The mass murder of nine African Americans in Charleston, South Carolina, by a white racist on June 17 has been widely denounced. But to understand this hate crime — a terrorist attack — it has to be put into the broader political context.
-
-
Julian Assange, founder and editor, of WikiLeaks had been a refugee in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for three years as of June 19. The key issue in his extraordinary incarceration is justice. He has been charged with no crime. The first Swedish prosecutor dismissed the misconduct allegations regarding two women in Stockholm in 2010. The second Swedish prosecutor's actions were and are demonstrably political. Until recently, she refused to come to London to interview Assange - then she said she was coming. Then she cancelled her appointment. -
The domestic act of terror at a historic African-American Church in South Carolina has quickly been branded as a “hate crime” by US officials, and the white man who perpetrated it is described as a “troubled” person who was otherwise “sweet and quiet”.
This is a predictable media narrative has to many for whom the racist and white supremacist motives behind the killing are transparent.
-
The murder of nine people in a historic Black South Carolina church is both a deep tragedy and a strong symbolic attack on the Black community, civil rights activist and writer Kevin Alexander Gray told TeleSUR English. Three men and six women, including South Carolina Democrat Senator Reverand Clementa Pinckney, were shot dead in a mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17. -
Police are searching for a gunman who killed nine people and injured several others at a historic African American church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, in what is being called a hate crime by local officials. As of the morning of June 18, the perpetrator was still at large, local police officials said. “I do believe this is a hate crime,” the police chief, Greg Mullen, said during a late night statement, according to the Washington Post. -
Rally against police brutality in McKinney, Texas, June 8, 2015.
The head of the US's largest organisation of Black lawyers and judges joined activists and community leaders on June 10 to call for national police reform to address racial bias. She also backed calls for an independent investigation into a white police officer's recent assault of a young Black girl in her bathing suit at a pool party in McKinney, Texas.
-
The US government issued a congratulatory statement on June 9, praising the Mexican people after June 7 elections, despite large protests and boycotts held by activists and teacher unions across the nation. The elections were marked by violence, but the US Department of State considered the process democratic, saying: “We congratulate the people of Mexico for exercising its democratic right to vote and choosing its leaders.” -
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being negotiated between the US and 11 other Pacific Rim nations — including Australia — is a treaty covering regulations and investments.
-
Since the 1973 United States Roe vs Wade Supreme Court decision in legalising most abortions, there has been a steady erosion of women’s abortion rights in the US - with the complicity of both major capitalist parties. A new wave of restrictions spearheaded by Republicans has developed in the past three years, gaining more traction in the past year. -
Traces of chemicals commonly used for fracking were found in the drinking water supply of three homes in Bradford County in the US state of Pennsylvania, a study revealed on May 18. The investigation, which appeared in scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</i>, proved the long-held worry of damaging underground drinking water sources from the method of extracting gases known as hydraulic fracturing. The report explicitly links the practice with the affected water systems.
-
The case of yet another death at the hands of US police of an unarmed Black man — in this case teenager Ariston Waiters in Georgia — will be re-opened after new evidence emerged on May 17. The new evidence revealed Waiters was shot twice in the back when already on the ground. Dalton County District Attorney Paul Howard reopened the case after Channel 2 Action News revealed new evidence and witnesses. The new elements proves Union City police officer Luther Lewis shot the unarmed 19-year-old Waiters twice in the back, after he already had him on the ground. -
A new video has surfaced of the arrest of 25-year-old Black man Freddie Gray by Baltimore police that contradicts previous police accounts and features an extra stop made by police on the way to the station, the Baltimore Sun reported on May 20. Gray died on April 19 from injuries sustained in the back of a police van. He was arrested after he made eye contact with police and then ran away. The newspaper obtained the extra cell phone video footage and testimony from neighbours who said they saw the police van stop one block away from where Freddie Gray was arrested April 12.