Papers leaked to Al-Jazeera, as well as secret US cables published by WikiLeaks, have exposed how Israel and the United States have used the Middle East “peace process” to push total capitulation on the Palestinian side.
United States
In his January 25 State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama called for a freeze on government spending and for lowering the corporate tax rate.
In response, Reuters reported on January 26, the US stock index figures rose.
Meanwhile, the situation for US workers and poor remains dire. A January 14 Socialist Project article explained that, “as of November the slump in U.S. housing prices had surpassed that of the 1930s. For 53 consecutive months American home prices have fallen.
Renowned investigative journalist and film maker John Pilger interviewed Wikileaks' editor-in-chief about the “war on WikiLeaks” in response to the website “speaking truth to power”.
Georgia prisoner strike demands
Over December 9-15, prisoners in a number of prisons in the US state of Georgia organised a strike via contraband mobile phones. The prisoners refused to perform prison labour in protest at a range of unjust conditions they face. BlackAgendaReport.com said on December 15 that one in 12 Georgians were in prison.
The December 20 Huffington Post published the prisoners' demands, which are listed below.
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The attempted political assassination of Arizona Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on January 8 opened a new debate about the depth of political divisions in the United States. It has included hot button issues of gun control and mental illness.
Giffords amazingly survived a gunshot wound through the head, but six of her supporters at the sidewalk meeting died. It included a nine-year-old girl and a federal judge. Thirteen people were wounded.
You may have read about the prison riot in England on New Year’s Day, with prisoners staging an uprising over searches for contraband booze. What received less coverage was the much bigger and more important protest by prisoners in the United States in December.
Prisoners in a number of Georgian prisons began a strike on December 9, the December 20 Huffington Post said. The strike was called off after six days, “following reports of violent crackdowns and rising fears that the situation would escalate”, the article said.
Time magazine chose to crown Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg as its Person of the Year for 2010. But for so many people, it was Julian Assange, who won the popular vote, who was more definitive of the year that was.
A number of Wikileaks revelations have shown that US officials, despite their public stance, have been well aware of corruption and human rights abuses of regimes it has supported. In some cases, the US funded these regimes and trained their military.
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Indonesia
A leaked September 2009 US cable indicates that US officials are aware that in West Papua, the Indonesian military (TNI) are responsible for serious human rights abuses and corruption.
The 190th Annual Meeting of Southern Baptists, held on November 16 in Columbia, South Carolina, approved a resolution calling its pastors to preach against homosexuality — “to uphold the biblical standard of human sexuality against all onslaughts” — but also to “love and show compassion toward homosexuals and transgendered persons”.
Mixed in with this “hate is love” doublespeak is a great deal of defensiveness about the loss of social status by the US religious right.
Media fanfare has subsided around the October rescue of 33 miners from the San Jose mine in Chile — an event watched by an estimated 1 billion people across the globe.
But could this event at least help bring about change for miners’ rights and conditions?
Unfortunately, if we look behind all the commotion and government rhetoric about making big changes for the lives of miners in Chile, the answer seems to be no.
On November 7, two miners were killed in an accident in the Los Reyes mine near Copiapo, close to where the San Jose mine accident took place.
“About 15 per cent of US households — 17.4 million families — lacked enough money to feed themselves at some point last year, a US Department of Agriculture report says.
“The study also found that 5.6 million of these households — with as many as 1 million children — had continuing financial problems that forced them to miss meals regularly.
“The number of these ‘food insecure’ homes … was more than triple the one in 2006, before the recession brought double-digit unemployment.
United States Republican representative from Ohio John Boehner is feeling pretty full of himself nowadays. Little wonder. With the Republicans winning back in control of the House of Representatives in the November 2 elections, Boehner looks set to be the next Speaker.
And like any pompous career politician who fancies himself cock-of-the-walk, he seldom lets facts get in the way.
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