Seven months on from the Sri Lankan popular uprising, Janaka Biyanwila looks at how government spin, backed up with state violence, is attempting to keep a lid on popular discontent.
Islamophobia
Far-right activist Phillip Galea has been jailed on terrorism charges after threatening to commit violence against left-wing activists and Muslims. Sue Bolton discusses what it will take to defeat such extremists.
Islamophobia in France has been growing in strength for many years, but has dangerously accelerated in recent weeks, writes John Mullen.
We will not forget any individual killed by racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Roma, queerphobic, misogynistic, inhuman ideologies, nor the intellectual apologists sitting in parliaments stirring the fire, says Ferat Ali Kocak.
The Reds are under the beds again!
They’ve hidden there since god knows when,
Our world is torn asunder
It’s kids’ beds they’re under
Along with Muslims and refugee men.
Labor’s dared to turn the focus
To the low-paid worker locus.
Don't they know it’s millionaires
Who need more cash and more shares,
Labor’s done it to provoke us.
It’s such an esoteric case,
Why care about the working base?
We know the best way to go
With wages now nicely low,
Don’t these workers know their place?
Three things strike you when looking at videos and photos of the neo-fascist demonstration on June 9 in London calling for the release from prison of the Islamophobic criminal and English Defence League (EDL) co-founder Tommy Robinson, writes Andy Stowe.
Two people died and homes, vehicles, shops and mosques were burnt during anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka.
The riots began in Kandy on March 5 and spread to other nearby towns. Victims accused the police of failing to protect them in the early stages of the violence. A state of emergency was declared on March 6.
Just two weeks ago, four young Muslim women wearing hijabs were assaulted right in front of the University of Technology Sydney at about 1.30pm. They were punched, one after another, by a woman they had not spoken to or interacted with in any way.
One of the women, a young student at UTS, and a recent migrant, was punched in the face and fell to the ground bleeding. A staff member who witnessed the assaults rushed to her assistance and photographed the alleged assailant.
A poll of 1000 people by Essential Research has found 49% of respondents supported a blanket ban on Muslim immigration to Australia, 40% opposed the ban and 11% were not sure.
Young people aged 18–24 were the most likely to oppose a ban on Muslim immigration. Fifty-eight per cent of young people opposed a ban, compared with 28% who supported it.
Since the announcement of an ordinance banning the wearing of burkinis on the beaches of the French Mediterranean city of Cannes in late July, France has been swept up in a new wave of Islamophobia.
A further 17 municipalities have announced their own ordinances banning the burkini — the full-body swimsuit worn by some Islamic women. These bans have been endorsed not only by France’s far right, but by the Socialist Party Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
Ibtihaj Muhammad.
An American Muslim fencer, who is the country’s first Olympian to wear a hijab, says she does not feel safe in the US due to the country’s increased anti-Muslim rhetoric, The Independent said on August 5.
The 2016 federal election has confirmed the continuing decline of Australia's two-party system. The relative stability that characterised the decades after World War II was shaped by a phase of unprecedented economic growth, record low unemployment and mass home ownership. But that is long gone, in fact it was an aberration. Our system of single member electorates helped paper over the current period of rising economic insecurity, but inevitably politics is catching up.
While the votes are still being counted and the deals brokered, the resurrection of Pauline Hanson's racist party has sparked concern and outrage.
Pauline Hanson's One Nation party has won at least one, possibly three Senate seats: Hanson claims it could be as many as six. It polled the fourth highest nationally of all parties contesting the Senate, after Liberal, Labor and the Greens,.
The election platform One Nation presented was blatantly racist and anti-Muslim, and poses a threat to civil rights.
Armed thugs, some with signs supporting Republican presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, intimidate worshipers at a mosque in Irving, Texas. November 21.
In her 2007 book The Shock Doctrine, Canadian author Naomi Klein discusses how capitalist governments and corporations exploit disasters to further their interests against the rest of us.
There are sprawling industries and self-proclaimed career “terrorism experts” in the US that profit greatly by deliberately exaggerating the threat of terrorism and keeping Americans in a state of abject fear of “radical Islam”.
All sorts of polemicists build their public platforms by demonising Muslims and scoffing at concerns over “Islamophobia”. The most toxic ones insist that such a thing does not even exist, even as the mere presence of mosques is opposed across the country and are physically attacked.
Victoria Police announced on August 6 they had arrested and charged a 38-year-old man in connection with death threats made against Socialist Party councillor Steve Jolly, from Yarra Council in Melbourne’s inner north. The threats referred to Jolly’s prominent role in mobilisations countering the far right Islamophobic groups Reclaim Australia and United Patriots Front (UPF).
Pages
