels has reach a sticking point above the target of 2 percent, meaning interest rate cuts markets have been clamouring for are being pushed further down the track.

Fed chair Jerome Powell indicated as much in remarks earlier this month saying that the central bank would need to have “confidence” inflation was moving sustainably down to the target before it would be appropriate to ease monetary policy.

“The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence, and instead indicate that it’s likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence,” Powell said.

The change in the interest landscape saw options markets suggesting a roughly 20 percent chance of a rise in rates over the next 12 months with the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds spiking to more than 5 percent. Wall Street experienced its longest losing streak in 18 months before rebounding somewhat at the start of this week.

In the longer term the growing problems for the US and world economy were outlined in reports prepared for the annual spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held last week.

While it put forward what has been described as a relatively “sunny” outlook for the near term—estimates of global growth were revised upwards—the IMF forecast for the long term presented a different picture.

It noted that since the global financial crisis, amid fluctuations, the general trend for growth was down which would continue with global growth at the end of the decade falling to more than a percentage point below the pre-pandemic average.

The IMF said this was a result of weak productivity, a fall back in globalisation as countries pursue increasingly nationalist economic policies, the misallocation of capital resources and increasing geopolitical turmoil.

In her remarks to the gathering, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva warned the global economy was at risk of falling into what she called “the tepid Twenties.”

The class struggle does not usually get much of a mention in IMF reports although it is always present in the thinking of the guardians of the interests of global capital. But on this occasion, it was referred to directly by the IMF chief as she warned that the fall in global growth could lead to “popular discontent” with the political establishment.

The downward trend and how to address it is “what I think [about] when I wake up in the middle of the night,” Georgieva said.

Another issue of concern was the stability of the financial system due to the rise of US public debt. At around the equivalent of US GDP and set to rise even further in coming years, it has reached what is universally acknowledged as an “unsustainable” level.

The IMF Fiscal Monitor report was replete with calls for the US and other governments to tackle this issue with the restoration of “fiscal buffers” to be achieved by targeting spending on health and pensions and social service entitlement programs.

The toxic combination of higher for longer interest rates and slower growth are beginning to become ever more apparent.

This week Bloomberg reported that South Korea is “emerging as a closely watched weak link in the $63 trillion world of shadow banking”—the growing role of hedge funds, equity funds and other non-bank institutions in the global financial system.

The cause of concern is the rise in delinquency rates under conditions where because of higher interest rates Citigroup economists estimate that around $80 billion worth of project-finance debt is “troubled.”

Shadow banking finance to the real estate sector is now more than four times the level it was a decade ago.

According to the Bloomberg report, the role of South Korea’s shadow banking sector in areas that may risk financial stability is “second only to the US in relative size.”

Quentin Fitzsimmons, a financial manager at the T. Rowe Price Group, told the news agency: “What is happening in Korea is probably a microcosm of what could be happening elsewhere. It has made me concerned.”

The growing financial problems in South Korea, one of the world’s major industrial centres, come amidst mounting concerns that its economic growth “model”—heavy industry and computer chip production backed by the state—is running out of steam.

This week, the Financial Times (FT) published an article headlined “Is South Korea’s economic miracle over?”

The answer it gave is almost certainly yes.

The FT reported that the government is seeking to boost the development of new computer chip technologies and their manufacture “amid growing anxiety that the country’s leading export industry will be usurped by rivals across Asia and the west.”

According to a Bank of Korea report last year, cited in the article, having risen at an average of 6.4 percent between 1970 and 2022, annual growth was set to slow to an average of 2.1 percent in the 2020s, 0.6 percent in the 2030s and then start to shrink by 0.1 percent a year in the 2040s.

For China, the world’s largest manufacturing centre, whose growth has been pivotal to the expansion of the world economy for more than a quarter of a century, the situation is no better.

The crisis in the Chinese real estate and property development sector which has seen the collapse of at least 50 companies, of which Evergrande is the most well-known, has not been resolved as the problems of the economy are compounded by a global economic slowdown and escalating warfare measures by the US and increasingly the European powers.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported on the growing crisis in the car industry resulting from the slowing of demand and the switch to electric vehicles, leading off a with a description of the fate of a major complex in Chongqing, China’s largest western city.

The complex, which was a joint venture of a Chinese company and Hyundai, the South Korean industrial giant, was opened in 2017 with high levels of robots and other equipment to produce petrol-driven cars. It was sold late last year for fraction of the $1.1 billion it cost to build and “unmown grass at the site has already grown knee high.”

According to the article: “Dozens of gasoline-powered vehicle factories are barely running or have already been mothballed.”

The slowdown goes beyond petrol-driven cars and extends to the electric vehicle market not only in China but globally with major car firms, including Tesla, announcing price cuts.

The developing car industry crisis is symptomatic of the marked slowdown in the global economy which will be exacerbated by the continuation of elevated interest rates.

The US is the only major economy experiencing growth, but it does so under conditions where the boost provided by the Biden administration—handouts to corporations under the Inflation Reduction Act and increased military spending—is raising the mountain of unsustainable debt.

The European economy, led down by the world’s third largest economy, Germany, is barely growing. The UK economy is at or near recession and growth in Japan, the world’s fourth largest is barely above zero.

The target for Chinese growth is 5 percent. But this is the lowest level in more than three decades and the government will be struggling to meet it.

Survivors and families of the victims of Manchester Arena bombing to sue MI5

Margot Miller & Robert Stevens

Survivors and families of victims of the 2017 suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena which killed 22 concert-goers are suing the UK’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, for failing to prevent the terror attack. This is the first case of its kind against the intelligence service.

On May 22, 2017, Libyan Islamist Salman Abedi walked into the foyer of the venue and blew himself up with a home-made bomb, as fans were leaving a performance by singer Ariana Grande. The blast killed 22 men, women and children and injured over 100. Many survivors suffered life changing injuries as Abedi added metal nuts and bolts to his home-made device to inflict maximum injury.

Forensic officers work near the Manchester Arena in Manchester, Wednesday, May 24, 2017. [AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth]

The bombing was planned by Salman Abedi and his brother Hashem Abedi. In August 2020, Hashem, after being extradited from Libya, was jailed for 55 years for the 22 murders.

Hudgell Solicitors, Slater & Gordon and Broudie Jackson Canter are leading the legal suit on behalf of 250 complainants, on the grounds MI5 negligence breached the injured survivors’ “right to life” under the Human Rights Act. A legal source told the Sunday Times: “This... action is not about money or compensation. It’s about holding MI5 to account for failing to prevent 22 people dying and many hundreds more being seriously injured.”

The group claim has been submitted to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT).

The legal action against MI5 is important not just to establish the truth about the circumstances leading to the deaths of 22 people, but because it threatens to unravel the cover-up organised at the highest levels of the state.

The action follows the conclusion last year of the official inquiry into the Arena bombing, set up by then Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel. The inquiry was an attempt to placate the families, but its main role was to conceal the role successive governments and the intelligence agencies played that culminated in the mass murder carried out by the Abedis.

The inquiry sat for 18 months from September 2020 at Manchester’s Magistrates Court. It revealed that Salman Abedi came to the attention of MI5 as many as 18 times over a seven-year period before he perpetrated his crime.

Given the extensive surveillance of both Abedi brothers by the intelligence agencies, the crime could have been foiled in the planning stage. Five months prior to the bombing, the FBI informed British intelligence that Abedi was planning a terrorist attack.

That they were not prevented from carrying out their heinous crime was because Salman and his brother were protected assets of British intelligence, given free rein to travel back and forth between the UK and Syria and Libya during the 2011 US-led NATO proxy war to topple the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

The British-born brothers visited Libya regularly, where their parents returned in 2016. Their father, Ramadan, and an elder son fought against the Gaddafi regime as proxy forces of US and British imperialism in the savage regime change operation. British intelligence were well aware that the Abedi family and their Manchester group were funnelling rebel fighters into Libya. According to then Defence Secretary Phillip Hammond, the UK military spent £212 million supporting Libyan rebel forces in 2011.

In 2011, David Cameron’s Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition allowed members of the Al Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) to travel to Libya from Britain in 2011. Abedi’s parents were both LIFG members, as were other anti-Gaddafi Libyans in his neighbourhood in Manchester. Control orders previously restricting their movements during a thaw in UK-Libyan relations were lifted as London swung against Gaddafi.

The Daily Mail revealed in 2018 that as the post-war conflict in Libya intensified in 2014, Salman and Hashem Abedi fled Libya with British government assistance onboard the Royal Navy vessel, HMS Enterprise and were evacuated back to Britain. This operation was sanctioned at the top of government with the Mail report confirming, “The information [on the soldiers lists of who boarded HMS Enterprise] was subsequently passed on to Number Ten [Downing Street to Cameron], the Foreign Office and the Home Office.”

HMS Enterprise sea training in UK waters in 2019 [Photo: Ministry of Defence-Open Government Licence version 1.0]

When it came to examining the links between the Abedis and British intelligence, the inquiry barred the public, including the affected families, and entered closed session.

The final inquiry report by Sir John Saunders covered up the role of MI5, MI6, the Ministry of Defence and successive British governments, in recruiting and protecting Islamists sent to Libya to expedite regime change.

The first volume of the inquiry was made public but such was the close relationship of the Abedis to the intelligence agencies that the second has only been circulated to those with security clearance. The inquiry was told that the closed report contained “material that would be damaging to national security if it were to become public.”

The final verdict that the public were expected to swallow—was that “It is not possible to reach any conclusion on the balance of probabilities or to any other evidential standard as to whether the Attack would have been prevented.”

Downplaying damning evidence, inquiry chair Saunders said there was a “realistic possibility” the bombing could have been stopped, but it was “quite impossible” to declare there could have been a different outcome. MI5 Director General Ken McCallum stated there was only a “slim” chance the plot could have been foiled.

As the legal action taken out makes clear, the families do not accept this whitewash.

The inquiry heard in a closed doors session that in the months before the attack, two pieces of information about Abedi were received by MI5. One specific piece of intelligence—the details of which have not been made public with “national security” being given as the reason—could “have led to actions which prevented the attack.” This intelligence is understood to be related to Abedi’s return to Britain from Libya four days before the attack. He wasn’t being stopped at the airport, because MI5 failed to flag him up with counter-terrorism police. Had this been done he could have been followed back to the block of flats in south Manchester where his car was being used to store explosives.

The Times reported on the news that the families were to sue MI5, “It is possible that Abedi had a switch for the bomb when he went through the airport. Had he been subject to an investigation, he would have been stopped and the authorities might have discovered it.”

So overwhelming was the evidence that MI5 could have prevented the bombing that McCallum was obliged to issue an apology to the families on behalf of MI5, saying he was “profoundly sorry”. He said, “There was a realistic possibility that actionable intelligence could have been obtained which might have led to actions preventing the attack… I deeply regret that such intelligence was not obtained.”

The father of the youngest victim, eight-year-old Saffie-Rose Roussos, told Sky News he believed his daughter would still be alive “if MI5 did their job”. Speaking to Times Radio last year after McCallum made his apology, Andrew Roussos said, “At 2017 we were at the highest alert and everybody was warned of an attack in this country, and MI5… had 22 pieces of information about Salman Abedi.” He added, “Salman Abedi should not have made it to that arena that night.”

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain, “I'm sorry but yes, they [MI5] have blood on their hands.”

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal hearing the case of the families is expected to begin next spring. It is a government body, part of the Home Office, with the powers of the High Court that listens to complaints against the intelligence services. In most of cases, neither side wins. In 2020 and 2021, no complaint was upheld. The ITP is no more likely to reveal the truth than the public inquiry, on the grounds of national security.

Since the Arena bombing, Britain has become further embroiled in expanding NATO wars in the Middle East—against the Palestinians in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, in Syria, the Yemen and against Iran, stoking tensions that could result in further terrorist attacks in the UK.

UK Prime Minister Sunak pledges 2.5 percent GDP military spending to place economy on a “war footing”

Robert Stevens

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Tuesday that Britain is to increase military spending to 2.5 percent of GDP in “the biggest strengthening of our national defence for a generation”.

Spending will increase to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030, up from 2.3 percent, including new funding for Ukraine, this year. “Over the next six years, we’ll invest an additional £75 billion in our defence,” said Sunak. Downing Street said military spending will reach £87 billion annually by 2030, “ensuring the UK remains by far the second largest defence spender in NATO after the US.”

Rishi Sunak (centre) holds a press conference with the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (left) and then met British soldiers stationed at the Warsaw Armoured Brigade military base, Poland, April 23, 2024 [Photo by Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The Ministry of Defence’s budget covers the ongoing renewal of Britain’s nuclear-armed submarine fleet, and the build and maintenance costs of several hundred nuclear warheads. The upper estimate on nuclear weapons spending alone over the next decades is between £170-£200 billion.

Sunak made his announcement at a military base in front of armoured vehicles and alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Warsaw, Poland: the first stop on a tour of Europe which included meeting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin Wednesday.

Sunak said the increase in military spending “is a turning point for European security and a landmark moment in the defence of the United Kingdom.” Speaking at the base of the Warsaw Armoured Brigade, he addressed a regiment of the Queen’s Dragoon Guards: “I want to talk to you about how we equip you to do your duty in an increasingly dangerous world,” with Britain and NATO confronting an “axis of authoritarian states.” Sunak named “Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China.”

Declaring the move to 2.5 percent the equivalent of Winston Churchill’s demands that Britain re-arm in the years leading to the Second World War, the prime minister said it required placing the “UK’s own defence industry on a war footing… One of the central lessons of the war in Ukraine is that we need deeper stockpiles of munitions and for industry to be able to replenish them more quickly. So today, we’re giving £10 billion in munitions to give industry long-term funding certainty.”

On the heels of the Biden administration announcing the release of $60 billion to fight Russia in Ukraine, Sunak pledged, “We will send Ukraine an additional half a billion pounds, hitting £3 billion of support this year. And we’ll provide them with the largest-ever package of UK military equipment. This will include more than 400 vehicles, 4 million rounds of ammunition, 60 boats and offshore raiding craft, vital air defences, and long-range precision-guided Storm Shadow missiles.”

Sunak said defeating Russia meant “we must support Ukraine for the long term”. Britain would now “move past this stop-start, piecemeal way of backing Ukraine.” Therefore, “we are today providing a long-term funding guarantee of at least the current level of military support to Ukraine, for every year it is needed.”

Projecting ahead to the possible election of Donald Trump as US President later this year—who has demanded that all NATO members meet the 2 percent of GDP threshold for military spending—Sunak said, “We cannot keep expecting America to pay any price or bear any burden if we ourselves are unwilling to make greater sacrifices for our own security… And at this turning point in European security, if 2.5 percent becomes a new benchmark for all NATO partners to reach, allied defence spending would increase by over £140 billion.”

The uplift in military spending came days after Stockholm International Peace Research Institute announced that the world’s powers spent $2.4 trillion (£1,970 billion) on military forces last year, the highest figure ever recorded. The 6.8 percent increase between 2022 and 2023 was the steepest since 2009. A developing global conflagration, with wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, saw for the first time ever an increase in military spend in all five geographical regions analysed: Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania and the Americas.

It is only a few weeks ago that Sunak was still maintaining that the 2.5 percent mark would be reached, “as soon as economic conditions allow”. But he has faced constant demands from the most hawkish Conservative MPs and military top brass to move faster. Last month three former Tory defence secretaries, Michael Fallon, Gavin Williamson and Ben Wallace, called on Sunak to pledge an increase in spending to 3 percent of GDP. Other political and military figures and commentators have called for an increase to 5 or 6 percent or higher.

Within minutes of Sunak’s announcement, economists and other commentators were pointing out that Sunak was still engaging in imperialism “on the cheap” and that the real-terms cash increase announced for the military was nearer £20 billion than £75 billion. Leading the charge was Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey, who posted on X, “As [party leader] Keir Starmer recently set out, Labour wants to see a fully funded plan to reach 2.5 percent, but the Tories have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted on defence and we will examine the detail of their announcement closely.”

This was the opening shot of an election arms race in which Labour, as the “party of NATO” and having declared its preparedness to use nuclear weapons, will ensure that its election manifesto is in line with the war requirements of British imperialism.

Making military spending the premier concern will be Britain’s war-crazed media. A flavour of this was seen in the questions put to Sunak at the press conference. The Daily Mail: “You mentioned NATO’s Article Five. Just to be clear, you’re ready to take Britain to war if Russian troops set one boot in this country [Poland] or any other NATO ally, is that right?”; the Telegraph: “You had some very strong words about the threat from China at the start of your speech, and you link those directly to this extra money that you’re putting into defence and protecting Britain. Is it now time, as a lot of your MPs want, to designate China officially as a threat?”; Sky News: “You talk about Europe being at a turning point and this spending putting the UK on a war footing. Have we entered a pre-war era?”

Six national newspapers led their front pages on the military being handed further tens of billions, with the Express’s banner headline reading, “About Time Too!”

The massive attacks being primed to make the working class pay for the vast financial resources of the military are indicated by the fact that the initial tranche of funding is to come from slashing 72,000 jobs in the civil service. Shapps told LBC Radio, referring to the civil service cuts, “We’re simply saying that defence of the realm is the absolute number one priority; it comes before everything else and if we don’t defend the nation, then everything else becomes slightly less of an issue.”

Sunak himself at the press conference spoke of the need to cut the welfare budget to fund the tens of billions of pounds announced in new arms spending. “Last week I outlined a significant set of reforms to the welfare system overall, to tackle what we're seeing, which is a significant increase in claims and bills. Spending on ill health and disability benefits is forecast be around £69 billion pounds. That is an extraordinary amount of money. We're talking about defence spending here today... The PIP [disability benefit] budget alone is forecast to increase by 50 percent in the next four years, unless we do something differently.”

Also making clear it was the working class who had to pay in far deeper austerity cuts than anything seen since the Second World War, the Telegraph editorialised, “These [increases in arms spending] are all welcome developments which reflect the worsening international situation, probably the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War when at least 3 per cent of GDP went to the military. The defeat of the Soviet Union was an excuse to cut spending and cash in the so-called ‘peace dividend’, used by successive governments to boost social and welfare programmes. Are these now to be cut back in order to fund defence and, if not, why not?”

Inhumane conditions in Tegel arrival centre, Germany’s largest refugee camp

Angela Niklaus

Conditions in Berlin’s so-called “Ukraine Arrival Centre TXL” (UA TXL) are intolerable. They show the extent to which the government’s policy of sealing off Europe’s external borders is also being continued inside the country. It is the flip side of the pro-war policy, militarisation and division of society.

Initially, politicians and the media overflowed with welcoming words for refugees with Ukrainian passports. Images of trains full of Ukrainians fleeing to Germany were seen as an excellent way to exploit the warmongering against Russia and justify the political and military support for the far-right Zelensky government. But the effusive media welcome for Ukrainians has long since given way to a reality of right-wing agitation, garrisoning and deliberate exclusion.

The so-called “arrival centre” on the former Berlin-Tegel airport site (TXL) shows particularly clearly what all state governments, regardless of their political colouring, now support and implement: an extreme right-wing, racist immigration policy that is intended to deter and divide.

The refugee camp in Tegel on fire, 12 March 2024 [Photo by screenshot Pro Asyl / tiktok]

The camp was opened in Berlin two years ago as a hub for people who had fled the war in Ukraine. They were to be housed here temporarily, registered, and then distributed throughout Germany. Around 10,000 people have passed through the camp in the past two years.

Katja Kipping (Left Party), the senator (Berlin state minister) responsible for social affairs until April 2023, justified the 2022 announcement that a tent city would be set up on the site by citing a lack of housing options in the existing accommodation. In view of the new influx of refugees, she claimed, “We have to create space. Every shelter we give is a condemnation of Putin’s war.”

In fact, Germany’s largest refugee camp, with around 5,000 places in 40 lightweight halls, has turned out to be a detention centre for refugees of all ages and health conditions. It deprives people of all their rights and denies free access to critical journalists, lawyers, and independent aid organisations.

What was originally designed as accommodation for a few days or weeks has become a trap for many people, some of whom have been unable to escape for over a year. In March 2024, there were more than 4,500 people crammed into a very small area.

Strictly separated from the Ukrainians, asylum seekers from Turkey, Syria, Moldova, Georgia, and Afghanistan have also been housed here indefinitely. The Refugee Council found that “from October 2022 to the end of January 2023 and since October 2023,” asylum seekers have been “parked” in the Tegel camp for long periods of time without any entitlement to social benefits, cash, medical care, or registration of their asylum application.

In an incendiary letter in September 2023 to Kipping’s successor, Social Affairs Senator Cansel Kiziltepe (Social Democrat, SPD), around 130 Ukrainian women denounced the “insults, harassment, arbitrary treatment and violence—including against children” by the security staff in charge. In December 2023, the intolerable camp conditions burst into public view once again, as mass brawls with the abusive and sometimes racist security staff led to police investigations and the immediate suspension of 55 security staff.

In the camp, 14 to 16 people have to share a dorm. Although the camp is not currently at full capacity, the free areas are not being used to alleviate the unbearably cramped conditions. According to press calculations, this occupancy rate results in 2.63 square metres per person in a very small space, including the corridors. The planned minimum standards for shared accommodation of six to nine square metres per person are being dramatically undercut in Tegel.

“Five bunk beds per dorm, the plastic walls just two metres high, curtains instead of doors” prevent any privacy, reported a carer in an interview with Neues Deutschland (nd). There is no separation of the sexes. People in wheelchairs are crammed in here, as are minors and people with open war injuries and mental health problems.

Camp residents have reported that families and partners are separated. Single women, women with babies or even pregnant women have to share compartments with men they do not know. These and similar reports have been confirmed by the Berlin Refugee Council. Emily Barnickel from the Refugee Council explained: “There is also the extreme case of mothers with their three-day-old babies being placed in mixed compartments with six other men.”

The obligation to wear a smart card around their neck at all times in order to have personal names and data scanned by a machine reinforces the feeling of having no rights and being locked up. Luggage and personal belongings can be and are checked and searched at any time.

In the winter, the heating in the lightweight halls repeatedly breaks down. Catastrophic hygiene conditions led to mass outbreaks of highly contagious diseases, such as the chickenpox outbreak last year and the measles outbreak this year. The risk of contracting COVID-19 is permanently high.

But as the Berlin Refugee Council alarmingly pointed out, the camp no longer has a quarantine centre. The camp doctor and paediatrician do not issue prescriptions or referrals, but only treat sick people from existing stocks of medication, supported by paramedics from the German Red Cross (DRK). Adequate medical care—including for people with chronic illnesses or pregnant women—”is virtually non-existent.” For non-Ukrainian refugees, access to the camp’s rudimentary medical care is even more limited.

There is no regular cleaning service in the dining areas, and refugees who want to clean themselves are given neither cleaning materials nor money to do so, according to an employee of the camp operator. In the toilets, there is “rarely soap, no dry wipes and no disinfectant.” Defective toilets and showers are not repaired. In an interview with nd, the employee says that “only three women’s showers” were working in the tent area she was in charge of and that “half of the 40 toilets were blocked.”

“If you weren’t already traumatised, you will be traumatised there,” employees on site told nd. This also applies to the staff themselves. “It’s a very toxic place for us employees.” “The camp should actually be closed.” “It’s a disaster, from top to bottom,” and the management bears the main responsibility for this they said.

In the Berlin Senate (state executive), responsibility lies with the SPD Senator for Social Affairs, Cansel Kiziltepe, and the President of the State Office for Refugee Affairs (LAF), Mark Seibert. In view of the police investigations and reports from those affected, the latter himself had to admit in December 2023 that it was not a place “that anyone would want here.” The German Red Cross (DRK) is responsible for looking after the camp and has rejected the allegations as “inaccurate” or merely temporary grievances. The DRK is supported by the aid agencies Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), the Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe and the Malteser Hilfsdienst.

For minors, the garrisoning is also intolerable in terms of their right to education and free development. In the camp, they were denied adequate schooling or access to public schools until mid-February. Containers equipped with computers were made available only to the approximately 560 Ukrainian schoolchildren in November, where they could “independently participate in online home-schooling with their teachers in the UKR [Ukrainian Republic],” according to the Berlin Refugee Council in its report on the conditions in the TXL detention centre.

In mid-February 2024, Education Senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch (Christian Democrat, CDU) boasted about the opening of the “Welcome School TXL,” where around 130 underage Ukrainians were learning German and receiving specialised lessons. A further 300 places were to be created in March 2024 and up to 700 such school places in the future.

In fact, the camp school “Willkommensschule TXL” epitomises the deeply racist character of the immigration policy of the state government—a coalition of the CDU and SPD.

Ibrahim Kalanan, former State Secretary for Justice, makes clear on the verfassungsblog.de website that the separate schools in emergency and collective accommodation centres were pursuing a “new segregation strategy” with the aim of using “parallel” educational institutions to exclude the “equal enjoyment of rights” by schoolchildren with a refugee background, to which non-refugee schoolchildren would be entitled. This strategy is reminiscent of the US doctrine: separate but equal, the racially motivated schooling of black and white pupils in separate schools until 1954.

Instead of expanding the capacity of public schools, funding long overdue refurbishments and new school buildings as well as affordable housing for all, the state government is pouring millions into funding temp-homes, mass accommodation and “camp schools.”

The “segregation strategy” of the CDU Education Senator and the garrisoning policy of the SPD Social Affairs Senator in Berlin are completely in line with the federal policy of hermetically sealing off the EU’s external borders.

The mass accommodation centre hit the headlines again at the beginning of March 2024: A major fire on the site once again raised awareness of the inhumane conditions refugees confront in the heart of the German capital. One of the 1,000 square metre tent halls caught fire. According to the operator, there was no serious damage to health, but the 300 or so residents from Ukraine lost their few personal belongings.

The case inevitably brings back memories of the infamous Moria mass accommodation centre on the Greek island of Lesbos. The fact that there was no catastrophe comparable to that in Moria in 2020 was partly due to the fact that the fire broke out during the day, but above all because the camp’s capacity is currently under-utilised.

Tareq Alaow, refugee policy spokesperson for Pro Asyl, emphasised: “We have repeatedly warned in the past that cramming so many people together in precarious accommodation is extremely dangerous.” Neither the Left Party (when it was in government) nor the SPD and CDU are influenced by the concerns and warnings of aid organisations and doctors.

Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU), who heads the CDU-SPD Berlin state administration, immediately announced the construction of a new large tent on the site of the burnt-down tent hall. Furthermore, at the end of March—less than two weeks after the major fire—the state government decided to expand the camp’s capacity to 7,100 places and to extend its operation up to and including 2025. The construction of further temporary accommodation and container villages is also being planned.

Mass accommodation in Germany and barbed wire, pushbacks and detention centres at Europe’s external borders—this is the far-right asylum policy of the SPD-led federal government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which is supported by all the state governments.

US Secretary of State Blinken in China with a bagful of demands and threats

Peter Symonds

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has landed in China for a three-day visit armed with a slew of demands and threats as part of the Biden administration’s aggressive confrontation and military build-up against Beijing. Chief among those demands is that China halt the export of so-called dual-use items to Russia, which the US claims are helping Moscow prosecute the war against the US-NATO backed regime in Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns walk through the Yu Gardens in Shanghai, China, April 24, 2024 [AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool]

Having goaded Russia into invading Ukraine, the US and its European allies are desperate to reverse the deteriorating position of the Ukrainian military amid its loss of territory to Russian forces. While funneling ever-more quantities of sophisticated arms to Ukraine, Washington is now demanding that China assist in crippling Russia’s industrial capacity and thus the Russian military.

“When it comes to Russia’s defence industrial base, the primary contributor in this moment to that is China,” Blinken told reporters last week after a G7 meeting in Italy. “If China purports on the one hand to want good relations with Europe and other countries, it can’t on the other hand be fueling what is the biggest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War,” he said.

The US is not only demanding that China halt the sale of so-called dual-use items, including computer chips and machine tools. It is also threatening to cut Chinese banks facilitating such trade from the global financial system based on the US dollar. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned during her visit to China earlier this month: “Any banks that facilitate significant transactions that channel military or dual-use goods to Russia’s defence industrial base expose themselves to the risk of US sanctions.”

Washington’s demand is completely hypocritical. The Biden administration acknowledges China has not sold weapons to Moscow, yet it is pushing through Congress a huge $95 billion-package of military funding of which $61 billion is to go to Ukraine and the US-NATO war against Russia. Now the US is insisting that the sale of dual-use items—a broad, undefined category to which almost anything could be added—be stopped.

A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ): “China’s right to conduct normal trade and economic exchanges with Russia and other countries in the world on the basis of equality and mutual benefit should not be interfered with or disrupted. The United States should immediately stop imposing unilateral sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals.”

Blinken’s remarks about the Ukraine war were also aimed at driving a wedge between China and Europe and pressuring the European powers to impose tougher sanctions on Beijing. The WSJ noted: “Washington’s European allies have shown even more reticence to apply punitive measures against a major trade partner and financier, sanctioning only a fraction of the scores of [Chinese] firms put on US rosters… Germany and some other key European allies had been satisfied with that no-arms policy as enough.”

A former senior US national security official told the newspaper: “Now there’s an effort to adjust that in part because of the scale of Chinese support. The hope is that we get the Europeans to read China the riot act.”

The funding package that passed the US House of Representatives last Saturday was aimed not only at shoring up the Ukrainian military. It will also provide $26 billion to Israel for its genocidal war in Gaza and escalating conflict with Iran, which the US has accused of providing arms to Russia. Significantly, from Beijing’s standpoint, the legislation includes $8 billion in military funding for Taiwan. Biden has pledged to sign the bill into law as soon as it hits his table.

Far from being separate conflicts, the legislation passed with bi-partisan support makes clear that the US regards its confrontation with China as a prelude to it becoming the third front in a war to maintain American imperialism’s global hegemony. In a similar fashion to its provocative inclusion of Eastern European countries in NATO, Washington is goading China to take military action over Taiwan. Biden has ramped up ties with Taiwan and boosted arms sales to Taipei effectively undermining the One China policy under which the US de facto acknowledges that Beijing is the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan.

Asked about US military aid to Taiwan at press conference on Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin warned that closer military ties between the US and Taiwan would “not bring about security for Taiwan” and would “only escalate tensions across the Taiwan Strait.” Beijing has long warned that it would take military measures in the event that Taipei declared formal independence from China, yet US actions are actively encouraging the Taiwanese government to move in that direction.

While deliberately provoking tensions with China over Taiwan, Blinken is also slated to raise the issue of “aggressive manoeuvres” by Chinese ships in the South China Sea. Over the past decade, the US has deliberately inflamed longstanding territorial disputes in the South China Sea between China and neighbouring countries as a means of isolating Beijing and strengthening military ties in South East Asia. Biden this month hosted a summit with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines that pledged closer military collaboration directed against China.

Chinese trade with Russia is not Blinken’s only target. The US is also threatening trade penalties over what it alleges to be China’s “dumping” of cheap goods on the American markets, particularly electric vehicles and solar panels. Since Yellen’s visit, the Biden administration is also considering increased tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminium and is carrying out an investigation into alleged Chinese subsidies in shipbuilding and other industries.

The Biden administration not only maintained the heavy trade penalties imposed on China by the Trump administration but has ramped up efforts to hobble Chinese hi-tech industries by banning the export of the most advanced computer chips and chip-making equipment to Beijing and has prevailed on allies to do the same.

At a briefing on Tuesday, a Chinese foreign ministry official hit back at US claims of Chinese overcapacity and dumping as “outright economic coercion and bullying,” adding: “Behind it is the evil intention of curbing and suppressing China’s industrial development, aiming to seek a more favourable competitive position and market advantage for the country.”

In an utterly cynical move, Blinken is also preparing to trot out the litany of “human rights” allegations against China, including the outright lie that Beijing is engaged in “genocide” against Muslim Uyghurs in western Xinjiang province. He does so even as the US arms, bankrolls and politically defends the fascistic Israeli regime as it wages a genocidal war in Gaza that has already claimed more than 34,000 Palestinian lives, a majority women and children, and has plunged the entire population into hunger and destitution.

Against this backdrop, suggestions by the Biden administration and the American media that Blinken is going to China to improve relations are absurd. He has gone to bully Beijing into making further concessions even as US imperialism builds up its military forces and strengthen its military alliances in the Indo-Pacific in preparation for war.