Racism

R&R: A Novel
By Mark Dapin
Viking, 2015, 287 pp, $32.99

Mark Dapin is a rising star of Australian writing, having first made his mark as a journalist with a string of newspapers. He is a knock-about sort of working-class bloke, who brushed up against the British socialist movement before migrating, a bit of a boxer as well as a writer.

Interviewing the light welterweight world champion Kostya Tszyu for the Sydney Morning Herald, Dapin famously persuaded Tszyu to let him spar with him in the ring. Tszyu didn’t muck about, breaking three of Dapin’s ribs.

On the weekend of July 18 and 19 there was another round of right-wing Reclaim Australia (RA) protests.

The stated aim of RA and its offshoot, the United Patriots Front (UPF), was to defend what they call “Australian values” from the threat of “Islamicisation”.

REGIONAL QUEENSLAND
Come to a National Peace Convergence over July 5 to July 12. Protest Talisman Sabre joint military exercises between US and Australian troops at Shoalwater Bay. Visit Peace Convergence 2015 on Facebook.

MELBOURNE
Come to a rally: Fight the fines on the jobless on Wednesday July 1 at 1pm. The unemployed can be fined for failing to attend a job search appointment with their Employment Service Provider. Max Employment, 470 Collins St. Organised by Australian Unemployment Union.

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.

If you listen to most Western politicians you could be forgiven for thinking that refugees are a pesky annoyance, greedy “economic refugees” from the Third World illegitimately trying to break into this wealthy country.

Their now monotonously routine scapegoating of refugees for the pain and insecurity that more and more people feel, even in the richest countries in the world, translates into plain abuse out there in the public.

The Socialist Alliance stands in full solidarity with the burgeoning movement against the forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities in WA.

This movement can win and if it does it will be a victory for all working people in Australia.

Without any consultation, the federal government announced in September that they would cut funding that, for more than 40 years, had been provided to support these communities. The state government, equally contemptuous in their lack of consultation, then announced that up to 150 communities would have to close.

Verbal Reality Volume One
Provocalz
Native Sun / Hustle Hard, 2012
$15
www.provocalz.bigcartel.com

"Every time you see in the media someone's been killed by police it always just happens to be an Aboriginal," says radical rapper Provocalz.

It's 9.30 on a Saturday morning and the south-west Sydney spitter is telling Green Left why he made his hard-hitting horrorcore track, "Cop Shot".

LA cops shoot dead homeless man

Los Angeles police fatally shot a man on March 1 in a confrontation that was caught on video, TeleSUR English reported on March 2.

The shocking footage shows several officers struggling with a man in an area known for its homeless population. The struggle continued once the man was on the ground and several shots were fired.

The Justice Department’s investigation of the Ferguson Police Department has uncovered an array of racially discriminatory practices that were commonplace in the St Louis, Missouri, suburb, Jack Holmes wrote at TheDailybeast.com on March 3.

Holmes said: “Along with systemic issues, a pattern of personal racial bias among members of law enforcement was uncovered, perhaps best evidenced by a number of racist emails released with the report.”

Independent media organisation Your World News published the following open letter to the United Nations on August 21.

***

August 21, 2014

Dr. Ivan Šimonović

760 United Nations Plaza,

New York, New York 10017,
Ebola victims women
United States

Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, United Nations

Dear Dr. Šimonović,