The Truth Behind The Lies

Shibu Thomas

Fabricated Charges leading to the imprisonment of innocent Christians has become increasingly common and is on a steep upsurge. Since 2018, Persecution Relief recorded 194 cases of false charges and arrests made against Christians of which 57 cases were documented in the first half of 2020 alone.

Arrests based on ‘forced conversion’ is the most widely used allegation by religious radicals. However, with the Christian minority opposing the severe Anti-conversion law, anti-Christian elements have begun to invent new and devious ways to thrust innocent ones into the bottomless pit of the Indian judicial system.

Persecution Relief was alerted about one such incident on the 25th of August 2020, which happened at a village in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

*Pr. Ram Prasad was in for a shock of his life when he visited the local Police station to rule out rumors of a complaint being filed against him. “There were talks within the community that a fellow villager had made a police complaint against me” said Pr. Ram Prasad, in conversation with Persecution Relief.

“When I inquired with the Police, they made some astonishing revelations. *Bhola Nath, an 83-year-old man had filed a complaint stating that his family has been living in fear as I have been harassing the women in his house, taking the idols from his home and throwing them into the river, verbally abusing and threatening the family” said Pr. Ram.

“I do not know why they have suddenly done this” he said, discussing about the “outrageous” allegations that have been made against him. The Pastor told Persecution Relief that the same family had requested him to pray over their daughter-in- law who was suffering from a serious illness.

I prayed over her. She, her husband- *Babu Nath and family then put their faith in Jesus Christ. However, the other brother, his family and Bhola Nath-the father of the two brothers continued with their prior religious beliefs.

Persecution Relief spoke to the *Alok Nath- the son of Babu Nath concerning the incident. “Although we live on the same property, our houses are separate. My grandfather lives with my uncle and his family but continuously keeps a watch on who visits our home. They are against our Christian faith.”

Speaking to Persecution Relief, *Hari, a local shop keeper who is also a part of Pr. Ram’s Church said, “Bhola Nath is telling people in the community that our Pastor has broken up his family. This is untrue. Our Pastor has been a Christian for the past 15 years and is faithfully serving the Church in our community.”

“I went to their home after they invited me there. We live in the same village and know each other for a long time and I have never caused them any inconvenience. I have no idea why Bhola Nath has put me into trouble” said the Pastor.

It is no joke for a Christian to prove his innocence to widely biased authorities, especially in a country that is known for its religious intolerance. Finding a lawyer who is willing to fight an unpredictable and one-sided battle is tedious, let alone paying his fees. The process is often long and grueling, sometimes taking years to clear.

This prejudiced attitude towards the Christian minority is gradually but steadily gaining ground. Popularized promises made by influential politicians of India being ‘ethnically cleansed’ by 2021 are being widely welcomed and propagated by the religious majority.

These religiously motivated attacks may seem insignificant at the moment, yet is an important piece of a puzzle- the picture which we may behold only once it’s too late.

Between January to July 2020, Persecution Relief has documented 9 religiously motivated hate crimes that have led to death, of which 2 involve rape. From January 2016 to June 2020, Persecution Relief has recorded 2067 cases of Hate crimes against Christians in India of which 293 cases were recorded in the first half of 2020 alone.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has downgraded India to the lowest ranking, ‘Countries of Particular Concern’(CPC) in its 2020 report. The US State Department ranked India’s persecution severity at “Tier 2” along with Iraq and Afghanistan. Over the past seven years, India has risen from No. 31 to No. 10 on Open Doors’ World Watch List, ranking just behind Iran in persecution severity.

New Zealand: Christchurch terrorist jailed for life

Tom Peters

The fascist gunman responsible for mass shootings at two Christchurch mosques on March 15, 2019, was sentenced yesterday to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Brenton Tarrant had earlier pled guilty to 51 charges of murder, 40 of attempted murder and one charge of committing an act of terrorism.

It is the first time such a sentence has been handed down in New Zealand. Christchurch High Court Judge Cameron Mander said the gunman was motivated by “base hatred of people perceived to be different” and “showed no mercy. You ignored the pleas of the wounded to be spared. You advanced on them, stood over them and shot them.”

A lawyer speaking on Tarrant’s behalf said he did not oppose the sentence. The gunman made no other statement, contrary to some predictions that he would use the hearing to espouse his white supremacist and fascist ideology.

The sentence was delivered after three days of hearings during which 93 people delivered victim impact statements. They included relatives of those killed, as well as survivors of the massacre.

Sara Qasem, whose father Abdelfattah was killed, said: “I no longer feel safe in my own home, in my own country and I [will] always carry this heavy stone in my heart for a tragedy that was one tragedy too many.”

Hamimah Tuyan, who lost her husband Zekeriya, addressed Tarrant, saying: “You put bullets into my husband and he fought death for 48 days, 18 surgeries until his last breath. My eldest son has only five years’ worth of memories with his father. My wee one much less, not enough.”

Tony Green, a spokesman for the Al Noor mosque which was targeted in the attack, told Radio NZ he and others were relieved by the sentence, but added that “there are some serious questions to be asked” about how the attack could occur.

Ferroze Ditta, general secretary of the Muslim Association of Canterbury, who was injured in the attack, said there were “mixed reactions” to the terrorist’s decision not to speak. Tarrant’s guilty plea means he has not faced any public questioning during a trial about how he was able to carry out the attack, whether he had accomplices, and the source of his fascist motivations.

Ditta, Green and the Islamic Women’s Council have called for the release of an interview conducted with the terrorist by the Royal Commission of Inquiry set up by the Labour Party-led government ostensibly to investigate the attack.

The inquiry, which has been held entirely in secret, is due to release a report on November 26. The government will then decide what information is made public, including about why the police and intelligence agencies did not prevent the attack and whether they had prior knowledge of Tarrant’s activities.

Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad, who wrote extensively about the 2011 massacre by Anders Breivik, one of Tarrant’s idols, told Radio NZ on Wednesday: “Tarrant and many of the shooters in America, they have announced their shooting [online] sometimes 24 hours ahead. Where were the authorities then?”

Two days before his attack, Tarrant posted anti-Islamic images on Facebook, including a clear threat against Al Noor mosque.

In 2016, Tarrant was reported to Australian police for making a death threat on social media, but the complaint was dismissed. The following year the Bruce Rifle Club near Dunedin, where Tarrant practiced shooting, was reported to New Zealand police by someone alarmed by the racist and violent language used by club members. Again, the complaint was not followed up.

In an extraordinary statement following the sentencing, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern basically demanded an end to public discussion about Tarrant. She told a press conference: “The other job we have is making sure that he has no notoriety, that he has no platform, and that we have no cause to think about him, to see him or to hear from him again.” [emphasis added]

In response to Ardern’s earlier requests for the media not to report on the gunman’s ideology, New Zealand’s major media companies had agreed to censor statements made by Tarrant during court proceedings and avoid quoting from his manifesto.

The document was banned by the state censor shortly after the attack, in order to prevent discussion about its contents, including his admiration for US President Donald Trump, and the similarity of his anti-immigrant and anti-socialist views to those of established political parties. These include the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, which is part of the Labour-led coalition government.

The manifesto also notes that far-right extremists frequently join the armed forces. Several members of the fascist group Action Zealandia, which shares Tarrant’s views, have served in the NZ military. One unnamed member has been arrested for allegedly sharing restricted military information. It is not known whether the group had any contact with Tarrant, who was known in fascist circles in Australia.

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, who leads NZ First, declared yesterday that “this terrorist should be returned to the country that raised him,” Australia, to serve his sentence. Such statements are aimed at denying the role New Zealand’s political and media establishment has played in encouraging the anti-Islamic and racist sentiments which influenced Tarrant.

Peters himself has repeatedly smeared Muslims as potential terrorists and has demanded that immigrants made redundant during the pandemic “should go home.” NZ First is leading an anti-Chinese campaign to justify NZ’s integration into US-led war preparations.

Successive governments, led by the Labour and National Parties, sent troops to the illegal US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They poured money into the spy agencies to target the Muslim community in New Zealand and carry out mass surveillance while ignoring the growing danger of white supremacist violence.

Ardern’s government has exploited the terrorist attack to further boost the powers of the state. Through the “Christchurch Call” initiative, she has led a campaign by governments internationally for increased censorship of social media, which Ardern and other governments have blamed for encouraging terrorism.

The reality is that the extreme right is being fostered internationally, including in the US, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, by governments, media commentators and academics, and protected by state agencies. The aim is to divert rising working-class anger over social inequality away from the capitalist system, onto foreigners and other minorities.

UK government planning troops on the streets for combined pandemic “second wave” and hard Brexit crisis

Richard Tyler

“Pandemic influenza, severe flooding, a Covid second wave and an unruly exit from the EU [European Union] transition period could cause a systemic economic crisis with major impact on ­disposable incomes, unemployment, business activity, international trade and market stability.”

This is how the Conservative government’s Cabinet Office outlines the potential situation this winter in the UK in a document titled “Preliminary set of Reasonable Worst-Case Scenario Planning Assumptions to support civil contingencies planning for the end of the Transition Period.”

The presentation dated July 2020 and listed as “Official sensitive” was leaked to the Sun, which reported it on Sunday, describing it as a “Doomsday Document.”

Screenshot of the The Sun’s web site showing its photo of the leaked document, “Preliminary set of Reasonable Worst-Case Scenario Planning Assumptions to support civil contingencies planning for the end of the Transition Period”

The Sun notes that the document reveals:

“One in 20 Town Halls could go bust in a second Covid wave, sparking social care chaos; The economic impact of the virus and Brexit could cause public disorder, shortages and price hikes; Troops may have to be drafted on to the streets to help the police in the worst-case scenario—1,500 are already on stand by” and “Supplies of food and fuel are all under threat this Christmas if Dover becomes blocked.”

The “reasonable worst-case scenario” it describes is one in which Britain crashes out of its transitional arrangement with the EU at the end of the year without having secured a trade deal. Following the latest week-long round of talks that concluded last Friday, EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier accused Britain of “wasting time,” adding that there had been “no progress whatsoever on the issues that matter” and that the negotiations were “going backwards more than forwards.”

If the UK were to end up without a trade deal, the Cabinet paper foresees “mandatory controls on UK goods from day one.” This would seriously affect both imports and exports. All trucks entering and leaving the country would require customs clearance documents and could be subject to border inspections, leading to massive delays at ports such as Dover and Calais. 2019 saw 2,397,270 haulage vehicles passing through the Channel port, which handled up to 17 percent of the UK’s entire trade in goods worth up to an estimated £122 billion in 2017.

Delays at this sensitive choke point would impact vital food supplies, medication and the movement of parts for just-in-time manufacturing. For example, Honda UK holds just an hour’s worth of parts at its Swindon factory and relies on 350 trucks a day arriving from Europe to maintain the production lines.

Other spin-off effects would bring major shortages. Thirty percent of UK food is imported from the EU, raising the prospect of empty supermarket shelves. Delays to the arrival of medication would place many patients at serious risk, with 75 percent of medicine imports arriving via Dover and limited shelf life, meaning such vital drugs cannot be easily stockpiled.

The Sun says of the document’s contents, “The outlook is also bleak for Gibraltar and the Channel Islands, both reliant on imports. Gibraltar could be cut off from Spain and economically crippled and the Channel Islands may need airdrops of medicines and food.”

This already drastic situation could then become the “perfect storm,” the report’s authors warn, if a major flare-up of COVID-19 results from the reopening of the economy and particularly of schools in September, if the winter flu season proves harsher than usual, and if bad weather causes major flooding, adding to transport disruption.

Interruptions to the movement of energy supplies for power generation and transportation would increase the likelihood of blackouts at the coldest time of the year. Water purification requiring imported chemicals could also be hit, threatening rationing.

According to the document, the National Health Service (NHS) could face a “one in 40-year flu scenario alongside even a continuation of the current levels of C19 [COVID-19] and [be] significantly overwhelmed in any level of second peak.”

Even now, the ability of local authorities to provide much-needed services is under threat as 1-in-20 councils in England “are already at high risk of financial failure ­following COVID-19.”

A rise in historically low inflation rates, as well as pushing up the cost of necessities such as food, heat and lighting, could “significantly impact social care providers due to increasing staff and supply costs,” the document finds.

The criminally irresponsible policies of the Johnson government make such a “reasonable worst-case scenario” more, not less, likely.

The headlong push to reopen the entire economy places the drive for profits above the threat to millions of lives. This is being compounded by the reopening of schools throughout the UK under conditions where it is virtually impossible to stop the spread of the coronavirus among children in crowded and dilapidated facilities. This is confirmed by the experiences in every country where schools have been reopened.

The latest Cabinet study follows on from previous government plans for the possible imposition of martial law in the context of the deepening crisis over Britain’s exiting the EU.

Under a so-called “Operation Yellowhammer,” Whitehall mandarins could employ sweeping powers embodied in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, introduced by the Labour government of Tony Blair. This could include curfews, travel bans, confiscation of property and the deployment of the armed forces.

Under the Act, the government can arrogate to itself extraordinary powers, enabling it to declare a state of emergency without a parliamentary vote. “Emergency regulations” that are virtually unlimited can be decreed using the Royal Prerogative. These include giving “directions or orders” prohibiting assemblies, closing down electronic communications, and outlawing “other specified activities.”

In March, the government implemented significant parts of Yellowhammer in its Emergency Coronavirus Bill. This enables the government to restrict or prohibit events and gatherings in England and Wales during the pandemic in any place, vehicle, train, vessel or aircraft, any movable structure and any offshore installation and, where necessary, to close premises. It provides a temporary power to close educational establishments or childcare providers, extended to cover Scotland and Northern Ireland, where there is no equivalent legislation.

Yellowhammer predicted a “rise in public disorder and community tensions.” As the Emergency Coronavirus Bill was passed, it was announced that 20,000 military personnel were on standby—10,000 military personnel regularly assigned to operations among civilians, such as in floods, plus a further 10,000 troops.

The Bill was backed by all sections of the political establishment, including Labour under its then nominally “left” leader Jeremy Corbyn. Introduced to Parliament on March 19, these draconian measures passed through the House of Commons without a vote on March 23 and were made law on March 25 after receiving Royal Assent. The Emergency Coronavirus Act will remain in place for at least two years and can be updated every six months.

The Cabinet document provides further evidence that the Tories are preparing for a major eruption of class conflict. According to the Sun, the report wargames having to deal with “coordinated industrial action,” with troops available to assist the police in maintaining “public order.”

The Johnson government’s handling of the pandemic has been catastrophic for the population, with more than 65,000 people having needlessly lost their lives. This has generated mounting anger with health, education, transport, food processing and warehouse workers among the sections of the working class protesting their safety, lives and jobs being daily jeopardised.

Millions are, to cite the document, staring a “major impact on ­disposable incomes” in the face with the government already cutting back on its furlough scheme—to be ended entirely at the end of October. While the state-funded scheme only paid 80 percent of employees’ wages over the last few months, it was the mechanism through which millions of workers were able to keep their jobs.

With corporations already having shed tens of thousands of jobs so far during the pandemic, unemployment is set to rocket in the coming months with predictions that the jobless rate could almost treble to 15 percent.

Scottish National Party oversaw COVID-19 disaster

Steve James

According to the latest YouGov/Times opinion polls, 79 percent of respondents in Scotland believe First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is doing “well” or “fairly well” in her handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

By contrast, the same percentage think Prime Minister Boris Johnson is doing “badly” or “fairly badly.” Approval ratings for the pair’s respective governments are similar—79 percent approval for the Scottish government, 73 percent disapproval for the UK government.

From the beginning of the pandemic, Sturgeon’s media presentation was more effective than Johnson’s. She fronted daily press conferences on the progress of the virus, coming across as relatively serious, while portraying herself—with the assistance of a pliant media—as relatively down to earth and possessing a grasp of factual issues. Johnson, by contrast, shut down his government’s daily briefings in June, rarely appeared on them anyway and cannot open his mouth without proving himself a dangerous liar and fool.

Yet the governments formed by Johnson’s Conservatives and Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP) have rolled out, and continue to pursue, near identical policies with regard to the pandemic. These have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, mainly of a generation of the elderly and most vulnerable. This has even led to Scottish police already investigating care homes, which suffered especially large numbers of deaths. By late June, a special Scottish Crown Office unit had begun inquiries into 238 coronavirus fatalities, including 177 in care homes.

It should be noted that Sturgeon attended several meetings of the Tory government’s Emergency COBRA committee held in the Cabinet Office at Downing Street, to discuss the ruling elite’s response as the pandemic took hold. Sturgeon attended her first COBRA on March 2, with the Johnson government committed to its herd immunity strategy of the mass infection of the population.

Comparing death rates between UK regions is problematic since England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all use somewhat different techniques; there are differing delays in records emerging and so on. There is also powerful political pressure to continually reduce the death toll and massage the figures. But the picture that repeatedly emerges is of a generally disastrous and murderous response to the pandemic.

To take one measure, as of August 26, according the Public Health England (PHE), there were 41,465 deaths within 28 days of a positive COVID-19 test across the UK. Of these, 36,818, (89 percent of the total) occurred in England, 2,494 (six percent) in Scotland, 1,594 (four percent) in Wales and 559 (one percent) in Northern Ireland.

England accounts for 84.3 percent of the UK population, while Scotland’s is around one tenth of that at about 8.4 percent, Wales represents 4.7 percent, and Northern Ireland 2.8 percent, so the Scottish death rate is somewhat lower but disastrous nonetheless. If Scotland had the same population as England, COVID-19 deaths would be at least 24,000.

A tally of excess deaths to the middle of June, released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on August 5, produced a revealing set of figures. According to the ONS, the UK as a whole has registered the highest increase in its death rate this year of all European countries at 6.9 percent—compared with the next highest Spain (6.7 percent), Belgium (3.9 percent) and Sweden (2.3 percent).

Within the UK, England showed a 7.5 percent increase, compared with Scotland’s 5.1 percent, Wales’s 2.8 percent and Northern Ireland’s two percent. The Scottish figure was therefore the third worst in Europe, behind England and the UK, despite Scotland’s relatively dispersed population, outside of the main populated central belt between Glasgow and Dundee.

Putting numbers on the percentages, PHE recorded 53,238 excess deaths in England since late March, of which 49,201 (92.4 percent) referred to COVID-19 on the death certificate. The National Records of Scotland registered 4,813 excess deaths since March, of which 86 percent were attributed by the death certificate to COVID-19.

By these measures, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Scotland has been utterly devastating and of a piece, giving due regard to geography and population, to its impact in England and throughout the UK.

The impact on the elderly in Scottish care homes underscores the point. Repeated counts have concluded that 46 percent of all coronavirus-linked deaths in Scotland took place in care homes. To the end of July, a total of 2,335 excess deaths occurred in these settings.

This mirrors events in England. Precise comparable figures are not available, but by July the BBC was reporting a vast figure of around 30,000 excess deaths in care homes in England and Wales in comparison with 2019. Of these, according to the ONS, 19,394 mentioned COVID-19 on the death certificate--around 50 percent of coronavirus-related deaths in Scotland and England.

As the pandemic crisis developed, both governments followed a policy of releasing elderly hospital patients from hospitals into care homes in a manner which can only be described as homicidal. To the extent there are differences between Scotland and England, the level of government culpability is, thus far, even more fully exposed in Scotland.

Earlier this month, it emerged that at least five Scottish health boards transferred patients who had already tested positive for COVID-19 into care homes. The Scottish government had previously admitted that 1,431 untested hospital patients were moved to care homes between March and April this year, as the pandemic crisis deepened.

According to the Sunday Post, at least 300 elderly hospital patients were in fact tested prior to being moved to care homes. Of these, it has now been confirmed that 37 had tested positive, from figures released by Ayrshire and Arran, Grampian, Tayside, Fife and Lanarkshire health boards.

NHS Lothian and NHS Highland failed to respond to the Post ’s freedom of information requests. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said it released 752 patients into care homes but provided no further details. The health board mandarins overseeing Scotland’s largest population centre—and including Inverclyde, with the highest concentration of deaths—claimed it would be too expensive to check records to see which patients had tested positive.

Allyson Pollock, a professor of public health at Newcastle University, likened the move to “putting a lit match to dry tinder and starting a forest fire because we know that infection control measures weren’t good in care homes, we know care homes were understaffed and we know that older people are very vulnerable to COVID-19.”

The Scottish government was directly responsible for these criminal actions. Scottish Health Secretary Jeane Freeman wrote to the health boards in April praising them for exceeding the “challenging targets” set by the government for clearing hospital beds. Asked to move 900 “delayed discharge” patients—people in hospital and requiring care but not necessarily at the level provided in a hospital—the health boards had moved 920.

Nick Kempe, a former head of Glasgow City Council’s older people’s service, told the Post, “The Health Secretary’s letter shows the Scottish Government put enormous pressure on hospitals to discharge patients. The letter also said it remains of paramount importance to free up hospital beds. There is no mention of risk here at all and it appears clear that any consideration of risk was secondary to the paramount importance of getting people out of hospitals. That explains how infected people were sent into care homes, and this is where responsibility lies for a large proportion of deaths.”

Sturgeon has now resorted to desperate parliamentary evasions. Speaking during First Minister’s Questions this week, she claimed the Scottish Government was still “awaiting analysis” from Public Health Scotland on the number of people who were discharged from hospitals into care homes who “may have had the virus.” Sturgeon has refused to commission an interim report into the coronavirus deaths, seeking instead to delay launching a full public inquiry until after the next Scottish parliamentary elections, due in May 2021.

Sturgeon has also refused to explain when she found out about transfers of COVID-19 positive patients. The Scottish government refused a Freedom of Information request from the Scottish Tenants Federation for February and March minutes of SNP government’s top level so-called “Resilience Room” meetings, which were attended by ministers, doctors, scientists, local government representatives and logistics experts. According to the Herald, “There were nine such meetings led by officials and eight of ministers.”

What response the SNP government did give reveals the extraordinary nervousness in ruling circles of the implications of these decisions becoming apparent to working people. A statement conceded, “Disclosure of these internal discussions between Ministers would be likely to have the effect of undermining the Government’s position and thus the effectiveness of the decision, which would not be in the public interest.”

German students establish action committee against school reopenings

Philipp Frisch

In the fight against the dangerous return to schools under unsafe conditions, students in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) have taken an important step to protect their classmates, teachers and their families. At the School Centre in Dortmund’s Hacheney district, they founded an action committee on Sunday to link students and teachers together to take action against the school reopening and ensure safe teaching conditions.

The two founding members, Berdan and Jan, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the founding of the committee and the situation in Dortmund schools. Both see the committee primarily as a response to the ruthless policy of reopening schools. When Berdan came back from vacation two weeks ago, he immediately saw that the reopening of schools was putting all those involved in danger. “I thought to myself, ‘We can’t go on like this! I must do something!’”

He had been aware that as an individual he could not change the situation. “I then looked for like-minded people and started talking to my friends. I immediately agreed with some of them. I also talked to Jan and it was clear to us that something had to be done,” he says. “I had already searched the Internet for information and found the SGP’s [Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, Socialist Equality Party] call to ‘Stop school reopenings,’ which I could agree with in every respect. Then I read other articles, including the American SEP resolution on the issue at the WSWS, and discussed the material with my friends. On Sunday, we decided to form the committee.”

Pupils crowd together at the School Centre in Dortmund-Hacheney

On Monday, they started to put up posters and distribute leaflets at their school, calling on classmates and teachers to oppose the reopening of the school and participate in the committee. They also put up the poster for the IYSSE’s online event on the topic next Sunday. “Right on the first day, our campaign attracted a lot of attention. Especially the posters and the headline ‘Stop the school reopenings! Prepare for a general strike!’ have led to some discussions with classmates, many of whom have said that they see things the same way,” Jan reports on her experiences on Monday.

So far, the committee has five members. Berdan and Jan are in contact with other interested classmates, also at other Dortmund schools, and teachers. “Some of them immediately said that they wanted to join in. Others are still reluctant, but have said that they support us,” said Berdan.

The two attend different vocational schools within the Hacheney School Centre, where many prospective nurses go to school, some of whom would be on the front line in health care facilities. They themselves take their school-leaving exams there with a focus on health. They founded the committee not only out of concern for the health of their classmates and teachers, but also because of their families.

Students crowd into a packed subway

Both Jan and Berdan have relatives who were in the risk group. “My mother has lung disease,” explains Berdan. “Her work as a cleaner is hard enough for her anyway, then her lungs—I don’t want her to get infected with the coronavirus.” Jan adds, “I also want to protect my family, there are also cases of risk, and at the same time, of course, I want classes to be organised in such a way that we don’t miss anything and, above all, that we don’t put ourselves in danger.”

So far, the committee has made two central demands. The first is that lessons should only take place online or in small, fixed learning groups that are physically separated and safely housed. However, the second demand is that face-to-face instruction in small groups should only take place at all if the transportation companies increase the use of buses and trains to such an extent that safe travel is possible.

Jan and Berdan are most worried about the situation in public transport. “Here, 6,000 to 7,000 students arrive daily and only very few of them have their own car. Some teachers are also using public transport. We all start at about the same time in the morning. The situation on the buses and trains is catastrophic. People cannot keep their distance.” Jan took a photo that leaves no doubt that buses and trains are becoming breeding grounds for the virus.

Her description makes it clear that a rapid spread of the virus among students and teachers is practically pre-programmed even in the current regular operation of schools and is only a matter of time.

“According to the rules and regulations, things are not running here as they should,” says Jan, “I myself can observe at least five rule violations per day. When collecting worksheets, for example, teachers and students regularly get close to each other. Often, social distancing here cannot be maintained at all. Moreover, Berdan reports that it is not possible to ventilate the building properly because of defective or locked windows.”

“In old classrooms, where we still were until recently, sometimes only one or two windows opened. Some classrooms are completely blocked off, which makes everything even tighter,” Berdan continues.

This fits the overall picture. Der Spiegel recently reported on a study that examined 363 classrooms in NRW. It found around half of classrooms would have to be closed because, after just one class with the windows closed, there was so much carbon dioxide (CO2)—and thus potentially dangerous aerosols—in the room that they would have to be classified as unhygienic under current occupational safety regulations.

Berdan and Jan also described how coronavirus cases at schools were handled in a completely irresponsible manner. Jan said, “If someone is suspected of being infected, there is a quick test. If the test is negative, people are sent back to class. If the test is positive, those people are quarantined, but only they. This contradicts all scientific recommendations because students may have become infected in the days before the test of the positive student and spread the virus in the classroom, on trains and at home.”

The reports of Jan and Berdan coincide with conditions described by school principals in NRW, who recently commented on the desperate situation in their schools in a letter to NRW state Premier Armin Laschet.

In their letter, the principals complain that the regulation from the Education Ministry completely ignored the reality at schools. The public, however, was “led to believe that the MSB [Ministry for School and Education] works responsibly, with foresight and prudence.”

Berdan and Jan reported that they had also spoken with teachers. “One of my teachers told me about her situation. I found it incredible,” Berdan explained. “Before the Easter vacations, she belonged to a risk group and was sent home accordingly. She had had surgery and then suffered from an immune deficiency. She also lives in a house with her parents, also a risk group. In the meantime, the rules have been changed so that she is no longer in the risk group and has to go to school.

“She told me what she thought. The rules would simply be changed to keep the number of teachers who are not allowed to attend classes as small as possible. The state’s concern is about training new workers, she says, and this should not be interrupted. Old people wouldn’t matter anyway, because they could no longer serve the economy.”

In the end, Jan and Berdan made an appeal to teachers, students and parents to take part in the fight against school reopenings and get in touch with them. “From a moral point of view, what is happening in schools at the moment is quite reprehensible,” Berdan said. “More schools and also companies and factories should form action committees to prevent worse things from happening.” Jan added, “Our committee is open to anyone who agrees that the reopening of schools, as it is happening now, must be stopped.”

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei and its youth organisation, the IYSSE, are holding an online event next Sunday to discuss the creation of action committees against the reopening of schools to which all are invited. “These murderous policies can only be stopped by the independent mobilisation of all workers in a nationwide general strike,” the statement announcing the meeting says.

The event will also be attended by representatives of the SGP’s international sister parties, who are also fighting to build action committees in their countries and help workers network internationally on the basis of a socialist perspective.

US and Russian military units clash in Syria

Bill Van Auken

In an incident that poses the stark danger of an escalating confrontation between the world’s two major nuclear powers, the Pentagon has reported that four US troops were injured in a collision between their armored vehicle and a Russian patrol in Syria this week.

Moscow and Washington have traded charges, each blaming the other for the incident, which unfolded on Tuesday morning outside of the Syrian town of Al-Malikiyah located near Syria’s northeastern triple border with Turkey and Iraq.

US and Russian armored vehicles in Syria. [Credit: Russian MoD]

US National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot issued a statement Thursday charging that a Russian armored vehicle had “struck” a US Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Accusing Russian forces of having committed “unsafe and unprofessional actions” in violation of “de-confliction protocols” worked out between Washington and Moscow in December 2019, Ullyot added threateningly that “US forces always retain the inherent right and obligation to defend themselves from hostile acts.”

The Pentagon reported that four American soldiers had suffered “mild concussion-like” symptoms as a result of the collision.

For its part, the Russian military charged that the incident was the fault of the US military, the outcome of an apparent provocation. A Russian Defense Ministry statement released following a telephone conversation between the chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, and his US counterpart, Gen. Mark Milley, said that the incident stemmed from “an attempt to block the Russian patrol.” It added that the patrol and its route had been cleared beforehand between the two sides.

Videos of the incident taken from a Russian armored vehicle appears to show the US vehicles attempting to intercept the column as it moved across an open field. The Russian convoy was accompanied by an MI-8 attack helicopter, which hovered over the American armored vehicles.

The incident is by no means the first posing the threat of a direct confrontation between US and Russian troops in northeastern Syria. Last month, Air Force Maj. Gen. Kenneth Ekman, the deputy commander of US forces in Iraq and Syria, told reporters at the Pentagon that American and Russian forces were coming into contact almost “every day.” He acknowledged that Moscow and Washington are pursuing their own interests in the country, and “those interests aren’t quite aligned.”

Indeed, Washington has been involved in military operations inside Syria since 2011, when the CIA armed and funded Islamist militias as a proxy ground force in a war for regime change aimed at toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad and installing a pliant American puppet in Damascus. Beginning in 2014, it launched a direct US military intervention in Syria—using the Kurdish YPG militia as a proxy ground force—under the pretext of combatting the Islamic State (ISIS), a mutation of the very same Islamist militias that it had previously supported. For its part, Russia began providing key strategic air support in defense of the Assad government against ISIS and US-backed Al Qaeda-linked militias in 2015.

Tensions and the threat of direct confrontation have only escalated since US President Donald Trump announced that he was withdrawing US forces from Syria and greenlighted a Turkish invasion in October 2019 aimed at driving Washington’s erstwhile Kurdish allies from the Syrian-Kurdish border.

Faced with a firestorm of opposition from within the US military and intelligence apparatus to a total pullout, Trump shifted to what he proclaimed was a policy to “keep the oil,” with US troops redeployed to the oil producing areas of the northern Syrian governorates of Deir ez-Zor and Al-Hasakah.

Trump reiterated this policy in a barely coherent statement at the White House last week, when he declared, “As you know, in Syria we’re down to almost nothing, except we kept the oil… we left, but we kept the oil.”

At the end of last month, it was revealed that the Trump administration has backed a deal ostensibly struck between a newly created US oil company, Delta Crescent Energy LLC, and the Pentagon’s Kurdish proxies. The company, headed by a right-wing Republican former ambassador and an ex-Delta Force officer and Fox News contributor, is supposed to begin exploiting and selling Syria’s oil in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which bars occupying powers from exploiting the resources of the occupied for their own benefit.

This is only the latest war crime committed by US imperialism in Syria since it launched its regime change operation, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands and turned millions into refugees. It is maintaining a regime of unilateral sanctions tantamount to a state of war, condemning the vast majority of Syria’s population to poverty and sabotaging the response to the spreading coronavirus pandemic.

With the move to begin directly exploiting Syria’s oil, while actively denying access to the Syrian government, which desperately needs the resources for reconstruction, the Pentagon appears to have escalated its presence in the war-torn country, sending convoys across the border from Iraq with weaponry and heavy equipment.

Russia has also accused Washington and its Kurdish allies of reanimating the remnants of ISIS in order to turn them against the Syrian government and its allies, including Iran and Russia.

The Russian news agency Sputnik quoted an unnamed spokesman for Russian forces in Syria who said that there has been a recent outbreak of terrorist attacks, which Moscow attributes to former captured ISIS fighters who have been released by Washington’s Kurdish proxies under an “amnesty program.”

The armed actions of these elements “benefit the United States,” the spokesman said, serving to both “disrupt the process of socio-economic reconstruction of Syria” and “justify [US] presence in the country’s east.” It should be added that this resurgence of terror attacks provides a counterweight to the growth of popular opposition among Arab tribes in the northeast to the domination of US force and their Kurdish proxies.

Russian military investigative units are apparently focusing on this connection between the Pentagon and former ISIS fighters in their investigation of the August 18 killing of Russian Maj. Gen. Vyacheslav Gladkikh, who lost his life to an improvised explosive device while passing near a US-controlled Syrian oil field.

Amid the mounting and dangerous US-Russian tensions, Trump’s ostensible political opposition in the Democratic Party—including the phalanx of former US military and intelligence operatives who have rallied behind its presidential candidate Joe Biden—is attacking his administration from the right, accusing it of being insufficiently aggressive against Russian forces in Syria.

Senator Tammy Duckworth, who used her speech to the Democratic convention last week to brand Trump the “coward-in-chief,” demanded that the US president “speak out against Vladimir Putin and demand answers as to why his troops are harassing and injuring our troops in Syria.”

Senator Steny Hoyer, the Democratic House Majority Leader, issued a statement declaring that “The news today of an encounter between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria underscore the dangers of this Administration’s lack of a strategy to protect our troops, support our allies, and promote an end to the conflict there that secures our interests … We must not allow Russia to secure effective control over Syria and threaten the stability of that part of the world.”

Brett McGurk, the former Special Presidential Envoy for Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, who has become a foreign policy surrogate for Biden, tweeted on Wednesday, “Russian military forces are ramming and injuring US troops in Syria. No competent [commander in chief] would leave our troops in this position.”

The threat of an eruption of US militarism, not only in Syria, but in Eastern Europe, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, is growing steadily, not only unhindered but inflamed by the global coronavirus pandemic. Any one of these hot spots can provide the spark for a global conflagration.

The hysterical response of the Democrats to the collision between US and Russian armored vehicles in northeastern Syria makes it clear that the advent of a Biden administration will only intensify this threat.

The struggle against a new world war, together with the fight against the pandemic, the defense of jobs and social rights and defeating the threat of dictatorship, cannot be advanced one inch by means of an electoral strategy in support of Biden and the Democrats. Rather, it requires a strategy based on the class struggle and guided by a revolutionary socialist and internationalist program.

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder: Police violence on the rise in Germany

Max Linhof & Jan Ritter

Three months after the murder of George Floyd in the United States, which has been followed in that country by sustained police violence, similar scenes have been playing out on the streets of major German cities.

German police (Credit: Max Pixel)

A growing number of police operations have occurred over recent weeks involving the use of ruthless force. Mobile phone videos taken by passersby reveal that police officers not only display extreme aggressiveness and brutality towards their targets, but also towards those seeking to document police violence.

Düsseldorf Altstadt: August 15 at around 7:30 pm

Amateur video footage shows how four police officers restrain 15-year-old Mohamed A. One police officer kneels with his full weight on the boy’s head, forcing his head into the asphalt. The scene is reminiscent of the events leading to George Floyd’s death. The boy was taken to hospital with suspected brain trauma, and bruises in the face, skull, pelvis and spine. The video of the police operation spread rapidly on Twitter. Eyewitnesses reported that police officers sought to violently prevent filming of the incident.

Hamburg Neustadt: August 17

Mobile phone videos shared via Twitter and YouTube show how the 15-year-old student Kadir Holdur was surrounded by police officers and forced against a building wall. The police officers threaten and shout at him. When the clearly terrified student wants to take off his T-shirt, the officers restrain him. The video shows how the boy attempts in a panic to resist the police officers’ attacks, but is wrestled to the ground and handcuffed with the help of pepper spray and five officers.

This incident also recalls Floyd’s death. The officers violently push the boy down onto the ground as he struggles to breathe and says, “I can’t breathe.” On the building wall behind him is the statement, “Please, I can’t breathe,” George Floyd’s last words.

Frankfurt Sachsenhausen: During the night of August 15-16

A 29-year-old man with an immigrant background is arrested by 20 police officers after allegedly resisting an order to leave the area due to alcohol consumption. The video shows how the defenceless man is pushed to the ground by the throat by an officer. A second officer kicks the handcuffed man twice with full force in the back, while another officer twists his legs. The man cries out in pain. The remaining officers use physical force and pepper spray to force witnesses to leave the area.

Somewhat later, another officer appears and kicks the restrained man in the head. He is only prevented from committing further violence by another officer. The disproportionately aggressive treatment of the man by the police is commented on by witnesses in disbelief. They say, “Look at how they’re laying into him!” or “They’re going ballistic!”

Ingelheim: August 15

In addition to attacking refugees and immigrants, Germany’s police, which is a hotbed for far-right networks, is also notorious for its brutal attacks against left-wing protesters.

On 15 August, the fascist party Die Rechte (The Right) organised a rally with 24 participants in Ingelheim, Rhineland-Palatinate, to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy. Around 500 police officers were present. Three counter-protests attracted over 1,000 people.

Up to 150 people were forced into a small tunnel after arriving at the train station. Being crammed together in a poorly ventilated tunnel is life-threatening during the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, officers used batons and pepper spray to force the protesters closer together and blocked off both exits to the tunnel as they crammed those confined into an even smaller space. Witnesses reported panic attacks, cuts and mental breakdowns in the tunnel.

Forty-year-old Spike M., who wanted to participate in the demonstration with his children, described the situation in the tunnel to the TAZ newspaper, “They totally lost it, I could hardly breathe. Everyone I spoke to said it was terrifying.” Amelie F., a 27-year-old post-doctoral sociologist, commented, “I feared for my life.”

Later, one of the tunnel’s exits was opened, and the protesters were forced to one of the three counter-protests, which was effectively transformed into an open-air prison with cars and fences. The 250 demonstrators were held there for several hours. Witnesses reported that in spite of the heat, they were neither offered water nor the opportunity to go to the toilet in private.

The police reduced the size of this open-air prison on two occasions, making social distancing impossible. Witnesses reported violence against people who had lost consciousness, were in handcuffs, were injured, or were in wheelchairs. They also noted that many of the officers’ service numbers were either covered up or totally removed so that they could not be identified.

According to the Sanitätsgruppe Sud-West i.V., a local health care group, 116 protesters were injured. The medics wrote on Facebook that the police “overran our treatment area and threatened our personnel.” They emphasised the high number of panic attacks caused by the extreme brutality of the police. These cases “had to be treated by our emergency team for psychosocial care.”

Amelie F. drew a link between the violence of the police in Ingelheim and the far-right networks that are active in the military and police. “We always hear stories about right-wing extremist tendencies in the police, and one would like to think that it’s only a few cells or something like that. But on Saturday, I had the impression that it is a system. The strength of the force deployed there. And if you just consider that the neo-Nazis were marching 100 metres away, and we are treated like that because we want to protest against them,” she said.

As in the US, the ruling elite is responding to mounting opposition among workers and young people with massive police deployments and the mobilisation of fascist forces in the security agencies. Officers who lash out or shoot people—the police killed 14 people in Germany last year—are hardly ever charged. Investigations into the actions of a mere six officers of the 500 present in Ingelheim were launched. In 2018, there were officially 1,559 cases of bodily harm by a police officer on duty. But only 49 cases made it to court and only 20 of those charged were convicted.

Hurricane Laura, strongest to hit Louisiana in 150 years, brings damaging winds

J. L'Heureau

Hurricane Laura made land fall near Cameron, Louisiana south of Lake Charles early Thursday as an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, with sustained winds reaching 150 miles per hour, making it the most powerful hurricane to hit Louisiana in 150 years. Nearly 2 million people in the coastal areas of Texas and Louisiana were subject to evacuation orders in the days before the powerful storm hit the region.

As of publication, there have been four recorded deaths in Louisiana, including a 14-year-old girl in the small town of Leesville when a tree fell on her family home.

Lake Charles, the fifth largest city in Louisiana, with a population of 75,000, suffered wind damage so extensive that Tylor Quebedeaux, a funeral director at Hixson Funeral Home, said it was “worse than Rita,” the Category 5 hurricane which killed 120 people across four states in 2005.

Benjamin Luna helps recover items from the children's wing of the First Pentecostal Church that was destroyed by Hurricane Laura, Thursday, Aug. 27, 2020, in Orange, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Over 600,000 homes and businesses lost power in Louisiana, including over 80,000 in Calcasieu Parish, where Lake Charles is located. Approximately 80,000 people lost power in Rapides, Evangeline, Iberia, and Avoyelles Parish, and another 12,000 lost power in Lafayette. Additionally, the Louisiana Department of Health stated that nearly 50 water systems became “inoperable,” affecting the ability of at least 100,000 people to access clean water.

The hurricane also caused a chemical fire to break out at the BioLab, Inc. industrial complex in Lake Charles Thursday morning, sending chlorine gas and other hazardous emissions into the air and the nearby lake. Wilma Subra, a chemist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, warned of the dangers, noting that “chlorine can damage the lung tissue permanently” when inhaled.

BioLab's parent corporation is the Toronto-based Kik Custom Products, which produces consumer products such as household cleaners and pool disinfectants. According to Nola.com, the plant “was categorized under federal standards as a major source of hazardous air pollutants.” The Environmental Protection Agency's National Air Toxics Assessment, released in August 2018, established that Calcasieu Parish, where BioLab is located, has one of the highest risks for cancer from air toxins in the US.

Elsewhere in the state, Interstate 10, a vital traffic artery for south Louisiana, was closed from the Atchafalaya Basin to Texas Wednesday night, according to Lafayette Consolidated Government spokesman Jamie Angelle. The Isle of Capri, a riverboat casino, became dislodged by the storm and crashed into the Calcasieu River Bridge Lake Charles, which is a part of I-10. The bridge, which is over 60 years old, had already been given a “structurally deficient” rating by the US Department of Transportation, and a sufficiency rating of 6.6 out of 100 by the National Bridge Inventory.

After forming into a tropical depression in the Atlantic Ocean on August 19, Tropical Storm Laura entered the Gulf of Mexico Monday night. It rapidly strengthened into a hurricane, reaching Category 3 by Wednesday morning, and strengthened even further as it approached land. The storm quickly weakened to a Category 2 Thursday morning, and then to a Category 1 by mid-morning and back to tropical storm status at it moved inland throughout the day.

Before making landfall, many forecasters gave alarming statements the Laura's impact across a large swathe of southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana would be “catastrophic,” with National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham stating that the storm surge, peaking in some areas at 20 feet, would not be “survivable”.

“Unsurvivable is not a word that we like to use,” National Weather Service meteorologist Ben Schott told the New Orleans Advocate. “It’s one I’ve never used before.” He later added, “I think the damage from this will be, unfortunately, devastating at a level where people will not be able to recognize the area they live in.”

Thankfully, the area was mostly spared from the devastating storm surge predictions, with the surge reaching about half of the 18 to 20-foot predictions. Chip Kline, head of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority board, said “It would appear most of the damage that was inflicted on southwest Louisiana was from wind.” Nonetheless, there has been extensive flooding damage to buildings and homes in Cameron and Calcasieu Parish.

Nola.com reported that Laura is “the first major hurricane of the 2020 Atlantic season and is expected to be the strongest storm to make landfall in the US since 2018's Hurricane Michael pounded the Florida panhandle with strong Category 4 winds.” The Weather Channel stated that Laura is “the 7th named storm to hit the continental US before the end of August,” a new record.

It is the second fastest hurricane ever to strengthen in the Gulf of Mexico, hitting land with more power than Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. Laura made landfall with sustained winds of 150 mph and with a pressure recorded at 938 millibars. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina made landfall with winds of 125 mph, and a landfall pressure of 920 millibars.

As a tropical storm, Laura had already caused massive destruction in the Caribbean on its way into the Gulf. In Puerto Rico, tens of thousands lost power and water service, according to a briefing by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on August 23. Thousands were forced to evacuate in the Dominican Republic. Hundreds of homes were damaged, and at least three people died, including a 7-year-old boy and his mother.

In Haiti, almost two dozen people lost their lives due to flash flooding, including a 10-year-old girl and 10-month-old boy, and nearly 200 families were made homeless, according to the Haitian Civil Protection Office. More than 300,000 people were forced to evacuate in Cuba, and the tropical storm also caused landslides and swollen rivers in Jamaica.

Laura followed on the heels of Tropical Storm Marco, whose trajectory also placed it on a path heading towards the Louisiana coast. Forecasters feared Marco would also strengthen into a hurricane, marking the first time in history that two hurricanes developed in the Gulf of Mexico and hit land in quick succession. However, Marco weakened into a tropical depression on Monday night, eventually dissipating by Wednesday.

Mandatory evacuations were issued this week for the large area covering southeast Texas by the Louisiana state line over to Plaquemines Parish (county) in southeast Louisiana, affecting nearly 600,000 people. Nearly 400,000 residents were told to evacuate the Texas cities of Beaumont, Galveston and Port Arthur, along with Jasper, Jefferson, Newton and Orange counties.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also greatly complicated the situation facing evacuees. Texas has recorded more than 580,000 infections, and over 11,000 deaths, according to the state’s department of health. Louisiana has recorded over 144,000 cases so far—the highest per capita infection rate in the US—and over 4,500 deaths.

A recent study by scientists from Columbia University and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which quantified “how hurricane evacuation may affect” COVID-19 cases, found that the “origin and destination counties” of evacuees could see a rise in cases. In the best-case scenario, where evacuees relocate to areas with lower transmission rates, it stated that cases may rise up to 10,000. In the worst case, they could jump by as much as 61,000.

The hurricane will also likely cause a drop in testing for the virus. Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, noted that Hurricane Hanna, which made landfall in South Texas as a Category 1 storm in late July, already demonstrated this. “Part of the drop in testing that we saw a couple of weeks ago may have been due to Hurricane Hanna,” she said. “That is a big concern about testing now.”

Testing in Louisiana has been greatly curtailed in preparation for the hurricane, with only hospitals and clinics providing tests. This while Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards stated, “About half of our parishes are still well above 10 percent positivity.” In essence, as he stated, the state is “going to be blind this week on data to affect our decisions” during and in the aftermath of the hurricane.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center, a division of the National Weather Service, predicted an “above-normal 2020 Atlantic hurricane season” in late May. The season runs from June 1 to November 30, peaking in mid-September to early October. NOAA predicted at that time “a 60% chance of an above-normal season, a 30% chance of a near-normal season and only a 10% chance of a below-normal season.” It predicted 13-19 named storms, 6-10 hurricanes, and 3-6 major hurricanes.

Updating its hurricane season outlook on August 6, the NOAA predicted 19-25 named storms, 7-11 hurricanes, and 3-6 major hurricanes. Climate change-induced factors, such as warming sea surface temperatures, have led Gerry Bell, the lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center to state that “[t]his year, we expect more, stronger, and longer-lived storms than average, and our predicted ACE [Accumulated Cyclone Energy] range extends well above NOAA’s threshold for an extremely active season.”

As Hurricane Laura was making its way through Louisiana, two new systems were detected in the Atlantic, with one having a 30 percent chance of formation over the next five days.

As with the COVID-19 pandemic, the ruling class in the US, from the federal down to the local level, has had an ample amount of time based off of the predictions and analyses made by the scientific community to prepare for a more intense hurricane season. The yet-to-be-determined amount of damage, destruction, and deaths caused by Hurricane Laura and any future hurricanes has and will continue to expose the sheer incompetence and criminal indifference permeating the ruling class's policies as the global capitalist crisis—with the degradation of the environment and natural disasters influenced by human-induced climate change being some of the effects—continues to deepen.