Anti-racism

England lose to Iceland and “Brexit” from Euro2016, June 27. What a time to be in London. My family's long-planned vacation has given us a ringside seat for the greatest humiliations suffered by Britain since boxer Frank Bruno tried to take down a young Mike Tyson.

American singer Alicia Keyes has produced a short feature that reimagines the current refugee crisis as if it were taking place in California. The refugee crisis in the wake of conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa has triggered many militant xenophobic responses.

Election after election of racist and Islamophobic rhetoric from both major parties, combined with a growing swarm of far-right outfits, is resulting in violent hate crimes. A car firebombed at the Thornlie mosque in Perth on June 28 and racist graffiti on the wall of an Islamic college are the latest in a string of attacks. Hundreds of people were praying inside the mosque and it was only a matter of luck that no one was injured or killed.

Pauline Hanson is back in the Senate after 18 years, riding the wave of anti-Muslim hatred spawned by various confected Wars on Terror™. But liberal commentators are warning we should take her more seriously this time. She and her 10% are “not just racists” they say. And they're right. Since the election, Hanson has made it clear that she has two major priorities this time around: protecting Christian fish'n'chips from Middle Eastern halal fast food, and tender-hearted men from the feminist Family Court.

The Chilcot Inquiry into Britain's role in the Iraq War has prompted calls for a similar inquiry into the Coalition government, then led by John Howard, taking Australia into war in 2003. Andrew Wilkie, the only intelligence official from the US, Britain or Australia to dispute the official explanation for the Iraq War, said on July 7 there should be an investigation into the Howard government's decision to go to war.

Armed with the findings of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, South Australian Labor Premier Jay Weatherill is pressing ahead with plans to import as much as a third of the world's high-level nuclear reactor waste and store it in the state's outback. There are compelling reasons to reject it. The project, it now emerges, could go ahead only over resistance from Indigenous traditional landowners, some of whom took part in the Lizard Bites Back convergence in early July.

“Protesters in Chicago, New York and St Paul, Minnesota, took to the streets on July 7 to express outrage after the second fatal police shooting of a Black man in the United States in two days,” Reuters said that day . Reuters said the protests were peaceful but tension was evident after the shooting of Philando Castile, 32, by police near St Paul on July 6. His girlfriend posted live video on the internet of the bloody scene minutes afterward, which was widely viewed.

The media-backed attempted coup by right-wing Labour Party MPs against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has failed, amid large demonstrations and public meetings across Britain defending the left-wing leader.

For some people, it was impossible to believe that this day would come. Seven years after John Chilcot started to take evidence in a British inquiry into the Iraq War and 12 years after the previous inquiry into the war, many anti-war protesters could be forgiven for being sceptical about what the report would say. First impressions, announced over microphones and megaphones while being read from mobile phones, were met with a militant response. There was a sense of vindication for those of us who opposed the war from the outset and has renewed our determination.

The article below was published by Tony Norfield on his Economics of Imperialism blog in the lead up to the June 23. It looks at the impact of British imperialism on all sides of the 'Brexit' debate.

The Left urgently needs an honest assessment of where we are and what we have to do in the aftermath of the UK referendum on the European Union. These are some hastily written notes toward that assessment.

The Congressional, executive and judicial wings of the United State government recently clarified for all — despite Washington's claims to the contrary — that Puerto Rico is a US colony. A law known as PROMESA was passed by Congress with bipartisan support and signed by President Barack Obama on June 30. It creates an unelected seven-person control board that has sweeping powers to take over Puerto Rico's economy.