FTC imposes $5 billion fine on Facebook for “deceiving users” about data privacy

Kevin Reed

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a ruling on Wednesday that ordered the social media giant Facebook to pay an unprecedented $5 billion fine and to implement management practices enumerated in a “Mandated Privacy Program” that includes a twenty-year third-party “compliance monitoring” regime run by the Justice Department.

The settlement with Facebook—in which the company neither admits nor denies any of the allegations against it—was approved in a 3-2 vote by the FTC one month ago. The formal ruling in the US District Court of the District of Columbia was made after the deal was approved by Attorney General William Barr and was signed by representatives of the FTC and Facebook on July 23.

The deal was the product of a sixteen-month investigation by the FTC into Facebook’s alleged mishandling of the private data of its 2.2 billion active users. According to an FTC news release, the agency had charged “that the company violated a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information.”

The settlement is by far the largest penalty ever levied against a company in the history of the agency. The previous largest privacy-related fine was for $22.5 million against Google in 2012 for “misrepresented privacy assurances to users of Apple’s Safari internet browser.”

The FTC was founded in 1914 under the administration of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson as a government enforcement and regulatory agency in the era of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Over the decades, the agency has been increasingly used to shield corporate executives and owners from prosecution for a host of criminal activities and business practices that have killed or maimed workers or been harmful to the health and well-being of the public.

The FTC currently has two Democratic and three Republican appointees—each commissioner is appointed by the President for a seven-year term—and the vote was split along party lines. In a statement announcing the settlement on behalf of the majority, Agency Chairman Joseph Simons said, “We are extremely proud of the landmark penalty and conduct relief announced today. The size of the $5 billion penalty, as well as the percentage of profits it represents, will provide significant deterrence not just to Facebook, but to every other company that collects or uses consumer data.”

For its part, Facebook reported the settlement on its Newsroom blog explaining how the FTC ruling “is not only about regulators, it’s about rebuilding trust with people.” The post also included an infographic on how Facebook will now finally protect user privacy, something it has said so many times in the past that everyone has lost count.

The Newsroom report also included a 48-second video of a clearly-perturbed CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressing a meeting of Facebook staff saying, “This is a new chapter for the company. Privacy is more central than ever to our vision for the future and we’re going to change the way we operate the company from the leadership down and from the ground up.” His speech was not convincing.

Congressional figures from both parties also weighed in on the ruling as being too lenient. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said the FTC ruling “utterly fails to penalize Facebook in any effective way” and Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said, “The FTC is sending the message that wealthy executives and massive corporations can rampantly violate Americans’ privacy and lie about how our personal information is used and abused and get off with no meaningful consequences.”

While the FTC and Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C. hypocritically prattle on about user privacy violations by “massive corporations” like Facebook, they have absolutely no qualms about the scraping of social media profiles and driver’s license photo databases by the intelligence agencies while serving up lies “about how personal information is used and abused” for the purposes of surveillance and building dossiers on the entire public with “no meaningful consequences.”

The FTC case against Facebook stemmed from revelations in early 2018 that the British data mining firm Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of 50 million Facebook users without their permission. The data was then repackaged and sold by the consulting firm for political advertising purposes.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal had all the hallmarks of a carefully orchestrated media campaign by Democratic Party supporters to further tarnish and blame Facebook for allowing supposed “Russian meddling” in the 2016 presidential elections and the victory of Republican Donald Trump. That this type of data scraping had been going on for years and has been a central feature of Facebook’s business model for paid advertising revenue was completely left out of the sensational news coverage.

Far from protecting Facebook user privacy rights—the entire $5 billion will go to the US Treasury with not one cent to the harmed users that the FTC is supposedly standing up for—the present ruling is a significant action in preparation for more aggressive government regulation and control of the major social media platforms. With the imposition of a massive fine—$5 billion is 24 percent of Facebook’s 2018 profits—and the onerous twenty-year oversight regime, the FTC is putting all of big tech and their Wall Street investors on notice that major changes are in the making.

The FTC settlement takes place alongside of a congressional investigation into big tech that uses similar language about protecting the public from the invasive practices of Microsoft, Google, Apple and Amazon and “breaking up” the tech monopolies. The ruling class is seeking a means of intervening politically into the mobile, broadband wireless device and social media industries, while not disrupting the enormous earnings of these largest firms on Wall Street and maintaining their dominant role in the worldwide competition for technology products and services.

Behind the phony public relations lingo about “user rights” is a concerted effort by the state and the corporations to find a way to halt the use of social media for the purposes of expressing and organizing the rising political opposition of workers and young people against the ruling class and capitalism internationally. Every strike and struggle today—including the mass demonstrations in Puerto Rico which resulted in the governor’s resignation—is being organized and coordinated with social media apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

The strategy of the ruling class is two-pronged. On the one hand, the tech corporations are implementing—with state assistance—censorship that stifles and blocks the development of left-wing and socialist views on their platforms. And on the other hand, the state is intervening with lawsuits, court cases and legislation to both gain access to all content on social media and impose regulation on the corporations preventing the use of social media for political and social struggle. This is the objective meaning of the campaign against “user privacy violations” and “fake news” on social media over the past two and a half years.

The mass drownings off Libya and the fight to defend refugees

Alex Lantier

The ongoing wave of atrocities against refugees demonstrates that it is impossible to defend immigrants without a mass, international movement against the capitalist system. Despite mounting outrage at crimes committed against refugees by the world’s wealthiest states, these governments are determined to continue anti-immigrant policies condemning tens of thousands of innocent people to death.

On Thursday, a ship carrying 270 to 300 refugees fleeing Libya capsized and sank in the Mediterranean, en route to Italy. Fishermen who spotted the boat called the Libyan coast guard, who rescued around 140 refugees from the waves. The remaining are missing and presumed drowned.

Refugees rescued in the Mediterranean in 2014 © Italian Navy/M. Sestini

Sabah Youssef, a survivor of the shipwreck devastated by the drowning of her seven-year-old child, declared: “I don’t want anything now except to go back to my country, Sudan, to die there.”

An Eritrean survivor made an international appeal for help: “We rescued ourselves. No one could help us, and no one came to rescue us, and here we are in a big problem, so we need your help.”

The refugees who survived the shipwreck are still in grave danger. Like all refugees delivered to Libya’s coast guard—a force built and funded by the European Union (EU), after the 2011 NATO war against Libya destroyed that country’s government and armed forces—they risk internment in EU-funded concentration camps. There, they face assault, rape, being sold into slavery, or murder, as the United Nations, human rights groups and major media have repeatedly documented.

Those who survive the abuse meted out by camp guards risk falling victim to the civil war that has devastated Libya since the NATO war. Earlier this month, dozens died when aircraft loyal to Khalifa Haftar, a military strongman backed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, bombed a refugee camp in Tajoura as they attacked the Italian-backed official Libyan government in nearby Tripoli.

Yesterday, UN High Commission on Refugees Spokesman for Africa Charlie Yaxley tweeted shocking news that of the survivors of the shipwreck, “84 were taken to Tajoura detention camp, where more than 50 died trapped inside during an airstrike just weeks ago. … They must be released and action taken so that no one is brought back to detention centers.”

Responsibility for refugee drownings in the Mediterranean, which have claimed 14,000 lives since 2016, lies with the European Union (EU) and the capitalist system. Faced with a global upsurge of the class struggle—mass protests in Puerto Rico, US teachers strikes, “yellow vest” protests in France, and strikes against EU austerity in Portugal, Germany and Poland—the capitalist class is viciously stoking anti-refugee chauvinism to divide the workers. At the same time, it builds up a police state for mass repression of the entire working class.

Imperialist governments on both sides of the Atlantic pour hundreds of billions of dollars into their military machines, and impose austerity to enrich billionaires like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (net worth $165.6 billion) and LVMH owner Bernard Arnault ($104.2 billion) at workers’ expense. Yet, echoing the fascist regimes of the 20th century, governments and bourgeois parties of all political colors insist that everyone must blame their troubles on immigrants.

America’s fascistic president, Donald Trump, has detained hundreds of thousands of immigrants in a network of US concentration camps and is threatening police raids on US cities to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. The Democratic Party has played a key role in supporting Trump’s far-right policy, voting $4.6 billion to fund the US concentration camp system despite protests against immigration raids across the United States.

The drownings off Libya have provoked outrage in Europe at Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, who proclaims his admiration for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Salvini, who has threatened mass raids to deport illegal immigrants and the Roma people, blocks all ships bearing refugees from reaching Italy. He ignored protests by 200,000 people this spring in Milan in defense of refugees. Having arrested German captain Carola Rackete of the Sea Watch 3 vessel for landing refugees in Italy, and released her amid a wave of protests in Germany, he now refuses to allow an Italian coast guard ship bearing refugees to land until other EU states agree to accept all immigrants aboard.

Yet responsibility lies with the entire EU. In 2015, it launched “Operation Triton,” ending rescue operations and stepping up warship deployments in the Mediterranean, and accelerated construction of a vast network of concentration camps. Millions of Middle Eastern and African refugees are imprisoned in horrific conditions in EU-funded camps stretching from Italy and Greece to Turkey, Libya and Niger.

Statements by Berlin and Paris criticizing Salvini’s fascistic outbursts reek of hypocrisy. While the Macron government has called Salvini “disgusting,” Macron has hailed fascist dictator Philippe Pétain and his officials boast to their fascistic base in the security forces and the financial elite about grounding the migrant rescue ship Aquarius in Marseille to keep refugees from reaching France. French police brutally broke up a protest by African refugees in Paris on July 14, the anniversary of the French Revolution, and have savagely attacked “yellow vests” protesting social inequality.

Having briefly extended an open door in 2015 to migrants fleeing the Syrian war via the Balkans to Germany, Berlin has adopted an anti-immigrant policy. As it rearms, and right-wing extremist German professors call to rehabilitate Hitler and German militarism, violent neo-Nazi groups are flourishing in the police apparatus. The unsolved murder of politician Walter Lübcke, who faced multiple death threats from neo-Nazis after publicly defending refugees, amounts to a barely veiled threat against anyone supporting refugees in Germany.

In 1940, two years before European fascism launched the genocide of the Jews, the great Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote: “Today decaying capitalist society is striving to squeeze the Jewish people from all its pores; seventeen million individuals out of the two billion populating the globe, that is, less than 1 percent, can no longer find a place on our planet! Amid the vast expanses of land and the marvels of technology, which has also conquered the skies for man as well as the earth, the bourgeoisie has managed to convert our planet into a foul prison.”

Eighty years later, Trotsky’s words sound as a warning. After three decades of imperialist war in the Middle East and Africa since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and a decade of economic crisis since the 2008 Wall Street crash, tens of millions have fled bloodshed and poverty across the planet. Last year, 70.8 million people were displaced around the world, the most since World War II.

The relentless state repression and police state build-up are signs that the ruling class is firmly set on a fascistic course.

The way forward is the fight to mobilize ever broader layers of the international working class entering into struggle and arm these struggles with a socialist and internationalist program. This means rejecting attempts to blame immigrants for the social crisis produced by capitalism and defending their right to travel, live and work in any country of their choosing. Above all, it means rejecting illusions that fascistic anti-immigrant policies can be fought in alliance with any section of the ruling establishment.

Only a perspective for mobilizing the working class internationally for the socialist transformation of society can free humanity from the diktat of the corporate oligarchy, defend democratic rights and guarantee a high standard of living to all.

Germany: Racist assassination attempt on Eritrean man

Marianne Arens

On Monday, July 22, a man from Eritrea was gunned down on the street and seriously wounded in the town of Wächtersbach in the state of Hesse. On Tuesday, around 500 people gathered at the scene to hold a vigil and express their horror over the act. Just a few weeks ago, a neo-Nazi executed the politician Walter Lübcke in nearby Kassel.

The assassin in Wächtersbach, 55-year-old Roland K., had evidently sought out a victim with dark skin. He fired several shots at the Eritrean from his car and then drove away after hitting his target. A short time afterwards the shooter was found dead in his car. Apparently he had shot himself in the head.

The Eritrean survived the attack but with serious wounds. Workers at a nearby facility heard the gunfire and immediately called an ambulance. The 26-year-old man had been shot in the stomach and required an emergency operation. He has a wife and a child and had been living in Hesse for seven years. He had a permanent job and was also continuing his education. He was on the way to his education facility when he was struck down by Roland K.

The perpetrator of the attack is a known racist. According to information from the local radio station, he had boasted in his local bar “Zum Martinseck” that he was planning “to kill a refugee now.” He then drove eight kilometres to Wächtersbach and sought out the local integration office for refugees for a victim. A little later, Roland K. returned to the bar and boasted of his act. At 4:15 pm he was found dead in his car 200 metres away from the pub.

According to the prosecutor general’s office, Roland K. committed suicide. He was a trained butcher and truck driver, who was unemployed and living on Hartz IV social welfare. Police found two pistols in his auto and three more weapons, a pistol and two rifles, plus 1,000 rounds of ammunition in his apartment. He had drafted a suicide letter found in his apartment, but the authorities have so far refused to release its content.

Undoubtedly, the man had a “right-wing extremist or far right nationalist orientation,” declared Alexander Badle, a spokesman for the Frankfurt attorney general. He quickly added that there was “no reliable valid evidence that (the perpetrator) had contact to the right-wing or right-wing extremist milieu.” In the case of the murder of the conservative politician Lübcke the authorities also claimed for a long time that there was no evidence the assassin had “connections to far-right circles.”

In fact, evidence of links to neo-Nazi circles in the latest shooting is manifest. Objects associated with the far right were found in the apartment of Roland K and a neighbour told local media “he threatened to shoot someone on several occasions ... and he was definitely a right-wing extremist.”

A report in Stern magazine drew attention to the apparent acceptance of the racist bragging of Roland K. by guests and the landlord of “Zum Martinseck.” The magazine writes: “Even the landlord is apparently closer to far-right thinking than he let on in front of camera. On his Facebook page, he shared Reichsbürger propaganda and content from the NPD.” Both the Reichsburger and the German Democratic Party (NPD) are far-right organisations.

The attempted assassination took place on the same day as fascist bomb threats were made against the party headquarters of the Left Party. The TV journalist Georg Restle also received death threats. The Tagesspiegel reported that the authorities are checking links between this latest shooting and the shooting of young people in Norway carried out by the neo-fascist Anders Breivik. Seven years ago, on the same date, July 22, Breivik killed 77 people.

Speaking on behalf of the Hessian state government, Michael Bußer promised the administration would make “all information available.” A similar pledge was made by the Green Party, which governs the state in a coalition with the conservative CDU.

The roots of the cowardly assassination attempt in Wächtersbach are evident. It is the result of a xenophobic campaign that reaches into the highest government circles. It was the current German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) who declared that immigration was the “mother of all problems.” He also declared that the ruling federal coalition would resist “to the last cartridge any immigration into the German social system.” Seehofer made this last pronouncement back in 2011. More recently Seehofer stated that if he had not been a minister he would have marched alongside the Nazis who rioted and demonstrated in Chemnitz last year.

Seehofer is not an isolated case in the federal government, a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU), and Social Democratic Party, (SPD). The government is increasingly openly taking up the policies of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and thereby promoting far right ideology and activities.

Recently the coalition agreed to a “Law of Orderly Return,” which accelerates the process of deportations and expands the system of inhumane “anchor centres,” i.e., internment camps for refugees. In its latest report, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (Office for Constitutional Protection, BfV) once again singled out the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) for surveillance as “left-wing extremist,” while completely failing to mention such far-right active terrorist networks as Combat 18.

The lurch to the right by the state organs and its devastating consequences are increasingly coming to light. Hajo Funke, a consultant in the Hessian committee investigating the activities of the far-right National Socialist Underground, told the newspaper Hessenschau that the Wächtersbach assassination attempt made clear that “Inhibitions have diminished in the wake of agitation at an official level.”

Funke laid blame on the AfD and the far right Pegida movement, but also stressed that the biggest problem in Hesse was the fact that the police and the BfV had “not provided complete and full information.” He referred to the investigation files on the NSU murder in Kassel, which were initially to be locked away for 120 years, and are now only to be made available after 30 years. This measure was agreed by the state’s Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) and state premier Volker Bouffier (CDU), who was Hessian Interior Minister at the time of the NSU murder of Halit Yozgat.

12,500 job cuts at Nissan as global restructuring of auto industry continues

Jerry White

Nissan will slash 12,500 jobs—or 10 percent of its international workforce—as the brutal restructuring in the global auto industry continues in the face of falling international sales and the scramble over the development of electric and driverless car technologies.

By the end of March 2020, Nissan says it will cut 6,400 jobs in Japan, the US, Mexico, Britain, Spain, India and Indonesia. Another 6,100 jobs are expected to be cut in other locations around the world in fiscal years 2021 and 2022.

The Yokohama, Japan-based automaker made the move after seeing its quarterly profits fall 95 percent. The cuts also follow the failure last month of merger talks between the transnational conglomerate Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi and Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler.

The bulk of the cuts will be on the factory floor, but the company will also lay off engineers, technicians and other salaried employees. According to a corporate presentation to industry analysts, the company will cut 2,420 jobs at plants in the US and Mexico, 2,540 in India and Indonesia, 880 in Japan and 470 in Spain. As part of the company’s first phase of job cuts in the UK, 90 jobs will be cut in Sunderland, according to the Financial Times.

Earlier this year, Nissan eliminated a shift at its Canton, Mississippi pickup truck plant, laying off nearly 400 contract workers. A US company spokesman said there were no immediate plans for further layoffs in Canton and Smyrna, Tennessee but this seems doubtful in the face of the new cuts. Nissan employs 21,000 workers in the US.

“Nissan is implementing strategic reforms in order to build an operational base that will ensure consistent and sustainable profitability over the medium term,” Nissan management said in a statement. “The company is moving quickly to optimize cost structures and manufacturing operations, while also enhancing brand value, steadily refreshing its lineup and achieving consistent growth globally, including in the US.”

Nissan’s move is the latest in a global massacre of jobs. Last year, Detroit-based General Motors announced the shutdown of five plants in the US and Canada and the wiping out of nearly 15,000 production and salaried workers in North America. In March, German automaker VW said it would slash 7,000 jobs. In May, Ford announced the cutting of 7,000 salaried workers, in addition to hundreds of production layoffs at Flat Rock, Michigan and Oakville, Ontario. Honda recently ended a shift at its plant in Marysville, Ohio, that makes its Accord sedan and other models.

Stuttgart-based Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, might be next to announce job cuts after it posted a net loss of $1.3 billion in the second quarter.

There is an ongoing worldwide decline in car sales. US sales were down 2.4 percent in the first half of 2019 and analysts predict that total sales will fall below 17 million for the first time since 2014. A Bank of America-Merrill Lynch analyst recently predicted that US car sales could fall by nearly 30 percent by 2022.

In China, the world’s largest auto market, sales were down more than 12 percent in the first six months of the year. Last year, China car sales fell for the first time in two decades. Thousands of job cuts have already taken place and many factories are operating well below capacity.

India is seeing its worst sales slowdown in a decade. With passenger sales falling 17.54 percent in June, for the eighth successive month, several auto companies, including Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra, have previously announced production cuts. Maruti Suzuki India has dropped its plans to double vehicle manufacturing capacity in Gujarat and layoffs of part suppliers have already hit in Manesar, Haryana, in the industrial belt near Delhi.

In the US, car dealerships are starting to stockpile SUVs and pickup trucks, which have been a source of vast profits for GM, Ford, Fiat Chrysler and other carmakers. Ford dealers had about 10 percent more trucks and SUVs in stock than they had a year ago, according to data confirmed by industry sources cited by the New York Times. Chevrolet dealers had 15 percent more trucks in stock and Honda dealers 26 percent more.

“Car dealers around the country said that the upgrade cycle they rode to rich profits in recent years appears to be ending and that they are seeing fewer buyers despite offering discounts and other incentives. So, dealers say they are ordering fewer vehicles from manufacturers,” according to the Times.

At the same time, the average price of new vehicles has risen to around $35,000 and interest on auto loans has edged up. “It’s a double whammy,” said Mike Jackson, chairman of AutoNation, the nation’s largest chain of new-car dealerships. “Customers are having monthly payment shock.”

The US-based auto companies are continuing to run their truck and SUV plants at close to maximum capacity. The companies are relying on the massive concessions handed over by the United Auto Workers over the last decade in particular, which cut new hires wages and allowed companies to quickly and at little cost lay off part-time and contract workers when sales fall. The automakers and the UAW hope to use the threat of new layoffs to extract even more concessions from workers, with GM saying it wants 50 percent of its work done by temps.

Mark Wakefield, a managing director at AlixPartners, told the Times automakers have organized their plants in ways that allows them to adjust production more easily than a decade ago when sales plunged and GM and Chrysler sought bankruptcy protection. Still, he said, if sales continue to be weak, other manufacturers may start to idle truck and SUV plants. “First for a week or two at a time,” Wakefield said, “and if inventories don’t come back in line, they may say, ‘O.K., maybe we do need to take a shift out.’”

UK: Boris Johnson selects extreme right cabinet

Chris Marsden & Robert Stevens 

Newly elected Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson is now prime minister of Britain’s most-right wing, anti-working-class government since the Second World War.

His is a class war government, with all the main positions filled by representatives of the extreme right of a very right-wing party. On Wednesday evening, Johnson finalised a Cabinet dominated by hard Brexiteers, with former pro-Remain Tories having to sign up to support leaving the European Union on October 31, with or without a deal. He sacked 17 ministers who were either Remainers or allies of outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May.

Johnson nominated as Chancellor Sajid Javid, who favours slashing corporation tax from 19 percent (the lowest rate in the G20) to 12.5 percent and has mooted abolishing altogether the 45 percent rate of income tax paid by the richest.

Among the most significant forces in Johnson’s government are those grouped around Dominic Raab, a clique within the Thatcherite Free Enterprise Group involved in publishing Britannia Unchained in 2012. The collection of articles written by Raab, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Chris Skidmore and Liz Truss argued for deregulation of trade, tax cuts and hiking up the exploitation of the working class, declaring, “The British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor.”

Raab was handed the post of foreign secretary and deputy prime minister. Patel is home secretary. Kwarteng is the minister for business and energy and industrial strategy minister.

In the past, Patel has argued for the restoration of capital punishment. She is chair of the Conservative Friends of Israel. As Secretary of State for International Development she opposed giving aid to the Palestinians without guarantees that it would be used for “health and education services, in order to meet the immediate needs of the Palestinian people and maximise value for money.” She was forced to resign in November 2017 for organising private meetings with leading Israeli political figures including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Truss is international trade secretary. Her chosen side project is working with a group of extreme right political and media figures to secure funding for a Museum of Communist Terror to be established in London. At a recent fundraising dinner, she called for the defeat of the “monster of the hard left.” The right had been “asleep at the wheel in the battle of ideas” since the end of the Thatcher government, she complained.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the head of the backbench European Research Group, who has been described as the “minister for the 18th century,” will become Leader of the House and co-ordinate the government’s parliamentary business over Brexit.

Johnson’s main pro-Brexit rival, Michael Gove, will co-ordinate Brexit policy across the government’s departments, with a mandate to “turbo-charge” preparations for a “no-deal Brexit outcome.” He will work with Johnson’s new adviser, Dominic Cummings, who led the Vote Leave campaign.

In the November following the 2016 Brexit referendum, Margaret Thatcher’s former chancellor, Nigel Lawson, wrote an opinion piece for the Financial Times declaring, “Brexit gives us a chance to finish the Thatcher revolution.” Her transformation of the British economy “was done by a thoroughgoing programme of supply side reform, of which judicious deregulation was a critically important part.” Now, however, the UK was “bound by a growing corpus of EU regulation which, so long as we remain in the bloc, we cannot touch. Brexit gives us the opportunity to address this … to finish the job that Margaret Thatcher started.”

This is Johnson’s agenda for government. In his statement to parliament in the government’s priorities, he said leaving the EU “is not just about seeking to mitigate the challenges, but about grasping the opportunities … we will begin right away on working to change the tax rules to provide extra incentives to invest in capital and research. We will now be accelerating the talks on those free trade deals, and we will prepare an economic package to boost British business and lengthen this country’s lead … as the number one destination in this continent for overseas investment.”

There are two de facto members of Johnson’s government who are not in his cabinet—Nigel Farage, of the Brexit Party, and US President Donald Trump.

The pro-Remain former Tory whip Nick Boles complained to The Times, “The hard right has taken over the Conservative Party. Thatcherites, libertarians and no-deal Brexiteers control it top to bottom. The Brexit Party has won the war without electing a single MP. Boris Johnson isn’t our new prime minister, Nigel Farage is.”

Farage is in the US, where Trump hailed Johnson’s victory and said he and Farage would achieve “tremendous things” together. Picking Farage out of the crowd at a Washington rally, Trump said, “I know he’s going to work well with Boris,” who he described as “Britain’s Trump … That’s what they wanted. That’s what they need.”

Writing in the Daily Telegraph about a possible electoral alliance with Johnson, Farage declared, “If he is able to convince us, then together we would electorally smash the Labour Party, he would assume a big working majority, and he would go down as one of the great leaders in British history. All this is possible, but is Boris Johnson brave enough?”

Trump backs Johnson because he is seeking to break up the EU as part of his “America First” agenda. The “alliance” he offers the UK, on which Johnson bases his own strategy, will deepen the descent into trade war—pitching Britain against German and French imperialism—and bring with it further colonial-style wars.

Backing US aggression against Iran is already being described as the acid test of the new alliance, with the Wall Street Journal speculating, “Johnson could simply announce that the UK is joining America’s maximum-pressure campaign and calls for a new (Iran) deal … The rest of Europe would likely have no choice but to join its Anglophone partners—and finally present a united front.”

The dangers presented to the working class are acute and no response can be expected from the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. His spokesman spent yesterday in a spat with the new Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson, who accused Corbyn of “aiding and abetting” a Conservative Brexit by refusing to immediately call for a vote of no confidence—which is the privilege of the leader of the main opposition party.

Corbyn has said he will only do so when it is “appropriate.” A Labour spokesman described such a vote as a “nuclear option.”

Pro-Corbyn sources are stressing that the party is preparing for a possible snap general election in the autumn, in anticipation of Johnson failing to secure a deal with the EU and a Tory rebellion against a no-deal exit that would have devastating economic consequences. But all discussion is focused on Corbyn arriving at a formula that satisfies the pro-Remain demands of the Blairite right of the party.

The five election pledges launched by Corbyn yesterday centre on the promise of a public vote on any Conservative Brexit deal, in which Labour would campaign to remain in the event of a no-deal or a poor deal.

For the working class faced with savage austerity, Corbyn promised the thin gruel of increased National Health Service funding, a £10 an hour living wage, a job-creating “green industrial revolution”, and free school meals for primary school children. He could not do more without provoking a backlash from the Blairites he has capitulated to and protected ever since becoming party leader. His refusal to drive out the Blairites and mobilise the working class against the Tories is the sole reason why Johnson can now plan to wage devastating social warfare.

Beijing raises prospect of military intervention in Hong Kong

Ben McGrath

With no sign of the massive protests in Hong Kong coming to an end, Beijing issued a veiled threat on Wednesday that it was preparing to use military force to put down the demonstrations. Fears are growing within the Stalinist regime that similar protests could spread throughout the Chinese mainland, given widespread social discontent.

Defense ministry spokesman Wu Qian stated at a briefing to introduce China’s new defense white paper: “We are closely following the developments in Hong Kong, especially the violent attack against the central government liaison office by radicals on July 21.” Wu added: “Some behavior of the radical protesters is challenging the authority of the central government and the bottom line of one country, two systems. This is intolerable.”

Asked for additional information, Wu simply stated: “Article 14 of the Garrison Law has clear stipulations.” This article specifies that the Hong Kong government can request the intervention of the Chinese military in maintaining order. The army garrison in Hong Kong is currently comprised of 6,000 soldiers in bases around the city. Any military intervention runs the risk of becoming another Tiananmen Square massacre.

“Challenging” the “bottom line of one country, two systems” is a red line for Beijing, which has expressed fear that “external forces” are responsible for the unrest in Hong Kong. The one country, two systems concept has been proposed for Taiwan as well, in order to facilitate the island’s reunification with China. Any protest against this, or stoking of independence movements, is seen as a danger to China’s security. Taiwan, for example, would become a base for United States military aggression against the mainland if it were to declare formal independence. For the same reason, Beijing fears allowing anti-China forces from gaining a foothold in Hong Kong or other territories.

Beijing has altered its previous public stance that the army would not intervene in the Hong Kong protests. In making the shift, it seized upon isolated incidents of violence during last Sunday’s protest rally. Beijing issued an initial veiled threat after protesters occupied the Hong Kong Legislative Council building on July 1. The following day, the PLA Daily, the army’s main newspaper, reported on drills conducted by the garrison the previous week. That was an unusual move, because the PLA typically keeps a low profile in the city.

Beijing’s ultimate fear is that similar demonstrations will spread throughout China and shake the capitalist foundations on which the Stalinist leadership rests. It has tied its sense of legitimacy, and justification for a lack of democratic rights, to a rapidly growing economy. However, this is wearing away as the economy slows.

Anger at deteriorating social conditions is now widespread, not just in Hong Kong and China, but throughout the international working class. Beijing looks around the world with fear that Chinese workers will follow the example of mass protests that have erupted in country after country, from the “yellow vests” in France, to Algeria and Sudan, and most recently, the huge demonstrations in Puerto Rico that forced Governor Ricardo Rosselló to resign from office yesterday.

Chinese state media gave widespread coverage to Sunday’s violence in Hong Kong, in order to slander the protest movement as a whole and prepare public sentiment for a violent crackdown. Yet the protest march of some 430,000 people was largely peaceful. Only a few hundred participants broke off from that march to surround Beijing’s liaison office, spray graffiti on its walls and hurl eggs. Police broke up the gathering with tear gas and rubber bullets, itself an escalation of police violence.

In addition, organized gang members associated with China’s triads, many of which are directly connected to the central government, launched a vicious attack on people returning from the day’s rally, and others just going about their daily lives, at a train station in Yuen Long. The attackers were seen shaking hands with, and receiving thumbs-up from, pro-Beijing lawmaker Junius Ho, who later called them his “friends.”

While the immediate impetus for the protests was a controversial extradition law, intensifying social inequality is driving the protests. Officially, 20 percent of the city lives in poverty, though many workers supposedly above the poverty line do not earn enough to make ends meet. “The needs of Hong Kong’s youth have not been fulfilled,” Derek Liu, a 21-year-old student, told the Financial Times this week. Liu pointed to the fact that youth lack access to housing and well-paying jobs, saying: “If you don’t have them, you will find a way to change society.”

A commentator on an online forum likewise wrote at the beginning of July: “Poor working conditions, no flat, no democracy—everything that appears ordinary in other countries is absent in Hong Kong.”

Both the Hong Kong government and the pan-democrats have downplayed Beijing’s threats to use the military against protesters. Replying to the Defense Ministry’s threats Wednesday, Eric Chan, director of the Chief Executive’s office, stated: “This is nothing new. The Hong Kong government has no plan to seek help from the [PLA Hong Kong] garrison in accordance with that provision [Article 14].”

Workers and youth need to take the threats from Beijing to use the military as a serious warning. They must reach out to workers throughout China and fight for the unity of the entire Chinese working class, while rejecting attempts from right-wing, parochial, and chauvinist tendencies to shift blame onto Chinese mainlanders for supposedly stealing the economic benefits of the city.

Declining living conditions in Hong Kong and throughout China and the growth of social inequality is the result of capitalism, which Beijing enforces to the hilt. It is only through an international movement in a fight for genuine socialism that the issues facing Hong Kongers, and workers and youth throughout China and Asia, can be addressed.

Ukrainian president Zelensky’s new party wins parliamentary elections

Jason Melanovski

The newly created Servant of the People party of Ukraine’s recently elected President Volodymyr Zelensky won an overwhelming victory in Ukraine’s snap parliamentary elections on Sunday. The party won 43 percent of the vote and 253 out of 450 seats in Ukraine’s Parliament. The win marks the first time any political party has held an absolute majority in Ukraine’s parliament since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Zelensky will now be granted unprecedented political powers as president.

The snap elections had been called, in an authoritarian move by Zelensky in his inauguration speech, following his landslide victory last April against the widely hated former president Petro Poroshenko, who had been brought to power by the imperialist backed far-right coup in Kiev in February 2014.

The parties of both ex-president Poroshenko (“European Solidarity”), which had gained a majority in the previous parliamentary elections in 2015, and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (“All-Ukrainian Fatherland Party”) both received only 8 percent of the vote and 25 seats in parliament each.

The Opposition Platform—For Life party finished second with 13 percent of the vote and 44 seats. This party, whose leadership maintains ties to the Kremlin and favors ending the war in Eastern Ukraine and restoring peaceful social and economic ties with Russia, will now serve as the opposition party in parliament, since Zelensky has pledged to never form a coalition with the party because of its stance towards Russia.

This stance further exposes the fact that Zelensky is bowing to the demands of Ukrainian nationalists and the United States government, who refuse to accept any negotiated settlement with separatists in the Donbass region of the country. Despite his rhetoric during the presidential campaign indicating possible negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky since coming into office has joined the anti-Russia campaign of the West and of his predecessor.

Now, reports suggest that Zelensky will most likely seek to form a coalition with another newly-created party, Golos (Voice), which is likewise led by a popular entertainer, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk of the Ukrainian pop rock band Okean Elzy. The party won just 6 percent of the vote and 20 seats, mainly in western Ukraine, but would enable Zelensky to garner support among the middle and upper middle classes in that region, as well as among right-wing Ukrainian nationalists, who were totally shut out of parliament in Sunday’s elections.

Zelensky has even invited Vakarchuk to discuss the position of Prime Minister, hinting at the possibility that Ukraine’s two most important political offices could be held by a comedian and a pop-star.

Vakarchuk has a much more extensive political history than Zelensky, which testifies to his close ties to the pro-Western section of the Ukrainian oligarchy.

He was a prominent figure in Ukraine’s 2004 US-backed “Orange Revolution,” supporting the western-backed former President Viktor Yushchenko and later serving in parliament as a member of Yushchenko’s party. He later supported Ukraine’s far-right backed coup against elected President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. In 2015 Vakarchuk participated in an international fellowship program at Yale University and in 2018 he went to Stanford University as a visiting scholar. Vakarchuk holds perhaps even more openly right-wing “free market” views than Zelensky, and supports the country’s entry into both the EU and NATO.

The remaining 47 seats will be held by independent candidates and members of other minor parties. The Communist Party of Ukraine was prohibited from running in the elections because of the right-wing “de-communization” laws which were passed under Poroshenko in 2015.

While much has been made by both the Ukrainian and Western press about the “stunning” turnover of the elected members of the Ukrainian government, the results are in fact symptoms of a political crisis in which there is little to no trust or faith in the institutions of the Ukrainian state within the Ukrainian working class.

All of the parties now in parliament, including Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, lack a clear political program and are financially backed by billionaire oligarchs or Western-backed NGO front groups like Vakarchuk’s Golos. Zelensky himself maintains close ties to the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who has long played a central role in Ukrainian politics.

None of the candidates within Zelensky’s party have previously held parliamentary seats. Out of the 450 seats in the newly assembled parliament a total of 323 seats will be occupied by entirely new deputies. Like Zelensky, who had no political history prior to his huge victory over Poroshenko in April, many of the members of his new party have no political experience.

They are drawn, for the most part, from Ukraine’s middle and upper-middle classes that supported the Maidan movement of 2013-2014, which culminated in the Western-backed coup of February 2014. They are comprised of “activists, entrepreneurs, lawyers,” as well as entertainers and celebrities like Zelensky, according to the Financial Times.

They will now be “educated” by the Kiev School of Economics, according to Bloomberg News , and will work to implement the free-market, pro-EU, pro-NATO reforms and “anti-corruption” policies that Zelensky ran on.

Reports also suggest that many of Zelensky’s close advisers and future cabinet members will be figures from earlier administrations with close ties to the country’s oligarchic class and imperialist governments.

On Tuesday Zelensky announced that Ruslan Demchenko will serve as his presidential advisor. Demchenko, one of the most experienced politicians of the oligarchy of post-Soviet Ukraine, previously served as the advisor to Poroshenko and also worked in both the administrations of the right-wing western-backed Viktor Yushchenko presidency (2005-2010) and the presidency of Leonid Kuchma (1994-1998). In the immediate wake of the restoration of capitalism, from 1992 to 1996, he had served as the second secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy to the United States.

As for the prospective prime minister, although Zelensky has suggested that Vakarchuk could serve in the position, he has also stated that he wants “an economy guru respected in the West, not a politician,” which may point to the appointment of former Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius.

During his time in the Poroshenko regime, Abromavicius favored the rapid selling off of Ukraine’s remaining state-owned industry to pay off the country’s massive IMF debt and stem the rapid fall of Ukraine’s currency. The Washington, DC-based Atlantic Council think tank declared that, “choosing Abromavicius would signal to investors, Western governments and Ukrainians that Zelensky is serious about changing Ukraine.”

Trump administration proposes cutting off food stamps for 3 million Americans

Brian Dixon

The Trump administration has proposed cutting off food stamps for 3.1 million Americans. The proposal will now be followed by a 60-day public comment period. The change will inevitably mean hunger for increasing numbers of Americans as they struggle to pay for other basic necessities such as housing, utilities, transportation and healthcare.

Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue proposed the rule changes on Tuesday, telling reporters in a phone call that it will “save money” and “preserves the integrity of the program.”

“The American people expect their government to be fair, efficient, and to have integrity,” said Perdue, who as governor of Georgia committed a number of ethically suspect actions, such as accepting $25,000 in gifts and passing tax legislation allowing him to defer $100,000 in taxable gains from the sale of land.

The food stamp program, known formally as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), generally limits benefits to individuals making less than 130 percent of the poverty line, or about $27,000 for a family of three, already an abysmally low figure.

However, for the past two decades states have had the option to use “broad-based categorical eligibility” to assist some families with incomes as high as 200 percent of the poverty line, about $43,000 for a family of three.

The option gives states the flexibility to allow beneficiaries to have modest savings in case of an emergency, purchase a new home, or take on extra work hours without the fear of losing their benefits.

“What the [current system] does is say to workers that if you want to work a few more hours, you don’t risk losing SNAP because you take the extra shift,” Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told NPR. “So it’s promoting work.”

Over 40 states and Washington D.C. have taken advantage of the option, which allows them to continue to provide food stamps to individuals who receive any form of means-tested welfare benefits (even something as simple as being provided a brochure on benefits) by raising the income and asset limits.

The proposed changes would restrict this option—which Perdue characterized as a “loophole”—by limiting it to only those individuals receiving substantial and ongoing assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a minimum of $50 per month for at least six months. Individuals not receiving the necessary level of TANF aid would now have to separately apply for food stamps.

In the USDA’s impact analysis of the changes, it notes that 9 percent of SNAP households would no longer qualify, while 13 percent of SNAP households with elderly members would lose benefits.

The government agency acknowledges that the change will increase food insecurity and wipe out what little savings these low-income individuals may have at a time when increasing numbers of Americans face hunger and poverty.

“The proposed rule may also negatively impact food security and reduce the savings rates among those individuals who do not meet the income and resource eligibility requirements for SNAP or the substantial and ongoing requirements for expanded categorical eligibility,” the USDA stated in its impact analysis.

The cuts would also impact seniors and individuals with disabilities if their assets exceed $3,500. Placing limits on the assets held by individuals discourages saving among the poor because their benefits may be cut off if they save up too much.

The program also allows 265,000 schoolchildren to eat free lunches. The new proposal would require children to apply separately for these meals, but did not explain the process for doing so.

USDA officials partially justified the cuts by claiming the food stamp program is being abused. As supposed proof, Brandon Lipps, head of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, cited a Minnesota millionaire and conservative activist, Robert Undersander, who applied for and received food stamps as a political stunt.

“As you know there’s a millionaire who’s come out to say he got on the program specifically to prove that he could. Americans won’t support a program that allows SNAP benefits to go to people like millionaires,” Lipps said Monday night. He made the preposterous statement that “there may be other millionaires” getting food stamps.

The number of individuals on food stamps has already been steadily dropping as states tightened their eligibility requirements. Around 36 million Americans use food stamps, a drop from 44 million in 2018 and 47 million in 2013.

Republicans attempted to make similar cuts in the negotiations over the 2018 farm bill. The current proposal is an effort to bypass the legislative branch by imposing the new rule.

Democrats attacked the proposal even though they have worked with Republicans to slash welfare and other benefits since the Clinton administration. Food stamps were also cut under the Obama White House.

“This proposal is yet another attempt by this administration to circumvent Congress and make harmful changes to nutrition assistance that have been repeatedly rejected on a bipartisan basis,” responded Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

Ohio Democratic Representative Marcia Fudge called it “yet another attack on hungry Americans that ignores the clearly stated will of Congress.”

Republicans and the Trump administration are framing the cuts, which would save a little over $2 billion, as necessary to address the growing budget deficit.

Of course, no such concerns were raised when the Republicans passed $1.3 trillion in tax cuts in 2017 or the record $738 billion defense budget agreed to earlier this week by both Democrats and Republicans. However, when it comes to workers and their children having enough food to eat, the answer is always that there is “no money.”

Israeli nurses launch nationwide strike

Jean Shaoul

Nurses in Israel’s public health care system began a nationwide strike on Tuesday in protest over their heavy workload, staff shortages, the low standard of care and a planned pay cut.

Hospitals and Health Management Organisation (HMO) clinics are providing only emergency care and a reduced level of essential services, while one family health centre for children in every city is providing care for women with high-risk pregnancies. School health services and clinics in Health Ministry offices that provide vaccinations for foreign travel have closed.

The strike was launched following the breakdown of talks with the Finance and Health ministries on Monday, triggering angry protests by nurses outside the Health Ministry building in Jerusalem that evening.

On Tuesday, Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov said, “This strike is unnecessary, and we have been forced to go to the Labour Court to resolve the conflict.” This is a lie. Far from “resolving the conflict,” the Health Ministry is determined to end it by obtaining an injunction to order the nurses back to work.

The Health Ministry also ordered hospital and clinic managers to dock the wages of those responsible for the strike action by 20 percent, provoking such outrage and threats of escalation that it was forced to withdraw its directive.

This attack on nurses—whom historically the state has been reluctant to target for wage cuts—comes just after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interim government passed an austerity budget slashing an additional $900 million. The various political blocs and parties barely mentioned their economic and social programmes, much less the conditions facing Israeli workers and their families, in the April 9 elections.

This strike creates the conditions for these issues to take centre stage in the new elections, scheduled for the autumn, following Netanyahu’s inability to form a government, and indicates the enormous political and economic crisis facing Israel’s financial and political elite.

The strike, called by the National Nurses Union, is part of a labour dispute that has been ongoing over the last few months. Nurses are protesting over totally inadequate staffing levels that have been a longstanding problem. Israel has only half the number of nurses per 1,000 people compared with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 10 nurses per 1,000.

This makes it difficult to meet the Health Ministry’s new accreditation standards that create additional work that can only be done at the expense of patient care and in many cases is a sheer waste of time. The nurses blamed the government for staff shortages that have led to long waiting lists for treatment, intolerable queues for patients, corridor waits on trolleys as nurses search for an available bed and patients left unattended. The heavy workload for the nurses jeopardises patient safety. Further, the government has imposed lengthy bureaucratic procedures to get approval for crucial procedures.

Registered Nurse Madlena Ashtrum, who works in the Shmuel Harofe Hospital, told Israel Today, “Our working conditions are impossible and now they want to reduce our salaries by 20 percent? We walked out of the hospital.”

She added, “Many of us are already working 12-hours a day and barely making a minimum salary.” Her basic salary is $1,300 a month, but with Israel’s high cost of living, particularly housing, she has to work holidays and weekends to make ends meet. She said the decision of Health Minister Ya’akov Litzman of the right-wing United Torah Judaism party to cut her salary by 20 percent will make it impossible for her to continuing working, though she has worked as a nurse for more than 25 years.

Ashtrum called on Litzman “to come and see the patients sleeping in the hallways, nurses working overtime because of staff shortages and filthy conditions because there are not enough cleaning crews on the job. The poor working conditions and heavy caseloads mean that patients are not getting proper care.”

There is also an acute shortage of hospital beds. The doctor-patient ratio is at a record low; only a few hospitals in the major urban centres have the latest instrumentation, and access to advanced medical treatments elsewhere is very limited. This means that in practice only the rich have access to high-quality health care, while the poor are left to suffer in pain or die an early death.

Israel’s expenditure on health care is among the lowest in the industrialised countries. The government’s prioritisation of the defence budget to finance Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians and its military assaults in the region over the provision of essential public services led to health care funding being slashed once again in 2019.

Last week, Israel’s Taub Centre for Social Policy Studies published a report that concluded that the government’s failure to plan, finance and regulate the health care system had led to a severe shortage of beds, inefficiency and gaps in accessibility of treatment. It found that Israel had fewer hospital beds, shorter hospital stays and higher occupancy rates than other members of the OECD.

Israel had 2.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people versus 3.6 in the OECD, with a particularly sharp decline in beds—a 22 percent decline versus 15 percent in the OECD between 2002 and 2017. Access to health care and hospital facilities was particularly acute away from the three major cities, further exacerbating social inequality.

The report said that the shorter average hospital stay in Israel of about 5 days per patient compared to 6.7 days among all OECD countries and the high occupancy rate of about 94 percent compared to 75 percent in the OECD reduces the hospitals’ ability to handle emergencies and indicates a potentially lower level of treatment quality.

Such has been the public frustration over inadequate health care that hospital nursing staff have become the victims of violence. According to a 2017 report in the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, while all hospital departments had seen an increase in violence, emergency rooms and outpatient clinics are the most exposed to it. Last August, nurses went on strike over the government’s failure to respond to its complaints of attacks on health care workers and to implement the recommendations of the Committee for the Elimination of Violence in the Health System that called for the installation of security cameras and the hiring of additional security personnel.

Such conditions are an indictment not just of the Netanyahu government, but also previous Labour governments and the medical workers’ trade unions, organised within the Histadrut, Israel’s federal trade union organisation. Histadrut, a corporatist and racist setup that refused until recently to represent migrant workers—the most exploited section of workers in Israel—owned and controlled much of Israel’s economy, including its largest health care insurance company, for decades.

Trade union membership in a country that once had 85 percent union membership, in part because of its health care insurance arm, has been in freefall for decades as—like its counterparts elsewhere—Histadrut isolated and sold out one section of workers after another.

In this case, too, the nurses’ union has no plans to widen the strike, even though hospital doctors have called for more medical staff and doctors, the public have denounced the shortage of health care facilities, and there are similar problems in other public services such as education, social care and transport that have led to strikes in the past months.

The Histadrut’s historic linkage to the Labour Party broke down when Labour joined the Likud-led National Unity Government in the 1980s and implemented its neo-liberal economic policies. In 1995, the Labour government’s reorganisation of the health care insurance system removed any remaining incentive for workers to retain their union membership. Since then, the health care system has been subject to repeated budget cuts.

Dangerous encounter of warplanes from four nations over Sea of Japan

Ben McGrath

A dangerous incident on Tuesday over the Sea of Japan, involving war planes from Russia, South Korea, China and Japan, has highlighted the growing risk of a major conflict that could engulf the region, one of the most strategic in the world.

According to Seoul’s Defense Ministry, the incident began when two Russian Tu-95 bombers and two Chinese H-6 bombers entered South Korea’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) between the Korean Peninsula and Japan without notice around 8:40 a.m. for 24 minutes. Shortly after that, an unarmed Russian A-50 early warning and observation aircraft allegedly twice entered airspace claimed by South Korea around the Dokdo/Takeshima Islets. Japan also claims the islets.

In response, South Korea dispatched F-15 and F-16 fighter jets. After sending 30 warning messages which went unanswered, according to Seoul, its fighters fired warning shots at the Russian A-50, 80 on the first incursion and 280 on the second.

Russia, which does not recognize Seoul’s ADIZ, initially said its planes were over international waters and that South Korean jets “conducted unprofessional maneuvers by crossing the course of Russian strategic missile carriers, threatening their security.” It added: “This is not the first time the South Korean pilots have unsuccessfully tried to prevent Russian aircraft from flying over the neutral waters.”

An ADIZ is different from a country’s 12-nautical-mile territorial limit. ADIZs have been declared unilaterally to justify a country demanding aircraft from foreign countries to identify themselves and to make known their flight paths despite being in international airspace. An ADIZ has no basis in international law. Japan’s ADIZ covers a large portion of the Sea of Japan, but does not include Takeshima/Dokdo.

Tokyo claimed that both Russian and South Korean aircraft had violated its airspace over the Dokdo/Takeshima islets and scrambled its own fighter jets. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga denounced both countries on Tuesday.

Suga stated: “We protested strongly based on the recognition that a Russian military aircraft flying over the Sea of Japan violated the territorial airspace near Takeshima in Shimane Prefecture twice.” He added: “In view of our stance on the sovereignty of Takeshima, it’s totally unacceptable and extremely regrettable that warning shots were fired by a South Korean military aircraft.”

Moscow later expressed regret for the A-50’s incursion over Dokdo/Takeshima and blamed the incident on a technical glitch. South Korea’s presidential secretary for public communication then downplayed the incident, saying: “Moscow said if the aircraft flew according to an initially planned route, this incident would not have occurred.”

According to Moscow, Russia and China were conducting their “first joint air patrol using long-range aircraft in the Asian-Pacific region.” The drills were “carried out in order to deepen and develop Russian-Chinese relations” and were “not aimed against third countries.”

Beijing took a more muted approach. At a media conference, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying rejected a questioner’s use of the word “intrusion.” Hua said: “I’d caution against using such terms, considering China and South Korea are friendly neighbors and the situation is not clear yet.”

This incident highlights the very sharp tensions in the Asia-Pacific. Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, told CNN that firing warning shots in the air was “very, very serious” and “very, very rare.”

Allegations and misunderstandings could easily ignite a conflict. Despite Russia’s statement of regret, Peter Layton, an analyst at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia, accused it of aggression, claiming: “This mission will have given them a comprehensive map of the (South Korean) national air defense system.”

While US fighter jets may not have been directly involved in the incident, Washington’s aggressive military build-up in the region created the conditions for the dangerous aerial incident. Both Beijing and Moscow have been denounced by Washington as “revisionist powers” and are targets for future US attack.

After a trip to Japan, US National Security Advisor John Bolton, one of the leading hawks in the Trump administration, arrived in Seoul for talks with South Korean officials the same day as the incident occurred. Bolton addressed the growing animosity between Seoul and Tokyo in an attempt to shore up the US alliances against China and Russia. Bolton and his South Korean counterpart Jeong Ui-yong discussed closer collaboration between the US and South Korean militaries in case of a future incident involving Russia or China, which would allow Washington to exploit the situation as it sees fit.

A statement yesterday on talks between Bolton and Defense Minister Jeong Gyeong-du declared: “The two sides shared an understanding on continued security cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo, and agreed to cooperate closely for the development of such bilateral ties, as well as trilateral relations involving the US.” As usual, they claimed the trilateral relationship was necessary to counter the North Korean “threat,” the pretext for the military buildup against China.

Beginning under Barack Obama’s administration, Washington has exploited long-festering territorial disputes in the Asia-Pacific to justify the military buildup against China and Russia in the region. This campaign has been stepped up under President Donald Trump, and now includes regular military provocations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, thus raising tensions with Beijing.

Moscow and Beijing are deepening their military alliances in preparation for an attack by Washington or one of its allies. Last September near Vladivostok, the militaries from the two countries, alongside troops from Mongolia, held what Moscow described as the largest such exercise since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The joint drills involved in Tuesday’s clash over the Sea of Japan were carried out in the same vein.

Washington’s destabilization campaign however has had the unintended consequence of fueling growing animosity between Japan and South Korea, two key US allies. Both Seoul and Tokyo have been emboldened to press their own longstanding territorial and economic disputes against one another. It is not out of the question that a clash between South Korean and Japanese militaries could take place in the Sea of Japan, particularly as both governments whip up national sentiments to divert growing social tensions at home.