In fascistic Independence Day speech, Brazil’s Bolsonaro condemns “strikes, social disorder”

Miguel Andrade

On September 7, Brazil’s Independence Day, the country’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro delivered a far-right rant centered on what he defined as a national identity based upon “fear of god,” “respect for the family” and a struggle for “liberty” and against “communism.”

In his two-and-a-half-minute speech delivered on prime-time national TV and radio, Bolsonaro omitted any mention of the social disaster caused by the criminal response to the COVID-19 pandemic by his government and the Brazilian ruling class as a whole.

Instead, he presented a short and twisted history of Brazil in which “Brazilians always spilled their blood for liberty.”

The short statement began by resurrecting old tropes about “racial harmony” in Brazil; that “national identity began to be drawn by means of miscegenation between Indians, whites and blacks.” These conceptions have been used historically to impose “national unity,” deny social inequality and portray movements opposing it as agents of “foreign meddling.”

Bolsonaro reviewing naval troops in Rio de Janeiro (Credit: Agência Brasil)

Bolsonaro then drew a straight line from independence in 1822 to the delirious claim that Brazil had beaten back “numerous invasions” in the 19th century—which was actually dominated by civil wars. He then skipped to the Brazilian military’s participation in World War II “to help the world defeat fascism and Nazism” and, finally, his main theme, to the 1964 US-backed coup against the bourgeois-nationalist President João Goulart.

Bolsonaro stated that “in the 1960s, when the shadow of communism threatened us, millions of Brazilians who identified with the national desire to preserve democratic institutions took to the streets against a country gripped by ideological radicalization, strikes, social disorder and generalized corruption.”

He concluded by portraying his own administration as the continuation of this history, stating “we have won yesterday, we are winning now and we will always win.”

The open praise for the bloody 1964 coup, which established a 21-year dictatorship and initiated a series of US-backed military takeovers across South America, as a movement fulfilling the desire of “millions” in a moment of “social disorder” and “strikes” is not only a historical falsification, but a grave threat.

Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who spent his whole 28-year career as a House backbencher for the state of Rio de Janeiro making apologies for the cruelest acts of military repression of the regime, has been obsessed with “social disorder” breaking out in Brazil since the first day of his administration.

His coup threats are generally dismissed by authorities in Congress, the Supreme Court, state governments and the press as delusional and inconsequential. This was the ruling establishment’s response in April, after Bolsonaro took part in a fascist rally in front of the Army headquarters in the capital of Brasília calling for the outlawing of the opposition to his gross mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their attitude was summed up by the conservative Estado de S. Paulo daily, which editorialized: “It is comforting to realize, however, that, this time, authorities from every institution in the Republic reacted strongly against another offense to democracy by Bolsonaro and his followers.”

Only three days after Bolsonaro’s Independence Day fascist appeal, the outgoing Supreme Court president, Justice Dias Toffoli, stated that he had “never seen directly on the part of Bolsonaro or his ministers any action against democracy.” This statement was made even as the Supreme Court is judging cases linking Bolsonaro to the organization of the far-right demonstrations in which the president regularly takes part, and amid the Justice Ministry’s drawing up of a so-called “anti-fascist list” of public servants, mostly law-enforcement officials, who are seen as not sufficiently adhering to Bolsonaro’s drive to build a far-right base within the police forces—all but setting them up as targets for his supporters.

Bolsonaro’s threats and open references to the legitimacy of a military takeover stem not from his psychotic personality, as deranged as it is, but from the broader requirements of Brazilian capitalism, whose crisis has been massively deepened by the world impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As with Donald Trump in the United States and other fascistic world leaders, Bolsonaro is not the cause, but the product of a broad turn towards authoritarianism in face of the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s.

The particular focus of his speech on the role of “strikes” in the situation in Brazil in 1964, which was chiefly characterized by a broad working-class offensive which the military feared would get out of the control of the bourgeois-reformist Goulart, is significant. It is not merely a right-wing historical viewpoint, but rather a direct response to the eruption of working class opposition to the homicidal policies of the Brazilian and world bourgeoisie towards the COVID-19 pandemic and their use of the crisis to further advance their interests with corporate bailouts, austerity measures and the driving down of wages.

This reaction is already being seen across Brazil, where autoworkers have begun fighting against a jobs bloodbath, teachers and parents are opposing a homicidal back-to-school drive and Brazilian Post Office workers are entering the fourth week of a militant strike against the destruction of wages and working conditions.

Moreover, outrage over the absolute indifference of the ruling class to the more than 130,000 COVID-19 deaths and more than 4.3 million cases is joined by increasing popular anger over mass impoverishment and rising inflation, as the government cuts its so-called emergency relief to 67 million poor, informal and unemployed workers in half, to 300 reais (US$50) monthly.

Just two days after Bolsonaro’s speech, it was reported that in several cities, markets were rationing sales of staples such as rice, milk and cooking oil. Prices of these commodities have gone up almost 20 percent since the beginning of the year due to the anarchic pursuit of profit by major capitalist producers, who were exporting their production amid a record fall in the value of the national currency, the real.

The cut to emergency relief is now being combined with a massive spike in official unemployment figures, previously hidden by workers dropping out of the workforce in order to take care of their families amid the uncontrolled spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This socially explosive situation is threatening the Brazilian ruling class with a major confrontation with the working class, and it is preparing accordingly. Bolsonaro’s threats closely mirror the terrified response to mass working class opposition in the United States on the part of the Trump administration, with which Bolsonaro has worked in close coordination on many geopolitical issues.

His condemnation of “ideological radicalization,” generally mocked by pundits as inconsequential “Cold War lunacy,” is a close imitation of Trump’s own denunciations of Democratic mayors, and even the tried and tested corporate shill Joe Biden as “radical leftists.” These denunciations are directed not against right-wingers in the Brazilian Congress or the unions, but against working class opposition, which the government already denounced as “terrorist” when demonstrations erupted in June, amid the worldwide wave of opposition to police violence and inequality stemming from the murder of George Floyd.

Preparations for repression involve many other political actors beyond Bolsonaro and his inner circle This was highlighted by the chilling censorship imposed by Rio de Janeiro courts against Brazil’s most powerful media group, the Globo conglomerate. Globo was prohibited from publishing material it had obtained from the investigation into the involvement of Bolsonaro’s son, Flávio, a Senator for Rio de Janeiro, in a money laundering scheme. The case ties the Bolsonaro family to the “Crime Office” gang, one of Rio’s infamous “militias” which terrorize working-class areas of the city and its outskirts. Globo claimed that the Rio de Janeiro Attorney General’s Office was preparing to formally charge Flávio and moving toward an indictment of Bolsonaro himself.

The corruption charges against Bolsonaro have been seen as a “cheap” means to remove him from office without involving a formal impeachment vote, which the Workers Party (PT)-led opposition has deemed “too costly” politically. At the same time, the censorship drive that has accompanied the worsening of the Brazilian social crisis indicates that significant sections of the ruling class may consider such charges also “too costly,” as they may not be able to remove Bolsonaro without further destabilizing the whole of Brazilian capitalism.

Under these conditions, the most urgent task facing Brazilian workers is breaking free from the political straitjacket imposed by the official opposition to Bolsonaro, led by the PT and its pseudo-left apologists in the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party). They are working to subordinate the growing movement of the working class to the stability of the capitalist state, ultimately collaborating with the ruling class in the strengthening of the repressive forces.

UK firms announce hundreds of thousands of redundancies

Barry Mason

Hundreds of thousands of workers are being laid off in the UK, as corporations impose restructuring programmes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, the BBC revealed that 3,672 employers had given notice of more than 300,000 planned redundancies in June and July. The BBC obtained the figures under a Freedom of Information request. Under government legislation, firms planning to make more than 20 workers redundant at a specified workplace must give notice to allow for a 90-day collective consultation period. These are sent to the government via a form called HR1—the total number of which the BBC was able to access.

The BBC revealed, “1,784 firms made plans to cut nearly 150,000 jobs in July almost a sevenfold increase on July 2019 … In June, 1,888 employers filed plans for 156,000 job cuts, a sixfold increase on the previous year.” Firms planning less than 20 redundancies do not have to give notice, so the number of jobs slated for redundancy is probably much higher.

Among the firms giving notice of redundancies in July were high street chemists Boots, which announced 4,000 job losses, while high-end retail chain store John Lewis announced 1,300 jobs were to go. High street staple Marks and Spencer announced 950 job losses, with a further 7,000 announced in August. Azzurri, which owns Italian restaurant and food outlet Zizzi, announced it would close 75 outlets with the loss of 1,200 jobs. Furniture retailer DFS is cutting 200 jobs.

Other companies announcing substantial job cuts over the summer include Pizza Express, Virgin Atlantic, department store chain Debenhams, TSB bank group, Centrica (the energy group which owns British Gas), the Royal Mail Group and the Arcadia, the clothes retail group that includes Topshop and Dorothy Perkins.

Nye Cominetti, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation think tank, said of the survey, “The businesses making the announcements during the summer even while furloughing [UK government job retention scheme] was still in place are not expecting any big pickup in demand any time soon … this data, taken alongside other business surveys and forecasts from both the Bank (Bank of England) and the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility), all paint a fairly bleak—and consistent—picture of the next couple of months …”

The figures obtained by the BBC underscore the result of a survey published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) along with the job recruitment agency Adecco. Describing a “challenging autumn” for pay and job prospects, the survey of more than 2,000 employers showed one in three expected to cut jobs in the third quarter of the year. It noted 38 percent of private companies expected to make redundancies, compared to 16 percent of public sector employers.

Its measure of the net employment balance, the difference in the proportion of employers expecting to take staff on to those expecting to let staff go, had fallen from -4 to -8 over the summer. This was the lowest figure since the survey was first produced in 2013.

Workers face further pay cuts, with the survey showing that companies would be restraining pay over the next year. Even those planning a pay rise would not go above a 1 percent increase. This represents a freeze, with inflation at 1 percent.

Commenting, Gerwyn Davies, a senior advisor at CIPD, said, “This is the weakest set of data we’ve seen for several years. Until now, redundancies have been low—no doubt due to the Job Retention Scheme—but we expect to see more redundancies come through this autumn, especially in the private sector once the scheme closes.”

The cut in job numbers, “will likely be accompanied by a pay squeeze for workers…” He expected to see a “freezing [of] recruitment, reducing hours or restricting overtime, or cuts to bonuses and deferring salary increases.”

The list of coming redundancies is on top of the jobs lost during the pandemic. An Independent newspaper survey estimates that over 185,000 job cuts have already been announced over the last six-month. This includes:

* March 30: BrightHouse (household goods, hire purchase), 2,400 at risk

* April 28: British Airways, 12,000

* May 5: Virgin Atlantic, 3,150

* May 19: Ovo Energy, 2,600

* May 20: Rolls Royce, 9,000

* June 4: Lookers (car dealership), 1,500

* June 10: The Restaurant Group (Frankie and Benny’s), 3,000

* June 15: Travis Perkins (builders’ suppliers), 2,500

* June 15: Jaguar Land Rover, 1,100

* June 25: Royal Mail, 2,000

* June 30: Airbus, 1,700

* July 1: Harrods (retail), 700

* July 9: John Lewis, 1,300 at risk

* July 30: Pendragon (motor retailer), 1,800

* August 5: WH Smith, 1,500

* August 11: Debenhams, 2,500

* August 18: Marks and Spencer, 7,000

* August 27: Pret a Manger, 2,800

* September 3: Costa Coffee (coffee chain), 1,650

Jobs continue to go in car manufacturing. BMW Mini intends to cut 400 out of 950 GI Group agency jobs at its Cowley plant in Oxford. Those affected will be informed in mid-September. The firm is to move from a three-shift day to a two-shift day in October. The company says it will also cut a small number of core employee jobs through voluntary redundancies and early retirement.

Restaurant chain Pizza Hut is closing 29 of its 245 outlets with the loss of 450 jobs. The chain has over 5,000 workers in the UK. It is seeking to use an insolvency mechanism to reduce its rental costs.

Costa Coffee, owned by Coca-Cola, has reopened 2,400 of its 2,700 outlets following a six-week shutdown. It plans to cut staff numbers by 1,650 mainly through the abolition of the assistant manager role.

IHS Markit chief business economist Chris Williamson stated, “Worryingly, many companies are already preparing for tougher times ahead, notably via further fierce job cutting.” In August, the UK economy officially went into recession for the first time in 11 years. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of economic decline. For April to June the economy shrank by just over 20 percent compared to the previous quarter.

The job retention scheme is due to close completely at the end of October. The scheme has kept millions of workers on company payrolls through government financial support, under which the state paid 80 percent of employee’s wages—already slashed to 70 percent. Major corporations, to remain competitive, are preparing for the end of the state’s largesse by laying off thousands. There is a fear among some bourgeois commentators and political representatives that a sudden end to the scheme could lead to social upheaval. A Treasury Select Committee of MPs has called for a targeted extension of the furlough scheme.

While the official unemployment rate is currently just under 4 percent, the Bank of England expects it to rise to 7.5 percent following the end of the furlough scheme. Other estimates warn that unemployment could almost treble to 15 percent.

Job cuts on the scale already carried out and those to be made soon can only be imposed due to the connivance of the trade unions, who have not lifted a finger in opposition. The collaboration of the unions in job losses extends to their prior agreement on “redundancy caps,” such as the 10 percent of redundancies accepted by the Unite union for the airline industry. As the WSWS noted, “If Unite’s stated redundancy cap is enforced, this will mean the destruction of 4,500 jobs at BA, 1,500 at EasyJet, 1,750 at Ryanair and 1,350 at Airbus.”

Floods inundate Sudan amid escalating economic crisis

Jean Shaoul

A month of torrential rains has brought record-breaking floods to Sudan, killing at least 100 people, injuring 46, and destroying more than 100,000 homes. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost everything they owned.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that more than 557,000 people had already been “affected” by this year’s floods. As Sudan’s rainy season lasts from June to October and always brings flooding—last year’s floods affected 400,000 people—the country is likely to face more rains and displacement.

The OCHA warned that the humanitarian situation in Sudan is worsening and that the supplies needed to respond to the crisis are running out, while the destruction of roads has made it difficult to deliver aid to communities in need. Access to clean water has been affected, with around 2,000 water sources broken or contaminated, increasing the danger of water borne diseases.

The hardest hit has been the capital Khartoum, where the Blue and White Nile Rivers meet, as the Nile burst its banks, demolishing everything in its way. Blue Nile and River Nile states have seen similar devastation, while the Gezira, Gadarif, West Kordofan, and South Darfur regions have reported damage. At least 16 of Sudan’s 18 states have seen some flood damage.

The level of the Blue Nile hit a record high of 17.58 metres due to heavy seasonal rains in Sudan and Ethiopia, the source of the Blue Nile that accounts for about 80 percent of its waters. It is the highest since the 1912 flood in Sudan when the level reached 17.14 meters. Further heavy rains are forecast for neighbouring Ethiopia and parts of Sudan.

The volume of rain has been the highest on record. Marwa Taha, a climate change expert, told Al Jazeera, “But this year we’ve seen an increase in the amount of rainfall because of climate change and so the Nile has flooded more than before. In addition, a lot of trees have been cut down to make place for residential areas near the Nile, affecting the valleys where the water would flow through.”

The rising Nile floodwaters could also inundate one of Sudan’s ancient archaeological sites at Al-Bajrawiya, the capital of the Kushite Kingdom of 2,600 years ago that also includes the famous Meroe pyramids, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Marc Maillot, head of the French Archaeological Unit in the Sudan Antiquities Service, said, “The floods had never affected the site before.”

Teams are building sandbag walls and pumping out water to prevent damage to the site, which is usually some 500 metres away from the river.

Sudan has declared a national emergency for three months and designated the country a natural disaster zone.

While some tents have been erected to accommodate the displaced, many families have had to sleep in the open on whatever dry land they could find in Khartoum. Ezz Aldin Hussein, an engineer whose home in south Khartoum was badly damaged, blamed the government. He told Al-Jazeera, “The rainy season is known to come every year, but we don’t see the government seriously prepare for it.”

Not only have successive governments failed to take preventative measures to minimize flood damage, they have also failed to make basic preparations to help people affected.

As Hussein explained, when he called the police and civil defence authorities for help, “no one came to help us.” People have had to rely on neighbours and charities for help.

The government’s failure to help people who have lost everything in the floods has added to the mounting perception that Sudan’s new military-dominated transitional “technocratic” government, headed by Dr Abdalla Hamdok, differs little in substance from the regime of former President Omar al-Bashir. Al-Bashir, who came to power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989, was overthrown in a pre-emptive coup by the Sudanese military, with the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, in April last year after months of anti-government protests.

In practice, the country is ruled by the deputy chairman of the Transitional Military Council (TMC), Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF), widely hated for its brutal operations in the Darfur conflict. The RSF, more powerful than the Sudanese army, controls most of Sudan’s towns and cities.

On June 30, tens of thousands of Sudanese demonstrators took to the streets of Khartoum and other major cities demanding change, including a full transition to democracy and civilian rule.

The government’s handling of the pandemic has been widely criticized. As cases emerged, widely believed to have been transmitted by the hundreds of Sudanese migrant workers returning from Egypt and the UAE in March because of the outbreak, the government sent them to quarantine centres. Conditions were so bad that many left prematurely. Students returning from Wuhan, where the virus was first detected, protested at the airport when the government tried to put them into quarantine, forcing the government to let them go home.

The government imposed a nationwide lockdown in April. Police beat up and arrested doctors, including the head of the largest maternity hospital in Sudan, as they were heading to work even though they were carrying travel permits.

Dozens of health centres, including hospitals, closed after the outbreak of the pandemic, with many doctors refusing to work because of the lack of protective equipment.

Since the government lifted the lockdown and reopened its borders, the number of cases and deaths has doubled to reach just under 13,500 cases and 833 deaths.

The lockdown left millions of Sudan’s day labourers without income, as the government provided no safety net. Inflation running at 100 percent and unemployment at 25 percent compounded their plight. Sudan’s $34.5-billion economy contracted 2.5 percent in 2019, with a further 8 percent expected this year, exacerbating a fiscal crisis that has sent living costs soaring and sparked the mass protests that led to Bashir’s ouster.

Sudan is seeking an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan that entails persuading the Trump administration to drop its long-standing listing of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism—although most long-running US sanctions were removed in 2017—and settling or rescheduling its $1.3 billion arrears to the IMF and $57.5 billion external debt. The $3 billion pledged by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi last year comes nowhere near resolving Sudan’s economic crisis and has not been followed by further aid.

The Hamdok government is looking at scrapping subsidies for fuel products that would trim about $2.5 billion from the budget and regaining the assets, believed to be worth $3.5 to $4 billion, illicitly stolen by al-Bashir and his cronies.

Key to gaining US consent to an IMF loan is the agreement to pay about $826 million (up from a previous $300 million deal) to the families of the 200 or more people killed in the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania by al-Qaeda in 1998, allegedly with the support of the al-Bashir regime. While the new government has agreed to pay compensation, it is unclear how it will raise the money to do so. This follows Sudan’s payment in February of $30 million to the families of 17 US Navy sailors killed in the 2000 suicide-bombing of the USS Cole, although Sudan’s government “explicitly denies” any involvement in the attack.

Last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Khartoum to press the US’s demands, including the strengthening of Sudan’s relations with Israel following the UAE’s “normalization” of its relations with Israel as part of its closer alignment with Saudi Arabia and the UAE against Iran. It follows the meeting in February between General Abdul Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto head of state, and Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Uganda. This contrasts with the al-Bashir regime that was aligned with Qatar, Turkey, and Russia, although it had more recently sought to gain US support.

Sudan is under pressure to resolve multiple long-running armed conflicts that threaten the further breakup of the country following South Sudan’s secession in 2011. The government has signed a peace deal, which covers issues such as land ownership, power sharing, and the return of the millions displaced by the fighting, with five of seven rebel groups in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, aimed at ending 17 years of conflict in the western region of Darfur and southern states.

Millions in the US choke on hazardous air as West Coast fires continue to rage

Kayla Costa

As fires continue to rage across the West Coast of the United States, millions of people have suffered from the destruction of their homes, the deaths of loved ones and animals, mass evacuation, and the health risks posed by hazardous air quality. The 2020 fire season has quickly spiraled into a social and environmental catastrophe, far surpassing California’s last historic Camp Fire in 2018.

Roughly 100 large fires, some of which have merged into massive complexes, have broken historical records as 3.4 million acres have burned in California, joined by over one million acres in Oregon and over 600,000 acres in Washington.

Experts can only describe the fires as “unprecedented” in their size, speed, and destruction. To give a sense of the nature of these flames, 900,000 acres burned in a single 72-hour period in Oregon alone.

Thirty-three confirmed deaths have been counted as of Sunday, including a one-year-old boy in Renton, Washington. Dozens were missing in Oregon over the weekend, with rescue crews working to identify them.

The western US wildfires, seen from space, on Sept 9, 2020. (NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin)

Further, tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, sometimes scrambling in a matter of minutes as flames quickly approach their neighborhoods. About 12 percent of the Oregon state population, or more than 500,000 people, were given varying degrees of evacuation alerts for the weekend.

“We didn't know what to grab. We didn’t pack. Who knows what to do when you're going through this?” Nailah Garner told KOMO News regarding her husband’s and her experience fleeing their home in a small forested town of Vida, Oregon. After the fires swept through the area and she returned to the apocalyptic scenes, Garner commented, “It's all gone, and it looks like a war zone hit it.”

Many have sought refuge with family members or friends who lived in less risky areas, soon after being forced to pack up again and travel further as evacuation orders expanded. Others have traveled to evacuation sites that were hastily set up at churches, schools, fairgrounds, and event centers.

Given the heavy agricultural importance of many of the affected regions, families have had to find shelter not only for themselves but for their livestock as well. The Oregon State Fairgrounds is currently housing 500 animals and 1,500 families.

The National Interagency Fire Center reported on Sunday that over 30,000 firefighters and support personnel were deployed to fires across the US. While the majority of the fires are along the West Coast, firefighters are combating blazes in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.

While 30,000 may seem like a large number, the firefighting teams are overwhelmed and understaffed for the complex task of managing the infernos. Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Robert Garcia told CNN on Saturday that his department is fighting the 32,000-acre Bobcat Fire with “500 personnel, when it usually has 1,000 to 1,500” and that “some firefighters are working more than 24 hours in a shift.”

Adding to the risks posed to the lives and health of West Coast residents is the giant smoke plume that is currently resting on the densely populated western half of California, Oregon, and Washington. The smoke has created very hazardous air conditions which began last week and are expected to last for weeks in California.

Scientists use the Air Quality Index (AQI) to monitor air pollution throughout the world, measuring the parts of fine particulate matter within a cubic meter of air. The AQI measurements were created for a scale of 0 to 500, ranging from healthy air quality to dangerous air quality.

The entire West Coast has had AQI over 100, which is considered unhealthy for at-risk groups with lung conditions and asthma. Many cities have recorded far higher levels, surpassing 300 AQI that is “unhealthy for all groups.” Air quality index measurements between 500 and 820 were recorded in Southern and Central Oregon, the northeastern outskirts of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Central Valley in California.

Portland, Oregon has been placed under a State of Emergency due to the combination of hazardous air quality as well as the threat of fires creeping towards its suburbs. On Sunday morning, Portland’s air quality index value averaged about 516, becoming the number one major city with the worst air quality in the world. The recent events strike parallels with modern records of 755 AQI in Beijing, China in 2011 and over 1,200 in New Delhi, India last November, where urban pollution reached obscene heights.

The number of tiny particles of hazardous smoke entering residents’ lungs and bloodstreams can cause serious health consequences, straining their respiratory and cardiovascular systems. This can cause irritated throats, burning eye sensations, compromised immunity, asthma attacks, bronchitis, lung failure, heart attacks, cardiac arrest, and other severe conditions.

These health risks have caused an uptick in immediate hospitalizations, while also making the population more susceptible to the COVID-19 virus, the symptoms of which become more severe for those with compromised respiratory and immune systems.

“There’s that aspect that people who are sick with COVID, but maybe not sick enough to notice or go to the hospital. But then when you add smoke on top of it, it could kick them into an extra-bad respiratory response,” Jeffrey Pierce, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, explained to Oregon Public Broadcasting.

These hazardous conditions have affected well over 20 million people, taking into account the most populous metro areas in the region: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

The combination of little to no preparation by the ruling class for disasters and the extreme weather conditions fueled by climate change has made it possible for these annual fires to become such devastating experiences for millions.

As with all natural disasters, the brunt of the damage will fall to the working class and the most vulnerable in society. Thousands of “essential” workers are forced to labor in toxic air and become more susceptible to the coronavirus, the elderly and those with chronic health conditions confront life-threatening conditions from the smoke, the homeless are not sheltered in the countless empty housing units that could be utilized, and many of those who have lost their homes will be left with nothing.

More than 15,000 attend University of Texas football game amidst coronavirus pandemic

Chase Lawrence

The University of Texas (UT) at Austin held a football game Saturday between the Texas Longhorns and the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). More than 15,300 people attended the game under conditions in which confirmed cases of COVID-19 continue to spread throughout the state.

Free COVID-19 tests were required only for students who purchased “The Big Ticket” season pass. All other ticket purchasers from UTEP or non-students were exempt and could not get the free tests, accounting for the roughly 14,000 people at the stadium.

A UT Austin spokesperson confirmed that only 1,198 attendees were tested before the game. Out of these, 95 tested positive, or nearly 8 percent. This indicates that the UT Austin student population has an incredibly high incidence of COVID-19.

Prior to the game, the university issued a list of wholly inadequate “precautions,” including markings in the stadium for social distancing, a mask mandate, and a ban on tailgating. They also reported that 225 hand sanitizer stations had been set up.

Fans at the college football game in Austin, Texas, on September 12, 2020. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

It is well known that people wearing masks in close proximity for long periods can still acquire the virus. It has also been stated by experts and scientists ad infinitum that any large gathering of people, especially where shouting will take place, has the potential to become a “super spreader” event in which large numbers of people become infected with the virus. In fact, the state of Texas has a ban on gatherings of over 10 people.

The exception to the requirement was made by the Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. He has also exempted various business re-openings and issued a mandate that schools reopen for in-person classes eight weeks after their normal start date.

In a press conference Wednesday, Mark Escott, the Austin Public Health interim health authority, citing the occupancy limit set for the game, put it mildly: “Having 25,000 people in one space is a concern.”

On the same day, three COVID-19 clusters were reported with about 100 cases.

UT Austin already has a high number of COVID-19 cases, ranking fourth in Texas universities. The COVID-19 dashboard on UT Austin’s website lists 814 cases, with 633 students and 181 staff infected since March 1. The reported positivity rate of 1.3 percent, which is terrible in itself, is most likely an undercount, especially given the case numbers among students attempting to attend the game.

Given the mass gathering, against the express warning of medical science, it is a forgone conclusion that there will be a spike in infections as a result. It is also likely that the virus will infect visiting UTEP students and cause a larger outbreak at their university, where 103 cases have been reported.

The determination of UT to hold the event is bound up with financial interests. UT Austin’s football team is the university’s single most profitable enterprise. UT sports reported a net profit of $16.5 million in 2018-19. According to numbers from USA Today, UT Austin ranked number one in total revenue among the US college sports programs in the same period.

This helps to explain why UT Austin is giving their athletes three tests a week, as they see are seen as profitable commodities. At most universities, sports programs such as basketball, baseball, and football are the most profitable department of the school and receive millions in investment to the detriment of other departments.

Thirteen UT Austin football players tested or were presumed positive for COVID-19 three days into practice that started on June 15. Showing the contempt the administration holds for students, the university outsourced their testing because the testing set up at the university for students that the administration has touted was deemed too slow, with a team doctor telling the UT Austin Athletics Director Chris Del Conte “I can’t wait around.”

Universities around the country are run like businesses. This is the rationale behind the reopening of universities, additional fees for online classes, and the restart of college athletics. Only a rank-and-file movement of faculty, staff, and students, in solidarity with K-12 teachers and workers everywhere, can stop these criminal policies.

Greece buys billions in French arms amid war tensions with Turkey

Alex Lantier

On Saturday, conservative Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a purchase of billions of euros in French weaponry and a large increase in the size of the Greek military. This massive increase in military spending, by a country which the European Union (EU) has devastated with billions of euros in draconian cuts to social spending over the last decade, marks a major escalation in Greece’s ongoing military standoff with Turkey.

Mitsotakis indicated that Greece will purchase 18 Rafale fighter jets, four French naval frigates with naval helicopters, and a large supply of anti-tank weapons, torpedoes and missiles. It will also ask French firms to upgrade four Greek frigates that are already in service. Finally, Mitsotakis said that 15,000 more soldiers would be recruited to the Greek armed forces.

“The time has come to reinforce our armed forces. … This is an important program that will form a national shield,” Mitsotakis declared in a speech in Thessaloniki.

The sale comes after months of escalating threats and one direct collision last month between Greek and Turkish warships in the eastern Mediterranean, as Athens and Ankara lay competing claims to territorial waters and oil-rich seabeds in the region. In this dispute, Paris has aggressively backed Athens, sending several warships and fighter jets to the eastern Mediterranean to counterbalance Turkey’s numerical superiority over Greece.

Paris also is seeking to undercut Turkey’s position in Africa and specifically in Libya, where French President Emmanuel Macron backs warlord Khalifa Haftar and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan backs the Government of National Accord (GNA). Haftar and the GNA currently lead the two main factions in the decade-long civil war in Libya triggered by NATO’s war against the country in 2011.

On Thursday, Macron had met other southern European heads of state in a so-called Med7 summit (with Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Malta and Cyprus) in the Corsican city of Ajaccio. Beyond discussing the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen the southern European powers seek new EU bailout funding, they pledged to renew France’s plans for a Union of the Mediterranean, vetoed by Berlin a decade ago. They also issued joint criticisms of Turkey’s maritime claims in waters also claimed by Greece or Cyprus.

The Med7 states adopted a statement calling to “renew the southern partnership between the European Union, its member states and our southern neighbors. We await with interest the November 27 regional forum of the Union of the Mediterranean.” They also pledged to coordinate policy in the Sahel, where they aim to prevent African refugees from reaching Europe and to assist France’s ongoing bloody war in Mali.

In addition to “hailing” multi-trillion-euro EU bank and corporate bailouts adopted to enrich the financial aristocracy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Med7 states also criticized Turkey. They stated, “We reiterate our full support to Cyprus and Greece amid repeated threats against their sovereignty and aggressive measures by Turkey.”

At a press conference during the summit, Macron declared that the Turkish government “today behaves in an unacceptable way” and should “clarify its intentions.” He added that, from the standpoint of the Med7 states, “Turkey is no longer a partner in the Mediterranean region.”

On Saturday, Erdoğan replied by criticizing France’s neo-colonial policies in the region. He verbally attacked the French president: “Macron, this is not the last problem you will have with me. You don’t know history. You don’t even know France’s own history. Don’t mess with me. Don’t mess with Turkey.” Citing France’s bloody 1954-1962 colonial war in Algeria and to its complicity in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 people were killed, Erdoğan added: “You cannot lecture us on humanity.”

Erdoğan instructed Greece not to follow French policy, “do not take these paths. You will be left all alone.” He added that Greece should “demonstrate good-neighborly behavior. Fortunately, we make our own decisions. Turkey can give any fight, if necessary.”

All of these statements point to the urgent and growing danger of war amid a deepening breakdown of the NATO alliance and growing military tensions in the eastern Mediterranean.

France’s arming of Greece and growing tensions with Turkey are the outcome of decades of war in the Balkans and the Middle East since the 1991 Stalinist restoration of capitalism in the USSR. The bitter struggle over access to oil and gas profits and trade routes unleashed by the 2011 NATO wars in Libya and Syria are having explosive consequences. France is assembling an alliance including Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to isolate and threaten its ostensible NATO “ally,” Turkey.

As for the Erdoğan regime, discredited by its draconian herd immunity policy targeting workers in Turkey, it is aggressively staking oil claims while striking a populist, “anti-imperialist” stance to try to limit growing opposition at home. This posture is empty, however: Turkey’s GNA proxies in Libya are themselves the officially recognized product of NATO’s neo-colonial 2011 war in Libya, which Erdoğan himself ultimately supported.

Above all, the fact that Greece will spend billions of euros on a major increase in its military arsenal underscores that the costs of these reactionary war threats are borne by the working class. While the EU has imposed tens of billions of euros in austerity measures since the 2008, slashing real income levels by an average 30-40 percent, Athens is nonetheless pledging to find billions to spend on armaments that would only be used in an all-out regional war.

The risk of such a conflict, amid a surge of global geopolitical tensions linked to Washington’s war threats against China and to the COVID-19 pandemic, is rapidly growing. These tensions are very directly involved in the region, as Russian warships and planes operate out of Syria, which also has a coastline nearby in the eastern Mediterranean.

One indication of growing great-power tensions in the region was Friday’s announcement that Chinese troops will join forces from Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Myanmar, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Pakistan in joint military exercises in the Caucasus. The exercises are to involve 80,000 soldiers together with tanks and combat vehicles.

Returning to America from Qatar, where he had attended talks with the Taliban on Afghanistan, Pompeo stopped on Saturday in Cyprus and met with Republic of Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades. Noting that “crucial developments are taking place in the eastern Mediterranean,” he said: “We remain deeply concerned by Turkey's ongoing operations surveying for natural resources in areas over which Greece and Cyprus assert jurisdiction over the eastern Mediterranean.”

In an indication that Washington and Paris are now pursuing different and conflicting policies in the region, Pompeo called for de-escalation of tensions inside NATO: “Increased military tensions help no one but adversaries who would like to see division in transatlantic unity.”

This was not, however, an appeal for a peace policy. Pompeo went on to demand that Cyprus cut its longstanding relations with Russia, amid the continuing standoff between US and Russian troops in nearby Syria. He told Anastasiades: “We know that all the Russian military vessels that stop in Cypriot ports are not conducting humanitarian missions in Syria, and we ask Cyprus and the president to consider our concerns.”

The escalating chaos and divisions between the major regional and world powers underscore the urgency of the unification of workers internationally in a socialist, anti-war movement.

The California wildfires, climate change and capitalism

Bryan Dyne

The wildfires burning through the US West Coast, the largest on record in the history of California and which may become the largest in the country, have already killed 33 people and threaten to displace hundreds of thousands.

Just one of these fires, the August Complex in California, has consumed more than 875,000 acres. Until yesterday afternoon, the entire city of Portland was on alert for a mass evacuation as local and state officials warned of a “mass fatality event” if the fires reached Oregon’s largest city.

In a year that has already seen massive and uncontrolled wildfires in the Amazon and in Australia, the California fires make clear the immense dangers posed to human society by climate change, and the total inability of capitalism to address the problem.

The disaster is compounded by the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in California, where the number of cases is still increasing by more than 3,000 a day, with a total of more than 760,000 confirmed cases so far. Residents are now forced to either stay in place, socially distance and risk death by wildfire, or evacuate to a shelter and risk infection.

The official “COVID-19 Interim Shelter Guidance” from the office of Oregon Governor Kate Brown admits these dangers. The document warns: “All shelter residents, even those without symptoms, may have been exposed to COVID-19 and should self-quarantine after leaving the shelter in accordance with state and local recommendations.”

Scientists have long warned that climate change is intensifying wildfires. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned just last year that as global temperatures increase, damage caused by wildfires will grow proportionally. This has been noted both for regions such as the American west, but also in Australia, Brazil, central Africa, Europe and even Siberia.

Further scientific warnings were raised earlier this year in conjunction with the mass wildfires in Australia and Brazil, which saw record fires in those countries.

Like hurricanes on the East coast and in states on the Gulf of Mexico, the likelihood of natural disasters that form a “perfect storm” of weather conditions increases as global warming continues unabated. Hurricanes such as Sandy, Harvey and Maria, once thought of as “storms of the century,” are now expected to happen once every 16 years. The same is true of the infernos now raging.

The Trump administration is spearheading a frontal assault on all environmental regulations, eliminating even the most token restrictions on emissions, fracking, and offshore drilling. Trump has also rolled back controls for emissions of methane—a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide—and appointed Scott Pruitt, an attorney previously used by the oil and gas industry to sue the Environmental Protection Agency, to head that same organization.

For his part, California Governor Gavin Newsom attempted to pose as a strong advocate for climate science, telling reporters, “The debate is over, around climate change,” at a press conference outside the North Complex Fire. He added: “This is a climate damn emergency. This is real and it’s happening.”

Yet for all his rhetoric, Newsom has helped expand the fossil fuel industry in California along similar lines to Trump’s policies nationally. During his first ten months in office, Newsom approved 33 percent more new oil and gas drilling permits than his predecessor Jerry Brown. He also dropped a proposal from earlier this year to further regulate the industry after his administration received a letter from the California Independent Petroleum Association, an oil and gas lobbying group, urging him to do so.

The flagship for such hypocrisy is the “Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice” put out by Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. It asserts that a “Green New Deal is a crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face,” and claims that Biden will “[e]nsure the U.S. achieves a 100% clean energy economy and reaches net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”

Readers should recall the legacy of the Obama-Biden administration on environmental policy before expecting Biden to carry forth any of this platform. During their second year in office they spearheaded the efforts to conceal the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest oil spill to date in the Gulf of Mexico and which caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to the entire region. After it became impossible to hide the billions of barrels of oil being pumped in the Gulf, they worked to shield BP as much as possible from any liability while accelerating deep-sea drilling deregulation that caused the explosion in the first place.

Obama spearheaded efforts to expand offshore and Arctic drilling. In 2015, he let Royal Dutch Shell resume drilling after a series of near-disasters three years prior. That same year, he opened up the Atlantic coast for drilling for the first time, despite warnings against offshore drilling issued in the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon.

The Obama White house did nothing to stop the environmentally destructive hydraulic fracturing techniques that massively expanded under Obama and Biden in the search by various corporations for cheap sources of natural gas.

Biden’s platform also shows that the “Green New Deal” is a vacuous slogan that can mean anything one wants. Biden can call for a “Green New Deal” while simultaneously declaring, “I am not banning fracking,” referring to the practice of natural gas extraction that has poisoned much of Appalachia.

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released the initial “deal” proposal, she called for “a transition to 100 percent renewable energy within 10 years, and actions to “virtually eliminate poverty in the United States.” Essentially the only common characteristic between the two plans is the assertion that it is possible to solve the climate crisis without challenging the capitalist system and the private ownership of production.

It is also significant that the demand for a “Green New Deal” has been adopted by the Green Party. While they seek to contrast themselves from the Democrats, their program on climate change makes a call to “Enact an emergency Green New Deal to turn the tide on climate change,” essentially verbatim from Biden’s plan.

The Green Party also calls for a “WWII-scale national mobilization to halt climate change,” modeled on the original proposal by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The wartime rhetoric only underscores the nationalist character of this approach, based on the idea that the climate crisis can be solved in a single country, or through capitalist states addressing climate change via treaty agreements.

Climate change itself is a global phenomenon. As many recent scientific papers on the topic have stressed, the only real solution to halting global warming and all its ongoing and oncoming catastrophes is through a reorganization of the world’s energy production and transportation infrastructure and the development of new technologies to immediately halt carbon emissions.

To seriously address climate change requires a major reorganization of economic life on a global scale. The framework of energy production has to be transitioned from one that uses fossil fuels to one that relies on renewable energy. This, in turn, requires an international effort, involving a massive influx of funding for infrastructure, the development of current technologies and the investigation of new ideas, rather than the squandering of trillions of dollars on war and the self-enrichment of the world’s billionaires.

The technology exists to solve these problems, as well as for increasing the living standards and quality of life of the world’s population. Yet it is impossible to do so within the framework of the capitalist system.

Any effort to genuinely tackle climate change comes into conflict with the nation-state system and the broader framework of capitalism itself. The necessary influx of funds to temper the fires and abate the climate crisis collide with the private ownership of production and the enrichment of a tiny elite at the expense of society as a whole. As long as a handful of billionaires dominate society, with every aspect of economic life geared to their personal enrichment, not a single social problem—including climate change—can be solved.

This makes the solution to climate change an inherently class question and a revolutionary question. It is the working class that will suffer the brunt of the impact of global warming. It is the working class that is objectively and increasingly defining itself as an international class. It is the working class whose social interests lie in the overthrow of capitalism and the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, which will open the way to the establishment of an economic system based on the satisfaction of human need, including a safe and healthy environment.

D-Prize Contest for Medical Oxygen Maintenance

Application Deadline: 18th October 2020

• Early Submission Deadline: October 18th, 2020 at midnight PT (pacific time) 
• Regular Submission Deadline: November 8th, 2020 at midnight PT (pacific time) 
• Extension Deadline (limited to 200 people who register): November 29th, 2020 at midnight PT (pacific time)

Register for an extension.

About the Award: Half the world lacks access to medical oxygen – a basic and critical treatment for numerous ailments. Oxygen concentrators are machines that produce medical oxygen in low-resource settings and are being distributed at a large scale – yet without maintenance, many will soon be at risk of breaking down. Can you develop a team of technicians to service existing oxygen concentrators? D-Prize will award up to $20,000 to help teams launch an initial three-month pilot of this idea.

Type: Contest

Eligibility:

• D-Prize is for aspiring entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world, of any age, and any background.
• We will consider funding existing organizations only if: you are piloting a new distribution-focused initiative, and you need high risk capital.

Eligible Countries: Any

Number of Awards: Top 1-2%

Value of Award: D-Prize will award up to $20,000 to help teams launch an initial three-month pilot of this idea.

How to Apply: Apply below

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Facebook Video Storytellers

Application Deadline: 18th September 2020

Type: Training

Eligibility: The course is open to journalists, student journalists and other content creators from Africa. 

Eligible Countries: African countries

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: The six-week, self-directed course starts September 21. It will prepare participants to discover story ideas as well as shoot, script, edit, upload and distribute high-quality videos using a mobile phone. Storytellers who successfully complete this interactive course may apply to participate in a mentorship program and compete for prizes of U.S. $1,500. 

Duration of Award: 6 weeks

How to Apply: Apply now. 

Visit Award Webpage for Details

American Muslims 19 years after 9/11

Abdus Sattar Ghazali

19 years after the ghastly tragedy of 9/11, civil rights remains the major problem for the seven-million-strong American Muslim Community.

The Covid-19 Pandemic shut down the US economy and disturbed the social life however even in this challenging times American Muslims were victims of hate crimes, discrimination and Islamophobia. Almost two decades  after 9/11, American Muslims still dealing with the fall out of this tragic event.

Following Trump’s 2016 election, American Muslims experienced a spike in hate crimes, according to data from the FBI.  American Muslim leaders attributed the spike to anti-Muslim rhetoric espoused by Trump and some of his close associates.

Here are few examples from recent months:

President Trump re-tweeted a post by an anti-Muslim bigot critical of former vice president Joe Biden for engaging in outreach to American Muslim voters and pledging to end the Muslim Ban. Trump retweeted a July 21st post by Paul Sperry, who wrote, “BREAKING: Biden wishes public schools taught more about Islam; promises Muslims he will end terrorism-related ban on immigration from high-risk Islamic nations “on Day One.”” According to Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, Sperry has blamed Islam for the spread of the Ebola virus, called former President Barack Obama the “defender-in-chief of Islam,” warned of an “Islamic fifth column” growing inside America, accused tax reform activist Grover Norquist of “ties to militant Muslim activists,” and written multiple debunked books attacking Islam and Muslims.

In June, President Trump appointed former Breitbart writer, white supremacist sympathizer and anti-Muslim bigot Sebastian Gorka to the National Security Education Board. The 14-member National Security Education Board provides strategic consultation and oversight for the National Security Education Program. This program develops expertise for the U.S. federal government workforce and also provides grants to universities and scholarships for students to study languages and regions critical to national security.

In an apparent Islamophobia remark, MSNBC host Joy Reid, in her August 31 night program, said:

When leaders, let’s say in the Muslim world, talk a lot of violent talk and encourage their supporters to be willing to commit violence, including on their own bodies, in order to win against whoever they decide is the enemy, we in the U.S. media describe that as, ‘They are radicalizing those people,’ particularly when they’re radicalizing young people. That’s how we talk about the way Muslims act. When you see what Donald Trump is doing, is that any different from what we describe as radicalizing people? Trump condemned Reid’s remarks, though somewhat inaccurately, tweeting, “The very untalented Joy Reid should be fired for this horrible use of the words ‘Muslim Terrorists.’

On September 8, American Muslim groups expressed deep concerns over a slew of Islamophobic and Anti-Semitic social media posts by Dallas area physician, Michael Robles. Dr. Robles is a physician who works at American Pathology Partners (AP2) and Alliance Diagnostics. He posts regularly on Jihad Watch, a hate website run by notorious anti-Muslim bigot, Robert Spencer.  His posts include:  (1) “The hard hearted and stiff-necked Jews do not believe in the Holy Trinity. They believe in a different god. Their rejection begins from the beginning they will suffer, see Amos. They are antichrist. They follow the evil one.”  (2) “Islam false god false prophet false Quran false Christ – Islam is the anti-Christ, born from deception and follows Satan. Pure death and lies in Islam.” (3) “Never trust a Muslim who actively practices and follows the Quran.”

Politicians have added fuel to the fire of anti-Islam sentiments in the United States. Islamophobia has become a campaign tool used to galvanize voters. The heightened rhetoric has exposed an alarming trend that has developed after 9/11. Muslims are constantly and consistently cast as somehow un-American because of their faith.

Muslim Americans have expressed concern and alarm after Republican candidate Laura Loomer—who has described herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and called Islam a “cancer”— won her primary in Florida, earning praise from President Donald Trump, the Newsweek reported on August 19. Loomer, 27, won the GOP primary for Florida’s 21st District, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The far-right activist has previously been banned from multiple social media platforms because of her extreme rhetoric. She will now face Democratic Representative Lois Frankel, who is widely expected to win, on November 3. But even if Loomer’s chances of beating Frankel appear remote, Muslim Americans are worried about a Republican Party that appears to be increasingly open to overtly Islamophobic candidates and viewpoints.

On August 29, Republican Mitch Swoboda, who is running to represent the 37th district of Michigan, shared an Islamophobic meme on Facebook equating the wearing of face masks to protect persons from COVID-19 infection with the false trope that women lack rights of personal choice within Islam.   The meme states, “That’s why they [Arabs] imposed on every woman the mandatory use of a fabric over her face. Then Islam turned it into the woman’s symbol of submission to Allah, the man owner of the Harem, and the King.”

Hate Crimes against American Muslims

An Arab-American teenager in New York was assaulted on August 13 with a baseball bat. The Council on American-Islamic Relations  called this “an anti-immigrant, anti-Arab, and racially charged attack.” The victim was identified as Tarek Elsayed, an 18-year-old Egyptian-American.

Somaia Harrati, a 17-year-old American Moroccan Muslim woman wearing hijab, was assaulted with a bottle of urine and Islamophobic slurs on August 10 in Bronx, New York. The NYPD was urged to initiate a hate crimes probe in the Islamophobic incident.

On July 2, 2020, in New York, Rashid Hassan, a Pakistani taxi driver, was assaulted and yelled “Go back to your country.” The police and an ambulance were called to the scene. Mr. Hassan was taken to the hospital and may need surgery on his eye to prevent blindness due to a blood clot resulting from the assault. Another driver nearby recorded the incident and provided the footage to the responding officers.

A 50-year-old Muslim man was assaulted outside the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minn., on August 6-night. The victim was walking to Dar Al-Farooq when two people described as being in their late teens or early twenties approached and assaulted him, according to police. The victim suffered a non-life-threatening injury and was transported to Fairview Southdale Hospital.

On September 9, Pennsylvania chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported a Muslim man in that state by an alleged attacker who is shown shouting “Go back to your country” during the incident. The assault was captured on video.

Even kids were blamed. The Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Dallas Fort-Worth (CAIR-DFW), a chapter of the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, on February 26 released a new report, “Singled Out: Islamophobia in the Classroom and the Impact of Discrimination on Muslim Students” indicating that 48 percent of respondents say they experienced some type of bullying — nearly double the national average.  CAIR-DFW’s report examines how Muslim students feel about their school environment, about identifying as Muslim and the extent of anti-Muslim bullying and harassment students experience.

In short, years after 9/11 terrorist attacks, American Muslims remain on the receiving end.

On the positive note

It was perhaps a historic moment for American Muslims when in July the House voted to repeal the Trump administration’s travel ban and further restrict the president’s power to limit entry to the U.S.  This was a symbolic victory for Muslim American and civil rights groups as the measure is unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled Senate, where it has no GOP support. The bill, which passed the Democrat-controlled House 233-183, had initially been slated for action in March, before the coronavirus forced scheduling changes on Capitol Hill.

Since taking office in 2017, The Trump administration has continuously targeted immigrants and communities of color. Despite the recognition that white supremacist violence is a serious issue, the administration continues to focus on suppressing the rights of minority and immigrant communities. The xenophobic immigration agenda of the administration was furthered earlier this year when additional countries, mainly in Africa, were added to the Muslim Ban.

In June 2020, a bill was introduced in the Assembly of the State of California, saying that the Assembly joins communities throughout the State of California  in recognizing the month of August 2020 as American Muslim Appreciation and Awareness Month. The resolution pointed out that approximately one million American Muslims currently reside in California, the highest number of any state in the United States and the American Muslim community is recognized as having made innumerable contributions to the cultural, political, and economic fabric and well-being of California and the United States.

As a positive outcome of constant pressure, the American Muslims became active politically and created alliances with other ethnic and faith groups.

National Muslim Voter Registration Day: On August 28, 2020, American Muslim activists across the country rallied their communities to participate in National Muslim Voter Registration Day to impact the 2020 presidential election.MPower Change, in collaboration with grassroots organizations, launched the #MyMuslimVote campaign to promote a nationwide virtual registration drive. Participating organizations have already reached out to nearly half a million registered Muslim voters, and are sending email and text message reminders to encourage American Muslims to vote in person or by mail. American Muslims, along with other minority communities, could help vote President Donald Trump out of the White House and usher in Democratic contender Joe Biden, MPower Change Executive Director Linda Sarsour told CNN.

The Trump campaign in mid-August launched Muslim Voices for Trump. Also introduced at that time were similar coalitions for voters who identify as Indian, Hindu and Sikh. A Trump campaign site targeted to Muslim supporters includes a sign-up form, but no policy initiatives are listed. “Muslim Voices for Trump will energize and mobilize the Muslim community in re-electing President Donald J. Trump by sharing the many successes of the Trump Administration,” the site states. “Re-electing President Trump will ensure the protection of religious liberties, economic prosperity, and educational opportunities for Muslims in America.”

Joe Biden’s agenda for Muslim Americans:  In a bid to attract the American Muslim vote, Joe Biden, Democratic Presidential nominee Joe appointed a Senior Advisor for Muslim Engagement on his presidential campaign and issued a special paper  saying “Muslim-Americans are essential to the American fabric, and working with Muslim-American communities is critical to ensuring that Muslim-Americans are uplifted and empowered, and that their issues of concern are addressed within our democracy.”  Muslim-Americans are a diverse, vibrant part of the United States, making invaluable cultural and economic contributions to communities all across the nation. But they also face real challenges and threats in our society, including racially-motivated violence and Islamophobia. Joe Biden pledged to work closely with Muslim-Americans to address the needs and legitimate concerns of the Muslim-American community. As President, he will: protect Muslim-American constitutional and civil rights; honor the diversity of Muslim-American communities; ensure adequate healthcare; create a safe learning environment; rebuild our economy with a more resilient, more inclusive middle class; and make communities safer.

Meanwhile, a coalition of Muslim Democratic delegates has rejected the Democratic National Convention’s proposed party platform, in particular for not pushing for the U.S. to end military aid to Israel and sanctions on Iran, the Religious News Service (RNS) reported on August 4.  The Muslim Delegates and Allies Coalition is urging all delegates to vote against approving the platform during this week’s vote. The coalition was recently formed in hopes of pushing the party to “take more decisive action to improve U.S.-Muslim relations.”  The coalition is made up of 100 DNC national delegates, including some from Virginia, New Mexico and Texas, among other states.

Muslim voters concerned about civil rights: A  coalition of national Muslim organizations on August 25  released the results of a pre-election “Muslims in America Policy Poll” – an online survey of 1,500 Muslims in America that highlights issue and policy priorities of the Muslim community just months before the 2020 General Election.  The poll was created and distributed through a partnership of Muslim organizations, including America Indivisible, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Emgage USA, Jetpac, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), MPower Change and Poligon Education Fund — consolidating efforts to educate and mobilize a Muslim constituency.

Mosques across America dedicate Friday sermons to confronting racism, police brutality: On Friday, June 5, a wave of mosques dedicated their Jummah sermons to preaching against anti-black racism and police brutality, following urgent calls from black Muslim leaders to publicly speak up with a “Day of Outrage.” Led by Imam Jihad Saafir of inner-city community center Islah LA, a coalition of black Muslim leaders in California has suggested that, in Friday sermons and talks, Islamic organizations address racism and that they also address it in letters of solidarity with black Americans.

George Floyd’s killing was a final straw for thousands of Americans protesting against police brutality and systemic police racism. Muslim leaders say it may also, at long last, prove to be a tipping point for non-black Muslim communities, according to Aysha Khan of Religious News Service. “This has been a rough week, a rough two months for Black Muslims who have been deeply impacted by police brutality and mass incarceration,” said Margari Aziza Hill, co-founder of the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative. “We are in mourning, we are tired, we are angry, we are mobilizing.”

Display of Religious Bigotry by Hindutva in NY’s Times Square denounced: The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, on August 5 joined the “Stop Genocide in India” coalition in condemning the use of New York’s Times Square to promote the far-right Indian government’s embrace of militant Hindutva ideology, which has resulted in the destructive and deadly rise of anti-Muslim bigotry across India. On August 5, 2020–exactly one year to the day that India revoked article 370, removing Kashmir’s autonomy–Indian PM Modi laid the foundation stone for the building of a Hindu Temple at the site of the 16th century Babri Mosque Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state. The mosque was destroyed by militant Hindu extremists in 1992 and ushered in nationwide pogroms, resulting in the murder more than 2,000 Muslims.  Special interest groups sympathetic with Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) policies purchased ads in Times Square to celebrate the laying of the foundation stone.

American Muslims join the nation in commemorating the 19th anniversary of this ghastly tragedy with an optimism that the state of present anti-Muslim campaign will subside in due course of time as happened during the Second World War with the Japanese Americans who also endured similar national intolerance, social prejudice and legal injustice.