Rogues in the Ranks

Edward J. Martin

On May 25, 2020, African American George Floyd, was arrested and killed by a white Minneapolis police officer. The officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt forcefully on Floyd’s neck, and in effect crushing Floyd’s wind pipe. Three other officers were involved, two helping to restrain Floyd, and another standing guard between witnesses and the actual killing. Eight minutes passed and Floyd was dead. Video taken by onlookers was posted world-wide which led to protests and riots in Minneapolis and throughout the United States. Protests also broke out in countries around the world, most notably Europe. Absent the video, the question being asked is how many more killings are taking place at the hands of the police, specifically black men.

The cause of the protests and rioting, it is safe to conclude, has been the result of African American men and women being killed by police. George Floyd’s death unleashed rage and subsequently triggered protests which, at times, turned into violence, predominantly through the destruction of businesses and property. Yet the protest and rioting appeared different from the sixties. The African American uprising included whites, ostensibly millennial, a mixed-race, ethnic, gender identity, class struggle coalition of the discontent. In fact, while the immediate cause of the uprising was a concomitant reaction to lethal racist tactics by police, the “feel” of the uprising had deeper overtones. The protest was not only about deadly force used against African Americans, it was also, arguably, a continuation of what Reconstruction failed to do: eradicate the vestiges of white racism and its monuments dedicated to the South’s deviant overlords such as, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee, and host of other lionized sociopaths.

The general trend of African Americans being killed, without justification, has been transpiring increasingly for decades. The ACLU has documented numerous accounts of police harassment, intimidations, 4^th and 5^th Amendment violations, civil rights and civil liberty violations, and excessive force and brutality. The Innocence Project has documented disproportionately high number of African Americans who have been charged, tried, and convicted, to only be exonerated at a later date. Clearly law enforcement, District Attorneys, and the criminal justice system have all acted in illegal and rogue fashion targeting African Americans. This is systemic racism, and African Americans have been, and continue to be the primary target.

Rogue Law Enforcement

There is sufficient evidence that law enforcement in the US, has been attracting alt-right extremists in law enforcement. An FBI report, “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2006, identifies that white nationalist and supremacist groups have been, and continue to be, hired by law enforcement agencies. They are recruiting, knowingly or otherwise, current law enforcement personnel from extremist groups. The investigation warned that skin head groups were directing such recruits to take on a covert identity as “ghost skins.” The secret identity for white supremacists is to obviously “avoid overt displays” of their true identities, assimilating into society, and then promote the values of white hegemony.

In 2006 the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office discovered that a neo-Nazi gang had formed within the Department. Similar investigations around the country have revealed that officers, and entire agencies, had ties with hate groups in states such as Illinois, Ohio Arizona and Texas. This has been corroborated by an October 17, 2006 Intelligence Assessment from the FBI Counterterrorism Division which detailed the threat of white nationalists and skinheads infiltrating police. Their point of their infiltration: to harass minorities and disrupt police investigations against racists and racist police themselves. The FBI report titled, “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement,” found that the use of racist tactics of intimidation, brutality and protecting fellow racists cops from prosecution was, sadly, a highly effective recruitment tool for like-minded supremacists.

In 2009, the US Department of Homeland Security issued a report on right-wing extremism and its relationship to “violent radicalization” in the United States. In the report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” April 7, 2009, Federal law enforcement agencies, according to the report had been alerted to an extremist threat in which state and local law enforcement have infiltrated these agencies and that other personnel are sympathetic to these groups and their cause. An FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015, gave greatest priority to the investigation of “domestic terrorism” focusing on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists, whose identifiable links connected to law enforcement personnel. On June 4, 2019, an FBI report from the Counterterrorism Division, “Confronting White Supremacy,” and June 4, 2020, FBI “Domestic Terrorism Conference Report,” described in detail the threat that white supremacist groups present to minorities and the public at large. On June 17, 2020, the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) described, in their report, the deepening concern that white nationalist groups present to democracy itself. And on July 11, 2020, the PBS News Hour, examined the growth of the Alt-right in a report, “Should the US designate racial violence as terrorism?” The conclusion was not only in the affirmative but also concluded that racial terrorism is as much a concern as Islamic terrorism.

The Center for Investigative Reporting, published an investigation in 2019, that found thousands of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers were members of militia groups ranging from Confederate-sympathizing, anti-Islam, or anti-government. They were both active and interactive with each other on Facebook. Members of these groups are unabashed racists. They have been linked to groups like the Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, whose purpose is to defend white Americans from “enslavement” and the flood of immigrants, legal or otherwise. The investigation reported that active membership in these groups included active-duty and retired law enforcement officers. They are highly involved with explicitly racist Facebook groups such as “Veterans Against Islamic Filth” (the group deliberately lowercases “Islamic” in its name) and “PURGE WORLDWIDE (The Cure for the Islamic disease in your country)”, and more subterranean groups such as the “Patriots for the Reclamation of America,” and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs, City of Compton, “Executioners.” Even Netflix in a series, “Alt-Right: Age of Rage,” identifies the Alternative Right and the Aryan Brotherhood, and its ostensible leaders, Richard Spence and Jared Taylor, as incendiary in their goals to maintain white identity. They argue that white America is being destroyed by integrating different cultures and identities and that Western white culture is threatened with extinction.

The head of the Oath Keepers movement, Stewart Rhodes, proclaimed in 2009, that the anti-government group includes thousands of “retired and active” police, sheriffs, and marshals. On May 30, during protests in New York City, an NYPD officer was making hand gestures (similar to those used by gang members) that has been linked to white supremacist groups, later reported to the New York Attorney General’s office. The Plain View Project, a database of public Facebook comments made by nearly 2,900 current and former police officers in eight cities, suggests that nearly 1 in 5 of the current officers identified in the study made public posts or comments that appear “to endorse violence, racism and bigotry,” as reported by Buzzfeed News and Injustice Watch in a study of the database. In fact, there are 1269 identified problematic posts from active duty Philadelphia police officers on the site. Of the 1073 Philadelphia police officers identified by the Plain View Project, 327 of them posted public content endorsing violence, racism and bigotry. Of those 327, at least 64 hold leadership roles within the force, serving as corporals, sergeants, lieutenants, captains, or inspectors.

Another example of racism and white supremacists in law enforcement can be traced to the 1990s in which a federal judge discovered that a “neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang” of Los Angeles police deputies – “the Vikings” – operated in the police department with full knowledge of the leadership. In San Francisco from 2015 – 2016, law enforcement attempted to terminate the employment of 17 police officers after an investigations revealed racist text messages were being sent within the ranks. Moreover, the Ku Klux Klan historically has been connected to local law enforcement. In 2014 a police department in Central Florida terminated the employment of two officers, one being the deputy chief of police, for membership in the KKK. In 2015, a police officer in North Carolina was photographed giving a Nazi salute at a KKK rally. The failure of police leadership to take disciplinary action on their own officers regarding excessive force and/or racist conduct is inherent to these agencies.

Derek Chauvin, the police officer charged with George Floyd’s death, had been under investigation for over 17 documented complaints. None of those complaints resulted in disciplinary action while only a few resulted in a letter of reprimand placed in his file. The Minneapolis Police Department refused to disclose the exact nature of the investigations or reprimands. The refusal to disclose these disciplinary actions speaks to a larger issue of transparency and public accountability. Between 2011 and 2015, the NYPD recorded 319 law enforcement offenses, including harassment and assault in many cases. All offenses were “cause” for termination. Thirty-eight law enforcement officers were found guilty by police tribunals of excessive force, unnecessary and unprovoked fights during arrests, or firing weapons unnecessarily. Apparently internal investigations took little to no action on accusations of favoritism, racism, and unlawful interrogations to force confessions and guilty pleas.

Large cities such as Chicago, also have struggles in holding police accountable. According to the Citizens Police Data Project, only 7 percent of complaints have resulted in disciplinary action. These include allegations of law enforcement using racial slurs. In 2018, the chief of police in Elkhart, Indiana, failed to discipline an officer for racial slurs while simultaneously promoting him to sergeant. The chief had full knowledge that the officer was making numerous statements on “white power” on police communications according to ProPublica. The “white power” motto has also been identified with Minneapolis Lieutenant Bob Kroll, who is president of the Police Officers Federation. He was named as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by four black Minneapolis law enforcement officers against the Minneapolis Police Department for discrimination. In the complaint, the allegation by the plaintiffs alleged that the Lieutenant displayed a “White Power badge” on his motorcycle jacket. Kroll, rejects the characterization, but has been heard frequently describing the Black Lives Matter movement as a “terrorist organization.”

The Obama administration made serious attempts to address police forces. In fifteen police departments throughout the United States, the administration legally forced these departments into consent decrees implementing reform. Under federal law the police departments were to commence with reforms from racial discrimination to brutality. In one case, the Justice Department report on its consent decree with Chicago, revealed that the police department received over 30,000 complaints of officer misconduct in five years and determined that a systematic pattern of excessive force has undermined confidence within minority communities. But the new Trump administration sought to undue these reforms.

On March 31, 2017, Trump’s former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, ordered the Justice Department to review Obama-era consent decrees on police department reform. Sessions then curbed their use by requiring political appointees to sign off on any future settlements. The Trump administration restriction on the use of the decrees was characterized as a transition away from protecting civil rights to instead promoting “law and order.” This was continued by Trump’s next Attorney General William Barr, who supported Sessions’ policy. To date, the Trump administration has not issued any new consent decrees against police forces within the United States.

Not all law enforcement officers are members of racist or white supremacist groups. Nor do all law enforcement support alt-right ideology. Notable examples of strong relations with citizens and community-led policing in response to this past several week’s protests include New Jersey police officers marching with Black Lives Matters protestors, police chiefs listening to and walking with protestors, and police in both New York City and South Florida kneeling in solidarity with protestors. In Flint, Michigan, Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson removed his riot gear and walked with marchers. In Long Beach, California, Chief Robert Luna fired a rogue officer for posting his picture on Facebook standing with his baton over blood.

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To be sure, there are other issues needing attention. Qualified immunity for police and district attorneys, police (unidentified) infiltration disguised as protesters assaulting protestors and damaging property falsely blaming protestors. Most disturbing is the fictional account of the Antifascists (Antifa) as a violent leftist terrorist group. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In an internal memorandum, FBI Director Christopher Wrey, found no evidence of Antifa’s involvement in national unrest, specifically with the George Floyd protests and riots as falsely reported by The Nation, June 2, 2020. The Washington Field Office memo states that “no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement” was initiated during the protests, as erroneously stated from Trump, Attorney General Barr, and various right-wing news outlets such as FOX News. On June 12, 2020, the New York Times in “Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests,” cleared Antifa and on June 22, 2020, the New York Times, “41 Cities, Many Sources: How False Antifa Rumors Spread Locally,” described how propaganda against Antifa was spread through the media community, most likely form conservative politicians and political action committees. The attempt was to falsely blame the uprising on an orchestrated group such as Antifa, according to Glenn Kirschner, former FBI, counterintelligence. Blaming a “left-wing” group was a ruse created to gaslight the public and divert attention from the “right-wing” police tactics condoned by the Trump administration.

Most disturbing is the training techniques – taught to American law enforcement by the Israeli Defense Forces – involving the neck suppressing technique used on George Floyd. The IDFs, use the same techniques on Palestinians as reported by Amnesty International (http://amnestyusa.org/7-17-20), and also documented in The Progressive in “US Police Are Being Trained by Israel – And Communities of Color Are Paying the Price.” The police training tactics are sponsored by the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (A-DL), which in turn sponsors the American Jewish Committee Project Interchange Institution and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

The term “systemic racism” means that institutions produce and perpetuate racially disparate effects in the case of minority populations. Professor Bernard Harcourt of Columbia University Law School has conducted and compiled several empirical studies of systemic racism in law enforcement agencies. These include a wide range of police tactics which include the use of policies such as “stop and frisk” and the disparate rates of police activities including traffic stops, searches of motorists during traffic stops, levels of respect shown during stops, misdemeanor arrests, marijuana arrests, use of SWAT teams, individuals jailed for inability to pay petty fines, militarized policing of targeted neighborhoods, resolution of murders of white versus black victims, sustained complaints against police officers, and unarmed victims of police shootings. The evidence of links to explicit white supremacist groups is only the tip of a racist iceberg, according to Harcourt.

In The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went to War Against Its Own Citizens, 2018, Harcourt argues that the effort to reduce crime in the United States initiated a terror campaign on its citizens, specifically African Americans, in much the same way the United States supported terror tactics in the Third World. Modern militarized police officers with tanks and drones have become pervasive tools along with government surveillance and profiling. Social media also serves to distract and track citizens from the fact that they have consciously or unconsciously surrendered rights to privacy, unauthorized surveillance, and unlawful searches and seizures. All of these, Harcourt contends, are facets of a new and radical governing paradigm in the United States – one that is rooted in the modes of warfare originally developed to suppress anticolonial revolutions and, more recently, to prosecute the war on terror. Harcourt provides a penetrating and disturbing account of the rise of domestic counterinsurgency, first as a military strategy, and secondly, as an increasing way of ruling ordinary Americans in an authoritarian manner.

Finally, Harcourt demonstrates how counterinsurgency’s principles – bulk intelligence collection, ruthless targeting of minorities, misleading, gaslighting and pacifying propaganda – have taken hold domestically despite the absence of any radical uprising – that is, till recently with the nascent Minneapolis rioting and subsequent uprisings in urban America. This counterrevolution against phantom enemies, he argues, is the tyranny of government at the behest of the power elite. For Harcourt, seeing and identifying this is the first step in resistance to the white nationalist police state within America. So the immediate task is twofold: demand an end the police killings of innocent black men and resist descending into a fascism.

Judicial Manoeuvres and Delhi Slums

Dunu Roy

The recent order by the Supreme Court 3-judge bench that threatens the homes and livelihoods of an estimated 48,000 families living along 70 km of railway tracks because they were “encroachments which are there in the safety zones,” has understandably raised many concerns. To place this order in context it is necessary to understand the trajectory of the courts and how they have manoeuvred their way from justice into governance that does not lie within their mandate.

The theme in which this order was pronounced goes back to 1985 when a petition was filed before a 3-judge bench on the pollution of the river Ganga at Haridwar but targeted the downstream tanneries at Kanpur. ​ When the first order was given in 1987 there were 35 advocates present in court representing the municipality, the pollution control board, and the 43 tanneries. In 2020, in the same theme, the number of advocates was 417 and they represented a host of regulatory bodies, municipalities, railways, solid waste handlers, smog tower makers, standards-setting institutions, and 12 thermal power plants.

How the issue of water pollution in the Ganga is linked to air pollution, railway safety, coal-burning plants, solid waste, air purification, and slums – and the list goes on increasing – is an indication of how the Court has kept manoeuvring its mandate to converge apparently unrelated, and contradictory, issues. In the present case, the EPCA recommended that all non-degradable waste be “given to authorised waste recyclers/pickers”, but the court has responded by evicting the waste-pickers! As for the slums as a safety hazard, the Railways’ own finding is that its safety performance is dependent on how much it invests in infrastructure.

This is not the first time the court has done this kind of manoeuvring. Other cases filed at the same time (1985) have been used to close not only 168 polluting industries (1996) but 75,000 non-conforming ones (2004); restrict diesel (1997) but also order the change from 10,000 diesel to 4,000 CNG buses (1998); ban mining (2002) while also removing 3 labour camps next to Bhatti Mines (2006); protect the Ridge (1995) but at the peril of evicting residents of 21 villages (2014). All these were based on the mistaken hope that they would stop the “adverse effect on the public at large.”

Another case before the court that addressed the issue of removal of garbage was also manoeuvred into other issues. While pulling up the municipalities for not removing garbage, the court commented that “slums are major polluters and they should be removed”. It also gratuitously observed, “Rewarding an encroacher on public land with free alternate site is like giving a reward to a pickpocket.” This casual observation has since been used by many agencies to hold the poor guilty for all problems. In addition, most courts are now following the precedent that the alleged guilty have no right to be heard.

The High Court of Delhi offers several examples of this bias. In 1994 an association of factory owners had filed a writ in this court seeking relief from congestion and the lack of facilities in their industrial area. Another association filed a similar writ for a different area in 2002. They were clubbed together and, suddenly targeting the slums – who were not heard, the Bench held that while “it is undoubtedly the duty of Government authorities to provide shelter for the under privileged”, but “we hereby proceed to squash the same (policy) which requires alternative sites to be provided to slum dwellers.”

At the same time another Bench was hearing 36 petitions by slum dwellers, along with 28 by resident welfare associations, on slum eviction.  This Bench too declined to hear the slum dwellers (arguing that the above Bench was hearing them!) but passed orders for the “demolition of all slum clusters which have come up after February 1997.” The Union Government stepped in to file a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court against the squashing of resettlement policy and a stay was granted by the court with the proviso that the Union could “proceed with the impugned policy”.

Faced by this turn of events the High Court then on its own decided to address the issue of slums. The Ministry of Tourism prepared a brief showing that slum dwellers were polluting the river Yamuna. The slum dwellers were not heard although a study showed that the 29 drains from their settlements carried only 0.08% of the total sewerage discharged into the river. The court merely ordered “to forthwith remove all the unauthorised structures, jhuggies, places of worship and/or any other structure which are unauthorisedly put in Yamuna Bed and its embankment, within two months from today.” This order was used to evict 60,000 families living on the river bank while ignoring the 23 encroachments on the river bed by the government, religious institutions, and residences.

In another case, the High Court gave an order to remove a settlement on the land belonging to Delhi Vidyut Board to free the road for smooth flow of traffic. The order stated, “the unauthorised occupants also have buffalos and other animals which not only give way to unhygienic conditions but also create hindrance on the smooth flow of commuters on the ring road of Delhi which are in thousands.” Thus, safety, conservation, pollution, congestion, waste, animals, hygiene, and land are all manoeuvred  to promote action against slums.

At the base of this trajectory is the fact that slums are not illegal. They are defined as unfit for human habitation, dilapidated, overcrowded; with no ventilation, narrow streets, no light or sanitation; and “detrimental to safety, health, or morals.” Also, it is the Delhi Development Authority that is responsible for creation of slums because of its failure to provide even one-third of the LIG housing that it is legally mandated to provide. The executive and the judiciary both know this and that is why the policy of resettlement exists and judgements follow from that. If slums are to be cleared or improved as per the Act, then “habitable” land becomes the critical (and expensive) issue. Proving encroachment is even more problematic because the rich have illegally occupied far more land than the poor.

That is why courts are turning to the belief that slums are “detrimental to safety, health, or morals”. Such a ‘sentiment’ requires less ‘evidence’ than property rights, occupation dates, and illegal squatting. Unless this kind of manoeuvring by a ‘committed’ judiciary and executive is challenged, and service providers held to account by an independent legislature and a free press, this trajectory is going to continue.

Smoking in the age of COVID: Some immunological considerations

Henry Hakamaki

Many have been wondering how smoking might affect the risk of suffering from COVID-19. It has been well established that smoking increases an individual’s risk of developing respiratory infections. Cigarette smoking, for example, increases the risk of developing influenza by a factor of five when compared to non-smokers.

This relationship is due to a variety of factors ranging from chronic bronchitis and inflammation of the lungs as a result of inhaling smoke to dysregulation of the immune system (in particular the innate immune system), and holds true for cigarette smoke, e-cigarettes, and largely for marijuana usage as well.

A recent survey has shown that individuals who use cigarettes, e-cigarettes, or both are at significantly higher risk to be diagnosed with COVID-19. This study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that cigarette smokers are 2.3 times more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than non-smokers, whereas individuals who use e-cigarettes only are five times more likely, and individuals who use both are seven times more likely. A meta-analysis has shown that cigarette smoking also significantly increases the risk of disease progression in individuals who develop COVID-19.

There are several immunological factors contributing to an increased likelihood of developing COVID-19 and increased severity of cases in smokers. The receptor responsible for allowing SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, to enter human cells is ACE2. The enzyme on the surface of human cells that primes the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 in order for it to fuse with ACE2 is TMPRSS2.

A new preprint has demonstrated that smoking upregulates the expression of both ACE2 and TMPRSS2 on the surface of cells. This increased expression would increase the number of binding domains and priming capability available to SARS-CoV-2, making it much easier for the virus to enter the cells.

Once in the cells, the virus essentially converts the infected cell into a virus-producing machine. Early in the infection, our innate immune cells will destroy any cells that they think are infected. This is an essential function for viral clearance, and primarily takes place before the immune system has specifically identified what the pathogen is.

Much of the damage associated with coronavirus infections is actually done by the immune system itself. Basically, what happens is that the innate immune cells overreact and begin releasing large amounts of proinflammatory cytokines and effector molecules, which causes massive inflammation and cell damage.

Smoking causes chronic inflammation in the lungs as well as upregulation of innate defense proteins, meaning that not only are the lung cells damaged before COVID-19 infection, but subsequent infection causes more severe innate immune cell overreaction than in non-smokers, thus leading to more lung damage and more severe disease.

Recently, it has also been found that e-cigarettes also increase these innate defense proteins and activation markers, particularly those of neutrophils which contribute significantly to lung damage in COVID infections, similar to that seen in cigarette smokers.

In addition, e-cigarettes have been found to alter mucin (the gel forming protein in lungs, the major constituent of mucous in the lungs) secretion and concentration in highly similar ways to traditional cigarettes. High levels of these mucins in the lungs of COVID patients have been linked to severe respiratory distress.

It is highly probable, though not confirmed experimentally, that having elevated levels of these mucins present in the lungs before COVID-19 infection, due to a history of tobacco or e-cigarette use, increases the risk for severe respiratory distress in an individual once they contract coronavirus.

Perhaps the most interesting case is marijuana. CBD, the non-psychotropic component of cannabis that is sought in medicinal uses, is a well-known immunomodulator, meaning that it alters the regulation of the immune system in some ways. No data is yet available on the effect of marijuana on the severity of COVID-19 infections, but it can be proposed that there would actually be differing effects depending on the disease stage.

CBD acts as an anti-inflammatory agent and an immunosuppressant, and therefore early on in the infection may actually prevent the innate immune cells from responding to and clearing the virus efficiently, leading to disease progression and increase in its duration.

However, in late stage infection, the innate immune cells themselves are causing much of the damage, and therefore the anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressive effects may actually prevent cellular damage. CBD has been found to have these protective effects against damage done by immune cells overreacting to several respiratory viruses, and may play a similar role here.

While there is little data on the effect of marijuana usage on COVID-19 severity, a preprint has shown that marijuana usage correlates with an increased risk of developing a COVID infection. It is not known whether this increased risk is due to chronic, low-level bronchitis due to inhalation of marijuana smoke, the immunosuppressive effects of CBD, unknown effects on the ACE2 receptor and TMPRSS2 (as seen in tobacco and e-cigarette usage), or social factors associated with marijuana usage. Nonetheless, the findings are worth considering.

It is critical that individuals know the factors that put them at increased risk for contracting coronavirus, as well as for developing severe disease once infected. Based on the current data, tobacco and e-cigarette usage are both associated with increased risk of developing COVID-19 infection, and both are highly likely to contribute to progression to severe disease in infected individuals.

Less is known about the effects of marijuana usage. While marijuana use has been found to correlate with increased risk of developing COVID-19, for reasons currently unknown, no data is available on the effect of marijuana on the severity of disease, though it can be hypothesized that contradictory immunological effects would take place depending on the stage of the viral infection.

Amazon uses former government agents to spy on workers

Shuvu Batta

A recent Vice News report revealed Amazon’s longstanding surveillance operations, systematically targeting and monitoring the company’s own workers on private Facebook Groups, with particular emphasis on posts calling for workers to organize or strike. The investigation unveiled an intricate spying operation on Amazon’s Flex Drivers, independent contractors who make possible the company’s “last mile delivery.”

Amazon utilized the domain www.sharkandink.com as a space—with no obvious connection to the conglomerate—to compile the reports. A login page included in the files obtained says: “the information related to different posts reported out from various social forums are classified. DO NOT SHARE without proper authentication. Most of the Post/Comment screenshots within the site are from closed Facebook groups. It will have a detrimental effect if it falls within the reach of any of our Delivery partners. DO NOT SHARE without proper authentication.”

Amazon utilized a well-organized team, called the “Advocacy Operations Social Media Listening Team,” to monitor the posts of workers. Posts are monitored in real time through a Live tool and sorted into various categories such as “Media Coverage,” and are further subdivided to handle more specific topics such as “Strikes/Protests: DPs planning for any strike or protest against Amazon,” and “DP approached by researchers—DPs being approached by researchers for their project/thesis,” with “researchers” referring to journalists and “DPs” referring to Delivery Partners, another term for Flex drivers. Particularly significant posts are brought to the attention of Amazon’s leadership.

According to an investigation published by Open Markets this month, navigation software for Amazon delivery drivers, called the Rabbit or Dora, is used to recommend and monitor routes and track the worker’s productivity. The software only factors in 30 minutes for lunch and two separate 15-minute breaks during the day, and further demands that employees deliver 999 out of every 1,000 packages on time or face termination.

Within fulfillment centers, employing over 600,000 workers, Amazon workers face a similar regime of surveillance. Upon entering the warehouse workers have to dispose of all personal belongings except a water bottle and a clear plastic bag of cash. During the workday, Amazon watches over warehouse employees with a high-tech Panopticon of security cameras.

Workers’ productivity is timed by a scanner, and if they are not quick enough they risk termination. At the end of their workday, warehouse employees are screened to ensure that they have not stolen any items. Large television sets throughout the facilities often display former employees who were caught stealing and were subsequently terminated and/or arrested. This is to frighten and intimidate workers with proof of the efficacy of the constant surveillance.

Surveillance is used in conjunction with managers to prevent workers from organizing. According to Hibaq Mohamed, a stower in Minneapolis quote in a recent report: “Managers are always hovering around. They feel comfortable physically harassing people; that’s a regular thing...The workers who speak up, they feel threatened physically and mentally...When they want to know something, the management, they use that camera. When we’re organizing, when there was a slowdown of work before the pandemic in my area or my department, then we [workers] would come together and talk. But [the camera] is how they can come so quickly and spread workers out.”

Private groups on Facebook and social media in general have become a way for workers to break the isolation promoted by management and connect with fellow co-workers. A recent example of the power of social media is the case of Jana Jumpp, a former Amazon employee who has compiled intensive data sourced from workers across the United States, showing infections and deaths from COVID-19 hidden by the company.

Amazon, which owns 32 percent of the world’s online “cloud” infrastructure, is well aware of the power of online forms of communication and is ramping up its surveillance apparatus for the primary purpose of tracking workers—in great part by hiring corporate employees with spying expertise developed through state and military service.

The company recently advertised job postings for an “Intelligence Analyst” and “Sr. Intelligence Analyst,” and subsequently took them down after the candid description of the job responsibilities received significant attention.

These jobs fall under Amazon’s Global Security Operations (GSO) and Global Intelligence Program (GIP). The job listing read, “Analysts must be capable of engaging and informing L7+ ER Principals (attorney stakeholders) on sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company, establish and track funding and activities connected to corporate campaigns (internal and external) against Amazon, and provide sophisticated analysis on these topics.”

L7 means the seventh rung on Amazon’s corporate ladder. Jeff Bezos, CEO and world’s richest man, is L12. ER means employee relations. An “Intelligence Analyst” is essentially a spy for the company, informing those in leadership positions within the world’s largest corporation of anything that threatens their profits, primarily the organized resistance of workers. The demand for this type of high-level corporate goon has grown sharply since 2018, from 7 posts featuring the terms “GSO” or “GIP” in July of 2018 to 46 as of September 8, 2020, according to a report compiled by Thinknum.

In a more recent description of the position of Intelligence Analyst on LinkedIn, Amazon specifically writes: “Previous experience in Intelligence analysis and/or watch officer skill set in the intelligence community, the military, law enforcement, or a related global security role in the private sector” is a “preferred qualification”.

A search on LinkedIn of Amazon GSOC(Global Security Operation Center) employees yields results such as John A. Barrios, a senior manager of GSOC who formerly worked for the FBI for over 11 years, and Nathan Nguyen, a GSOC manager and former Intelligence analyst from the US Army. When the keyword “Amazon Intelligence” is entered, Joel Rodriguez, the Head of Amazon Intelligence in the Americas and a former Senior Intelligence Officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and former Intelligence Analyst for the Department of Justice, is one of the results.

Keith Alexander

In addition to its mid-level staff, Amazon has integrated leading figures of the US military apparatus into its company leadership. General Keith Alexander, the former National Security Agency (NSA) chief, will be joining Amazon’s board of directors, the central body responsible for overseeing the operations of the global conglomerate, with almost 800,000 full time employees. Alexander led the NSA from August 2005 to May 2010. From 2010 to 2013 he was head of Cyber Command, which has as its mission, according to the Department of Defense, to “ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.”

As whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed, the NSA, alongside the CIA, created a massive spying apparatus with the goal “to collect all the world’s digital communications, store them for ages and search through them at will.” The agencies created programs which could forcibly enter an individual’s electronic device and store their private information without consent, violating the constitutionally guaranteed “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Edward Snowden is now exiled in Russia for exposing this criminal conspiracy against democratic rights, and has been hounded by both US capitalist parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

Amazon is in the process of rapid expansion, with plans to invest tens of billions of dollars over the course of the year in order to greatly increase the company’s domination across myriad sectors of the economy. However, the growing militancy of Amazon workers, spurred by inadequate safety measures during the pandemic, threatens to derail their plans. Over the past several months, Amazon workers have engaged in localized spontaneous strikes around the US, together with strikes by thousands of workers in Europe. This has been alongside massive protests against police brutality around the world.

At present, a growing strike wave of teachers, students and workers opposed to “re-opening” the economy during the pandemic is emerging, which threatens to encourage broad layers of Amazon workers to take strike action.

Increasingly fearful of rank and file workers, and viewing them as the biggest threat to the company’s profits, Amazon is ramping up its spying operations, in line with its growing integration with the US military and intelligence apparatus. The news of General Alexander joining Amazon’s leadership was revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing two days ago. Amazon’s management, composed of leading members of the capitalist class and headed by the world’s richest man, intend to use the expertise cultivated by its former state and military staff against “domestic terrorism” as a weapon against rank and file workers, who are increasingly connected through online forms of communication. Amazon is not unique in using these methods. In 2015, Walmart hired an intelligence-gathering service from the military contractor Lockheed Martin to survive and weed out workers’ resistance.

Amazon workers must not be intimidated. The corporation’s surveillance crackdown is not a show of strength, but of weakness. It is terrified of the growing resistance of rank-and-file workers. In order to defend their lives and livelihood, teachers and autoworkers, with the support of the World Socialist Web Site, have formed rank and file committees, democratic organizations in the fullest sense of the term, as the beginning of a great struggle to unite all sections of the working class in a fight to ensure their safety and build a better world.

Trade unions confer with big business Liberals on how to revive Canadian capitalism

Roger Jordan

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is claiming that it will outline an “ambitious” agenda to revive the economy, create jobs, support a “Green transition,” and address social inequality when Parliament reopens September 23.

This is a fraud. Whatever the hype and spin, the government’s real agenda is to enforce a reckless return to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic, boost corporate profitability and “competitiveness,” and advance Canadian imperialism’s predatory interests around the world through rearmament and the Canada-US military-strategic partnership.

The trade unions are playing a critical role in helping the Liberals promote their phony “progressive” narrative and in crafting their class-war policies. Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) President Hassan Yussuff and Unifor head Jerry Dias met respectively last week with Trudeau and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Yussuff followed up his meeting with the prime minister by publicly demanding that the unions’ New Democratic Party (NDP) allies continue to ensure the minority Liberal government has the votes needed to survive in office.

All this is in keeping with the criminal role the unions have played throughout the pandemic—from their support for the massive bailout of the financial markets and the coming 20 percent cut in financial aid for those who have lost their jobs, to their insistence that educators, meatpackers and other workers forced to work in unsafe conditions amid the pandemic must not take “illegal” job action to protect their health and lives.

According to a CLC press release, at their meeting Yussuff urged Trudeau to support investment in “Green infrastructure,” broaden Employment Insurance eligibility, provide job training programs and increase funding for child care services.

Unifor President Jerry Dias’ principal concern in his meeting with Freeland was to secure government subsidies and tax concessions for the automakers who prior to the pandemic were making profits hand over fist. “Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna and others talk about having billions of dollars for a ‘Green transformation,’” said Dias. “Well if you’ve got it, and you want to play, there’s no bigger industry to start than the auto industry.”

Dias and Yussuff claim their consultations with government ministers are aimed at advancing the interests of “working people.” This is a sham. As their own remarks make clear, they want to ensure that corporate Canada secures enough public funds to remain “competitive” on the world market and can continue to attract investors by providing lavish payouts to their super-rich shareholders. Dias expressed this with his characteristic bluntness on the issue of the auto industry, noting that Canada has seen its global share of auto production slide rapidly since 1999. Stressing that investment in a “Green transition” could turn this around, he added, “The bottom line is the government is going to have to get serious. We’re looking at a transformation of the industry.”

This is the logical continuation of the unions’ corporatist partnership with big business and their alliance with the Liberal Party, the Canadian bourgeoisie’s traditional preferred party of government. Earlier this year, the CLC and Unifor were instrumental in creating the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), which placed laid-off workers on meagre rations of just $2,000 a month. Meanwhile, supported by the unions and New Democrats, the Liberal government, working in concert with the Bank of Canada and other state agencies, forked over a gargantuan $650 billion to the big banks and financial oligarchy with no strings attached.

Making clear that he wants this alliance to continue, Yussuff stressed in an interview with CBC that the NDP has an “obligation” to continue working with the minority Liberal government. This is pushing at an open door. The NDP pleaded for a coalition or other form of formal alliance with the Trudeau Liberal government both before and after the October 2019 election, and has repeatedly provided the votes to prop up the minority Liberal government during the pandemic. On the same CBC radio program where Yussuff urged the NDP to keep the Liberals in office, the NDP’s national director, Anne McGrath, said the Liberals would find in the NDP a “willing partner.”

Of course, Dias and Yussuff avoid mentioning the fact that the “Green transformation” of industry they so enthusiastically promote will, under capitalism, inevitably be carried out at the expense of the working class. The auto industry provides a stark example of this, since the assembling of electric vehicles involves far fewer and less complex components than traditional vehicles. Providing billions in government funds to the major automakers will thus allow them to accelerate plans that have been long in the making for the destruction of tens of thousands of auto jobs in the assembly and parts industries, and replace them with low-paid, temp and precariously employed workers.

The emergence of Dias and Yussuff as little more than corporate consultants for big business arises out of the unions’ reactionary pro-capitalist corporatism and Canadian nationalism. This is not confined to Canada. In Germany, the IG Metall trade union, which is the largest union by membership numbers in the world, is overseeing a similar “transformation” of the auto industry, which the union by its own admission expects to cost 300,000 jobs. At the steel company ThyssenKrupp, IG Metall works councillors are personally bullying older, higher-paid workers into taking early retirement to assist the company’s cost-cutting plans. In the airline industry, cabin crew and pilots unions at Lufthansa, Germany’s largest airline, organized demonstrations to support a government investment in the company that was tied to the destruction of 20,000 jobs and the slashing of wages and benefits for pilots.

Under conditions of a deepening global capitalist crisis, which is intensifying competition between the major powers for access to markets, raw materials and spheres of influence, exacerbating inter-imperialist antagonisms and raising the threat of war, the trade unions in every country are determined to prove their loyalty to the bourgeois state. In practice, this means collaborating in the enforcement of stepped up exploitation of the working class at home, and supporting the pursuit of imperialist economic and geostrategic interests abroad.

Unifor and the CLC made clear their readiness to follow this path in a series of joint statements and documents prepared with the government and business organizations during April and May. In one such statement, signed by Yussuff and Canadian Chamber of Commerce President Perrin Beatty on May 11, the CLC and corporate lobby group advanced the corporatist argument that the pandemic has “tied our well-being to one another like never before.” Going on to call for the setting up of a “national economic task force,” the pair continued, “We will enter recovery with substantial new public and private debt. The reversal of decades of economic globalization and international supply chains will create challenges for a trading nation like ours. We will need to revisit policies on health care infrastructure, strategic reserves of key supplies, and ensuring domestic production facilities for critical medical equipment. Canada requires a process to discuss these transformational changes and to avoid stakeholders going off in different directions.”

Making good on their pledge to prevent “stakeholders going off in different directions,” the unions have sabotaged all worker opposition to the ruling elite’s reckless back-to-work campaign. This can be seen most graphically with their smothering of all opposition to the dangerous reopening of schools, which is going ahead in spite of a spike in new COVID-19 infections.

A vital element in the unions’ effort to block the eruption of mass working class struggles is their fraudulent claim that the Liberals represent a “progressive” alternative to the pro-austerity Conservatives.

To be sure, the Conservatives and their new leader Erin O’Toole, speaking for the most rapacious sections of big business, have denounced the meagre aid the Liberals provided the jobless under the CERB as “too generous” and a “disincentive to work” and are demanding a timetable for a balanced budget. But the differences between the Liberals and Conservatives over economic policy are purely tactical. They revolve around how best to boost the fortunes of big business, while preventing the eruption of mass working class opposition and certain sectional conflicts within the ruling elite over energy policy. The latter include whether to prioritize the interests of Big Oil or the development of a major Canadian presence in the lucrative Green industries of the future.

As for foreign policy, both parties are committed to spending tens of billions of dollars on new fleets of warships and fighter jets and stand full-square with Washington in its reckless military-strategic offensives against Russia and China.

Big business strongly backed the Liberals’ management of the first stage of the pandemic, that is, its ability to keep the lid on the class struggle, by enlisting the unions support, while bailing out the financial markets and presiding over job losses that in percentage terms were even greater than the Great Depression. Now the various factions of the corporate elite are pressuring the government to ensure its economic recovery measures are best-tailored to their respective interests, while strengthening the overall global competitive and strategic position of Canadian capitalism.

As Goldy Haider, chief executive officer of the Business Council of Canada, put it recently, “The choice is not spending or austerity. The issue is how much should be spent. Are their limits?”

Past experience has shown that while strict limits are always imposed on spending for health, education and social services, irrespective of which party is in power and irrespective of crying social needs, no restrictions exist on the amount of public funds to be lavished on the corporate elite and the military. In addition to the $650 billion transferred to big business and the financial oligarchy earlier this year, the Trudeau government has continued to implement its plan to increase military spending by over 70 percent by 2026 so as to modernize the armed forces in readiness for waging war to defend Canadian imperialist interests around the globe.

Meanwhile, critical social services have been starved of funding. A recent report by the Parliamentary Budget Office examining federal transfers to the provinces over the past decade found that the Tory Harper and Liberal Trudeau governments slashed a combined $14.5 billion from the equalization payments the provinces use to fund public services. This figure is in addition to the cutbacks in health transfers enforced by the Trudeau government, which followed Harper’s Tories in imposing a below-inflation annual increase of just 3 percent on these payments.

Budget Officer Yves Giroux, who has himself argued that the federal government must rapidly move toward reining in state expenditure, recently observed that due to the economic crisis federal equalization payments will fall even further in the wake of the pandemic, since they are tied to a three-year average of GDP (gross domestic product) growth. This will invariably mean further cuts to the country’s already dilapidated public services.

Russia holds regional elections amidst growing political crisis

Andrea Peters

Regional elections began Friday in Russia, with early voting starting across the country. Polls close on Sunday. Balloting is taking place in 83 regions. New governors will be chosen in 18 of these areas. Elsewhere, residents are casting votes for a variety of local representative bodies and in referendums.

The closely watched elections come as the government of President Vladimir Putin is beset by internal and external crises—mass anti-government protests in Belarus, which is the last Russian-allied state on the Russia’s western frontier, escalating tensions with Germany over the alleged poisoning of Alexei Navalny, ongoing anti-Kremlin demonstrations in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk, and the continuing spread of COVID-19.

Some of this weekend’s races are viewed as a barometer for the level of social discontent with the Kremlin, which worked in a number of regions to shore up its position by keeping opposition candidates off the ballot.

The strongest challenges to sitting governors backed by the Putin government are being mounted in of Irkutsk and Arkhangelsk, areas where there were relatively high levels of opposition to constitutional changes crafted by the Kremlin and recently passed through a nationwide popular referendum.

In the Siberian region of Irkutsk, which encompasses Lake Baikal, a Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) candidate is challenging an incumbent who was installed in office by Moscow after the previous KPRF governor, Sergey Levchenko, left in a “forced-voluntary” removal. Anger over the Kremlin’s intervention is intersecting with popular opposition to local leaders’ corruption, pollution and environmental damage in the resource-rich region. Last year, massive floods linked to climate change hit the area killing dozens and causing widespread evacuations.

In the far northern province of Arkhangelsk, similar issues have been emerging. The current governor, Igor Orlov, has earned the disgust of the population because of his role in working with Moscow to transform an area in the ecologically sensitive region into a massive trash dump for the country’s capital.

Lead challenger is Irina Chirkova, who is from the A Just Russia (SR) party, which is identified with mass protests that erupted in 2018 and 2019 over these issues. The SR is part of the “official” or “systemic” opposition in Russia, which means that it pretends at moments to oppose the Kremlin but works hand-in-glove with it on all major questions.

Arkhangelsk was also the site of nuclear accident in 2019. An explosion at an offshore military facility caused a massive radiation spike in the region, and terrified residents bought up all available supplies of iodine in local pharmacies.

In the neighboring Komi Republic, which shares the land impacted by the proposed landfill with Arkhangelsk, it is possible that the KPRF will win the largest number of seats in the regional parliament. KPRF regional head Oleg Mikhailov supports an emerging Komi independence movement, which is tapping into anger over the maltreatment of the region’s indigenous population and discontent over economic and social conditions in the area.

The regionalist sentiments cropping up in Komi point to bigger dangers facing Moscow—the prospect that Russia could break apart along geographical lines. As popular anger towards the central government grows over poverty and inequality, local elites seek to capitalize on their control over resource-rich areas, and foreign opponents of the Kremlin pursue a policy of break-up as a means to dominate the Eurasian landmass.

In Novosibirsk, an industrial region in southern Siberia, a slew of candidates are running for regional assembly and city council seats that have been held overwhelmingly by the ruling United Russia (UR) party and the KPRF, which is nominally an “opposition” party, but works closely with the Kremlin.

Sergei Boyko is leading an electoral coalition group called “Novosibirsk 2020,” which was set up by oppositionist Alexei Navalny. The group’s efforts are directed at putting into action so-called “smart voting,” a balloting scheme devised by Navalny to put pressure on United Russia and its political appendages. In Novosibirsk and throughout the country, Navalny’s supporters are telling people to “vote smart” by picking any candidate running against a Kremlin-backed incumbent, without any regard to the challenger’s policies and perspective.

Having identified in each of the 1,167 races happening across Russia whom people “should” vote for in order to “stop” Putin, they are throwing their support behind all and sundry, including the far right, the Stalinists, the nationalists and the pro-Western liberals.

In the southern Siberian city of Novosibirsk, where there is widespread discontent over the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, it is possible that the efforts of Novosibirsk 2020 or other challengers in the legislative races will make a significant dent in the number of seats held by the UR and KPRF. The aim of the “smart voting” practice is to completely disorient the popular opposition towards the Kremlin welling up within the population and to take advantage of rifts within the Russian ruling elite.

Navalny’s operations may also have some impact on the election in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, where Rustam Minnikhanov is seeking another presidential term. On September 9, just two days before the start of balloting, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) released details of its investigation into the Minnikhanov family’s real estate holdings.

The oppositionist himself has reportedly just emerged from the medically induced coma in which he was placed after falling severely ill while traveling back to Moscow from the Siberian city of Tomsk. The government of Germany, where Navalny is now being treated, has alleged Kremlin involvement in Navalany’s supposed poisoning, which the Merkel administration claims was caused by the Soviet nerve agent Novichok. Tensions between Berlin and Moscow are skyrocketing, with the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would bring further Russian energy supplies to the German market, now being called into question.

Russia’s regional elections come as the Putin government confronts multiple crises. The alleged poisoning of Navalny has unleashed another wave of anti-Russian hysteria in the West, with heads of government and leading newspapers filled with denunciations of the Kremlin.

Moscow’s last remaining ally on its Western frontier, the Belarusian government of Aleksandr Lukashenko, continues to teeter on the brink. It is resorting to repression, violence, and arrests in an effort to stay in power. Lukashenko confronts a right-wing, pro-free-market opposition with close ties to the West, but also a mass movement from below of workers disgusted by the government’s policies.

The Kremlin is, above all, terrified that the working-class discontent finding expression in events in Belarus will erupt in Russia, where workers share similar economic and political grievances and overwhelmingly speak the same language. Recent events in Russia’s far east, where the Kremlin’s removal of an elected governor provoked mass protests in Khabarovsk, have made clear that the era of global social protest is also hitting Russia.

At the same time, coronavirus cases have topped 1 million and are once again the uptick. Moscow, like all other countries, is openly pursuing a death policy. Alexander Myasanikov, the head of the country’s coronavirus information service, told the press on Friday, “ You should be glad that the number [of cases] is growing, because the more asymptomatic and mild forms, the faster we will achieve herd population immunity.”

Ordinary people, however, see the matter differently. In Volgograd, parents are objecting to the re-opening of schools, using the media to vent their opposition to forcing children into the classrooms. “I have only one question,” said one parent to a local news outlet, “Why was it necessary to open schools and kindergartens now, when there is a sharp increase in the number of infected people in the region?”

Thousands sleeping rough after the burning down of Moria refugee camp on Lesbos

John Vassilopoulos

What little remained of the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos/Lesvos was destroyed after secondary fires broke out on Wednesday evening. A terrible blaze destroyed most of the site on Tuesday. According to the local news site stonisi.gr, two fires broke out almost simultaneously Wednesday at around 7:30 p.m.

The first fire was in an olive grove next to the camp where tents and nylon shacks salvaged from the day before had been stacked, while the second was in the northern section of the camp where fuel storage units were located. There were hundreds of refugees and migrants, mainly families, in both locations who had been made homeless by the previous fire. Underscoring the possibility of arson, a smaller fire on Thursday afternoon at the camp site destroyed the few tents that remained.

Migrants sleep on the road near the Moria refugee camp on the northeastern island of Lesbos, Greece, September 10, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris]

Prevented by the police from making their way to the port city of Mytilene, thousands have been forced to sleep rough on roadside verges and on hillsides with no access to food and water for three consecutive nights. Shocking footage and pictures show refugees of all ages sleeping rough surrounded by their meagre possessions. Some were able to find shelter in a church while one group slept in a cemetery where they reportedly had access to water.

Aid organisations have been prevented from distributing tents and other emergency supplies by blockades mounted by what are described as “local residents,” more likely fascists, without the police intervening.

The Greek New Democracy government is using the disaster to demonise and dehumanise Moria’s former inmates. In a press conference Thursday, government spokesman Stelios Petsas blamed the initial fire on refugees protesting being isolated after 35 tested positive for COVID-19. “[S]ome people do not respect the country that is hosting them, and they strive to prove they are not looking for a passport to a better life,” he declared

Sections of the media have chimed in to portray a humanitarian disaster as a question of “law and order” and “national security.” Without any evidence a report in the right-wing daily Kathimerini Friday cited officers involved with the investigation into the fire, jointly run by police, national intelligence and counter-terrorism forces, that they are “honing in on a group of 30 young Afghan men ... who travelled to Greece without their families and had been linked to instances of drug dealing and extortion at the camp.”

New Democracy’s deputy leader and Minister for Development and Investment, Adonis Georgiadis, told Skai TV, “I don’t feel at all duty bound whenever they burn down their houses to build new ones for them.” He added, “I am very sad to see them like this. However, we must take into account the fact that these people set fire to the camp themselves.”

Using the word “houses” is a lie and an insult. Frequently described as “hell on earth” the camp was described last year as “the recreation of a concentration camp on European soil” by Jean Ziegler, a member of the committee of experts advising the UN Human Rights Council. Massively overcrowded, the camp detained 13,000 inmates in shacks and tents when it only had capacity for 2,800.

Under these conditions the government sought to turn Moria into a de facto death camp following the rise in cases of COVID-19 by imposing a blanket quarantine on the inmates, allowing the virus to tear through the camp.

In a statement last week, Doctors without Borders slammed the plan as “ill-considered and potentially very damaging.” “We cannot see the justification of the enforced mass quarantine,” said Caroline Willemen, the organisation’s COVID-19 field coordinator on Lesbos, adding “what’s worse, we know these measures will worsen our patients’ already deteriorating mental health.

“Right now in Moria, there are elderly people with underlying health conditions, pregnant women, as well as children who are afraid and are being exposed to more trauma as a result of this policy. The government should be protecting these people, but instead by keeping them hemmed in with COVID-19 in the camp, they are exposing them.”

Plans to temporarily house the homeless refugees were set into motion, with helicopters transporting tents to state-owned land behind the shooting range near the village of Panagiouda on the east coast of Lesbos. This is part of the government’s longer-term plan to establish closed detention centres on the island. In the Thursday press conference, Petsas declared a four-month national emergency on Lesbos, stating that those who started the fire “did so because they considered that if they torch Moria, they will indiscriminately leave the island. We tell them they did not understand. They will not leave because of the fire.”

Testimonies from aid workers on the ground stated that the only reason there were no deaths from the fire was because the camp was not closed. “Can you imagine if the fire had started in a couple of months when they had fenced it in with razor wire as they were planning to do?” said Philippa Kempson of the Hope Project to the Guardian. “You would have had 12,000 people trapped in an inferno.”

Former inmates staged a protest in front of police roadblocks Friday against the creation of a second camp. “Singing and banging plastic bottles, they march up and down a stretch of coastal road, calling for the right to leave Lesbos,” reported Bethany Bell, BBC News correspondent on Lesbos.

To enforce its plans in the face of mounting opposition the government has sent additional police units to the island, which reportedly arrived on Friday by air. Contingents of riot police vans, patrol cruisers and water cannon vehicles also arrived by sea at the port of Mytilene.

Commenting on the developments in Moria, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson tried to absolve the EU from any responsibility. Stating that “Migrant camps on Greek soil are primarily the responsibility of the Greek government,” she noted “the failure [of] the previous commission to actually reach a common European migration and asylum policy.”

There is no evidence that the present Commission has plans to deviate from the anti-refugee policy of the entire EU, with Greece acting as a gatekeeper. The commission has only agreed to fund the transport of 400 unaccompanied children onto the mainland. Germany has committed to take a thousand additional refugees and the Netherlands a minuscule 50.

The hellhole that was Moria was created under the direct instigation of the EU, which struck a filthy deal with Turkey in 2016, allowing for the internment of any refugees on Greek soil, or more properly its islands, before being deported back to Turkey.

Plans to set up closed camps on Moria are also in line with EU policy. Following a visit to Lesbos on Friday, European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas announced that the Moria camp would be replaced by “a modern facility.”

The pseudo-left party Syriza has sought to make political capital out of the disaster. In a statement released on Wednesday, it said, “Before the election ND was pledging to close Moria. The only thing it accomplished was to take over a facility with 5,600 people and exceed 20,000 before the programme of decongestion began. Without putting pressure for a collective European initiative, [Prime Minister Kyriakos] Mitsotakis has rendered Greece into a warehouse of souls.”

This turns reality on its head. It was under Syriza that the EU-Turkey deal was signed, turning the pseudo-left party into a willing jailor of refugees. ND builds its policy on the foundations laid by Syriza.