Loyalist anti-migrant pogrom in Northern Ireland

Steve James

Five nights of anti-migrant protests, riots and attacks on property has left the streets of several Northern Ireland towns littered with debris and burnt out cars. At its height, following protests involving hundreds of far-right thugs, migrant houses were set on fire and a leisure centre, in which migrants where thought to be sheltering, petrol bombed.

The riots followed an alleged sex attack on a teenage girl in the town of Ballymena on Saturday, June 7. Two Romanian teenagers have been arrested and have denied charges of attempted rape in Coleraine Magistrates’ Court.

A protester stokes a barricade fire in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, as people protest over an alleged sexual assault in the Co Antrim town, June 11, 2025 [AP Photo/Peter Morrison]

Ballymena is a Protestant-dominated industrial town in County Antrim, home of the unionist dynasty of the late Reverend Ian Paisley. It registers some of the highest deprivation indicators in Northern Ireland, having lost a number of major employers over the last few years. Those that continue are increasingly dependent on migrant workers to fill low paying jobs.

The Ballymena attack, as in the UK following the 2024 stabbing deaths of three children in Southport, and in advance of any facts being established, was seized on as a pretext by far-right forces for a large demonstration on June 9. Estimates put numbers at several hundred to 2,500 people who assembled in the Harryville area of the town.

The demonstration, undoubtedly with the approval of loyalist paramilitary groups, and amplified on social media, moved toward the Clonavon Terrace area where a number of migrant families live, and rapidly became a pogrom. A section of the demonstrators broke off and set up barricades against Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Land Rovers and riot police who were blocking access to Clonavon Terrace.

Over several hours, six houses were attacked, four of them set on fire. Shops were also damaged. One family with young children barricaded themselves in an attic. Rioters threw petrol bombs, bricks and fireworks at PSNI vehicles.

The next day, Romanian residents of the street told the Irish News, “We didn’t expect the riots to happen last night, we tried to get out of the house and go to a safe place around 7 p.m. I’ve lived here 15 years... I have so many friends from here, we got so much support. Everyone was texting us to ask if we are ok.”

A Filipino factory worker, employed at the nearby Wrightbus factory, who shared a house with other workers at the factory told the Belfast Telegraph, “They were screaming outside... after a minute, they trashed our door and stole our bikes. They got something from our garage and… came and smashed our windows, trying to get in. But we locked the door and then they were screaming outside. They told us to come out. They threatened to kill us.”

Early Tuesday morning a petrol bomb was thrown at the home of another Filipino factory worker in the village of Cullybackey. His car was burnt out and family traumatised. Reports suggested a Facebook page was broadcasting addresses of these to be targeted.

On Tuesday evening, conflict flared up in the Clonavon Terrace area with riot police, Land Rovers and a water cannon deployed. The police also fired plastic bullets. Many house windows were smashed in the street despite foreign residents putting Union Jacks on the doors and windows to save their homes from attack. Protests were reported in loyalist areas of Belfast, Lisburn, Coleraine and Newtonabbey, while bottles and masonry were thrown at police in Carrickfergus.

On Wednesday evening, Larne Leisure Centre was attacked by masked individuals, windows smashed and the facility set on fire following reports that it was being used to house migrants displaced from Ballymena. According to Mid and East Antrim Borough Council the leisure centre had been opened as an emergency rest centre, but by the time it was attacked any displaced people had been moved. A brick thrown through a window interrupted a yoga class.

The Irish News reported that on Thursday, in the town of Portadown, a local housing association warned that a planned demonstration in the town “could lead to an unsafe situation and we would recommend that you stay with family or friends during the protest.” A sinister post circulated on social media by a group calling itself the Loyalist Edgarstown Bonfire called for migrant owned businesses, houses and hostels accommodating migrants to be targeted. Some 400 loyalist protesters confronted large numbers of police, rocks were thrown and fires lit. Further conflict took place on Friday evening, while Ballymena was reported as quiet.

Elsewhere on Thursday, a family with three children were forced to leave their Coleraine home after it was set on fire, and bricks were thrown through house windows in Avoniel Road, Belfast. In total just 15 people have been arrested so far, and three teenagers charged with riotous assembly. The Northern Ireland Housing Executive reported that around 50 families have received assistance following the Ballymena attacks, 14 of which needed emergency accommodation. As many as 63 police are reported to have been injured.

The political response to the riots has been muted. The power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive, with ministers from Sinn Fein, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Ulster Unionist Party and the Alliance Party issued a pro forma statement, June 11, appealing for calm, calling for justice to take its course, and criticising those “weaponising the situation in order to sow racial tensions...”

Most heat was generated when Sinn Fein First Minister Michelle O’Neil—supported by the Labour government’s Northern Ireland Secretary, Hilary Benn—called for the resignation of DUP Communities Minister Gordon Lyons after a social media post in which Lyons pointed out the use of Larne Leisure Centre as a refuge for immigrants shortly before it was petrol bombed. Lyons claimed the information was already in the public domain. DUP leader Gavin Robinson insisted that Lyons was “doing a good job” and had been “fundamentally misrepresented”.

O’Neil made clear she wanted to move on to business as usual, covering for the far-right xenophobes of the DUP by insisting that all the Executive were “on the same page.” Seeking to restore confidence and stability, she told the British-Irish Council, “We have a job to do and I am committed to continuing to lead in that Executive to work with colleagues in the area, particularly to get us through this period that we’re in now.”

The hardline unionists gave the anti-immigrant riots, led by their loyalist base, a seal of approval. Jim Allister, Westminster MP for Traditional Unionist Voice complained of “unchecked migration” and insisted that “those who came onto the street last night in the main had a perfectly legitimate purpose and cause of being there.”

Various Loyalists outfits—which operated as paramilitary forces to carry out the dirty work of British imperialism for decade—are a ready-made fascistic force which, as these events show, can be mobilised to terrorise immigrants as the spearhead of attacks on the wider working class.

The riots follow repeated similar outrages across Ireland over the last two years. Last August, far-right forces went on a rampage in Belfast, smashing windows, throwing petrol bombs and attacking migrants in their homes, cars and businesses. In the Republic of Ireland around the same period, far-right anti-migrant protests took place in the Coolock area of Dublin against plans for a migrant hostel in the area. Other hostels were targeted, while asylum seekers forced to camp out in Dublin were attacked by masked men with knives.

In both sections of partitioned Ireland, as in the UK itself, the fascistic right is continually bolstered by the anti-migrant rhetoric spewing from governments and the major capitalist parties.

New Zealand Rich List exceeds $100 billion amid cost-of-living crisis

John Braddock

New Zealand’s Rich List, compiled annually by the National Business Review (NBR), boasted last week that the country’s wealthiest are now collectively worth more than $NZ100 billion. The figure increased from $95.55 billion in 2024, despite a brutal cost-of-living crisis and two recessions in the past 18 months.

The nation of just 5.3 million people now has 18 billionaires, up from 16 last year. A dozen newcomers, with $4.3 billion, are among 119 individuals and families profiled by the NBR, who altogether have a total of $102.1 billion—equal to more than 40 percent of the country’s annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Like similar reports posted internationally, the NZ list points to soaring wealth among a tiny privileged layer, even amid a gathering global economic crisis. Nine years ago the 2016 Rich List’s wealth was just under $60 billion, rising to  $72.6 billion two years ago.

Commenting on the rapid increase in the concentration of wealth, Bryce Edwards, director of the Integrity Institute, noted: “We are witnessing inequality grow towards heights approaching those of the early 20th century.” He described it as “a roadmap of oligarchic power in New Zealand, complete with policy wish lists, political connections, and breathtaking displays of luxury that would make a Gilded Age robber baron blush.”

New Zealand is already an extremely unequal society. According to Statistics NZ’s Household Economic Survey in 2021, the richest 5 percent of individuals owned 43.1 percent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50 percent held just 2.1 percent.

Nick and Anna Mowbray [Photo: Zuru]

Brothers Nick and Mat Mowbray, who with sister Anna Mowbray, founded Zuru Toys in 2003, topped the Rich List with $20 billion. The pair have been outspoken about their ambitions to be “the next Apple, Google, Tesla” with a target of $10 billion in revenue within five years.

Former list leader Graeme Hart is second, with an estimated net worth of $12.1 billion. Hart built his global packaging empire following his purchase of the state-owned Government Printing Office, for a vastly undervalued $23 million, during the 1984–90 Lange Labour government’s public asset fire sale.

Others to feature were prominent filmmaker Peter Jackson and his wife Fran Walsh, at fifth richest with a net worth of $2.6 billion.

This year the NBR also launched a Women’s Rich List, headed by Anna Mowbray and Lucy Liu, co-founders of online payments company Airwallex. Liu’s company was valued at more than $10 billion in a capital raise in May. The publication profiled 14 women, all of them estimated to be worth between $20 and $100 million.

The celebration of a handful of super-rich women comes after the right-wing coalition government last month passed the Equal Pay Amendment Act, designed to make it almost impossible for workers in female-dominated professions to claim that they are underpaid because of gender-based inequity.

The primary source of the Rich Listers’ fortunes is not the production of socially necessary goods and services. Their vast wealth derives almost entirely from parasitic activities such as financial investment and property speculation.

Viaduct Harbour Holdings, owned by the Gibbs, Wyborn, Farmer and Green families—all of whom regularly appear on the Rich List—leases out areas of the expensive Auckland harbour waterfront to the hospitality, sports and accommodation sectors. The Gibbons, Guntons, Carters, and Wallaces have all built their fortunes on property development.

A 2023 Inland Revenue Department (IRD) investigation into the wealth of the country’s 311 richest individuals found that only 7 percent of their income is in a form subject to income tax. The remaining 93 percent comes from returns on investment, including financial assets and capital gains—all of which is either not taxed, or taxed at a lower rate than incomes.

This privileged layer paid tax on their earnings at a rate of just 8.9 percent—less than half the 20 percent rate paid by someone on the average wage. Well-off New Zealanders are paying less tax than their peers in nine similar OECD nations, including Australia, Canada, the US, the UK, and five European countries, according to a Victoria University of Wellington study commissioned by Tax Justice Aotearoa last year.

In 2024, New Zealand and Belgium were the only two OECD countries not to have a capital gains tax—though Belgium had other wealth taxes, which New Zealand does not. None of this prevents the wealthy elite from endlessly agitating for cutting corporate taxes, privatising public services, slashing welfare and cutting government “bureaucracy,” all while seeking incentives for private sector “risk takers.”

The recent King’s Birthday Honours awards celebrated former National Party finance minister Ruth Richardson, appointing her as a Companion of the NZ Order of Merit. Richardson is reviled in the working class for her infamous 1991 “Mother of all Budgets” which savagely cut welfare and thrust thousands of beneficiaries into poverty, imposing conditions of misery that still exist.

The main opposition Labour Party meanwhile has consistently rejected any significant increase in tax on wealth. Despite campaigning in the 2017 election for a modest capital gains tax, in 2019 Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ruled it out. Her stance was endorsed by current leader Chris Hipkins.

The Labour Party-Greens government from 2017-2023, like others throughout the world, exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to engineer a huge transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich. Property values and corporate and bank profits soared due to millions in subsidies, bailouts and tax concessions, and the Reserve Bank’s quantitative easing and ultra-low interest rates.

While the country has since had near back-to-back recessions, the impact has fallen entirely on the working class. The NZX50 index increased by 1,500 points or 12.74 percent during 2024, its best performance since 2020. The Reserve Bank’s official cash rate cut from 5.25 to 4.75 percent last October gave the share market, dominated by investments in utilities, infrastructure and real estate, a strong boost in the final quarter of 2024.

Political connections play a critical role in maintaining and boosting the wealth of the richest at the expense of ordinary people. Last year the National Party-led government delivered a massive tax cut for landlords, estimated to have cost $NZ2.9 billion, falsely claiming this would lead to more affordable rents.

At the 2023 election, Rich Listers were among the most generous donors to the coalition parties, National, NZ First and ACT. Nick Mowbray gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to both National and the far-right ACT Party. Graeme Hart donated $700,000 to the right-wing parties over two years—$400k to National, $200k to ACT and $100k to NZ First.

The rich are not shy about flaunting their wealth. Along with mansions and overseas apartments, several, including Peter Jackson, own private jets. Hart runs a multi-million dollar, 102-metre superyacht. A bid by Anna Mowbray and her husband, rugby player Ali Williams, to put a helipad on their property in the exclusive Auckland suburb of Westmere currently faces strong opposition from nearby residents and community groups.

Speaking for the entire ruling class, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon gushed over the NBR’s report: “Isn’t it fantastic that we have got people with ambition, aspiration and positivity, and we should be celebrating success.”

But under Luxon’s government, there is an escalating social disaster. Tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs and Radio NZ reported on June 9 that the net worth of all households declined by $4.185 billion in 2024.

Already in 2023, 36.1 percent of households were scraping by on income that was either “not enough” or “only just” enough, according to Statistics NZ. In 2024, the Treasury estimated that nearly one-in-five children, 17.7 percent, were living in poverty. The New Zealand Food Network estimated this year that 500,000 people, a tenth of the population, is regularly dependent on food parcels.

Austria: Eleven dead in Graz school shooting

Markus Salzmann

Memorial at the entrance of the Borg-Gymnasium after the shooting on June 10, 2025 [Photo by Armin Ademovic / Wikimedia / CC BY 4.0]

On June 10, a gunman killed ten people and seriously injured eleven others at a school in Graz, Austria. The attack itself lasted only a few minutes. Immediately after police arrived, the perpetrator committed suicide in a school restroom.

The victims were nine teenagers, aged 14 to 17, and a teacher. The gunman, Arthur A., was a former student at the Borg-Gymnasium in Graz. The 21-year-old had dropped out of school after sixth grade. The perpetrator had no relationship with his victims; only the teacher he killed was known to him personally.

A nationwide minute of silence was held on Thursday morning. Flags at all public buildings were flown at half-staff, and Chancellor Christian Stocker (Austrian People’s Party, ÖVP) ordered three days of national mourning. In addition to Stocker, the interior and education ministers of the Vienna government also travelled to Graz.

The school’s students and teachers are still in shock and school operations have been suspended until further notice. The outpouring of sympathy for those killed and injured was profound and extended far beyond the Styrian capital.

While numerous questions surrounding the rampage remain unanswered, there is no doubt that this is the worst murder attack in Austria in decades. In recent days, police have released some information about the course of events and the perpetrator himself.

The 21-year-old, who lived with his mother just outside Graz, had apparently planned the crime down to the last detail. According to investigations, he was armed with a sawn-off shotgun, a semi-automatic Glock pistol, and a hunting knife. A pipe bomb was recovered from his apartment during a subsequent search. However, it was not functional. Investigators assume he lacked the necessary time or knowledge to do so.

Arthur A. apparently shot at students and teachers indiscriminately. When he was found in the school restroom after his suicide, he was wearing a headset. Whether he had contact with anyone before or during the attack has not yet been conclusively determined.

The attack had been planned over a long period of time. The attacker had been undertaking target practice since March and acquired weapons legally in April and May.

A week after the horrific act, the perpetrator’s motive remains unclear but evidence is emerging that he had mental health problems. In 2021, he was found mentally unfit for military service but apparently never received psychiatric or psychological treatment.

He is described as an inconspicuous loner who led an extremely withdrawn life. Photos and previous social media posts suggested that the 21-year-old perpetrator may have been inspired by the school massacre at Columbine High School in the US state of Colorado in April 1999.

Chancellor Stocker and his governing coalition, consisting of the conservative People’s Party, the Social Democrats (SPÖ), and the right-wing neo-liberal Neos, announced in response to the attack that they intend to tighten Austria’s relatively liberal gun laws. A higher minimum age and an aptitude test for gun ownership are under discussion.

In addition, psychological counselling in Austrian schools is to be increased. Government representatives did not explain how this would be reconciled with the comprehensive austerity package passed by the government, which also includes drastic cuts in education.

Instead, voices from all political parties are increasingly seeking to exploit the school shooting to censor social media and expand the powers of the police and other security agencies. Plans include, for example, increased spying on private computers using Trojans and electronic ankle bracelets for dangerous individuals.

The current findings regarding the perpetrator’s motives provide no explanation for the crime, nor are the planned measures suitable for preventing similar acts of violence.

The likely psychological problems only superficially explain this brutal outbreak of violence. Acts like these, which are becoming increasingly common, have deeper societal causes that are deliberately ignored by politicians and the media.

In the US, there have been 6,719 mass shootings since the beginning of 2013, in each of which at least four people were shot dead. But rampages with dozens of deaths have also occurred throughout Europe in recent years—including Austria.

In 1997 and 2018, there were outbreaks of violence in schools in Lower Austria. In a few days, the so-called Graz rampage will mark its tenth anniversary. On June 20, 2015, a 26-year-old drove an SUV through the city center, killing three people and injuring 36 others. The perpetrator was sentenced to life imprisonment and committed suicide in prison in 2023.

The background to such incidents is the enormous brutalization of society. While state and federal politicians mourn the victims of the rampage, at the same time they fully support NATO’s war against Russia, which could escalate into a nuclear war, and Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.

The three ruling parties, which took office in Vienna this year, is not only calling for tougher action against Russia. With the Neos, a governing party is the first time openly advocating the lifting of Austria’s traditional stance of neutrality and the deployment of Austrian soldiers in combat missions. While the coalition has approved harsh austerity measures in almost all areas, the rearmament of the Austrian army is to be intensified by €16.6 billion until 2032. This is the largest investment plan in the history of the Austrian armed forces.

The contempt for human life is even more evident in the government’s stance on the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s attack on Iran.

After former Federal President Heinz Fischer (SPÖ) recently called on the government to issue a critical statement against Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip, Stocker, Vice Chancellor Andreas Babler (SPÖ) and Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger (Neos) responded negatively, declaring that Israel had every right to “respond militarily” to the 2023 Hamas uprising. Even after Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, the government is merely demanding “caution” from both sides.

The right-wing policies of all established parties have also led to Styria being governed by a state government led by the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) since the end of last year. Under Governor Mario Kunasek, the FPÖ has already initiated widespread attacks on migrants and socially disadvantaged groups. The party also maintains close ties to the violent neo-Nazi scene in Austria and Europe.

Gold now number two reserve asset in international financial system

Nick Beams

A report by the European Central Bank (ECB) issued last week pointed to the growing lack of international confidence in the role of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

According to the ECB, gold accounted for 20 percent of the global reserves held by central banks, outstripping the euro at 16 percent and coming second to the dollar at 46 percent.

Gold bars on display at anexhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. November 8, 2006 [AP Photo/Seth Wenig]

“Central banks continued to buy gold at a record pace,” the ECB said. In 2024, for the third year in a row, central banks bought more than 1,000 tonnes of gold. This was a fifth of the total production for 2024 and twice the annual amount in the decade 2010‒2019.

The amount of gold now held by central banks is approaching the levels of 1965, the ECB noted. But that was under very different conditions.

At that time on basis of the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, which was one of the foundations of the post-war global financial system after the devastation of the 1930s, the dollar was backed by gold at the rate of $35 per ounce.

In August 1971, US President Nixon unilaterally abrogated the agreement when he went on Sunday night television to announce that the US would no longer honour its commitment to redeem dollars for gold. Sparked by the growing US trade deficit, it was the initial expression of the economic decline of the US from its dominant position at the end of World War II.

The dollar continued as the global currency but on a new basis. It was now a fiat currency which depended on the strength of the US state and its financial system. But that strength has increasingly been called into question by the series of crises which have gripped the US financial system. The most notable was the crisis of 2008, sparked by the escalation of speculation and parasitism in the US economy.

The dollar’s new role gave the US what was characterised as “exorbitant privilege.” Without the restrictions imposed by the need to maintain gold backing, it could increasingly run up debts and deficits in a way not possible for other countries because there would always be an international demand for dollars. And it used the need of other countries for access to dollars to enforce its demands.

Sanctions against Iran, and the threat of sanctions against European companies that tried to buck the US, were a case in point. In March 2022, there was a leap in this process when the US cut Russia off from the SWIFT international payments system and in combination with the European powers froze the assets of the Russian central bank, amounting to around $300 billion.

This decision sent a shock wave through the international monetary system. If the reserves of a central bank could be seized in this way then what was a safe haven—certainly not US dollars.

As the ECB noted in its report: “Gold demand for monetary reserves surged sharply in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and has remained high.”

Gold, it said, appeared to be seen as a hedge against actions and the freezing of assets.

“In five of the 10 largest annual increases in the share of gold in foreign reserves since 1999, the countries involved faced sanctions in the same year or the previous year.”

In 2024 the price of gold rose by 30 percent and so far this year has increased by a further 27 percent, at one stage hitting $3,500 per ounce, 100 times its level when Nixon broke the dollar-gold nexus.

Reporting on the ECB analysis, the Financial Times gave some indication of the extent of these concerns.

“A survey among 57 central banks that were holding gold last year also revealed that concerns about sanctions, expected changes in the global monetary system and the desire to become less dependent on the US dollar were drivers in emerging markets and developing countries,” it said.

The ECB data cover last year. Since then, the forces driving the increase in gold holdings have only intensified. A key accelerant was the launching of the Trump administration’s economic war against the world, with China the chief target, with the announcement of massive “reciprocal tariffs” on the so-called “liberation day” of April 2.

The result was a spike in the yields (interest rates) on long-term US debt, as the price of bonds fell—the two have an inverse relationship. This reflected an expectation in markets of growing financial turbulence as a result of the upending of all the relationships governing international trade in the post war period.

Usually in such conditions there is a move into the dollar as a “safe haven.” However, in this case the value of the dollar in international currency markets fell, as there was a widespread move to “sell America”—that is, to shift out of US financial assets.

The Trump tariff war has certainly been a major factor in this process but by no means the only one. Of equal concern has been the rise of US debt, now at $36 trillion and the trillions more which are being added because of the “big, beautiful budget” announced by Trump. Interest payments on the debt are running at almost $1 trillion a year and are fast becoming the biggest item in the US budget.

Despite the pause on the reciprocal tariffs announced by Trump on April 9, when he noted that the bond markets were starting to get a little “yippy,” the shift has continued with the tendency of interest rates, especially on long-term debt, moving upwards while the dollar is continuing to fall.

Last week the dollar dropped by as much as 1 percent against a basket of currencies of its major trading partners, including the pound and the euro, after Trump announced he would be sending letters to countries facing reciprocal tariffs telling them what the rate would be.

The past two months were supposed to be a period of intense negotiations during which the Trump administration would announce major deals. Nothing had eventuated, with the exception of a minor agreement with the UK. Discussions over weeks with Japan, which is in line for a major hit to its auto industry of tens of billions of dollars, has so far produced no result.

At the same time, the concerns in the financial markets have grown with JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon warning that the bond market would “crack” at some point.

This brought a response from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the US would “never, never” default on its debt—a statement which recalled the old saying that one should never believe anything until it is officially denied.

In fact, there have been discussions in leading circles about the possibility of converting long-term Treasury debt into perpetual bonds which never repay the principal but only continue to pay interest. In July 2023 the Congressional Research Service published a report examining this possibility.

Such a move, which has been regularly dismissed would be regarded, especially by Japan and China, as a default, has not been officially discussed in leading international financial circles. But it should be recalled that Nixon’s measures on August 15, 1971 were not discussed either. The financial and economic partners and allies of the US found out about it like everyone else when they saw the president on television—just as they found out about reciprocal tariffs.

Whatever official statements are made about the “resilience” of the US financial system and the continuing role of the dollar as the global reserve currency, the fact remains that for the first time since the development of the new financial system after 1971, gold is now in second place as a key reserve asset.