The silly season is over – inasmuch as it ever is in the United States (it emerged in late August, for instance, that Senator John McCain, former 2008 presidential candidate, promised to provide arms and military aid to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi during a meeting in August 2009. And there are a few small victories for common sense.
A federal court, for instance, has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against former US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, for his role in devising policies of torture in Iraq. In mid August the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that two American citizens (Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel) who were tortured at a US military base in Iraq have adequate evidence to suggest that Rumsfeld was personally responsible for their treatment and not entitled to qualify for immunity.
Then a federal jury has also found four New Orleans police guilty of civil rights violations over the shooting deaths of two civilians and the subsequent cover-up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The charges were linked to shootings on the Danziger Bridge that also seriously wounded four others.
Also in the legal arena, though not so encouraging, the Obama administration is drawing criticism for the way in which is has dealt with the case of a married bi-national gay couple in San Francisco who risk being separated by deportation (Obama has already deported more people than Bush). The US Citizenship and Immigration Services has denied immigration benefits to Bradford Wells – actually a US citizen – and Anthony John Makk, an Australian national, who were married in Massachusetts seven years ago. Makk has been ordered to return to Australia.
But in New York City, an 82-year-old resident of Brooklyn who faces foreclosure was allowed to stay in her house in mid August after more than 200 people gathered near its front to block the eviction. Mary Lee Ward has lived in her home for 44 years but is now facing foreclosure as a victim of deceptive and predatory lending practices. “We are not slaves anymore. My grandfather was a slave, but I’m not. And they’re not going to force me to do anything against my will. You gotta put up a hard fight for the faith, and that means the fact that you have to stick with it when you know that you’re right. You know you have the evidence. You know you have the facts. Don’t let nobody walk over you. Don’t let nobody make you a slave.”
Unions
Some 45,000 unionised workers at telecom giant, Verizon, struck for several days last month after negotiations broke down between Verizon and two unions representing the workers (the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers). Verizon tried to cut health and pension benefits for workers and make it simpler for the company to sack workers. The strike was the largest and most significant this year. Verizon, which is the nation’s second largest phone company, earned US$6.9 (£4.2) billion in net income for the first six months of the year – or about a £1,000 an hour.
According to government data the share of the eligible population holding a job declined to just 58%, the lowest since July 1983. The official unemployment rate is 9.1%.
Other revealing official statistics released last month show that by the end of April this year the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had cost an average of US$9.7 (£5.9) billion a month. That’s £8m an hour and roughly the entire annual budget for the Environmental Protection Agency.
Also protesting were activists blocking the entrance to a US Navy base in Washington state which houses nuclear submarines; the protest was timed to mark the 66th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Then in Arizona, 10 protesters were arrested in mid August after chaining themselves together and blocking a road leading to the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff. They were protesting plans for a ski resort which would use recycled sewer water to make artificial snow on a mountain considered sacred by 13 Native American tribes.
Environment
Protests continue against the Alberta tar sands project which would build a pipeline 1,500 miles from north to south (the Keystone XL pipeline) to deliver tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in Texas. In late August more than 500 people protesting outside the White House were arrested on several separate occasions. Indeed, the protest is being widely described as one of the environmental movement’s biggest and important campaigns for many years. Dr. Sydney Parker of Maryland: “We are here because it’s not just an environmental issue, it’s also a very big health issue and that’s why we’ve come out today and that’s why we’re so committed. So personally I’ve never been arrested before. I don’t do this for fun. I’m here because I think it’s such an important issue that it really demands that kind of action and it demands that level of commitment from myself.”
Meanwhile a new report by Canada’s environmental agency has found that extracting oil from the Alberta tar sands will more than offset emission reductions in other areas. Greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands would triple to 92-million metric tons by 2020. But then Canada’s current conservative government has abandoned more ambitious efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The National Climatic Data Center confirmed that July was the fourth-warmest month in US history. In Dallas, for example, the temperature exceeded 100 degrees on 30 of the 31 days in July. This didn’t stop Texan presidential candidate Rick Perry from advocating – along with the teaching of creationism – that climate change be dismissed as a hoax.
Still, if you look at the website WorldNetDaily the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that shook the East Coast on August 23 is the result of the nation’s declining morals… “Washington, D.C. deserves more than the wallop it got today. It needs a much bigger shaking up than it got”. Whereas for rabbi Yehuda Levin “…there’s a direct connection between earthquakes and homosexuality. There was in Haiti, and there is here in New York and Washington, D.C., where they passed homosexual legislation and ordinances”.
Also in political news, far right candidate, Michelle Bachmann, in addition for saying that hurricane Irene was god’s punishment, effectively for those who don’t support the Republicans, has had to deal with reports that one of her staff, Peter Waldron, was arrested in February 2006 in Uganda for possessing a number of assault rifles and ammunition just days before Uganda’s first multi-party elections in 20 years. Another candidate, Mitt Romney, has applied for a permit to bulldoze his 3,000-square-foot, US$12 (£7.3) million beachfront vacation home in California – so as to replace it with one nearly four times its size. A campaign official remarked that the existing home is, “inadequate for their needs”. Romney lives in Massachusetts, but also has vacation homes in New Hampshire and Utah.
Louis Further
National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html
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