Eamonn McCann

In Geneva, Switzerland, earlier this month, a range of human rights groups co-sponsored a side event during the 30th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) addressing “the extensive use of torture and other forms of cruel and degrading treatment in the Saudi criminal justice system”.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called on the people of Falluja to rise up on January 6 and drive out armed groups affiliated to al-Qaeda. News accounts reported that Falluja had “completely fallen” to the Islamist fighters. The Iraqi army was poised to retake the city, said Maliki. He asked Sunni tribes to help. Sunni fighters had already taken to the streets, the BBC said, not to help expel the Islamists, but to resist any assault by Maliki's forces.
If Bradley Manning had committed war crimes rather than exposing them, he wouldn't be in so much trouble. He might even be hailed as an American hero. Instead, he's held at a military prison in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, facing more than 20 charges, including "aiding the enemy". Manning is the private who allegedly leaked sheaves of classified material to WikiLeaks while working as an army intelligence analyst in Iraq.
Nineteen-year-old Michael Delaney died after being run over by a truck in east London on a Saturday night in January 1987. An inquest jury found that he had been a victim of unlawful killing. But nobody has ever been prosecuted. Delaney had been among trade unionists picketing the Rupert Murdoch-owned News International plant at Wapping against the sacking of more than 5000 workers and the de-recognition of unions.
The most eye-catching placard on a 120,000-strong march in Dublin on February 21 against the Irish government’s austerity response to the tottering of the capitalist system was held aloft by a scrawny teenager with the look of a music-lover about him, reading “Make Bono Pay Tax”.