The UK government announced, in April this year, an arrangement with the East African nation of Rwanda, to relocate asylum seekers to the latter nation. The UK’s Home Secretary Priti Patel, herself born to a family of Ugandan-Indian refugees, stated that this deal with Rwanda will deter people smugglers.

Asylum seekers, after being processed in the offshore detention facilities in Rwanda, will be required to stay in that nation for five years. It is unclear what will happen to those unsuccessful refugee applicants.

Rwanda, having recovered from the ravages of warfare and genocide in the early 1990s, still remains one of the poorest nations on earth. Its human rights record is questionable, to say the least. It is not clear, beyond changing a hostel into a detention camp, how relocated asylum seekers will be housed and treated. There is though, a deeper issue which needs to be examined – the coercion of poor nations by rich imperialist countries to act as border guards, taking unwanted arrivals.

Offshore processing – a euphemism for institutionalised people trafficking – is a new way that rich nations dump the problems of unwanted migrants onto the poorer nations. While the UK-Rwanda deal is framed as a partnership, the reality is quite different. The UK’s per capita GDP is immensely larger than that of Rwanda. The poor nations face unequal conditions in the international arena. The imperialist nations are in a position to make aid and financing conditional on the forcible relocation to poorer nations of asylum seekers.

This kind of arrangement could best be described as a form of imperialism, 21st century style. The UK-Rwanda arrangement is not the first of its kind. Indeed, the inspiration for outsourcing the refugee issue comes from the Australian government’s Pacific Solution. Bribing the poorer nations of the Asia-Pacific region, successive Australian governments have detained asylum seekers in offshore camps in Nauru and Manus Island. Alexander Downer, former foreign minister and advocate of offshore processing, is one of Priti Patel’s advisers.

Implemented by the Australian Tories – the ultra conservative Liberal party – the Pacific Solution was revived, after a brief suspension, by the conservative Labour party in 2012. Offshore processing doubly victimises the asylum seekers. The latter, fleeing wars and conflicts instigated by the imperialist states, are denied their fundamental human right to seek asylum under the International Refugee Convention.

The EU, for some time now, has been using the African nation of Niger as an outsourcing migration laboratory. Niger, another impoverished nation, accepted millions of euros in aid on the condition that asylum seekers – those from outside of Europe – would be housed and their applications processed there. Rich nations have transformed international aid from a policy of development into an instrument of short term geopolitical interests.

In fact, the EU-Niger refugee arrangement is a way for the EU nations to construct a border patrol in the Sahel; rather than wait for asylum seekers to approach the heavily patrolled and militarised Mediterranean Sea, the flow of non-European refugees is stemmed and controlled by the poorer nations themselves. Outsourcing border patrols and coercive migration controls is part of a wider strategy to gain economic footholds in the poorer but resource-rich nations.

The richer nations have had decades of toxic political debate about immigration, multiculturalism and asylum seekers. Demonising refugees and alleged ‘queue-jumpers’ has influenced election campaigns and outcomes. Throughout the prime ministership of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli politicians denounced African refugees as ‘infiltrators’, a ‘cancer’ in the society. Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers were relocated from Israel to Rwanda.

Priti Patel’s background, as the child of Ugandan Indian refugees, draws a spotlight on the issue of the 1970s Uganda Asian refugees. The latter – known as Asians back then – were persecuted by the regime of General Idi Amin. Britain, having originally backed Amin’s rise to power, condemned his government’s mistreatment of the Ugandan Asian community.

Britain, over the objections of racist and right wing politicians and pundits, accepted Ugandan Asians as refugees. It would be wrong however, to forget that the Ugandan refugee crisis was the result of cumulative and historical decisions by Imperial Britain to import and privilege one ethnic group over the majority Ugandan population. This is not to excuse the actions of the Amin regime. The purpose is to highlight the original criminal policy of the British empire; divide and rule.

The British empire implanted generations of economically driven imperial service communities; after decolonisation they become the acceptable refugees. The unrelenting hostility directed at non-European refugees contrasts sharply with the favourable and welcoming attitude towards the recent outflow of Ukrainian war refugees. Rather than pushing refugees onto someone else, there are practical solutions to the refugee outflows, addressing the wars and inequalities that produce them.

Holocaust denial, based in antisemitic conspiratorial thinking, is the active attempt to create pseudoscientific materials denying the Nazi German programme to exterminate European Jewry. While old-school Holocaust denial has declined, obfuscation and distortion of the antisemitic killings in WW2 has increased, especially in Eastern Europe. This corresponds with the rise of ultranationalist and far right parties.

Professor Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar, was sued by Nazi apologist and white supremacist writer David Irving in the late 1990s. Irving, a long time Holocaust denier, sued Lipstadt and Penguin Books for libel. Lipstadt wrote a comprehensive book – published back in 1993 – called Denying the Holocaust: the growing assault on truth and memory. In that book, Lipstadt traced the origins and trajectory of Holocaust denial from the ruins of WW2, through the works of white supremacists and Nazi apologists, including Irving.

The trial of Irving versus Lipstadt and Penguin Publishers, dramatised in the 2016 film Denial, was decided in 2000 in favour of Lipstadt and Penguin books. Irving was comprehensively defeated in a legal action he initiated. Holocaust denial suffered a terrible blow, but it was not defeated.

Irving was following in the footsteps of previous generations of Holocaust deniers, which Lipstadt detailed in her book. Intending to exculpate Nazi Germany and its collaborators of the main crime – the extermination of European Jewry – Holocaust deniers and ultranationalist writers of all stripes were keen on rehabilitating white supremacy.

German nationalists, American racists and white European Nazi apologists found Holocaust denial to be the ideological cement glueing together their respective parallel agendas. Deniers and antisemites cast doubt on the existence of the gas chambers, and produce pseudoscientific materials in order to gain academic respectability for their cause. For instance, the denialist 1974 pamphlet Did Six Million Really Die?, written by an English white supremacist and neo-Nazi, attacked the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, criticising the objectivity of the judges and the veracity of the evidence presented.

The Institute for Historical Review, a think tank established by Holocaust deniers and antisemites in 1978 in California, churns out racist materials with a veneer of academic credibility. While reaching a high point in the 1980s and 90s, its activities have declined somewhat since then. Hiding behind a facade of free speech and scholarly enquiry, the IHR’s mission is to promote an updated white supremacy and recycle Holocaust denial.

Numerous books have been written rebutting the nefarious claims of Holocaust deniers. Richard Evans’ book, Telling Lies About Hitler is one such book; Michael Shermer’s Denying History: Who says the Holocaust never happened and why do they say it? is another. These books, and other multimedia materials, are indispensable in combating Holocaust denial.

However, we cannot be complacent – with the growth of social media, Holocaust denial has found a new arena in which to grow. From the very first days of the internet, antisemites and racists have utilised the new technologies to disseminate their views far and wide. The old school denialism has been superseded in many ways; no longer is it necessary to submit paper manuscripts for publication. Irving and other Holocaust deniers have either grown old, reduced their activities or passed away.

Holocaust obfuscation received a boost from the early 1990s onwards, and the reasons for that can be found in the politically tectonic shifts which occurred in Eastern European nations in 1989-91. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and its allied Eastern bloc paved the way for a resurgence of pre-Communist era ultranationalism, particularly in the Baltic states. With Communist ideology now discarded, the Eastern European states harked back to the ostensibly ‘good old days’ of the 1920s-1940s.

Investigating the Soviet period, and examining Moscow’s crimes is one thing; downplaying the culpability of Baltic, Ukrainian and Eastern European ultranationalism is quite another. Baltic and Eastern European collaboration with Nazism, and the crucial role these ultrarightist ideologies played in helping to massacre Jewish populations, had to be obscured. Today’s Eastern European ultranationalist Right intends to obscure its antisemitic actions in the past.

The Baltic states, prior to their occupation by Soviet forces, enthusiastically collaborated in antisemitic purges; the Ukrainian nationalist army, while theoretically independent of Nazi Germany, recycled antisemitic conspiracy theories, blamed ‘Muscovy-Communism’ on the Jews, and massacred Jewish communities. The ‘double genocide’ theory, which explicitly ties Soviet conduct to Nazi war crimes, turns the Jews from victims into perpetrators.

These political developments have created a climate conducive to the spread of Holocaust obfuscation, intended to exculpate Baltic and Eastern European ultranationalist parties of the crimes of antisemitism and ethnic cleansing. No, David Irving is not gaining a wide audience in Eastern Europe, however, the denial of European Jewry’s suffering at the hands of Baltic and Ukrainian ultranationalism is gaining a hearing.

When Baltic Waffen SS veterans are honoured as heroes in public parades, the doctrines that motivated them to murder Jews also receive credibility. Holocaust deniers, longing for oxygen for their views, begin obtaining coverage in the mainstream. Each national ideology can remember history the way they like. But ultranationalism must not be allowed to get away with pseudoscientific attempts to minimise or escape the guilt of its crimes, or repudiate the suffering of its victims.

One of the most well-worn and yet incorrect analogies circulating – especially around electioneering times – is that a government budget can be managed just like a household budget. After all, we cannot afford to spend beyond our means, can we? Is not balancing the family chequebook a good idea? Unfortunately, this folksy homespun analogy is not only simplistic, but also misleading and contributes to the infantilisation of political debate in the Anglosphere nations.

In response to a query by a journalist, Australian Labour Party leader Anthony Albanese could not recall the official unemployment rate. This putative ‘gaffe’ by an aspiring prime ministerial candidate revealed the infantile character of what passes for journalism, rather than any shortcoming on Albanese’s part. This ridiculous gotcha reporting only contributes to the deterioration of political debate, and increases the apathy of the electorate towards the political process.

Australian Greens leader Adam Bandt, when asked a similar gotcha-type question, hit back with an eloquent response – let’s focus on the policies and ideas, let’s discuss how to improve the welfare of the society. If you want the latest statistics – google it.

Greg Jericho, economics columnist for the Guardian, wrote that it is more important to know the impact of your policies than recalling statistics offhand. Indeed, Jericho wrote that he frequently accesses statistics from Australian government websites, when writing his columns. Rather than rattling off stats from the top of his head, he verifies his articles through research.

The household comparison has been skilfully deployed to facilitate an austerity agenda. A household budget impacts only the occupants of that household – a government’s budget decisions impact millions of people and affects the direction of a national economy. Our economic reporting, and the way we think about government spending, has been gradually colonised by the financial/corporate sector. The effect of that is to obscure the fact that wealth is created by labour power, combined with capital spending and investment, to generate a healthy economy.

A government can levy taxes, implement and regulate a currency, invest in long-term infrastructure projects, and determine the standards of measurement used to impose a uniform currency – the dollar in Australia’s case. In fact, in the 1960s, the Australian ruling class changed currencies from the pound (tied to the English currency) to the Australian dollar – a measure no household can ever achieve. Changing currency is a tectonic shift in the nature and operation of a national economy.

The alleged suffering of multinational corporations under an uncompetitive and uncompromising tax structure is a conservative myth. In Australia, there are 722 major corporations, including 199 which reported more than one billion dollars in profits for fiscal year 2016-17 – and paid no taxes. If government deficit was such a series problem, this avoidance of corporate taxes should be urgently addressed.

The failure by the Australian government to establish a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) may not seem like an economic issue. However, let’s consider the following – how much government money is lost or siphoned off due to corruption? Plugging that particular hole in the budget would certainly contribute significantly to reducing government debt.

The seeming inability of the federal government to investigate just how many billions of dollars transnational corporations have stashed away in offshore tax havens indicates a lack of political will. Reclaiming such money offers an opportunity to not only recoup truckloads of lost money, but also help compensate for the purportedly serious government deficit. These kind of political decisions are not in the interest of the financial/corporate elite; lectures about fiscal responsibility are reserved for public spending on health care and education.

The household-budget metaphor, deployed as a rhetorical device, is used to attack the suggestion of public spending, particularly as it relates to health care services, welfare, government schools, public transport and the like. Of course no government has infinite amounts of money. However, the way we think about deficit spending is influenced by those who intend to dismantle the public sector and hand over more money to private enterprise.

Former Australian prime minister and lodestar of today’s conservatives, Robert Menzies, ran budget deficits and invested government money in public infrastructure. Government spending as a share of GDP actually increased under Menzies – from 19.4% to 24.5%. No-one denounced his government as irresponsible or reckless. Menzies also kept watch on inflationary pressures, all the while maintaining a long term vision for the economy.

While noting the use of GDP growth as a metric of economic success, let’s suggest another metric to watch – lifting people out of poverty. How many millions, or hundreds, of previously unemployed and/or poor were lifted out of poverty by government policies? Surely improving the quality of life for its citizens is a major task of governments. Why don’t we report on poverty alleviation like we do on a daily basis on the stock market?

It is possible to focus on nation-building, constructing infrastructure vital to building a cohesive society, and keep an eye on deficits. This obsessive-compulsive disorder we have with reducing government deficit serves to blur our focus on economic activities that contribute to nation prosperity. Let’s have a national conversation about economic policies without recourse to trivial and infantile analogies which actually do harm to our political debate.

The freedom to practice the religion of one’s own choice is a basic human right. Sadly, not all countries allow this right to be practiced free from persecution. Please, do not use religious freedom, as US ruling circles do, as a cynical and perverse exercise in interfering in the internal affairs of other nations.

The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is a body which purportedly examines the status of religious freedom in nations around the world. It issues an annual report where, among other things, it lists nations which restrict the ability of religious people to practice their beliefs. This year, it has named Vietnam as a ‘country of particular concern’, the phrase used by the USCIRF to indicate nations where religious freedom is, in its opinion, subject to restrictions.

One has to wonder at the astonishing arrogance of US authorities assigning to themselves the function of arbitrating religious freedom in nations around the world. We will examine the role of the USCIRF as an instrument of US foreign policy later. Let’s first address the accusation that Vietnam suppresses religious followers and undermines religious freedom.

There is absolutely no basis in fact that the Hanoi authorities repress religion or religious worship. The Vietnamese constitution explicitly guarantees freedom of religion as a human right. The three main religions are Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, all of which are openly practiced. There are various minority religious groups, including Catholics and Protestants. Cao Dai, a particular religious minority highlighted by the USCIRF, is practiced openly as well.

Indeed, there was a long period in Vietnam’s history when religious groups were suppressed. No, not by the Hanoi authorities, but by the American-backed and installed regime of South Vietnam, formerly located in Saigon. The South Vietnamese leaders, with the full knowledge and support of the US, violently suppressed the Buddhist population and monks, while maintaining a position of privilege for the Catholic minority. The Buddhist crisis very nearly led to a mini-civil war within South Vietnam.

The USCIRF report highlights the fact that the Vietnamese constitution contains a clause which enables the government to invoke national security to suspend freedom of religion. The US is hardly in a position to hector other nations when it comes to the thorny issue of national security. The latter has been invoked by Washington’s ruling circles to rationalise all sorts of war crimes overseas, and domestic restrictions on civil liberties.

It is true that since 2018, the Vietnamese authorities require religious organisations to register in a national database to determine their authenticity. This measure guards against scams and hucksters who have exploited religious belief to further their own financial gain. Such scams have been prevented, and none of the religious minorities have complained about such a national registry.

There is no shortage of religious scams in the United States; organisations masquerading as religiously-motivated, accumulating masses of money from their followers, and enriching a handful of so-called pastors. The prosperity gospel, a purportedly Christian doctrine which holds that material wealth is a goal of worshipful belief, has resulted in the accumulation of tremendous wealth for the leaders of such groups.

The preachers of the prosperity gospel, while inspiring millions with the simplified doctrine that God will provide wealth, endless happiness and fulfilment, also rake in millions of dollars as well. A perversion of the original Christian doctrines, the prosperity gospel elevates a kind of individual salvation into a collective exercise in narcissism. The late bell hooks, scholar and activist, made an observation that applies to the practitioners of the fraudulent prosperity theology:

I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual self-improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community.

The USCIRF, rather than being a politically neutral body, is specifically an extremist-dominated institution, dedicated to the spread of fundamentalist doctrine around the world. The politicians who make up this commission are advocates for a strict, Americanised Christianity, condemn equal marriage status, spread anti-LGBTI propaganda, and condemn Islam specifically as a hateful doctrine.

The putative concern for religious freedom has been deployed as a weapon of US foreign policies for decades. The covert intervention of the US in Afghanistan, for instance, was carried out by citing the alleged lack of religious freedom in the socialist-era Afghanistan of the 1980s. The US exploited religious feeling to mobilise extremist groups, in an anticommunist insurgency.

However, religion was not the main reason the Afghan mujahideen rebelled, but rather the social and economic reforms – particularly distributing land to the peasantry – which impelled the reactionary mullahs to throw in their lot with the United States. The mullahs may have had culturally regressive views, but they were fundamentally committed to restoring an economic system of feudal-like inequality.

Freedom of religion is a fundamental human right. Perhaps the US should re-examine its own cynical history of abusing this claim to promote cultural interference around the world.

In March this year, the Duke and Duchess of Kent visited the Caribbean island nation of Jamaica, as part of a charm PR offensive. The neighbouring Caribbean country of Barbados cut its strings to the British monarchy, and declared itself a republic. Hoping to discourage Jamaica from removing the Queen as head of state, the royal visit was meant to drum up support for the UK monarchy.

The trip did not go well. The royal couple were met with protests, condemning the UK monarchy’s role in the commission of slavery, demanding reparations for the descendants of the enslaved. The Windrush scandal, which saw hundreds of Caribbean nationals deported from Britain, was also raised by the Jamaican protesters. Afro-Caribbeans, even those who had lived and worked in Britain for decades, were swept up in the British government’s policy of creating a hostile environment for Caribbean nationals.

The Jamaican prime minister, Andrew Holness, informed Prince William and the Duchess Catherine while they were in Kingston that Jamaica does indeed intend to sever ties with the UK monarchy and become a fully-fledged republic. Jamaica and Barbados are member states of the Commonwealth, the latter a loose association of former British colonies and dependencies. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Papua New Guinea are, among others, Commonwealth nations keeping the Queen as the official head of state.

With Jamaica following the example of Barbados in declaring themselves a republic, the grandiose notions of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ‘global Britain’ in the wake of Brexit have been undermined. Commonwealth nations are not forming the backbone of a resurgent Brexit Britain, as the UK government had hoped.

Barbados history of slavery crucial in understanding the rise of English colonialism and Britain as a maritime superpower. Slavery, while different from capitalism, was instrumental in the expansion of capitalist socioeconomic relations.

This is more than just a case of royal ties being cut in the Caribbean. A rise in Republican sentiment is all well and good; but there needs to be a thoroughgoing assessment of the impact and continuing relevance of slavery, and Britain’s role in it. Slavery is usually regarded as a historic and outmoded institution, something that has only marginal significance in the expansion of capitalism. While slavery has certainly been relegated to the distant past, and Britain did have a strong anti slavery movement, there can be no denying that the transatlantic slave trade was instrumental in the development of Britain as a capitalist power.

Professor Trevor Burnard, from the University of Hull, writes that Britain has never fully acknowledged its role as a slave-trading power. He notes that the UK monarchy as an institution was deeply embedded in, encouraged, and profited from the practice of slavery. The bustling entrepôts of Bristol, Liverpool and similar commercial cities built their wealth on the backs of slave-trading. Barbados was the place where the English first solidified their economic practice of slavery. English capitalist accumulation organised itself on the slave-driven sugar plantations in Barbados and the Caribbean.

It is no exaggeration to say that Barbados is the birthplace of Britain’s drive to construct a slave society. That template was exported and replicated across the Caribbean and mainland America. Importing African slaves as a disposable workforce, the profits from the sugar and tobacco plantations went into the coffers of the slave owners – and into the banking institutions, factories and workhouses that have become synonymous with English capitalism. While Barbadian society was organised as a ruthless, inhumane and back-breaking society for the slaves, the profits generated propelled English entrepreneurship into a global power.

There was a time when Britain paid reparations – not to the formerly enslaved, but to the former slave owners. The English government, finally relenting to the demands for the abolition of slavery, paid millions of pounds in compensation to the former slave owners, the latter claiming they deserved payment for their loss of property. The previously enslaved and their descendants received nothing. Slavery and capitalism may be rival economic formations, but they are also sibling rivals.

Kenan Malik, writing in the Guardian, observers that this latest royal trip was bound to be farcical. The notion that the UK monarchy is foremost in the minds of the Jamaicans or Barbadians is nonsensical. As Malik notes, politicians in the former British colonies, particularly in the Anglosphere, are proficient at constructing historical stories to reinforce their power in the present. The stories of repeated slave rebellions and uprisings in the Caribbean is conveniently omitted.

It is high time to consider not only the establishment of a republic, in Barbados, Jamaica and the wider Commonwealth nations, but also the abolition of the UK monarchy itself. It is an obsolete and archaic institution which should go the way of slavery.

The Russian invasion of the Ukraine, ongoing at the time of writing, has prompted an outflow of Ukrainian refugees, numbering in the millions. The EU member nations, such as Poland and Hungary, have accepted Ukrainian refugees, and there has been an outpouring of sympathy and solidarity for their plight. This is a humane and considerate response to people experiencing traumatic circumstances.

This sympathy and solidarity stands in stark contrast to the racialised hostility and militarised xenophobia that the EU nations have demonstrations towards nonwhite refugees from war-torn countries in the Global South. Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and people from African nations have faced the violent response of fortress Europe. Only last year, at the Polish-Belarus border, Middle Eastern and African refugees were greeted with tear gas, batons, electrified razor wire, and pushed into makeshift detention camps.

One of the governments supporting the harsh Poland-EU response to the new arrivals was Kiev. Denouncing the Middle Eastern and African refugees as ‘invaders’, the Ukrainian authorities, along with Poland, Lithuania and other EU nations, implemented the practices of Fortress Europe. The policies of deterrence and forcible detention of asylum seekers is not new in Europe; the EU nations have turned their immigration and refugee practices into hostile organs of repression.

EU governments have made numerous arrangements with non-EU European nations, such as Turkey and states in the Balkans, to detain incoming Middle Eastern and African refugees in isolated and decrepit camps, where refugees are subjected to violence. Greek authorities have imprisoned nonwhite asylum seekers in makeshift camps, and Croatian police have used violent tactics to keep refugees out of their nation.

Why have Ukrainian refugees received such a friendly reception? Let’s listen to the words of Bulgarian Prime Minister, Kiril Petkov. When discussing Ukrainians fleeing from the war-torn circumstances of their home nation, he said that Ukrainians are just like us:

These are not the refugees we are used to; these people are Europeans,”……These people are intelligent. They are educated people…. This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists.

Petkov was hardly alone in expressing these kinds of sentiments. That the Ukrainian refugees are white, educated, middle class, ‘just like us’ was a common theme throughout the corporate-controlled media. Numerous media commentators have emphasised that the Ukrainians constitute the ‘good’ refugees, in contrast to those sinister, nonwhite arrivals from Africa and the Middle East.

While the hospitality extended to Ukrainian refugees is commendable and necessary, it highlights the racist hypocrisies of the EU imperialist states in selectively sympathising with ostensibly white refugees, while dismissing South Asian, African and Middle Eastern refugees as the eternal Other. As Binoy Kampmark writes, the rich nations can now posture as generous benefactors by extending solidarity to the ‘right type’ of refugee.

The EU fortress, mobilised to its fullest extent to expel nonwhite refugees, is now showing a morally respectable face to the influx of ‘good’ Ukrainians. The hypocrisy of this terrible exercise in racialised public relations exposes the cynical manipulation of humanitarian pretexts of refugee policy in the EU, and Australia for that matter.

Saturation coverage of Ukrainian families fleeing the Russian invasion are a feature of our TV screens in the West. Funnily enough, Iraqi, Afghan or Yemeni families, fleeing the terrifying destruction caused by American made bombs, do not receive the same human-interest angle in our corporatised media. The attack on Mariupol hospital was indeed outrageous, but the long track record of American bombings of hospitals, such in Fallujah, Iraq, or Kunduz in Afghanistan, receive scant coverage because the victims do not conform to our stereotype of the ‘good’ refugee.

There is one claim that we should dispense with from the start; that the Ukrainian refugee outflow is the largest refugee crisis in Europe since the end of WW2. The situation in Ukraine is in flux, certainly, and it is one of the fastest growing crises in Europe. However, we would do well to remember that Europe experienced huge displacements of refugee populations since the 1990s.

The 1989-91 dismantling of the Soviet Union, in which capitalist austerity programmes were implemented in the former Soviet republics, resulted in the displacement of 9 million refugees, fleeing poverty, industrial collapse and fratricidal ethnic warfare. The economic dislocation caused by a return to neoliberal capitalism resulted in, among other things, a severe drop in life expectancy in Russia and an increase in child malnutrition.

The other catastrophic surge in refugee outflows was caused by the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early to mid-1990s. Bosnians fled the fratricidal ethnic conflict in their nation (1992-95), resulting in the production of at least 2 million refugees. The Bosnians, who are majority Muslim, never acquired the kind of sympathetic coverage we are witnessing today in relation to the Ukrainian refugees.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and the capitalist press hailed the inauguration of a new, united Europe. However, since the early 1990s, European Union nations have constructed new walls, border forces and guards – along with politically motivated hysteria – to expel refugees from the global South. The Mediterranean Sea is used as a maritime border to prevent the influx of African and Arabic-speaking asylum seekers.

It is high time to end rank hypocrisies, and change our refugee policies, basing them on our common humanity and international law. While we cannot order Moscow to stop its invasion of Ukraine, we can stop our participation in imperialist and predatory wars overseas – the wars which create outflows of refugees in the first place.

The US Africa Command – Africom – has been quietly expanding its footprint across the African continent since its establishment in 2007 (activated in 2008). A military and economic project, it represents the latest version of American imperialist intervention in Africa. An extension of Euro-American colonialism, Africa has been the target of colonial plunder for centuries – for its people as slaves, and also for its mineral resources.

While the transatlantic slave trade ended long ago, the imperialist powers continued in their designs to carve up Africa, exploit its tremendous natural resources, and maintain spheres of influence. Decolonisation in the 1950s and 60s achieved formal political independence for African nations, but the machinations by the capitalist West to recolonise Africa in more subtle ways never ceased.

When it comes to Africa the corporate-controlled media reports a depressing litany of cascading evils – corruption, interminable civil wars, dictators and child soldiers. Omitted from this picture is the very real, and ongoing, interventions by imperialist powers to keep African nations underdeveloped, and simply a source of raw materials for western transnational corporations.

Liberia – a settler colony similar to Israel

Was not Liberia, the small West African nation, founded by freed black slaves from the US, for the purpose of repatriating emancipated slaves and free African Americans? The sentiment to return to Africa was very noble, but such long distance nationalism was exploited, in the early days of the United States, to remove an important challenge to slavery – emancipated African Americans.

The American Colonisation Society, in the early 1800s, proposed a scheme of repatriation to West Africa – namely what became the nation of Liberia. Worried by the increasing population of emancipated slaves, as well as free blacks, the US authorities sponsored a return of formerly enslaved people, couched in the language of restitution.

The Americo-Liberians – as the new settlers are known – formed a new settler-colony in Liberia, and began to suppress the indigenous African nations. Indeed, the America-Liberians brought with them not only the outlook of the American society, but also fanatical Protestant Christianity. The project of peopling a new nation with settlers, armed with a fundamentalist interpretation of a monotheistic religion – the parallels between Liberia and Israel are quite apparent.

The vast majority of African Americans rejected this Liberia repatriation scheme, preferring to challenge slavery, racism and fight for equal rights in the United States. While prominent black nationalist and Northern abolitionists supported the Liberia project initially, the colonising practices of the new Americo-Liberian settlers soon attracted criticism.

The corrupt and dictatorial leaders of Liberia, such as former president Samuel Doe, were strongly supported by the United States, even as he was murdering his political opponents, embezzling state funds, while leaving his people in poverty.

Proxy imperialism

The extension of Africom into numerous African nations has been implemented on the spurious excuse of conducting the ‘war on terror.’ This flimsy pretext, mobilised by successive American administrations, has disguised the predatory nature of Africom’s proxy imperialism with a humanitarian cloak.

South Sudan, one of the newest nations in sub-Saharan Africa, is the result of a secessionist project, clandestinely supported by the US and Israel. Possessing vast reserves of oil, western multinational corporations have longed to get their hands on South Sudan’s energy reserves. It is no secret that Israeli armaments exports ended up in the hands of secessionist South Sudanese rebel groups, contributing to the destabilisation of the Sudan.

Since 2011, when South Sudan declared formal independence, Israeli arms, military surveillance technology and training for security forces has continued, despite the well-documented record of war crimes and atrocities committed by South Sudanese military forces. Poverty, endemic violence and corruption have plagued South Sudan, reducing it to a failed state.

Africom and exile communities

Africom is not only a military mechanism but also a money-making machine for the American military-industrial complex. The allegedly light footprint of Africom bases in sub-Saharan Africa is proving to be quite enduring. The inter-imperialist competition for Africa’s natural resources has intensified with the expansion of Africom.

Most of Sydney’s African communities, small and multiethnic, have concentrated on multicultural assimilation, and have distanced themselves from the struggle for social change. There is no shortage of African recruits among the politically regressive evangelical cults, the latter emphasising individual ‘salvation’ as opposed to collective solidarity.

Sociopolitical issues, such as the role of Africom, get forgotten amid the largely indifferent political and cultural wasteland of western Sydney. However, it is incumbent on the activist Left to raise awareness of the role of imperialist institutions, such as Africom, in extending colonial power across Africa.

High school geology classes were difficult, and also lots of fun. No, becoming a geologist was never the goal – education is not an ‘apprenticeship’; geology is not a garden implement or lawn mower that you study so you can ‘use it’ later. Purely career-oriented motivations are not the only reasons to take up science.

However, there is an important way that geology can be used, for lack of a better expression – countering the false claims, made by intelligent design proponents, regarding the Cambrian explosion. Let’s unpack this subject.

The vast majority of the Earth’s evolution is marked by the predominance of single-celled bacterial life. The apparently sudden appearance of nearly all the main body types of animal life around 541 million years ago – along with the evolution of multicellular life – seems like a major discontinuity.

This rapid diversification is referred to as the Cambrian explosion. Named after the Cambrian geological period, this ‘explosion’ purportedly presents a problem for evolutionary biology – except that it does not. Lasting between 13 and 25 million years, this apparent ‘explosion’ witnessed the divergence of all the modern metazoan phyla. Some biologists place the duration of the ‘explosion’ at 20 million years – a monumental length of time, but not uncommon when examining geological time. The Early Cambrian was 25 million years long – hardly a short time frame, so the label of an ‘explosion’ is a bit of a misnomer.

There are many unanswered questions regarding the causes and progress of the seemingly sudden appearance of major animal phyla during the Cambrian explosion. Scientists are debating its duration, and whether it is more accurate to call this episode a diversification or radiation of major metazoan phyla.

However, given these disagreements, let’s highlight one point – please stop using the episode to in the fossil record and biological evolution to pose a false challenge to the general validity of evolutionary theory. The term sudden appearance should not be used to sneak in the biblical Genesis story of creation as a supposed ‘verification’ of scripture.

There was rapid multicellular growth in the Cambrian, but this era did not mark the first appearance of multicellular life. Complex multicellular life preceded the putative Cambrian explosion by millions of years. There certainly are fossils, such as Anomalocaris, whose lineage cannot be traced directly to the Middle Cambrian. However, this does not prove the ‘sudden emergence’ of animal phyla in the Cambrian explosion. It was in this period that organisms became of extensively mineralised, increasing the amount of fossils left behind.

Indeed, the development of the field of geology – examining the bio-stratigraphic record of the Earth – was the major challenge upturning the biblical view of natural history, decades prior to the publication of Charles Darwin’s books on evolution. As geologists began to dig, especially in search of commercially viable oil deposits, what they found did not harmonise with a biblically-based account of the planet’s history. Conditions in the geological field compelled scientists to revise their previously cherished notions of a Genesis-compatible Earth.

Darwin himself realised the difficulty the rapid diversification of animal phyla in the Cambrian explosion presented for his theory of evolution by natural selection. The seeming rapidity of the rise of animal phyla apparently contradicted the prolonged, gradual and incremental change that evolutionary biology allegedly required. Findings in the field after Darwin’s death provided solutions.

The National Centre for Science Education (NCSE) published the findings of a team of geologists from the University of Adelaide, South Australia, who addressed this precise question. As the NCSE summarised:

Was the geologically fast diversification during the Cambrian too fast to be explained by normal evolutionary processes? Does the Cambrian explosion threaten the theory of evolution? To these questions researchers at the University of Adelaide offer a definitive answer: “No.”

The researchers concluded that even using the fastest inferred rates – and they examined arthropod lineages, the dominant species during the Cambrian – the purported rapidity of change is still consistent with evolution biology. While there are numerous competing theories regarding what prompted the Cambrian radiation, intelligent design advocates are not presenting a necessary corrective or contribution to the debate, but only more supernatural obfuscation.

Geologist and author Donald Prothero, writing in Skepticblog, explained that the term Cambrian ‘explosion’ is archaic, dating from the beginnings of geology, and a bit misleading. The Cambrian radiation was more of a slow burning fuse, with increasing numbers of fossil types tracing their lineage back to the Ediacaran period, the 94 million-year period preceding the Cambrian.

Let’s all understand geology and the Earth’s natural history – it is an endlessly fascinating and developing subject. However, scriptural reconciliation is not the goal of the natural sciences, no matter how much intelligent design proponents would like it to be. It is advisable keep theological speculations separate from scientific investigations.

The Nation of Islam (NOI), one of the most famous and wealthy black nationalist organisations in the US, has been cooperating with anti-vaccine fanatics, and recycling antivaccinationist falsehoods in their social media content. While the NOI has an extensive and bizarre theology setting it apart from other right wing organisations, it has found common cause with other antivaccinationist and Covid-19 denier spokespeople on the political spectrum.

The NOI, founded in 1930, advocates a bizarre invented cosmology, purportedly demonstrating the inherent superiority of the black race. A UFO religion, NOI adherents are taught that the original, divinely imbued human is the black man. Consisting of the Arabic-speaking Tribe of Shabazz, the black man himself is the original Allah.

Already, we can see a major divergence from the beliefs of mainstream Islam; the NOI is a polytheistic religion, advocating multiple gods. In fact, Islamic scholars have denounced the NOI as a completely different theological sect, believing in concepts alien to mainstream Islam.

While Wallace Fard Muhammad was the founder of the NOI, it was Elijah Muhammad who made the organisation into a strict, hierarchical setup we see today. Proclaiming himself the messenger of Allah, Elijah Muhammad advocated black separatism, a theologically-nationalist outlook, and black empowerment through wealth creation. Finding recruits among the black prison population, as well as among the poor and dispossessed African Americans in Detroit, the NOI appealed to many because of its message of black nationalism in confronting white supremacy.

Elijah Muhammad taught – and longtime NOI leader Minister Louis Farrakhan reiterated – that a mad black scientist, Yakub (identified with the biblical Jacob) created a new race through selective breeding and combining recessive genes. Weeding out the darker-coloured babies, Yakub created what became the white race – an inherently sinful, depraved people who would rule the Earth for 6000 years. This experimentation apparently took place on the Mediterranean island of Patmos.

This white race is currently approaching the end of its time, according to the NOI. At this point, the man-made Mothership, an alien intervention, would intercede in human affairs and bring to an end the domination of the white race, restoring the black man to his rightful place as custodian of the Earth. Once again, these beliefs are completely foreign to mainstream Islamic thought.

The NOI’s most famous recruits – Malcolm X and the boxer Muhammad Ali – helped the NOI gain a national following. It is important to stress here that black nationalism is not racism; after centuries of racial oppression, it is no surprise that ethnic minorities react by proposing a complete separation from their abusers. Malcolm X, while famously breaking with the NOI and denouncing its theology as fraudulent, never broke away from black nationalism.

The NOI has performed remarkably successful outreach among marginalised African American communities; its influence extends far beyond its core membership. The NOI membership is estimated at 50000, the African American population in the US is at 46 million. It has successfully built its organisation, requiring members to lead an abstemious lifestyle – no alcohol, tobacco, gambling or premarital sexual relations.

The NOI, under Farrakhan’s leadership, emphasised the importance of racial justice and economic empowerment for African Americans. In 1995, the NOI organised the Million Man March on Washington. In contrast to the white supremacist gathering in Washington on January 6 2021, not a single NOI member attempted to storm the US Congress or subvert the democratic process.

Since the beginning of the current pandemic, NOI leaders have advocated a Covid-19 denialist position, and preached an anti-vaccine message. This vaccine denial stems at least in part from a very real mistrust of government institutions and directives. The US has a long and sordid history of unethical medical experimentation on marginalised communities.

However, the NOI, alongside other antivaccinationist voices, have exploited such skepticism to promote harmful misinformation and deter African Americans from receiving the required vaccinations. Uniting with anti-vaccine proponents such Robert F Kennedy Jnr, and ultranationalist conspiracy theorist and politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, the NOI has amplified antisemitic and tawdry conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 virus and the vaccinations for it.

Conspiratorial viewpoints, reproduced in NOI materials, usually blames the Jews for either instigating the virus, or in another iteration, producing vaccines to depopulate the planet – by reducing the numbers of African Americans. Apportioning the culpability for the plight of the black community to the Jewish people has long been a staple tactic of the NOI. Everything from the transatlantic slave trade, to the civil rights movement – the latter advocating racial integration, the opposite of racial separatism – have been blamed on conspiracies by rich and powerful Jews.

While the NOI has given voice to marginalised African American communities, we should be honest in also repudiating the misinformation they spread, and the ludicrous fictional cosmology they advocate. The NOI’s antivaccinationist platform is a huge disservice to the communities they purport to represent.

The Australian government has announced a funding package of 804 million dollars, over the next decade, to increase Australia’s presence and activities in Antarctica. While there are definite scientific goals and benefits to increasing Australia’s existing commitments to Antarctica, it cannot be denied that geopolitical considerations were foremost in motivating the Morrison government’s Antarctic policies.

Cleaning up historical waste

We normally think of Antarctica as a pristine, if icy, wilderness – and that is fine. However, we cannot ignore the accumulation of historical pollutants and wastage on that continent as a result of military and scientific activities. The historic Australian Wilkes research station, abandoned in 1969 due to its burial under snow and ice, is estimated to have 20,000 cubic metres of waste still in its tip – including old batteries, dead dogs, leaking oil drums and abandoned food.

If we create all this waste, we have an ethical and legal responsibility to clean it up. In fact, Australia signed up to the Madrid Protocol, an environmental annex to the Antarctic treaty system. This protocol, which came into effect in 1998, establishes ecological considerations when planning and implementing Antarctic activities. Mining in Antarctica is expressly prohibited.

The American operated McMurdo research station (you may find a map here) used a nuclear reactor for its power requirements from 1961 until 1972. It took seven years to remove the 12,000 tonnes of contaminated rock to clean up the place. The waste was relocated to the United States. This kind of substantial environmental remediation will be ever more necessary if economic footprints are allowed to increase in Antarctica.

Geopolitical competition

Australia has had a presence in Antarctica for decades, and is no noice to geopolitical competition. Since the International Geophysical Year 1957-58, which brought together the best scientific minds working in the earth sciences, Australia has established research stations in Antarctica – and claimed approximately 42 percent of the continent’s landmass as its own.

In the late 1950s, numerous nations began a flurry of scientific activity in Antarctica – one of them being the Soviet Union. The Australian government at the time responded with commentary casting suspicion on the motives of our Cold War opponent – what are the Russians up to? Media commentators and politicians asked if military motivations underlie Soviet actions in the Antarctic.

Security concerns was the rationale deployed by successive Australian governments to increase Antarctic activity. Richard Casey, the external affairs minister in the 1950s, wondered aloud whether the Soviets would be able to rain missiles on Sydney or Melbourne. These concerns circulated in the media without a shred of evidence – in 1955, the Australian Defence Committee concluded that even if the Soviets had aggressive designs on Australia, it was hardly likely the Russians would attack from Antarctica.

In its most recent announcement regarding Antarctica, the Morrison government made references to the possible incursions of rival powers into Antarctica. While the government did not mention Russia or China by name, media outlets, such as the Australian Financial Review, loudly cheered the financial commitment by Canberra as a step in fighting the Cold War against China.

Kieren Pender, writing in The Guardian, notes that Cold War politics and science have coexisted in an uneasy relationship. He writes that:

Australian efforts in Antarctica therefore always serve a dual purpose: promoting science and conservation while maintaining some degree of involvement across the Australian Antarctic Territory, lest the treaty system ever dissolve.

That is interesting, because the Morrison government made clear that this funding commitment was aimed at strengthening our ‘leadership’ in Antarctica – mostly by way of building drones and inland traversing technologies, which have clear military capabilities.

Warming oceans

We have all seen the documentaries regarding the melting of Antarctica’s ice sheets and glaciers, accelerated by human-induced global warming. This will result in a cascading series of adverse impacts on the ecology of the Southern Ocean. The latter, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, surrounds the Antarctic continent, and contains a diverse marine ecosystem.

As the oceans warm, the ability of the marine life to survive in those ecosystems will erode. The Antarctic krill, a tiny crustacean that lives in the Southern ocean, is physically small – about six centimetres in length. However, their importance in the marine ecosystem is huge. Numbering in the millions, they constitute the food basis for whales and other species. The krill depends on a delicate balance of food and temperature.

As the phytoplankton, the microscopic plant organisms on which the krill depends, decrease in the warming oceans, the krill migrate further southwards. The growth habitat of the krill gradually contracts, and the adverse repercussions will cascade throughout the marine ecosystem.

The urgency of action on reducing the impact of anthropogenic climate change should take priority over short term military and geopolitical interests.