US escalates preparations for nuclear war with Russia and China

Andre Damon

After withdrawing from the landmark Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, the United States has been barreling ahead with its preparations to fight a nuclear war with China, Russia, or both, by testing and stockpiling dangerous new weapons in a nuclear arms race.

In an interview with Fox News, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the United States military is changing its focus from “low-intensity conflict,” such as the war in Afghanistan, to “high-intensity conflicts against competitors such as Russia and China.”

The US tests a ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missile that was banned under the INF treaty

Key to fighting such “high-intensity conflicts” is the United States’ arsenal of nuclear weapons, which Esper called “strategic forces.”

“Our strategic forces are a key deterrent to nuclear war. I think a strong, reliable, capable, ready deterrent is really what prevents nuclear war from happening in the first place,” he said.

In the Orwellian language of the “Defense” department, preserving “peace” is accomplished by expanding America’s “deterrent,” another name for the hellish nuclear weapons that can kill billions of people within an hour.

Esper made no secret of who he is seeking to “deter,” saying “China is the number one priority for this department.” He claimed China is trying to “push the United States out” of the “Indo-Pacific theater.”

Air Force Airmen perform seal checks on their gas masks during a chemical, biological, and nuclear defense class [Credit: US Air Force]

The term “theater” was defined by military theorist Carl Clausewitz as “a portion of the space over which war prevails.” Esper thinks the Indo-Pacific region—home to more than half of the world’s people—is, to the surprise of its inhabitants, a military “theater,” and one over which the United States supposedly has claim, despite being located on the other side of the world.

But to secure this supposedly God-given right to dominance over Asia, the United States—the only country to use nuclear weapons in World War II—is making active preparations to ring the entire Chinese mainland with nuclear-capable missiles.

Missiles that could reach the Chinese mainland from places like Japan and South Korea were banned under the INF treaty, which the United States pulled out of earlier this year.

The United States, Esper said, now needs “to be able to strike at intermediate ranges” to “deter Chinese bad behavior,’ as if he were talking about disciplining a child, not annihilating a country of nearly 1.4 billion people.

The United States is moving full-speed ahead with the deployment of new missiles. The Pentagon said Monday it had tested a ground-launched, Tomahawk missile, which would have been banned under the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty.

Earlier this month, Esper said that he would like to begin deploying medium-range missiles near China within a matter of “months.” Once conventional missiles are deployed, those with nuclear warheads will inevitably follow.

The INF treaty was signed on December 8, 1987, between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, after protracted arms control negotiations. It prohibited the deployment of land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers.

The treaty mandated the elimination of intermediate range missiles for the United States, the Soviet Union, and its successor states.

Donald Trump smiles with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi [Credit: US Air Force]

The United States said that it was withdrawing from the INF in response to Russia’s development of the Novator 9M729 missile, which is based on the earlier SSC-X-4 ground launched cruise missile that the US claimed violated the treaty. Despite the fact that Russia invited the United States to inspect its missile production facilities, the US was unable to seriously substantiate the charges that nominally led it to repudiate the treaty.

Regional strike against mining project fuels divisions within Peru’s crisis-ridden government

Armando Cruz & Cesar Uco

Since August 5, Peru’s southern region of Arequipa has been gripped by a region-wide strike and mass protests against the government granting a license to initiate the construction of two open-pit mines in the La Joya desert region. The mining project, which is located in Cocachacra, in Arequipa’s Islay province, is commonly known as “Tia Maria.”

Unions and community organizations have called for an indefinite strike beginning today, August 22, against the project. On Tuesday, protesters and police clashed once again in the Matarani district, the site of Peru’s second largest port through which much of the country’s mining and agricultural exports flow.

The company behind the Tia Maria project is Southern Copper (SC). It is a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico, Mexico’s biggest mining company, which has been widely criticized for damaging the Mexican environment through the dumping of mining wastes, toxic spills and other activities which are obviously not confined to Mexico. In Peru and elsewhere, when mine tailings are not openly dumped into rivers and the sea, they are pumped into reservoirs behind dams that are precariously built and tend to collapse, as was tragically seen in the 2015 Mariana dam disaster that killed 19 people in Brazil.

The Tia Maria project was first announced in 2003, but it was not until 2009 that SC produced an Environmental Impact Study (EIS). An EIS is a mandatory investigation into the potential environmental impact on an area by an enterprise that exploits it. By law, no mining project can begin development without the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MINEM) approving an EIS presented by a company, assuring that its project will not harm the environment or any human activity related to it.

The local population of farmers and agricultural workers in Cocachacra’s Tambo Valley depend upon the local Tambo river for their products which they export to other regions, and even as far as Bolivia. They were concerned about the consequences of the project, such as the dust raised by the giant explosions needed to open the pits and the use of the water from the Tambo river, and its pollution.

In order to give SC’s EIS some credibility, the MINEM sent it to be reviewed by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), expecting it to be approved by this body and thus obtaining political cover for providing the construction license to SC.

The UNOPS, however, said exactly the opposite of what the MINEM and SC had wanted. In its review, it found the EIS elaborated by SC raised concern primarily over the use of the Tambo river water, but also about the possible use of dangerous mercury in the operations. The MINEM abruptly ended the contract with the UN, and no other EIS from Peru has been presented to UNOPS since.

UNOPS’ inconvenient review deepened the distrust of the Islay people toward the Tia Maria project, but behind their opposition also lay well-known environmental devastation produced by mining in other regions of Peru. A clear example is the region of Cajamarca where the national Buenaventura Corporation drained entire lagoons in order to turn them into open-pit mines, altering for the worse the lives of thousands of people. After nearly two decades of extractive mining operations, Cajamarca remains one of the poorest provinces in Peru.

The region of Arequipa also has a history of militancy and opposition to diktats coming from the capital, Lima, with a massive uprising there in 1956 leading to the downfall of the US-backed dictator Manuel Odria, who had brutally oppressed and jailed members of the bourgeois nationalist APRA movement.

In April 2011, protests and strikes were called by the Council of Tambo Workers (Junta de usuarios del Tambo) and the Tambo Valley Defense Front (Frente de Defensa del Valle del Tambo)—two grassroots organizations representing farmers, agricultural workers and small businesses concerned by Tia Maria that have no official links to Peru’s political parties or unions. Their main demand was the complete cancellation of the project. The “nationalist” government of President Ollanta Humala sent militarized police to repress the demonstrators, resulting in a toll of three dead. Eventually, the government had no choice but to suspend the project.

In 2013, SC announced a new EIS on which they tackled the water supply problem by announcing the construction of a desalination plant that would use water from the Pacific Ocean instead of the Tambo River for the project. This new EIS was approved by the MINEM and protests once again erupted in 2015 opposing the project and demanding its cancellation. Once again, the MINEM retreated and suspended the project.

Then, in July of this year, with SC’s EIS facing expiration in less than a month, the government decided to grant the construction license for the Tia Maria project. Aware that this meant another confrontation with the Tambo inhabitants, SC declared that it would open a “dialogue” with the community before the real construction begins.

Once again Tambo’s grassroots organizations called for a region-wide strike on August 5, while sending an appeal to the government. This time they were joined by Arequipa’s regional president Elmer Caceres and other local authorities who appealed directly to President Martin Vizcarra to intervene and cancel Tia Maria’s construction.

Thousands of people aligned with 30 regional organizations joined the strike on August 5. There were frequent confrontations with the police, and workers continuously blocked the South Pan-American highway and the streets of Arequipa’s capital city, affecting commerce and economic activity.

Most importantly, workers blocked the Matarani port, prompting commercial ships to turn back and preventing the export of minerals from the Las Bambas mine, in Apurimac, against which the local population also fought. Militarized police where sent to evict strikers from the port.

Three days later, on August 8, the Mining Council—a MINEM body that receives appeals from the states and resolves them—announced the suspension, not of the project itself, but only of the construction license, for 120 days. In its decision it noted the “existing risk of the loss of human lives besides the already experienced economic losses.”

The Mining Council will take this time to review the appeals presented by Arequipa’s local authorities and decide whether or not to renew the license. Meanwhile the strike continued—mainly in the Tambo Valley region—although its intensity decreased.

Then on August 10, the corporate media ran stories revealing a closed-door conversation held between Vizcarra and Arequipa’s local authorities—including the regional president Caceres—on July 24. An unnamed participant in the conversation had secretly recorded it and leaked it to the press.

In the conversation, Vizcarra tells the local authorities that the government could agree to the license’s suspension in order to maintain the dialogue roundtable, but that he could not immediately announce the cancellation because he needed an “argument” for it. He feigned sympathy for Tia Maria’s opponents.

The corporate media and opposition congressmen reacted furiously to the leaked tapes, charging a “capitulation” to the “anti-mining extremists,” and saying Vizcarra had betrayed not only the “entrepreneur class” but the people by negotiating in secret and sending policemen to suppress the protests when he had already taken a decision beforehand about how to deal with the issue.

While Vizcarra is more cautious about how to deal with the Tia Maria conflict than his presidential predecessors, this in no way means that he has rejected the project. Similarly, the local authorities in Arequipa, who speak for the regional bourgeoisie, are just as concerned as the central government over the economic losses caused by the strike.

Resignation of Italian Prime Minister Conte triggers government crisis

Marianne Arens

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte submitted his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella on Tuesday evening, but remains in office in a caretaker role until a successor is chosen by parliament. The 65th government of the Italian Republic has thus come to an end.

Conte, who has been in office since June 2018 and is not a member of any party, resigned before a vote of no confidence. The head of the right-wing radical Lega, Matteo Salvini, broke up the coalition with the Five Star Movement (M5S) two weeks ago in the hope of becoming prime minister himself through early elections. Based on favourable survey results, the head of Lega hoped to form a government together with the Fratelli d'Italia, the direct successor to Benito Mussolini's Italian fascist party.

It is not at all certain that Salvini will reach his goal, particularly in the short-term. Both the opposition Democratic Party (PD) and the Five Star Movement have indicated the possibility of forming a joint government to avoid new elections. Together, the two parties would have a narrow majority.

PD leader Nicola Zingaretti said after a party leadership meeting: “We are extremely open to examine the conditions for a 'government of change' that serves our country at a time that is so difficult democratically, economically and socially.”

There were similar signals from M5S. According to Italian media reports, its leader, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi di Maio, has already contacted Zingaretti to discuss the possibility of a joint, stable government. Whether such a government will come into being, however, is questionable. The two parties had fought fiercely so far.

The next step is at the discretion of the 78-year-old President Mattarella, who himself comes from the PD. If no new coalition is formed, he could also appoint a government of experts, which would then also require a parliamentary majority. If Mattarella opts for new elections, which is considered unlikely, they must take place within 60 days. One last possibility would be for the Lega and the Five Star Movement to resume their coalition.

The most immediate task of the next government is to present a budget that complies with European Union deficit guidelines by October 15, which will require massive cuts at the expense of the working class. If the PD and the Five Stars take on this task, Salvini and Lega, which would then nominally be in opposition, could be further strengthened.

There was a debate in the Senate before Conte's resignation. In a 50-minute speech, he settled accounts with his Interior Minister Salvini, with whom he had worked closely until two weeks ago. He accused Salvini, whom he consistently addressed by his first name as “caro Matteo” (dear Matteo), of personal striving for power and irresponsibility and criticized him for wantonly provoking a “serious crisis” which “has serious consequences for the country, for economic, financial, political and social life.”

Salvini, for his part, demonstratively switched from the government bench to the Lega faction before his reply. From there he ferociously attacked the government of which he himself had been a member for the last fourteen months. To the thunderous applause of the fascists and Lega deputies, he boasted that he had closed Italy's ports to migrants, declaring that he would “do it all over again, everything!” He, Salvini, acts “without fear, proud and sovereign” and was “not dependent on Merkel and Macron.”

Record global dividend payouts fuel rising social inequality

Will Morrow

A new report published this week by the financial advisory firm Janus Hendersons shows that the world’s largest corporations will hand out $1.43 trillion in dividend payments to their shareholders in 2019, setting a new record.

Ten years after the global financial crisis began in 2008, wages continue to stagnate, poverty is rising, and workers everywhere are lyingly told that there is no money for such elementary social needs as healthcare, education and pensions. At the same time, the class of corporate executives and billionaire shareholders continues to rake in incredible sums of money.

According to the report, which is based on data calculated for the world’s 1,200 largest companies, total dividend payments surpassed half a trillion US dollars in the second quarter of this year, reaching $513 billion. To place this number in context, the amount handed out directly to shareholders in 2019 will be more than the annual economic output of Spain, a country of 47 million people. In just three months, the 20 largest companies alone paid $87.9 billion in dividends, roughly twice the total economic output of Tunisia (population 11.5 million) for an entire year.

Dividends are payments made by companies to their shareholders on a quarterly or annual basis, with every share entitling its owner to receive an amount determined by the company’s board. The money for these payments does not arise out of thin air. It is extracted from the collective labour of the working class. Its source, as Karl Marx discovered more than 150 years ago, is the surplus arising from the difference in value between what the workers are paid in wages and what they produce in the course of their work.

The figures contained in the report demonstrate how the share market serves as a mechanism for the transfer of wealth up the income scale from the working class to the wealthiest sections of society. The overwhelming majority of shares of all these corporations are dominated by a relative handful of investment firms and hedge funds which are controlled by a tiny layer of billionaire and multi-millionaire shareholders.

One hundred years ago, the Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, analyzing the development of imperialism at the turn of the 20th century, noted that an essential feature of this period of capitalist decay was an “extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by ‘clipping coupons,’ who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness.” Today, the processes then analyzed by Lenin have developed to a far greater level of maturity.

The growth of dividend payments is just one expression of how corporate profits are being used, not to re-invest into productive capital, but for essentially parasitic financial activities to directly enrich the corporate and financial elite.

The financial investment firm Moody’s reported last June that stock buybacks in 2018 by the S&P 500 companies (500 US-based companies that comprise around 80 percent of the US market) had doubled from the previous year to reach $467 billion in the year to March 2019. Stock buybacks occur when companies purchase their own stock in order to artificially inflate their own share price. Their sole purpose is to increase the wealth of shareholders by raising the price of the shares that they own.

Goldman Sachs data published at the end of July shows that in the 12 months ending March 31, the same S&P 500 spent 103.8 percent of their free cash flow on dividend payouts and stock buybacks. In other words, they spent more than their income in direct handouts to investors over the same period. This is the first time that this has taken place since the period of 2006–2008, in the immediate lead-up to the 2008 financial crash produced by the criminal speculative activities of the corporate and financial elite. In the period since, these activities have not only continued, they have intensified.

Glasgow: Lock-change evictions of asylum seekers restarted by Serco

Steve James

Transnational service company Serco has restarted efforts to evict asylum seekers from their accommodation in the city of Glasgow, Scotland.

In late July, the Scottish Refugee Council reported that three men who had temporarily left their flats returned home to find that Serco staff had changed the locks. The men are now homeless, destitute and entirely dependent on friends and charity. The evictions are the first of 300 the services giant intends to push through in the weeks ahead.

As of mid-August, up to 60 evictions have been halted by “interim interdicts,” temporary court orders, granted to the asylum seekers pending a legal clarification of their position. Over the last week, a further 20 asylum seekers reported to the Scottish Refugee Council that Serco had started issuing 14-day eviction warning letters, reducing from 21 days the time people have to respond to the eviction threat.

Some tactics deployed by Serco are particularly vile. Anna Pearce of the Asylum Seeker Housing project told the Scotsman, “Once government support has stopped, the asylum seekers will be given low-value vouchers for the [electricity] meters so they have to keep returning to Serco’s offices to pick up more … Sometimes, the property is so cold they go to stay at friends for a few nights. Then Serco says the property has been abandoned and changes the locks.”

Mourad Khelfane, a 29-year-old engineer from Algeria, has had no state support for the past seven months. He is dependent on food banks and handouts. Serco staff come and go from his Shettleston flat as they please. He has no family in Glasgow and is in imminent danger of being thrown onto the streets.

He told the Scotsman, “I cannot stop worrying, I cannot sleep. I left Algeria when I was 24. Now I am nearly 29. I keep thinking it will be too late for me to live my life.”

The threat to asylum seekers has again generated wide public revulsion and opposition, including protests and preparations to physically defend asylum seekers’ homes. Thousands of people have signed up to tenants’ union Living Rent’s list of those prepared to mobilise in front of homes threatened with eviction. Protests have also been organised on Serco’s Caledonian Sleeper rail service.

Serco, along with rivals G4S and Clearsprings, have since 2012 been contracted by the British Home Office to provide the cheapest possible accommodation to people seeking asylum in the UK while their claims are processed. The operators rent housing from local authorities, housing associations and private landlords, integrating, as Serco boast, “hundreds of landlords into one property portfolio, reducing costs and administration to the Government.”

The company recently won new housing contracts in England despite having been fined £6.8 million since 2012 for the miserable quality of the housing it provided. Its Scottish contract is due to be taken over by another services giant, Mears Group, later this year.

One year ago, Serco first announced its intention to evict the 300 or so asylum seekers whose asylum claims, according to Serco and the government, had failed and for which the company was no longer being paid by the Home Office.

In fact, many of the individuals still had legal options available—appeals, new claims. Some had been accepted as having the right to remain in the UK but had not been able to find new accommodation. Others were destitute, having been denied asylum and facing deportation at some indefinite point, back to countries from which they fled and where their lives may in be immediate danger.

Under public pressure, Serco agreed to “pause all further lock-change notices … whilst the law is being tested and clarified.”

Sudan opposition leaders form government with the army

Jean Shaoul

The Force for Freedom and Change (FFC), an umbrella group of opposition groups, have signed a power-sharing agreement with the Transitional Military Council (TMC), Sudan’s military junta.

The agreement reached on Saturday August 17, was initialed just days after the TMC gunned down school children in El-Obeid. It gives free rein to the military and security forces, which ousted long-term dictator President Omar al-Bashir in April to prevent the overthrow of the entire regime, to rule Sudan under the guise of a civilian “government” but on behalf of the tiny venal elite that has controlled the country since independence in 1956.

The agreement was met with a palpable sense of relief in Western and regional capitals that eight months of mass protests may now finally be over. It is a shameless betrayal of the movement which brought cities across the country to a virtual standstill demanding a fundamental transformation of the entire social order.

Heads of state, prime ministers and dignitaries from several countries, including Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and South Sudanese President Silva Kiir, attended the signing ceremony. The agreement, the subject of months-long talks that stalled repeatedly amid the junta’s violent and bloody crackdowns on hundreds of thousands of protestors, was brokered by the butcher of the Egyptian revolution, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in his role as the chair of the African Union (AU), and Ethiopian envoy Mahmoud Dirir.

All this took place under the watchful eye of Washington and its junior partner in London, Sudan’s former colonial master, determined to ensure that the uprising does not spread to its regional allies, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, without whose support the junta would not have survived.

Signing the deal on behalf of the TMC was deputy chief and de facto leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, and Ahmed al-Rabie for the FFC.

The power-sharing agreement establishes a joint military and civilian sovereign council to rule until elections are held in 39 months. General Abdel Fattah Burhan, the TMC leader and commander of Sudan’s armed forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) will head the 11-member sovereign council for the first 21 months and be able to veto the council’s decisions before handing over to a civilian leader for the next 18 months.

The council is to consist of four further military members, including Dagalo and Lieutenant General Yasser Al-Atta, with two additional members to be named later, as well as five members appointed by the FFC, Aisha Mousa, Siddig Tower, Mohamed Elfaki Suleiman, Hassan Sheikh Idris and Taha Othman Ishaq, and a civilian member to be agreed by both sides.

While there will be a government and 20-member cabinet nominated by the FFC, the TMC’s members on the council will nominate the crucial defence and interior ministries.

The FFC nominated 61-year-old economist Abdullah Hamdok as prime minister, the first civilian prime minister since al-Bashir seized power in a coup in 1989. Hamdok, who also holds British citizenship, previously worked at the African Development Bank and was chief economist in the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Sacked from his position in the finance ministry in 1989 because he wasn’t affiliated to al-Bashir’s Islamist movement, he turned down the dictator’s invitation to head the finance ministry in 2017.

Hamdok is tasked with rescuing Sudan from bankruptcy under conditions where $3 billion in aid from Saudi Arabia and the UAE has provided only temporary relief. At least 80 percent of Sudan’s 40 million people live on less than US$1 per day, with some 5.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance in 2018, an increase of 700,000 compared to 2017, and where some 2.47 million children suffer from acute malnutrition, while a tiny clique control Sudan’s wealth.

There will be a 300-member legislative council, with at least 40 percent of seats reserved for women. The FFC will appoint two thirds of the members, with other political groups not associated with former ruler al-Bashir and his National Congress Party (NCP) appointing the rest.

Anger among couriers is growing after Deliveroo quits Germany

Gregor Link

Last week on Monday, hundreds of couriers working for the online delivery service Deliveroo were informed in a short e-mail that they would be unemployed by that Friday. The UK-based company wrote in the e-mail that it “regretted” that it will no longer be active in Germany and glibly thanked workers for their “services rendered.”

According to the company, 1,100 freelance couriers, who generally transport meals from restaurants to their customers’ apartments by bicycle or scooter, as well as 100 office and temporary staff will be put out of work. The delivery service already withdrew from 10 German cities in August last year.

The e-mail hardly ran to three lines and was immediately hotly debated on social media. A Greek Deliveroo courier told how he had moved to Germany only 10 days earlier, rented an apartment and already paid a deposit. “Now I get this email—fantastic.”

The company is apparently dissatisfied with German labour laws, “for which our parents and grandparents have fought so hard,” notes another user. A third was outraged at the “notice period” of just four days. At Deliveroo, according to a courier from the UK, “people obviously have the wool pulled over their eyes right to the end.”

The multibillion-dollar online corporation ruthlessly exploits more than 60,000 couriers working in 200 cities worldwide. In 13 countries and regions, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, mostly young people and migrants work on an ostensibly self-employed basis for a company that has more than doubled its revenue in 2016.

Those who come from rural areas in the morning are forced to spend the whole day in the city centres because of the long travel to work. But they are only paid from the start of their shift or even only if they are given an assignment. At Deliveroo’s London headquarters, the “suppliers,” as the company calls its freelance couriers, earn less than £4 per job. Although they are not employed directly by the company, their “vacation time” is recorded by an app and influences their personal rating—and thus their income.

Contrary to the industry’s cliché of freedom and flexibility, most couriers work full-time and are under heavy financial pressure. They are often on their bike or scooter for hours in the heat, rain, snow and ice, are not paid for long waits in restaurants, and usually have to pay for repairs to their vehicles themselves.

Recently, Deliveroo had cynically boasted of having introduced free accident insurance for all drivers—only after the group had previously made changes in the remuneration system according to which couriers will be paid for the distance traveled instead of the hours worked, massively increasing the risk of accidents.

Meanwhile, Deliveroo faces strong criticism from workers on social media. Couriers around the world publicly refer to the company and management as “one of the dirtiest in the delivery industry” that “robs” its couriers. Terms like “thieves” and “bloodsuckers” are the more harmless epithets employed.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke to Zack, a “rider” from near London. He said the rates at which the company pays the couriers for distance traveled have dropped sharply in recent years. As a result, the rate of exploitation increases and the average pay—contrary to the statements of management—permanently declines.

Couriers also report that Deliveroo has significantly increased the order radius they require to be covered, forcing them to travel distances of up to five miles per order, while customers have to wait two to three hours.

Measures such as these aim to pit couriers against one another. As Zack reports, the pressure of competition is so high in some districts of London that couriers have been known to slash each other’s bicycle tires or chain the wheels of others out of desperation.

Twitter purges 200,000 accounts “originating from China”

Oscar Grenfell

Twitter revealed on Monday that it had shut down 200,000 accounts that it claimed “originated in China,” over posts relating to the ongoing mass protests of workers and youth in Hong Kong. The purge is one of the largest in the history of the platform.

A post by the “Twitter Safety” department entitled “Information operations directed at Hong Kong” stated that it had removed the accounts, because they were part of a “coordinated state-backed operation… originating from within the People’s Republic of China (PRC).”

Facebook also announced that it had removed five profiles and three groups, after being alerted to “inauthentic behaviour” associated with “the operation” by Twitter.

The US social media giants have accused the banned accounts of having repeated the Chinese government’s denunciations of the mass popular demonstrations in Hong Kong.

Twitter took the unusual step of sharing hundreds of megabytes of data, including Tweets and other information from 936 banned accounts that are hostile to the Hong Kong protests.

While the World Socialist Web Site opposes Beijing’s denunciations of the Hong Kong protests, the censorship by Twitter and Facebook of Chinese accounts is in line with US foreign policy and the Trump administration’s mounting confrontation with China. The US is yet to intervene openly in the Hong Kong protest movement, but behind the scenes it is no doubt calculating whether it can exploit the protests for its own purposes.

The latest mass purge is the latest stage in a protracted campaign to censor social media, conducted in close coordination with US and other western intelligence agencies.

In the course of this campaign, that has spanned more than two years, pages and material critical of US-led wars and government policy have been systematically targeted for removal, or have been made less accessible as a result of changes to algorithms that determine the content that is most visible to users.

As in previous instances of social media censorship, Twitter’s assertions are opaque and entirely unsubstantiated.

Its statement on Monday claimed that some of the accounts had been banned because they had engaged in “spam” or because they were “fake.” The post, however, also said that the accounts had been targeted because they were “deliberately and specifically attempting to sow political discord in Hong Kong, including undermining the legitimacy and political positions of the protest movement on the ground.”

In other words, individuals and accounts have been blocked from the platform, for voicing political opinions. This establishes a precedent for the mass removal of accounts that express political views that run counter to those being promoted by Twitter and its backers in the US corporate and political establishment.

The limited information contained in Twitter’s post undermines the company’s claim that all, or even the majority of banned accounts were controlled by the Chinese state. The company stated: “As Twitter is blocked in PRC, many of these accounts accessed Twitter using VPNs.”

In other words, the banned accounts were subject to the same Chinese government restrictions as the entire Chinese population and had to use a VPN (virtual private network) to evade the block. This would tend to indicate that the individuals operating the accounts were not doing so in any official capacity.

Some of the banned accounts, moreover, had a lengthy history of sharing content that had nothing to do with politics, including posts about popular culture.

Some 236 of the accounts had more than 10,000 followers, while several had hundreds of thousands. This suggests that they had built up a substantial audience over a protracted period, contradicting Twitter’s claim that the targeted accounts were all part of a recently created “spammy network.”

UK government prepares for social unrest following no-deal Brexit

Robert Stevens

Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrives in Germany today for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Tomorrow he will meet French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

Johnson has pledged to take the UK out of the European Union on October 31, with or without a trade and customs deal with the EU. The flare-up of tensions ahead of his trip shows that no deal is increasingly likely. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, and Irish Premier Leo Varadkar rejected out of hand Johnson’s demand that the “backstop” aimed at preventing a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic must be abandoned or there would be no deal. Johnson has described the backstop as “anti-democratic and inconsistent with the sovereignty of the UK.”

The crisis wracking the ruling elite over Brexit is the most severe since the Second World War. In response, Johnson’s anti-EU government is preparing a ferocious assault on the working class to enforce its “Rule Britannia” agenda.

This week’s Sunday Times published more details of Operation Yellowhammer, documents it described as revealing the “covert planning being carried out by the government to avert a catastrophic collapse in the nation's infrastructure” post-Brexit.

The Sunday Times has confirmed that they were compiled this month by the Cabinet Office. The documents marked “official sensitive” are understood to have been leaked by a senior Tory figure supportive of remaining in the EU, one of a group of ex-ministers led by former Chancellor Philip Hammond and David Gauke.

The newspaper emphasises, “The [Yellowhammer] documents… set out the most likely aftershocks of a no-deal Brexit rather than worst case scenarios…”

In a front-page article, “Operation Chaos”, the Sunday Times warns, “Britain faces shortages of fuel, food and medicine, a three-month meltdown at its ports, a hard border with Ireland and rising costs in social care in the event of a no-deal Brexit…”

The existence of the Tory Brexit planning strategy was first revealed last September, when a press photographer was able to take a snapshot of a document revealing some “no-deal” plans and the codename. Details of its general contents then emerged over the last year.

Yellowhammer’s “command and control” contingency plans for a no-deal outcome were first set to be enacted last March—the previous deadline set for the UK’s exit before it was extended to October by then-Prime Minister Theresa May and Brussels. Under its provisions, the government’s Cobra committee, which is usually only convened under conditions of national emergency, is empowered to deal with all no-deal preparations, including having a minimum of 3,500 troops on standby.

Yellowhammer’s provisions have dire social implications, as they are premised on the clamping down of strikes and protests by workers and the evisceration of democratic rights. They include the rolling out of sweeping police-state powers embodied in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, introduced by the Labour government of Tony Blair.

In January, the Times revealed that scenarios for martial law were being considered and that “curfews, bans on travel, confiscation of property [and] deployment of the armed forces to quell rioting are among the measures available to ministers.”

The picture that emerges from the latest documents is one in which every section of the economy faces turmoil in a small island nation that relies on imports for virtually all the necessities of everyday life, including basic foodstuffs and medicine.

There will be significant disruption at ports lasting up to three months before the flow of traffic supposedly “improves”—to 50 to 70 percent of the current rate. Yellowhammer warns that “Certain types of fresh food supply will …. decrease, which adds to the “risk that panic buying will disrupt food supplies.”

“Low-income groups” and “vulnerable groups” will be “disproportionately affected by any price rises in food and fuel.” Under these conditions, plans for rationing food are underway.

Yellowhammer notes that there will be “probably be marked price rises for electricity customers with associated wider economic and political effects.”

Bolivia’s biggest mine and public health sector go on strike

Andrea Lobo

The 834 workers at the San Cristobal mine, the largest in Bolivia and the third-largest producer of silver in the world, went on an indefinite strike Sunday to demand that the Japanese-based transnational Sumitomo comply with an August 9 ruling by a labor court that it pay overtime for Sundays, holidays, extra and night-shift hours, which it has not done since it bought the mine in 2006.

Miners have denounced having to work 12-hour days of strenuous work for the last 12 years without being compensated fully. Facing growing unrest, the Mixed Union of San Cristobal Miners (SMTMSC) appealed in August 2018 to the Ministry of Labor and the labor courts, which handed down their ruling a year later. In March, the union transported 600 miners and family members to march in the capital of La Paz to appeal to the government of Evo Morales, which effectively controls the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) that the San Cristobal union belongs to.

Unable to contain the anger among miners after ordering them to work without full compensation for another year, the SMTMSC called a strike after the company failed to comply with the ruling. On Sunday, about 600 miners, family members and supporters carried out another march in La Paz. As of this writing on Monday, the company had not given a response.

The strike coincides with an indefinite national strike in the public health sector launched on Monday. Doctors, nurses and other health care workers are demanding a major increase in spending, from 6.5 percent to 10 percent of the government’s budget and to fulfill unpaid benefits for state employees, while improving the conditions at public hospitals. This follows a 47-day strike last year violently repressed by police that forced Morales to cancel a malpractice law intended to scapegoat doctors for the decrepit state of the state-run health care system. Morales still denounced “the political strike that has caused so much harm to thousands of sick people.”

In July, after two doctors died from a virus contracted at work, health care workers carried out another two-day strike. At the time, the leadership of the COB threatened strikers with “mobilizations,” i.e., deploying thugs, and firings, while they were being threatened by the Morales government with arrests, including an arrest warrant filed against the president of the Medical Union in La Paz.

Facing mounting unrest from below, Morales and his Movement toward Socialism (MAS) are veering sharply to the right, adopting authoritarian forms of rule to defend the profits of the transnational corporations and financial vultures. If the Sumitomo Corporation gathers that it can ignore the court ruling, it’s because it has taken the measure of the pro-corporate MAS government and its unions.

At the same time, feeling the wind from Japanese, European and US imperialism in his sails as the preferred party for bourgeois rule in Bolivia, Morales is pursuing a fourth term in the October 20 elections, defying a 2016 referendum result, the Constitution and frequent demonstrations.

On Saturday, at a mass campaign rally, Morales boasted that “a group of private business people has joined us, and what do they tell me? ‘I’m not a MAS member nor in the process of becoming one, but I’m profiting more from it than with my own party’. They say that sincerely.”

Morales is comfortably polling ahead of the despised right-wing former president and vice-president Carlos Mesa Gisbert, who had overseen the military repression that killed dozens during the mass uprising in 2003 in support of the nationalization of natural gas.

Miners in San Cristobal, striking doctors and the increasingly restive working class in Bolivia need to draw conclusions about the class character of the Morales government, MAS and the trade unions.

The coming to power of Morales—and Hugo Chávez, Néstor Kirchner, Lula da Silva before him—represented the response by the capitalist ruling elite to a series of mass uprisings with revolutionary prospects during the turn of the century across Latin America. This movement from below developed in opposition to the fast growth of social inequality from continued privatizations, austerity, subsequent economic stagnation and repression, after promises of prosperity and democracy during the transition from the military dictatorships that ruled between the 1960s and 1980s.

Between the 2000 “Cochabamba water war” against privatization of the water, through to the 2003 “natural gas war,” and the 2005 elections, Bolivia saw the downfall of five presidents. MAS, with the backing of dozens of pseudo-left organizations across the region, was able to channel this upsurge behind the 2005 presidential election of Morales.

Police violence the sixth leading cause of death for young men in the US

Gary Joad & Kate Randall 

The killing of young men by police in America is a health emergency. Much attention has been given to the rise in recent years of “deaths of despair”—due to drug overdose, alcohol abuse and suicide. However, a recent study ranks police killings of young men as the sixth leading cause of death for young men in the US, regardless of race.

The study was published August 5 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Rutgers University Newark, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Washington University in St. Louis. It concludes: “Risk of being killed by police peaks between the ages of 20 years and 35 years for men and women and for all racial and ethnic groups.”

The study’s authors, Frank Edwards, Hedwig Lee and Michael Esposito, note that no agency of the government tracks or compiles an official count of peoples’ deaths at the hands of law enforcement. The findings on police “use-of-force” deaths in the study are gleaned by journalists from public records and news accounts and tabulated at the Fatal Encounters web site.

According to the Mapping Police Violence web site, 1,164 people were killed by police in 2018. According to the Washington Post’s Fatal Force tally, there were only 22 days in all of last year in which police didn’t kill someone.

The study’s authors also point to a commonly recognized phenomenon: “Police in the United States kill far more people than do police in other advanced industrial democracies.” Deaths due to police violence have increased a staggering 50 percent since 2008.

The study estimated an overall annual mortality rate from police violence of 1.8 per 100,000 for all men ages 25 to 29, in sixth place among all causes of death.

Number one was a catch-all category of accidental causes (such as drug overdose, motor vehicular accidents, and other fatal accidents), standing at 76.6 per 100,000.

Suicides account for 26.7 deaths per 100,000, homicides 22.0 per 100,000, heart disease 7.0 per 100,000, and cancer 6.3 per 100,000. It is a grim fact of life in America that the top three causes of death for young men involve so-called “deaths of despair” (drug overdoses and suicide) and homicides.

The mortality rate for women from police violence stands at 0.08 per 100,000 annually and does not rank in the 15 leading causes of death in young women.

Deaths caused by law enforcement actions were compiled for the study using data from 2013 to 2018. The authors found that about 52 of every 100,000 men and boys in the United States will be killed by police use of force over their lifetime. This compares to about 3 of every 100,000 women and girls that will meet the same fate. Latino men and boys have about a 53 per 100,000 risk of death by police, similar to the overall risk for men and boys.

The study confirms that black men have about 2.5 times the life risk of being killed by police than white men. Native American men have a lifetime risk of death by law enforcement between 1.2 to 1.7 times that of white men, and Native American women have a lifetime risk of a police-caused death 1.1 to 2.1 times that of white women.

The authors make the false claim that “Policing plays a key role in maintaining structural inequalities between people of color and white people in the United States.” While the police killings of African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are disproportionate in relation to their percentage in the population, the greatest number of people killed in police shootings are white. Moreover, while this issue is not addressed in the study, other studies have shown that black police are just as likely to kill, and just as likely to kill black men, as white police.

Insulating Cooperation from Contestation: The Japan-South Korea Dispute

Sandip Kumar Mishra

On 2 August 2019, the Japanese cabinet decided to remove South Korea from its ‘whitelist’. This restricts the export of critical Japanese products to South Korea, and will hurt the latter economically. The decision was apparently motivated as punishment for Japan, based on the October 2018 court ruling in South Korea that Japanese companies responsible for recruiting ‘forced labour’ from Korea must compensate their victims, which has contributed to the historic bilateral crisis between the two countries.

To be sure, Japan-South Korea relations have always been in contestation, even after normalisation of relations in 1965. Japan apologised to South Korea for its colonial exploitation, and offered financial compensation; this was followed by the establishment of formal diplomatic relations. Although this smoothed out relations at the state level, public opinion continued to be divided. Large protests and demonstrations against normalisation took place across South Korea, even though the country was ruled at the time by an authoritarian, President Park Chung-hee.

With common allies – such as the US – and common adversaries – such Japan and South Korea – it was believed then, even at the popular level, that relations would gradually improve. Japan considers its economic assistance as instrumental for South Korea's economic success. Japan also believes that its multiple expressions of regret for Korea's colonial suffering must bring that chapter to a close. In a similar approach, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent an apology to South Korean ‘comfort women’ (women who were used as sex slaves by the Japanese military during war time), and in 2015, promised to provide one billion yen (approximately US$ 8.3 million) as financial assistance. The agreement on the issue of ‘comfort women’ was noted to have been "finally and irreversibly" concluded.

The problem with the Japanese approach is that it assumes economic compensation and a formal apology as sufficient to heal deep-seated psychological wounds. These are admittedly important, but in a situation such as this, must also be accompanied by a sense of compassion and remorse. If compensation and apology are offered mechanically, in a way that is perhaps quite visibly intended to primarily remove obstacles in the bilateral relationship, they will not address public opinion in South Korea adequately. The South Korean government may well accept these moves in view of economic and strategic reasons, but the popular Japanese image will not change.

South Koreans take exception to official Japanese visits to the Yasukuni shrine, which contains the remains of 'war criminals'. Japan's revisions of school textbooks with regard to its wartime atrocities are also viewed negatively. Japan's official position on the issue of 'comfort women' and 'forced labour' is that these crimes were committed by Japan's military and business owners, thus distancing the government from these acts. Additionally, there are still territorial disputes between the two countries. Undoubtedly, South Korean leaders  also politicise the issue for domestic benefit. However, all of these translate, at least to the South Korean public, as a lack of sincerity in word and deed.

Japan and South Korea however have been able to devise a mechanism to keep their economic, cultural, and security equation insulated from historical baggage. They cooperate in mutually beneficial sectors, which is expected to have a positive spillover in the future on the historical background. Bilateral trade relations, educational exchanges, and tourism have increased exponentially. In 1997, both countries became part of a trilateral cooperation group along with the US, and in 2016, signed an agreement to share military intelligence on North Korea.

Unfortunately, the separation of domains of contestation and cooperation has been breached this time around. By removing South Korea from its ‘whitelist’, Japan has targeted South Korea economically. South Korea has also taken similar retaliatory measures. There is also speculation that the military intelligence-sharing agreement could be annulled as a result.

The onus in this scenario is tilted towards Japan, given that the ruling on ‘forced labour’ was taken by the South Korean judiciary, which the government had no say in. South Korea proposed a joint fund as compensation for victims, which Japan did not accept. Should both countries escalate the issue, it will lead to a historic diplomatic blunder that will be detrimental not just for bilateral relations, but also for regional stability.

Rotary Yoneyama Foundation Undergraduate, Masters and PhD Scholarships 2020 for International Students

Application Deadline: 15th December 2019 1:00P.M. Japan time for both April and Fall (September/October) 2020 Enrollment.

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: International

To be taken at (country): Japanese Universities and Graduate Schools

Eligible Field of Study: All courses offered by the Japanese University or Graduate School in Japan

About Scholarship: The Rotary Yoneyama Memorial Foundation awards scholarships to overseas students who aspire to study or conduct research in Japanese universities or graduate schools. Its scholarship fund is supported by the contributions of Rotarians throughout Japan. The Foundation is Japan’s largest private scholarship organization, both in terms of program scale and number of scholarships awarded.
Rotary Yoneyama Scholarship for applicants residing abroad is for international students scheduled to enroll in a Japanese University or Graduate School. Applicants have to find out and apply a Japanese university or graduate school by themselves before they apply for this scholarship. And they are requested to submit the copy of the application for admission for the university / graduated school.

Type: Undergraduates, Master’s and PhD degree

Selection Criteria and Eligibility: The program’s eligibility requirements are as follows:

1. Have already chosen the university or graduate school s/he will apply for
2. Be in the process of applying for admission
3. Be able to submit his/her letter of acceptance (an admission approval or a pre-arrival admission approval) under the schedule below.

• For April 2019 enrollment: Submit the letter of acceptance by the end of January 2020.
• For fall 2019 enrollment: Submit the letter of acceptance by the end of June 2020.

Number of Scholarships: several

Value of Scholarship:

• Undergraduates: 100,000 yen per month
• Masters students: 140,000 yen per month
• Doctoral students: 140,000 yen per month

Only for the first year of the scholarship, a supplemental of 400,000 yen is provided upon arrival in Japan.

Duration of Scholarship: for the period of study


How to Apply

Visit scholarship website for details

Sponsors: Rotary Yoneyama Memorial Foundation

Important Notes: Only for the first year of the scholarship, a supplemental of 400,000 yen is provided after arrival in Japan and attending an orientation. Yoneyama scholars are to arrive in Japan prior to the month of their admission. Irrespective of the reason, if they do not arrive in Japan by the month that their scholarship will begin to be paid, they will lose their eligibility.

Facebook Community Challenge for Developers Worldwide (USD $25,000 Prize) 2019

Application Deadline: 20th September, 2019 2pm PST.

Eligible Regions: 7 regions:(i) North America, (ii) Latin America, (iii) the Asia Pacific, (iv) India, (v) Sub Saharan Africa, (vi) Middle East/North Africa, and (vii) Europe.

About the Award: To enter this challenge, use at least one Facebook developer product to build applications that help bring communities together.  You might decide to craft an awesome Messenger experience, help community leaders strengthen and grow their audience, or integrate your own technology with Facebook’s large reach.
In addition, bonus prizes are available for exceptional solutions that fit into the community categories that (i) bridge on and offline experiences, (ii) build and grow community, or (iii) drive engaging communities.
Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to build community. We know that innovation can come from people of all backgrounds, from all kinds of places. So, we want to invite you, developers, to join us in this journey by building software applications that strive towards this mission.

Type: Entrepreneurship, Contest

Eligibility:

•  Build software applications that help bring communities together and use at least one Facebook developer product.
• To compete for optional bonus prizes, developers are invited to build solutions across one of the three community categories (i) bridge on and offline experiences; (ii) build and grow community; and (iii) drive engaging communities.

Value and Number of Awards: 

•  First Place – Global Round: $25,000 USD
•  Second Place – Global Round: $15,000 USD
•  Third Place – Global Round: $10,000 USD
•  Best Pre-Existing, Updated Solution – Global Round: $7,000 USD
•  First Place – Regional Round (7): $5,000 USD awarded in each region
•  Second Place – Regional Round (7): $3,000 USD awarded in each region
•  Third Place – Regional Round (7): $1,500 USD awarded in each region
•  Best Pre-Existing, Updated Solution – Regional Round (7): $2,000 USD awarded in each region
•  Bonus Prize: Best solution to Bridge on and offline experiences: $10,000 USD
•  Bonus Prize: Best solution to Build and grow community: $10,000 USD
•  Bonus Prize: Best solution to Drive engaging communities: $10,000 USD

How to Apply: Submit the Following:

• Demo video. (hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, or Youku). Your video should be around 2 minutes, including a demo of your working application via a step-by-step visual demo, and be available in English. Be sure to explain how the Facebook products used enhances the experience of your solution!
• Images. Please submit at least one image/screenshot of your application.
• Access. A way to access your working application for judging and testing by providing a mobile test build, a link to a live website, or a demo site where the application is deployed.

How to Enter:

1. Register for the Developer Circles Community Challenge here.
2. Join the Developer Community Challenge Facebook Group here.
3. Join your local Developer Circle to collaborate with other developers.
4. Check out the Facebook tools you can build with on the Resources tab.
5. Create a two-minute demo video that demonstrates your solution’s features and functionality.
6. Submit your project to the Challenge website by September 20, 2019, 2pm PST.

We can’t wait to see what our global developer community builds! #DevCChallenge

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Award Providers: Facebook