Antony Loewenstein

Jonathan Steele, the Guardian’s senior foreign correspondent and Dahr Jamail, a freelance American journalist explain the significance of Fallujah and the price paid in that “hotbed” of anti-American insurgency.

We still don’t know the true cost of American attacks. Casualty figures vary wildly, but thousands of civilians may have been murdered. This town, the “symbol of defiance”, is still under siege and atrocities are being reported by the few brave journalists entering the city.

“Dr Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of the city’s compensation commission…reports that 36,000 homes were destroyed in the US onslaught, along with 8,400 shops. Sixty nurseries and schools were ruined, along with 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries.

“Daud Salman, an Iraqi journalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on a visit to Falluja two weeks ago, found that only a quarter of the city’s residents had gone back. Thousands remain in tents on the outskirts. The Iraqi Red Crescent finds it hard to go in to help the sick because of the US cordon around the city.”

Read the whole thing. This is Iraqi “liberation” in the trenches.

Many in the mainstream media shun bloggers, content believing that by burying their head in the sand, the online revolution will simply disappear. No such luck, cultural heathens. Most bloggers have no corporate affiliation, are independently funded and can speak their mind freely, without having to toe the company line. True independence within the corporate media structure is next to impossible. Mainstream journalists know it and owners love it.

Juan Cole helpfully articulates the reasons bloggers are vitally important in this age of “consolidation”:

“If we were the mainstream media, we would be accountable to CEOs and editors and advertisers, all of whom have motives for suppressing some pieces of news and highlighting others. You might think to yourself that this is a diverse enough group that the story would still get through. But with media consolidation, fewer and fewer persons make the decisions.”

Media owned by Rupert Murdoch or newspapers published by Fairfax have both hidden and acknowledged agendas. So do many bloggers. But self-censorship is the only thing stopping bloggers highlighting a story or putting forward an opinion.

“We are not the mainstream media, and we are here. Get used to it.” Cole tells it like it is. Besides, are we going to simply rely on the Sydney Morning Herald or New York Times for information?

Gorilla in the Room continues its essential role in discussing the unmentionable. They highlight a startling article in Haaretz by Efraim Halevy, former head of the Mossad and now Ariel Sharon’s national security advisor. In a candid piece aimed at an Israeli audience, Halevy analyses the desired future role of the US in the Middle East. Gorilla outlines the revelations:

“A large part of the reason Saudi Arabia is so unstable right now is the U.S. presence in Iraq, which has made the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims feel that the U.S. has gone to war against the whole Islamic world. Halevy’s (and the neocons’, and AIPAC’s) preferred solution for all of this is additional U.S. wars against other Arab and Muslim (Iran) states, a resumption of the draft (where else would we get hundreds of thousands of additional Americans to serve as cannon fodder for this?), and a “generational” presence as occupiers in the region. (Of course, this would generate additional impetus for terrorism against the U.S. itself.)”

To this I would add the following. As an Australian, I question whether the government of John Howard is signing us up for adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and who knows where else, with a vested interest in allowing America’s role in the region to increase. When Australia sends more troops to Iraq, we are asked to believe that it’s to secure the Iraqi people and provide democracy. Alternative theories are essential. Historian Clinton Fernandes argues, instead: “Today, Australian military personnel are participating in the US-led attempt to create a stable investment climate, complete with a vast military presence, in Iraq.” This involvement mirrors, Fernandes posits, a repeat of similiar behaviour in relation to Asia, especially Indonesia under General Soeharto.

It’s time to dispense the myth that the Iraq invasion was about bringing democracy to the country. American, British and Australian financial and political interests are seen to align in the Middle East region. Never believe anyone who says otherwise.

I’m currently reading a fascinating book that expands on these matters. Iraq Inc.: A Profitable Occupation reveals the private contractors profiting from the occupation. Writer Pratap Chatterjee (managing editor of CorpWatch) painfully details how going to war makes good business sense. Hear the storm clouds gathering over Iran?

Baghdad-based Patrick Cockburn writes in the UK Independent that US troops are continuing to kill Iraqis with impunity, unlikely to be prosecuted or even investigated:

“We should end the immunity of US soldiers here,” says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician who argues that the failure to prosecute American soldiers who have killed civilians is one of the reasons why the occupation became so unpopular so fast. He admits, however, that this is extremely unlikely to happen given the US attitude to any sanctions against its own forces.”

Furthermore, the recent upsurge in insurgent violence can be explained in a variety of reasons, including:

“It was obvious to many American officers from an early stage in the conflict that the Pentagon’s claim that it did not count civilian casualties was seen by many Iraqis as proof that the US did not care about how many of them were killed. The failure to take Iraqi civilian dead into account was particularly foolish in a culture where relatives of the slain are obligated by custom to seek revenge.”

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Robert Fisk reveals in the Independent on Sunday that the 2002 Tony Blair “dossier” on WMD, translated into Arabic, contained numerous changes and deletions and differences to the English version.

“Translation carried out for The Independent on Sunday reveals for the first time that several references to UN sanctions were cut from the Arabic text. On one page, the words “biological agents” were changed to read “nuclear agents”. Arab journalists who reported on the dossier culled their information from the Arabic version – unaware that it was not the same as the English one.

“While there is evidence of sloppiness in the translation – a 2001 Joint Intelligence Committee assessment of Iraqi nuclear ambitions is rendered as 2002 – many of the changes were clearly deliberate, apparently in an attempt to make the dossier more acceptable as well as more convincing to an Arab audience. At the time, the US and Britain were trying to convince Arab Gulf states that Saddam Hussein still represented a major threat to them – in the hope of seeking their support for the 2003 invasion – while the Arab world was enraged at the disastrous effects UN sanctions had on child mortality in Iraq.”

The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) claims to be Australia’s finest newspaper. Interesting, therefore, that the latest circulation figures show a massive decline in readership. The weekday SMH lost 3.5% to just over 214,000 copies, while the Saturday edition shed a massive 5.4% to 352,482. There is trouble in Fairfax land. With speculation rife that management is hoping and praying for a change to cross-media laws after July 1 – allowing the once-great media company to be bought by a hungry mogul – the paper’s relevance to the Australian community is decreasing weekly. Numbers sold are far from the only barometer of success, but with less people still reading the paper, at what point does it become less relevant to informed debate?

Take today. “They’re having a baby – and eight Tassie cousins eagerly await a playmate”, screamed the article at the top of the front page. The pregnancy of Denmark’s Princess Mary is undoubtedly news-worthy, but the ever-increasing elevation of celebrity gossip to prominence shows an editorship, under Robert Whitehead, losing focus on what constitutes serious news. If the paper wants to be a tabloid, let the broadsheet morph into a tabloid or place such “news” in the entertainment section.

During a recent media forum, head of UTS journalism school, Wendy Bacon, spoke about the increasing reluctance of Fairfax to tackle the corporate takeover of Australia. She co-wrote a piece for the SMH in early March on the Australian connections of Halliburton. She said that she had had great difficulty getting the piece in the paper, “and if I was a nobody it possibly would have been impossible.” The facts in the story were alarming and yet no follow-up has occurred.

I recently spent time with one of the Middle East’s prominent journalists. I asked if he knew Paul McGeough, Fairfax’s leading foreign correspondent. He looked at me blankly. “Never heard of him”, he replied. McGeough is indeed one of Australia’s finest reporters, but his newspaper’s impact on setting agendas outside of Australia remains minimal, despite the advent of the internet. A newspaper’s success should never be solely dictated by its effect on the world, though it’s one important factor. We’re a small fish in a big pond, and seem to be becoming more parochial as time goes on. Shouldn’t a local paper want to challenge established norms in Washington, London and Canberra?

Is the mainstream media capable of seriously examining the tightening relationship between government and corporate interests? Are senior editors concerned about upsetting the status quo (witnessed during last year’s Federal election, when the Fairfax press either supported John Howard’s re-election or gutlessly sat on the fence, despite spending the previous years criticising Liberal Party policy.) We all know the agendas of the Murdoch press. We should be more questioning of how the Fairfax press conducts itself in a democratic Australia. If the organisation fails to listen, circulation figures will continue to haemorrhage and they’ll only have themselves to blame.

Union of Arab Community-Based Associations (Ittijah) has prepared a petition to the governments of the United States and the European Union calling on them not to support Israel’s “Development Plan for the Galilee and Naqab (Negev)”. The full petition can be read in English here.

The petition states that Israel’s plan for “development” of these two areas is actually a plan to destroy the Palestinian presence in these areas. The “development” plan will further the confiscation of Palestinian Arab land, the demolition of thousands of homes and the forced evacuation of the Arab unrecognised villages, encourages step-by-step ethnic cleansing and reinforces the State of Israel’s racially discriminatory policies.

As this is the case, Ittijah calls on the governments of the United States and the European Union, and on the United Nations, not to support the “development” plan. Every dollar and Euro in support of the “development” plan is support for the destruction of the Palestinian presence in the Galilee and Naqab (Negev), and for the continuing, extreme discrimination by the State of Israel against the Palestinians living in Israel.

Are the Americans keeping a body count in Iraq? Despite denying the fact for years – and Tommy Franks, former head of US Central Command, once saying that the US army “don’t do body counts”, a requirement under the Geneva Conventions – murdered humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka claimed in a recent essay that the US are in fact keeping a secret tally of Iraqi dead.

Ruzicka: “The statistics demonstrate that the US military can and does track civilian casualties. Troops on the ground keep these records because they recognise they have a responsibility to review each action taken and that it is in their interest to minimise mistakes, especially since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of their strategy.”

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CNN has a new President. Jonathan Klein is the man leading the once-mighty cable news network. Media moguls have long explained why progressive voices are so rarely heard on their stations or in their pages. In Australia, for example, there are no truly left commentators/talking heads on television during current affairs programs. We’re constantly told that a liberal agenda is running rampant and yet centrists are frequently featured in lieu of progressive guests.

Anyway, back to Klein. During a recent interview on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show, Klein explained why liberals are marginalised. Fox News was tapping into a largely “angry white man’s” conservatism and then the clanger: “a quote/unquote, ‘progressive’ or liberal network probably couldn’t reach the same sort of an audience, because liberals tend to like to sample a lot of opinions. They pride themselves on that. And you know, they don’t get too worked up about anything. And they’re pretty morally relativistic. And so, you know, they allow for a lot of that stuff.”

Where to begin with this nonsense? Hundreds of thousands protested the Iraq war, voted against George W. Bush in 2004 (or indeed didn’t vote for either Bush or John Kerry) and viewed any number of documentaries critiquing the current administration. Hundreds of campaigns continue across a wide area of activity, including against the “WOT” (War on Terror), Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting explains the hypocrisy: “As for progressives being “pretty morally relativistic,” Klein’s insult seems misapplied. One could argue that it’s the right and not the left that tends to see the killing of civilians as important only if the civilians are of the right nationality, for example, and thinks that torture may be acceptable if the right people are torturing.”

Klein’s diatribe is yet another reason why the mainstream media is no longer the place to regularly provide perspectives questioning the establishment. Following orthodox doctrine is what most mainstream commentators engage in. It’s not called journalism. It’s called channelling government propaganda.

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I’m off to Melbourne again for this Anzac Day long weekend. If you still accept the views of status-quo enforcer Gerard Henderson, who argues that Gallipoli was a noble adventure – “in 1914-18 Australia did not fight another nation’s war – then facts will clearly never get in the way of a good yarn. Yet again, our colonial past is ignored or justified. Australia has a history of fighting the wars of the imperial powers. By all means remember the fallen soldiers, but ditch the romanticism. Until Australia forms an independent foreign policy and feels comfortable saying ‘NO’ to America or Britain, we will continue to be seen as a neo-colonial outpost.

Related to this, blogger Rex in the City explains the possible reason behind John Howard’s hesitation in signing ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation:

“By signing this treaty, we would be acceding to the rules of the South East Asian Nuclear Free Zone. The US does not like this zone, and to sign the treaty would put us in a difficult position with the US. We’re a major ally, relying on their nuclear umbrella and we’re not going to upset the applecart.”

As Rex rightly says, Australia’s embedded journalists are caught asleep at the wheel yet again.

ANYWAY, have a good break and feel free to leave in comments any thoughts related to the following:

1) The day we can expect to see the rise and rise of a Prime Minister with no financial ties to big business and favours to repay when elected;

2) The day we can expect journalists to collectively rebel against the Howard government’s increasing restrictions on press freedom (I know I’ll waiting a long time for this one!);

3) The day we can expect more than a handful of Arab voices to appear in our mainstream media. After all, we have just invaded and occupied one of them (Iraq) and contributed to the continued occupation of another (Israel). Editors reading this, here are a few suggestions; and

4) The life and times of your long-weekend.

See you Tuesday.

US-based Judicial Watch reports:

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) has invoked privacy right protections on behalf of al Qaeda terror leader Osama bin Laden. In a September 24, 2003 declassified “Secret” FBI report obtained by Judicial Watch, the FBI invoked Exemption 6 under FOIA law on behalf of bin Laden, which permits the government to withhold all information about U.S. persons in “personnel and medical files and similar files” when the disclosure of such information “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

Large questions remain as to the activities of Bin Laden’s associates in the US in the days before and after 9/11, including access to flights out of the country.

Genocide is currently occurring in Sudan. Despite former US Secretary of State Colin Powell stating last September that genocide was in fact taking place, the atrocities continue. Australia announced this week that it will be sending a small deployment (a paltry 15 people) to assist the UN mission in the country.

Brian Steidle is a former US representative to the African Union who spent six months in Sudan monitoring the so-called ceasefire between rebels and the government and militia. He has now spoken out and detailed the horrors he witnessed.

“…probably say 95 per cent of the attacks, maybe even more – 99 per cent – were from the government of Sudan. It was the government of Sudan working in conjunction with the Arab militias using their helicopter gun ships and their Antonovs to bomb and terrorise the people.”

Steidle’s descriptions were chilling. He witnessed weapons that caused a man to have “his back…shredded by a cheese grater.” Entire villages were burnt to the ground and women were mass raped.

“..outside the village of Adwah there was a bone field. It was probably about 50m by 50m and you couldn’t walk around without stepping on human bones. We don’t really know how many people were killed there, but they apparently had been taken from one of the village by the Janjaweed [militia] and executed and left there to rot.”

And why doesn’t the world act? Steidle said it was simple. “Innocent people are being killed by a government that is aimed at wiping them out, pushing them out of Darfur, killing them, simply because they are black Africans.”

Rwanda recently marked the tenth anniversary of the 1994 genocide that killed close to 1 million people. The world has clearly learnt nothing after the worse atrocities since Cambodia under Pol Pot were committed.

The EU announced in August last year that its fact-finding mission had discovered widespread violence in Sudan but no signs of genocide, a crucial distinction allowing the Europeans not to intervene.

Sudan.net has the latest news from the country. Watching ABC TV last night and witnessing gruesome pictures of decomposing bodies and burning villages, one couldn’t help but feel helpless. Human Rights Watch is but one NGO trying to stop the ethnic cleansing.

We must act. It’s already too late.

Israeli peace group Gush Shalom have released their weekly message, published in Haaretz:

“Israel and the entire world are fascinated by Sharon’s great show in the Gaza Strip. That is the first stage of his plan.

“Behind this smoke screen, Sharon is occupied with expanding the big “settlement blocs” in the western part of the West Bank. Their annexation is the second stage of his plan.

“But at the same time, Sharon is preparing the third stage: the annexation of the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea shore. Together with the settlement blocs, these constitute 52% of the total West Bank area.

“This week, the occupation authorities have informed dozens of inhabitants of Akaba, north of Nablus, that they have to get out of their village, which has been declared a “close military zone”.

“Akaba is a small village bordering on the Jordan valley. The expulsion of the families is the beginning of a big secret operation for widening the valley, in preparation for its eventual annexation to Israel.”

Israel. The Middle East’s only democracy. A land of freedom amongst tyranny. All true statements if you’re Jewish, but not Palestinian. We now learn that Israel has asked the US for extra aid to fund the Gaza “disengagement”. A journalist colleague in Switzerland tells me that an article appeared in the Hebrew version of Haaretz newspaper stating Israel will ask for US$1.6 billion as financial aid for the Gaza disengagement. It will be asked in the first phase for US$ 600 million for transferring military bases. The second request of over US$ 1 billion will be for the development of the Negev and the Galilee. These figures were negotiated during the recent meeting between George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon.

The English language version of the article is decidedly lacking in details.

These developments once more begs the questions (and mirror statements I heard during my recent travels in the Middle East): is Israel little more than a convenient (for the US), dependent, colonial outpost in the Middle East, and do the American people, from whose tax dollars these loans are coming, truly understand the amount of financial support Israel is receiving?

Andrew J. Bacevich is a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, former contributor to such magazines as the Weekly Standard and the National Review, and former Bush Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. He’s also a self-confessed conservative. His latest book, The New American Militarism, How Americans Are Seduced by War, discusses the ways in which the American people have fallen in love with the idea of American military power and the rapid expansion of an imperial force that 9/11 only accelerated.

This extract explores the changes that have occurred since the Vietnam War, namely the military’s increasing separation from the American people – a force unto itself. For example, do most Americans know that their forces are constantly roaming and infiltrating dozens of countries around the world? The key to understanding these shifts is the desire of many in the military establishment, and their media cheerleaders, to normalise war for ideological and financial reasons. With governmental propaganda convincing many spectators that war is now nothing more than a spectator sport, with few casualties to speak of, let alone seen on the evening news, the public are more easily led into foreign adventures without understanding the true consequences.

The American Congress was informed in February that the Iraq invasion and occupation had in fact assisted terrorist recruiting. CIA Director Porter J. Goss said: “The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists.” Yet how often have we heard Bush, Blair or Howard talking about the Iraq war reducing the likelihood of terrorism?

Bacevich observes: “Confidence in the military has found further expression in a tendency to elevate the soldier to the status of national icon, the apotheosis of all that is great and good about contemporary America. The men and women of the armed services, gushed Newsweek in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm, “looked like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. They were young, confident, and hardworking, and they went about their business with poise and élan.” A writer for Rolling Stone reported after a more recent and extended immersion in military life that “the Army was not the awful thing that my [anti-military] father had imagined”; it was instead “the sort of America he always pictured when he explained… his best hopes for the country.”