Russia accuses Britain of blowing up Nord Stream pipelines

Robert Stevens

The Russian government has accused Britain of playing a major role in the September 26 blowing up of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.

Powerful underwater explosions blew gaping holes in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which carry Russian natural gas 760-miles under the Baltic Sea to Germany. The pipelines have a joint annual capacity to provide 110 billion cubic metres of gas, more than 50 percent of Russia’s normal gas export volumes.

Map of the Nord-Stream pipelines [Photo by FactsWithoutBias1 / CC BY-SA 4.0]

On Saturday, a spokesperson for Russia’s defence ministry said, “According to available information, representatives of this unit of the British Navy took part in the planning, provision and implementation of a terrorist attack in the Baltic Sea on September 26 this year blowing up the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.” The “unit of the British Navy” referred to, as the spokesperson later detailed, were British operatives “in the city of Ochakiv, Mykolaiv region, Ukraine.”

The explosions destroyed tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure vital to financing Russia’s economy, and powering and heating European industry and households. Russia’s state-owned energy company Gazprom is the main owner of the pipelines. The leaks took place on international waters, but of the four explosions two of them were in the Danish exclusive economic zone and two in the Swedish zone, close to the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm.

Nord Stream 1 had been operating for nearly 11 years, while Nord Stream 2 contained gas but had not yet been brought into commercial operation, owing to pressure by Washington on Germany and other EU powers.

The spokesperson also alleged UK involvement in Saturday’s attacks on Russian ships in the Black Sea. He stated, “At 4.20am today, the Kyiv regime carried out a terrorist attack on Black Sea Fleet ships and civilian vessels.

“Preparation for the terrorist act and training of military personnel of the Ukrainian 73rd Special Operations Centre Marine Unit was carried out under the guidance of British specialists who were in the city of Ochakiv, Mykolaiv region, Ukraine.

“It should be stressed that the Black Sea Fleet vessels that suffered the terrorist attack are involved in ensuring the security of the grain corridor as part of the international initiative to export agricultural products from Ukrainian ports.”

Britain’s Ministry of Defence denied the accusations, saying they were made to distract from Russia’s “disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine”.

Russia’s statement comes after weeks of insinuations by Britain and other NATO allies that the blowing up of its own pipeline was an act of sabotage by Russia. The incident has been used to further ramp up hostilities between NATO and Russia, with the activation of NATO's Article 5 collective defence clause being mooted.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said just days after the explosions that an Article 5 response could not be ruled out, adding, “I’ll reiterate that we have been in touch with our European allies and partners about the apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. We are supporting European efforts to investigate this.”

Before the NATO defence ministers’ meeting earlier this month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg threatened, “Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response… We have doubled our presence in the Baltic and North Seas to over 30 ships, supported by maritime patrol aircraft and undersea capabilities.” He pledged “further steps” would be taken to protect Western infrastructure, before also stating, “We will never give up the privilege of defining exactly where the threshold for Article 5 goes. That will be a decision we make as allies taking into account the precise context.”

The propaganda that Russia is an imminent danger to NATO’s security and energy infrastructure fed into claims that a “foreign power”—and everyone knows this means Russia—may have sabotaged the German rail network, halting train services across northern Germany on October 8. Services were grounded after two cables critical to the running of the network were cut in two places. Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht, while visiting German troops in Lithuania, demanded that NATO bolster security against Russia. “The fact is that we, Nato, must do more for our common security because we cannot know how far Putin’s delusions of grandeur can go,” she declared.

From the standpoint of who benefits, the accusation that Britain was responsible, or played a critical role in the bombing of Nord Stream, is far more credible than claims of Russia rendering inoperable tens of billions of dollars’ worth of key infrastructure it has been developing over almost three decades since 1997. Moreover, given the UK’s intimate relationship with the United States on military and intelligence operations, it is impossible to conceive of Britain blowing up Nord Stream without the direct approval of Washington.

Well ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, British ships were involved in major provocations against Russia in the Black Sea. In June 2021, a British warship entered waters claimed by Russia near Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea. In response, a Russian border patrol boat fired several warning shots and a Russian fighter jet bombed the path of the British destroyer HMS Defender.

The Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender leaves Portsmouth naval base on May 1, 2021 for exercises in Scotland, prior to deployment to the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Indo-Pacific region as part of NATO's UK-led Carrier Strike Group 21. Just over seven weeks later, on June 23, 2021, HMS Defender was involved in a major provocation with the Russian armed forces in the Black Sea. [Photo: WSWS]

Since 2019, the Royal Navy and forces from other NATO countries led by the US have held a series of operations in the Baltic Sea region. On June 25, 2019 the Royal Navy reported, “A British-led expeditionary group that includes the Baltic states will carry out a series of integrated military activities across their part of northern Europe.” Britain’s expertise in sea operations in the Baltic would mean its forces would have no problem disabling Nord Stream. The Royal Navy statement continued, “Covert amphibious raids, urban ambushes and counter-mine training will mark an action-packed third stage of Baltic Protector, on which more than 3,000 British troops and 16 navy ships are currently deployed.”

Just two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Defence Minister Ben Wallace  announced after a summit with the British led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF)—involving Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden—“We have ... agreed to undertake a series of integrated military activities across our part of northern Europe, at sea, on land and in the air.” He added, “For example, we will shortly conduct an exercise demonstrating JEF nations freedom of movement in the Baltic Sea.”

In June, just three months before the Nord Stream explosions, NATO conducted its BALTOPS 22 exercise with Britain playing a major role. NATO listed “Fourteen NATO allies, two NATO partner nations, over 45 ships, more than 75 aircraft, and approximately 7,000 personnel” which took part. The Royal Navy said, “Destroyer HMS Defender provides the firepower and leading-edge technology, while six of the smallest craft in the Royal Navy’s inventory – Archer, Charger, Explorer, Exploit, Ranger and Smiter – provide the speed, agility and numbers to swarm around participants in Baltops 22.” HMS Defender was the destroyer involved in the June 2021 standoff near Crimea.

The claims that Russia destroyed the pipelines are an important second string to NATO’s propaganda against Moscow, reinforcing claims that a Russian nuclear attack is the main threat to the world, allowing for an escalation of the war in the naval arena—in which the UK is already playing a leading part.

On October 3, days after the Nord Stream attacks, the Royal Navy sent a frigate to the North Sea. The ship would work with the Norwegian navy “to reassure those working near the gas pipelines.” Wallace said at the time of the operation, and after meeting again with the JEF, “the group condemned the blatant attacks against civilian infrastructure.”

He stated that Britain will acquire two specialist ships to protect undersea cables and pipes, with the first “multi-role survey ship for seabed warfare” operational by the end of 2023.

Corporate donors pump billions into 2022 US midterm elections

Alex Findijs

The 2022 US midterm elections have seen a vast influx of corporate money into key races around the country.

According to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data published last week by the Washington Post, the total volume of campaign donations for the current election cycle is nearly double the total for 2018. Data from AdImpact, an ad tracking company, has put the figure at $7.5 billion. This is nearly as much as the $9 billion spent during the presidential election cycle in 2020.

The flood of money has poured into the campaigns of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Under conditions of an escalating war against Russia, near-double-digit rates of inflation, an ongoing pandemic, a looming recession, and the transformation of the Republican Party into a platform for fascist violence while the Democrats serve as the premier party of imperialist war, the elections are increasingly devoid of genuine democratic content.

They have the character of a financial arms race between rival factions of the ruling class, with top donors investing tens and hundreds of millions from their vast fortunes to install in positions of power the bribed politicians of their choice.

Leading the pack is George Soros, who has donated a total of $128.5 million, mostly to Democracy PAC II, a Democratic Party-aligned super PAC (political action committee) created by Soros himself in 2021. Soros is the PAC’s only listed donor.

George Soros, Chairman, Soros Fund Management, USA, during the session 'Redesigning the International Monetary System: A Davos Debate' at the Annual Meeting 2011 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 27. [Photo by World Economic Forum / CC BY-SA 2.0]

He also oversees a large network of other PACs and organizations through which he funnels money to the Democratic Party. The Soros-backed Democratic Fund for Policy Reform has donated $25 million to Democratic candidates.

The top Republican donors are Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the billionaire owners of Uline, a privately held shipping and packaging supply company. Together they have given $70 million to Republican candidates this election cycle, on top of the tens of millions they have given to the GOP in previous elections.

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein. [Photo: Uline (Screengrab WSWS)]

They back far-right politics and politicians, promoting fascistic candidates such as Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Most recently their political activities have included attacking anti-COVID policies, including calling on the Wisconsin legislature to remove Governor Tony Evers for his lock-down orders, long since lifted.

Other major Republican donors include Kenneth Griffin, the founder and owner of Citadel and Citadel Securities, two of the largest investment groups in the world. Griffin has donated nearly $66 million, mostly for House and Senate races around the country.

Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and owner of Citadel and Citadel Securities. [Photo by Paul Elledge / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Jeffrey Yass, a wealthy investor and leading member of the Cato Institute, has donated over $48 million to Republican candidates. The Cato Institute is a right-wing libertarian, free market think tank founded by, among others, the billionaire Charles Koch.

Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone Group, is another top Republican donor. He has donated $32.7 million this election cycle.

Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Blackstone Group, USA, at the Annual Meeting 2008 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 24, 2008 [Photo by World Economic Forum/Remy Steinegger / CC BY-SA 2.0]

While the list of top donors is predominantly Republican aligned, the Democratic Party has received its share of support from corporate oligarchs beyond Soros.

The second largest Democratic donor is Sam Bankman-Fried, a billionaire investor and founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. He donated over $39 million, with $27 million going to the Protect Our Future PAC, an organization that ostensibly exists to support policies that will help prevent another pandemic.

Of course, the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled Congress have carried out essentially the same “let-it-rip” policies as Trump and the Republicans, allowing over a million Americans to die and countless more to be permanently scarred by Long COVID in the interests of corporate profit and the stock market.

The Democratic Party has also received large donations from unions such as the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, which has given more than $31.4 million to Democratic candidates and Democratic Party-aligned groups, according to the campaign finance tracker Open Secrets. The carpenters’ union is closely followed by the National Education Association, which has handed over $31 million.

Other major union donors include the American Federation of Teachers, the Service Employees International Union, and the Communication Workers of America, each of which has donated $10 million.

Unions in the transportation industry have donated a combined $10 million to Democratic candidates and PACs, even as the Biden administration and Congress have worked to force pro-corporate contracts on rail workers that fail to meet workers’ demands for adequate time off and paid sick days.

The teachers’ unions, for their part, have worked hand-in-glove with both big business parties to isolate and sell out strikes by educators driven by opposition to the reopening of unsafe schools in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.

The campaign finance data for this election cycle further demonstrates the fact that the Democratic Party is not a party of labor or democracy, but a party of Wall Street and the US military-intelligence apparatus.

During the Republican primary elections this year, the Democratic Party funneled millions of dollars into ads designed to boost the campaigns of far-right, pro-Trump election deniers and defeat more moderate Republicans, cynically calculating that Democratic candidates would fare better against Trump acolytes in the November general election. Not only has this exposed the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party and its inability to advance any policies that address the needs of working people and defend their democratic rights, it appears to have contributed to a Republican surge that may result in the take-over of one or both houses of Congress and many key state offices by Trump allies.

It has also exposed the pseudo-left organizations, such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), who promote “progressive” frauds like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez based on the lie that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left.

Macron calls to impoverish French workers by keeping wage rises below inflation

Alex Lantier

In an interview Wednesday evening on France2 television, President Emmanuel Macron set the course for his second term. Citing NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine and its expansion into Europe, he refused to index French wages to the rapid inflation that is devastating the global economy and promised to slash pensions by raising the legal retirement age to 65.

With 500 French people dying every week from COVID-19, and a new deadly wave expected this winter, Macron did not mention any measures to stop the contagion.

French Communist Party (PCF) National Secretary and Member of Parliament Fabien Roussel shakes hands with France's President Emmanuel Macron after talks at the presidential Elysee Palace, in Paris, Monday, June 21, 2022. [AP Photo/Ludovic Marin]

His interview confirms the Marxist warning that imperialist war abroad goes hand in hand with class war against the workers at home. As over 10 percent inflation staggers Europe, Macron’s refusal to raise wages and his attack on pensions are evidence of his plan, shared by all the capitalist states of Europe, to massively reduce living standards. As during the two world wars of the 20th century, the capitalist system works for the immiseration of the working class.

Macron first linked his desire to increase the cost of living to the supposedly inevitable return of war to Europe. “The war that is returning to Europe has multiple consequences. On energy, we were afraid of not having enough this winter. We managed to get by. On prices, it affects the lives of many compatriots,” said Macron, before predicting a massive increase in the cost of energy: “For households, we will continue to help by adapting things. [Nevertheless] there will be a 15 percent increase in the first months [of 2023] for electricity and gas.”

While inflation in France is already at 7 percent and will rise in 2023 due to the rising cost of energy, Macron refused to defend purchasing power by raising wages to at least the level of inflation.

“The solution is not to re-index wages to inflation ... I don’t want to be demagogic, I'm not here to say we’re going to re-index, otherwise we would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Macron said. He added, “If we want to move forward, we have no choice but to work more.”

To force workers to work more while earning less per hour worked, Macron proposed attacking pensions and unemployment insurance: “Today, there is not a serious expert who tells you that your pensions are funded. So, from the summer of 2023, we will have to shift the legal retirement age by four months a year. So, by 2025 we’ll go to 63, by 2028 to 64 and by 2031 to 65.”

Unsurprisingly, Macron then detailed measures aimed at reducing some of the shock of these measures on the most vulnerable workers and businesses. He announced state subsidies for businesses, particularly small businesses such as energy-intensive bakeries, and the extension of one-euro meals to slightly wider layers of students. But this will not offset the impact of inflation on the collective purchasing power of the working class, including rising prices for imported goods.

Macron has indicated that he will impose misery on workers under cover of nationalism, by stirring up fascistic hatreds against immigrants. Hypocritically claiming he would “never make an existential link between immigration and insecurity,” he made that link three seconds later, saying, “But I want to fight against illegal immigration. When you look at the delinquency in Paris, where there is a high concentration of this illegal immigration, yes, delinquency is very present.”

He boasted that he had “succeeded in sending home 3,000 illegal immigrants who were disturbing public order.”

At the same time, Macron himself admitted that he had no French solution to the crisis in global capitalism. Inflation, he said, is “the consequence of our dependencies, we have controlled it better than many of our neighbors. The crisis we are passing through leaves €85 billion less in revenue for the nation because gas has gone up, electricity too, and all this has spread to all economic sectors, and we must submit to this shock.”

Macron's adoption of a strategy of war, immiseration and fascistic repression raises the most serious political and historical questions for workers. The first is breaking with the narrow national framework of struggle proposed by the trade union bureaucracies, which subordinate strikes and workers’ struggles to their negotiations with Macron. But there is nothing to negotiate with Macron, whose policies run counter to the fundamental interests of working class.

The task facing the working class is to align its modes of struggle and perspectives with the challenges posed by an explosive objective situation. The nationalist, corporatist perspective of the trade union bureaucracies, to negotiate with the capitalist state and the bosses, leads to disaster. Only the formation among the workers in France and throughout the world of rank-and-file committees, independent of the national bureaucracies and taking the class struggle out of their hands, will make it possible to lead the necessarily international struggle against inflation, the pandemic and war.

This struggle can only be waged consciously by building a movement to transfer power to the workers through a socialist revolution.

The isolation of the current refinery strike in France by the ex-Stalinist General Confederation of Labor (CGT) bureaucracy is a warning. The CGT and its political allies such as the Communist Party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Unsubmissive France and Olivier Besancenot’s Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party are not only unable to defend wages. All the political parties and trade union bureaucracies historically linked to Stalinism, which blocked a revolution during the struggles of resistance to fascism in World War II and during the general strike of May 1968, will work to strangle workers’ struggles in the 21st century.

The Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 neither signaled the end of the struggle for socialism by the working class, nor resolved the mortal crisis of capitalism. However, simply declaring that this crisis exists without then fighting to break the influence on the working class of those national bureaucracies that negotiate with Macron means to work within the context of the political debate within the ruling elite, or even within the Élysée presidential palace.

Indeed, in an interview with the British magazine Economist in 2019, Macron admitted that Washington’s threats of war against Moscow were a sign of a deadly political crisis. “What we are seeing, I think, is that NATO is brain dead,” he said, before adding, “When the United States is very harsh with Russia, it is a form of governmental, political and historical hysteria.”

In fact, Macron himself is politically brain dead. Just three years later, he and the other NATO leaders are waging war on Russia in Ukraine, risking nuclear war. In 2019, he had added, “There was a pervasive conception that developed in the 1990s and 2000s around the idea of the End of History, an endless expansion of democracy, that the Western camp had won … [Then] a series of crises showed that it was not true.”

Former French prime minister under investigation over COVID-19 response

Jacques Valentin

Former French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe was heard on October 18 by the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), which judges crimes committed by French government ministers in office. After the indictment of his former health minister, Agnès Buzyn, on September 10, 2021, on charges of mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, Philippe was made an “assisted witness” but was not indicted.

Outgoing French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, left, speaks while newly named Prime Minister Jean Castex listens after the handover ceremony in Paris, Friday, July 3, 2020. French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday named Jean Castex, who coordinated France's virus reopening strategy, as the country's new prime minister. [AP Photo/Michel Euler]

The CJR’s decision confirms that there is significant evidence that the Philippe government’s pandemic response involved state criminality. In French law, an “assisted witness” is a person implicated in a criminal case against whom there is evidence to suggest guilt in the offence. Philippe is an assisted witness for the offences of “endangering the life of others” and “voluntary abstention from fighting a disaster.”

Thousands of individuals, doctors and associations have filed complaints against members of the government for their role in the pandemic, which has killed more than 156,000 people in France and almost 2 million across Europe to date.

The CJR therefore opened an investigation in July 2020 into the two charges against Philippe. The investigation targets several ministers: Philippe, Buzyn, her successor as Health Minister, Olivier Véran, and the Philippe government’s spokesperson, Sibeth Ndiaye. As for French President Emmanuel Macron, whose responsibility in imposing the policy of 'living with the virus' is massive, he enjoys legal immunity as president.

The CJR ordered searches, which took place in October 2020, at the homes of Philippe, Véran, Buzyn and Ndiaye, Jérôme Salomon, the director general of health, and Geneviève Chêne, the director of Santé Publique France. Amongst the failures Philippe will be required to explain are:

• the drastic decrease in mask stocks before the pandemic;
• the failure to recommend wearing a mask at the beginning of the pandemic;
• the holding of municipal elections in March 2020;
• the failure to activate the Inter-ministerial Crisis Committee (CIC) in a timely manner;
• the failure to implement measures laid out in pre-existing pandemic plans.

Philippe delayed activating the CIC, even though he had signed a document less than a year earlier requiring the improvement of “government action in crisis management.” This document called for the ICC to be activated “sufficiently in advance, as soon as the extension of the crisis to several sectors is envisaged.” Despite alerts from China as early as December 2019 and the first cases in France in January 2020, the ICC was only activated on March 17, 2020, as France’s first confinement began.

The CJR's incoherent decision to grant Philippe the status of assisted witness while indicting Buzyn raises the most serious questions about the CJR procedure. It suggests that the CJR is trying to divert focus to Buzyn in order to clear the main culprits, Philippe and Macron.

The lawyer for CoeurVide19, an association of COVID-19 victims, Me Yassine Bouzrou, said, “We do not understand this decision, because it is obvious that the actions of Ms Agnès Buzyn ... could not have been done without the agreement of the head of government.” The lawyer added: “I remind you the standards courts [in France], after complaints were filed, did absolutely nothing.”

Buzyn, who was indicted on September 10, 2021, has already faced around 20 hearings and is trying to defend herself in the press.

This week, Le Monde published an article, “COVID-19: Agnès Buzyn’s truths about the pandemic response,” which tries to rehabilitate Buzyn, based on documentation she has gathered to clear her name. Shocking reports are glossed over in a few words, like the fact that “For fear of leaks, she insists on delivering her concerns to him [Macron] in private, outside the council of ministers.” According to Médiapart, until she left the health ministry, Buzyn did not issue any alerts in the council of ministers.

Buzyn's defence has no credibility. It presents her as a medical personality who is apolitical and was not listened to enough. In reality, she was appointed by Macron to the Ministry of Health in May 2017 because of her many connections in the ruling class. She has held a range of positions in the health administration, before being appointed at the end of 2015, under Hollande, to the High Authority for Health.

Above all, however, Buzyn's inaction directly raises the responsibility of Macron and Philippe. Buzyn did nothing because she concluded, correctly, that they did not care about the health of the French people, especially insofar as its preservation threatened to reduce the flow of profits to the banks. She is now before the CJR not at the initiative of Macron or Philippe, but at the initiative of civil groups.

The CJR's investigation reveals that the official narrative on COVID-19 is a tissue of lies. Since the end of the first lockdown, the media and the ruling elite have denounced the public health measures taken to halt the first wave of the virus. The political establishment promotes a false narrative that the chief danger the pandemic poses is that scientists may seek to stop it and thus save lives.

Since the pandemic began, pseudo-left parties in France like Olivier Besancenot's New Anti-capitalist Party and Nathalie Arthaud's Workers’ Struggle have joined their voices with those of the libertarians and the far right, hostile to any policy to eliminate the virus. A consensus in favor of “living with the virus,” at the expense of mass death, dominates capitalist media and the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties.

The deadly policy was pursued in France and across the European Union, which is determined to minimize social spending and enrich the financial aristocracy at the expense of public health. During the first strict lockdown—imposed in France in March 2020 in response to a wave of strikes across Italy and Europe, and which almost eliminated the circulation of the virus—Macron gave only miserly aid to the masses. On the other hand, following the first confinement, he helped design a bailout package that gave trillions of euros to the banks.

The EU pursued this policy, which fueled inflation and enriched French and European billionaires, at the expense of millions of lives and the health of workers. Indeed, Macron made no effort to ensure that the low level of infections in May 2020 was followed by a serious attempt to trace contacts and eliminate the spread of the virus, as in China. The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) cited the great Marxist Friedrich Engels to describe this policy as “social murder.”

Now, the French justice system has confirmed that there is evidence in the official documentation that this policy was a state crime, according to its own standards.

It is necessary therefore to issue the most serious warnings about the CJR investigation. The working class already has bitter experience that such investigations, carried out within the political framework of the capitalist state, end up clearing the main culprits.

Indeed, the CJR was created following the terrible health scandal of contaminated blood and the role of the big-business Socialist Party government of Mitterrand in the contamination of haemophiliacs in France by the AIDS virus in 1982-1985. Despite the convictions of health officials during the 1990s, the CJR cleared all PS politicians in 2003. The decision not to indict Philippe is the first step in a new attempt to cover up guilt at the highest levels of the state.

Attack on Russian fleet leads to collapse of deal ensuring vital grain shipments

Andre Damon

A swarm of Ukrainian air and naval drones carried out a massive attack Saturday on the Russian Black Sea Fleet docked at Sevastopol in Crimea, provoking the breakdown of a grain shipment agreement and threatening hunger for millions of people around the world.

Russia claimed that at least one of the drones was launched from the security zone guaranteed by the grain corridor.

Russian Black Sea fleet ships are anchored in one of the bays of Sevastopol, Crimea, March 31, 2014. (AP Photo, File) [AP Photo]

The Russian foreign ministry said the strikes were “directed, among other things, against Russian ships that ensure the functioning of the specified humanitarian corridor.” Following the attack, the ministry claimed that “the Russian side cannot guarantee the safety of civilian dry cargo ships participating in the ‘Black Sea Initiative.’”

The Black Sea Grain Initiative was an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by Turkey in July, that allowed the transportation of 9.5 million tons of food products out of Ukraine and onto global markets, against the backdrop of an unprecedented surge in food prices.

Like the bombing of the Kerch Bridge and the assassination of Russian fascist ideologue Daria Dugina, the announcement of the Ukrainian attack followed a similar pattern. The New York Times reported that Ukrainian forces carried out the attack, confirming the assertions of Russian officials.

The Times’ confirmation came in the form of an article published Saturday, “With Western Weapons, Ukraine Is Turning the Tables in an Artillery War,” which declared, “The new capabilities were on display in the predawn hours Saturday when Ukrainian drones hit a Russian vessel docked in the Black Sea Fleet’s home port of Sevastopol, deep in the occupied territory of Crimea, once thought an impregnable bastion.”

As with previous attacks, Ukrainian officials denied being involved, absurdly claiming Russia blew up its own ships. Other US reports treated the claims that Ukrainian forces were involved as unsubstantiated allegations by the Kremlin.

As with previous attacks on Russian forces in Crimea, both sides had an incentive to conceal the extent and impact of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian forces.

The Guardian, reviewing footage published by Ukrainian journalists, claimed that Russia’s Black Sea flagship vessel, the Admiral Makarov, was damaged in the incident.

The Guardian reported that the “frigate was one of three Russian ships to have been hit on Saturday. A swarm of drones—some flying in the air, others skimming rapidly along the water—struck Russia’s navy at 4.20 a.m.”

The newspaper continued, “Ukrainian officials said it was unclear if the Admiral Makarov was badly crippled, or had escaped with light damage. Unconfirmed reports said its hull was breached and radar systems smashed.”

The Guardian citied Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko, who concluded, “There is a good chance that several ships are not just damaged but sunk.”

The incident follows the sinking in April of the Moskva, then the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, which was the first time Russia had lost a flagship since 1905. It was the second-largest vessel to be sunk in war since 1945.

Global grain markets are expected to see a surge in food prices Monday when trading resumes following the suspension of the grain deal, with experts warning about “catastrophic consequences” for low-income countries.

“We’ll see a substantial spike in prices” as a result, Andrey Sizov, managing director of Black Sea grain consultancy SovEcon, told the Financial Times.

Arif Husain, chief economist at the UN World Food Program, told the FT that “dozens of countries” would be affected by the disruption of global grain supplies. “In the good times [this] would be bad,” he said, “but in the current state of the world, it’s something that needs to be resolved as soon as possible.”

Responding to the announcement by Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared, “In suspending this arrangement, Russia is again weaponizing food in the war it started, directly impacting low- and middle-income countries and global food prices, and exacerbating already dire humanitarian crises and food insecurity.”

It was clear, however, that the main purpose of the Ukrainian attack was to blow up the deal, creating the pretext for intensified US/NATO military intervention.

Earlier this year, figures such as retired Admiral James Stavridis, the former NATO supreme allied commander Europe, called for the United States to carry out an attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the name of establishing a “humanitarian corridor” for grain shipments. The announcement of the agreement between Russia and Ukraine to ship grain from the Black Sea had temporarily put a stop to these calls.

As if choreographed beforehand, the breakdown of the grain deal was immediately met with demands within the US political establishment for direct US naval intervention in the Black Sea, which would risk triggering a shooting war between Russian and US naval vessels.

“This may lead the international community to escort the grain shipments in defiance of Russian threats,” Stavridis wrote on Twitter Saturday.

In an editorial Sunday, the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The best response is for the U.S. to organize a coalition of the willing to escort grain shipments from Odessa and through the Black Sea. It needn’t be a NATO operation, though the U.S. would have to lead it.”

Last week, Newsweek carried an article headlined “Finland Will Allow NATO to Place Nuclear Weapons on Border With Russia,” which reported that Finnish defense officials gave a “commitment” to NATO that they would not seek “restrictions or national reservations” on the placement of NATO nuclear weapons in the country’s application to join NATO is accepted.

The collapse of the Black Sea grain agreement will have devastating consequences for the working people of the whole world, who are being made to pay the cost of the US-NATO effort to militarily encircle and defeat Russia.

Over 150 dead in Halloween disaster in South Korea

Ben McGrath

A crowd crush of people in Seoul, South Korea has left at least 154 people dead and another 149 people injured. The tragedy took place Saturday night as people, mostly in their late teens and 20s, gathered for Halloween parties in the city’s Itaewon district, known for its nightlife. It is the single largest loss of life in the country since the Sewol Ferry sinking in 2014. 

Rescue workers and firefighters try to help injured people near the scene of a crowd surge during Halloween festivities in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2022. [AP Photo/Lee Jin-man]

The disaster took place in an alleyway off Itaewon’s main road near the Hamilton Hotel, located by the district’s subway station. The alley is only about 3.2 meters across, and was unable to handle the large numbers of people gathered there. Many of the side streets and alleys in Itaewon are similarly narrow, in addition to being very hilly, leading to over-crowding even on a normal Saturday night.

Authorities have announced an investigation into the exact cause and whether businesses where the tragedy occurred had followed safety regulations. Despite no clear evidence, the corporate media is already trying to blame the victims themselves. Some have suggested that people rushed to catch a glimpse of a celebrity rumoured to be making an appearance, or even the unlikely possibility that masses of people were under the influence of drugs, in a country where illegal drug use is uncommon.

A man in his 20s injured in the disaster, identified only by his family name Kim, told the media, “People started pushing around 10:30 p.m. and then from around 10:40 people fell over one-by-one and were piled 5 or 6 bodies high.”

A woman in her 20s stated that she and a friend “were going to the subway station, but there were so many people, we couldn’t move. We were pushed back and forth repeatedly and then, as people suddenly pushed us, my friend was knocked to the ground.”

People accused nearby stores and bars of refusing to allow people inside as they attempted to escape the crowds. One witness stated, “Bars in Itaewon put tables in the street and people coming and going were tangled up in the more cramped spaces. People collapsed and tried to escape into nearby stores, but they were thrown out into the street and told that it was closing time, and more casualties occurred.”

Whatever the exact cause, basic safety measures were clearly not in place to deal with the large influx of people for the Halloween festivities in Itaewon. The district is popular with both young Koreans and foreigners living in South Korea, and is a traditional gathering spot during holidays and events. Among the identified victims were at least 26 foreigners from 14 countries, including from China, Japan, Russia, the United States, France, Uzbekistan, Iran, Australia, and Norway.

The large crowds Saturday night were predictable, especially as the right-wing Yoon Suk-yeol government has misled people into believing the COVID-19 pandemic is over and removed nearly all virus mitigation measures. It was one of the largest public gatherings since the pandemic began and is indicative of the official approach to public safety, with tens of thousands in confined spaces without masks or other precautions, all in the pursuit of profits.

On average each day, 35,000 people continue to be infected with the deadly and debilitating virus while two dozen die, according to official numbers. The complete removal of pandemic safety measures goes hand-in-hand with the disregard for public safety in other aspects of life.

On Sunday, Yoon stated the tragedy “should never have happened,” saying, “As president responsible for the lives and safety of the people, my heart is heavy and it is difficult to contain my sorrow.” He announced, “The government will establish a period of national mourning until the handling of the accident is complete. It will place the highest national priority on managing the accident and on follow up measures.”

However, all of this is the pro forma official response to such tragedies. Whatever the government’s investigation finds, responsibility for the tragedy will be swept under the rug and none of the root causes of the disaster will be addressed. Anyone held liable will merely be used as a scapegoat. There will be no serious efforts to put crowd control and other measures in place for future events, despite the responsibility of local officials to ensure public safety.

Furthermore, while the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea and its allies will almost certainly seize on this tragedy to paint President Yoon as “incompetent” in order to further their electoral ambitions. However, Saturday’s disaster is ultimately the result of the profit system, which both the Democrats and ruling People Power Party defend.

South Korea's entire ruling class has a long history of ignoring safety for profits. This has led to numerous tragedies, including the Sampoong Department Store collapse in 1995, which killed 502 people; the Sewol Ferry sinking in 2014, which killed 304 people, mostly high school students; and an April 2020 fire at an Icheon construction site that killed 39 irregular and subcontract workers.

Similar incidents have taken place in other parts of the world in recent years, including last November at the Astroworld musical festival in Texas, United States, in which ten people were killed in a crowd crush. Following that tragedy, Keith Still, a professor at the University of Suffolk, specializing in the applications of crowd safety and crowd risk analysis, explained in an NPR interview, “Once you’re in a high-density surge environment, there’s very little you can do as an individual. It is up to things like the building design or the operations manager or the safety design of any system to make sure they’ve got a safe environment.”

Does the U.S. Chip Ban on China Amount to a Declaration of War in the Computer Age?

Prabir Purkayastha

Sanctions can at best slow China from taking the global lead in chip manufacturing. At their worst, they will raise the chances of chip wars spilling into a physical or economic sphere.

The United States has gambled big in its latest across-the-board sanctions on Chinese companies in the semiconductor industry, believing it can kneecap China and retain its global dominance. From the slogans of globalization and “free trade” of the neoliberal 1990s, Washington has reverted to good old technology denial regimes that the U.S. and its allies followed during the Cold War. While it might work in the short run in slowing down the Chinese advances, the cost to the U.S. semiconductor industry of losing China—its biggest market—will have significant consequences in the long run. In the process, the semiconductor industries of Taiwan and South Korea and equipment manufacturers in Japan and the European Union are likely to become collateral damage. It reminds us again of what former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

The purpose of the U.S. sanctions, the second generation of sanctions after the earlier one in August 2021, is to restrict China’s ability to import advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors. Though the U.S. sanctions are cloaked in military terms—denying China access to technology and products that can help China’s military—in reality, these sanctions target almost all leading semiconductor players in China and, therefore, its civilian sector as well. The fiction of ‘barring military use’ is only to provide the fig leaf of a cover under the World Trade Organization (WTO) exceptions on having to provide market access to all WTO members. Most military applications use older-generation chips and not the latest versions.

The specific sanctions imposed by the United States include:

• Advanced logic chips required for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing
• Equipment for 16nm logic and other advanced chips such as FinFET and Gate-All-Around
• The latest generations of memory chips: NAND with 128 layers or more and DRAM with 18nm half-pitch

Specific equipment bans in the rules go even further, including many older technologies as well. For example, one commentator pointed out that the prohibition of tools is so broad that it includes technologies used by IBM in the late 1990s.

The sanctions also encompass any company that uses U.S. technology or products in its supply chain. This is a provision in the U.S. laws: any company that ‘touches’ the United States while manufacturing its products is automatically brought under the U.S. sanctions regime. It is a unilateral extension of the United States’ national legal jurisdiction and can be used to punish and crush any entity—a company or any other institution—that is directly or indirectly linked to the United States. These sanctions are designed to completely decouple the supply chain of the United States and its allies—the European Union and East Asian countries—from China.

In addition to the latest U.S. sanctions against companies that are already on the list of sanctioned Chinese companies, a further 31 new companies have been added to an “unverified list.” These companies must provide complete information to the U.S. authorities within two months, or else they will be barred as well. Furthermore, no U.S. citizen or anyone domiciled in the United States can work for companies on the sanctioned or unverified lists, not even to maintain or repair equipment supplied earlier.

The global semiconductor industry’s size is currently more than $500 billion and is likely to double its size to $1 trillion by 2030. According to a Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting Group report of 2020—“Turning the Tide for Semiconductor Manufacturing in the U.S.”—China is expected to account for approximately 40 percent of the semiconductor industry growth by 2030, displacing the United States as the global leader. This is the immediate trigger for the U.S. sanctions and its attempt to halt China’s industry from taking over the lead from the United States and its allies.

While the above measures are intended to isolate China and limit its growth, there is a downside for the United States and its allies in sanctioning China.

The problem for the United States—more so for Taiwan and South Korea—is that China is their biggest trading partner. Imposing such sanctions on equipment and chips also means destroying a good part of their market with no prospect of an immediate replacement. This is true not only for China’s East Asian neighbors but also for equipment manufacturers like the Dutch company ASML, the world’s only supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines that produces the latest chips. For Taiwan and South Korea, China is not only the biggest export destination for their semiconductor industry as well as other industries, but also one of their biggest suppliers for a range of products. The forcible separation of China’s supply chain in the semiconductor industry is likely to be accompanied by separation in other sectors as well.

The U.S. companies are also likely to see a big hit to their bottom line—including equipment manufacturers such as Lam Research Corporation, Applied Materials, and KLA Corporation; the electronic design automation (EDA) tools such as Synopsys and Cadence; and advanced chip suppliers like Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD. China is the largest destination for all these companies. The problem for the United States is that China is not only the fastest-growing part of the world’s semiconductor industry but also the industry’s biggest market. So the latest sanctions will cripple not only the Chinese companies on the list but also the U.S. semiconductor firms, drying up a significant part of their profits and, therefore, their future research and development (R&D) investments in technology. While some of the resources for investments will come from the U.S. government—for example, the $52.7 billion chip manufacturing subsidy—they do not compare to the losses the U.S. semiconductor industry will suffer as a result of the China sanctions. This is why the semiconductor industry had suggested narrowly targeted sanctions on China’s defense and security industry, not the sweeping sanctions that the United States has now introduced; the scalpel and not the hammer.

The process of separating the sanctions regime and the global supply chain is not a new concept. The United States and its allies had a similar policy during and after the Cold War with the Soviet Union via the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM) (in 1996, it was replaced by the Wassenaar Arrangement), the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Control Regime, and other such groups. Their purpose is very similar to what the United States has now introduced for the semiconductor industry. In essence, they were technology denial regimes that applied to any country that the United States considered an “enemy,” with its allies following—then as now—what the United States dictated. The targets on the export ban list were not only the specific products but also the tools that could be used to manufacture them. Not only the socialist bloc countries but also countries such as India were barred from accessing advanced technology, including supercomputers, advanced materials, and precision machine tools. Under this policy, critical equipment required for India’s nuclear and space industries was placed under a complete ban. Though the Wassenaar Arrangement still exists, with countries like even Russia and India within the ambit of this arrangement now, it has no real teeth. The real threat comes from falling out with the U.S. sanctions regime and the U.S. interpretation of its laws superseding international laws, including the WTO rules.

The advantage the United States and its military allies—in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and the Central Treaty Organization—had before was that the United States and its European allies were the biggest manufacturers in the world. The United States also controlled West Asia’s hydrocarbon—oil and gas—a vital resource for all economic activities. The current chip war against China is being waged at a time when China has become the biggest manufacturing hub of the world and the largest trade partner for 70 percent of countries in the world. With the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries no longer obeying the U.S. diktats, Washington has lost control of the global energy market.

So why has the United States started a chip war against China at a time that its ability to win such a war is limited? It can, at best, postpone China’s rise as a global peer military power and the world’s biggest economy. An explanation lies in what some military historians call the “Thucydides trap”: when a rising power rivals a dominant military power, most such cases lead to war. According to Athenian historian Thucydides, Athens’ rise led Sparta, the then-dominant military power, to go to war against it, in the process destroying both city-states; therefore, the trap. While such claims have been disputed by other historians, when a dominant military power confronts a rising one, it does increase the chance of either a physical or economic war. If the Thucydides trap between China and the United States restricts itself to only an economic war—the chip war—we should consider ourselves lucky!

With the new series of sanctions by the United States, one issue has been settled: the neoliberal world of free trade is officially over. The sooner other countries understand it, the better it will be for their people. And self-reliance means not simply the fake self-reliance of supporting local manufacturing, but instead means developing the technology and knowledge to sustain and grow it.