Tony Iltis

The United Nations estimated early last month that more than 5400 people had been killed since protests against the dictatorship of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in March last year. Since then, the rate of killing has probably increased, but the UN said the violence has made further casualty counts impossible.

When US forces crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan and killed 24 Pakistani border guards on November 26, it further strained Pakistan-US relations, already complicated by the fact the Pakistani elite, in particular the military, maintains close links to both the US and the Taliban.

This collaboration with both sides of the Afghan war has continued despite the November 26 incident being far from unique. Both the Taliban and the US-led forces routinely kill Pakistani civilians, as well as soldiers and police.

A year ago, uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began the wave of popular mobilisations across the Arab world that has become known in the West as the “Arab Spring”.

A desperate individual protest in a provincial Tunisian town ― the self-immolation of fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi to protest police harassment and lack of economic opportunity ― triggered a region-wide revolt against economic and political injustice.

“Preliminary results from Congo’s presidential election show incumbent Joseph Kabila leading,” Associated Press reported on December 3. For several reasons, this is not surprising news from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The reasons include election-related violence, in which the police and army were not neutral, and electoral fraud.

Violence escalated in the final days before the November 28 poll.

A November 8 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear regulatory authority, has been used by the United States and other Western powers as a pretext for a new round of economic sanctions against Iran and the ramping up of belligerent rhetoric.

“The phraseology is ponderous but the message is clear,” BBC diplomatic and defence correspondent Jonathan Marcus explained on November 8. “Iran, the IAEA believes, may well have been working on research for a nuclear bomb to arm one of its long-range missiles.”

The increased US military presence in Australia, announced by PM Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama during Obama’s November 16-17 visit, is a setback for peace. Australia should be closing existing US military bases in Australia and put an end to existing joint military exercises with US forces.

Australia should stop taking part in US-led military aggression. In particular, it should withdraw Australian soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The main purpose of US President Barack Obama's November 16-17 visit to Australia was to announce with Prime Minister Julia Gillard the deployment of US soldiers in Darwin, new US air force and naval facilities in Northern Australia and more joint US-Australian training.

As if to dispel illusions he was less warlike than his predecessor, George W Bush, Obama stuck to military themes in his speeches: from endless historical examples of the US and Australia fighting wars together, to anecdotes from today’s battlefields, to the metaphors he used.

WikiLeaks has awakened many people to the cynical and violent workings of the political, military and corporate entities that run the world. For Christine Assange this awakening has been heightened because her son is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange — now the target of the powerful 1% who have not appreciated his contribution to transparency.

“I started off on this journey saying WikiLeaks is great in theory but … I’m not going to support it publicly before I’ve read everything I can on it,” she told Green Left Weekly. “It was quite a journey for me.”

In a grim piece of political theatre that is becoming more frequent, and more surreal, a sombre PM Julia Gillard on October 30 acknowledged the latest three Australian fatalities in Afghanistan by claiming that Australia was winning a just war there.

The death toll of Australian soldiers in the decade-long war is now 32.

Military deaths in Afghanistan are unusually bipartisan events in Australian politics. Gillard’s claims were unreservedly backed up by the Liberal-National opposition.

The October 23 declaration of Libya’s “liberation” by the National Transitional Council (NTC), the de-facto government since taking Tripoli from former dictator Muammar Gaddafi on August 21, was a showcase victory for the West’s vision of how the Arab democratic awakening should progress.

An uprising began in Libya on February 17 — part of the popular rebellion that has broken out against dictatorial regimes across the Arab world. The Gaddafi regime's brutal repression — carried out with Western-supplied weapons — meant the rising turned into a civil war.