Antony Loewenstein

The Lancet is justifiably famous for its compelling research on Iraqi deaths since the fall of Saddam, but it seems all is not well with the publication. The Royal Society of Medicine explains:

Reed Elsevier, the publisher of The Lancet, has today been condemned by a former editor of the British Medical Journal for its involvement in the promotion of arms sales.

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Richard Smith urges scientists and academics to publish their research and findings elsewhere.

“Reed Elsevier is one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific and medical journals and the finest of its journals is the Lancet, the leading global health journal,” said Dr Smith.

“Indeed, The Lancet has been receiving much attention from the Pentagon for its important articles showing that death rates in Iraq are far above those admitted by the United States government and yet its publishers promote arms fairs.

“The blatant hypocrisy doesn’t end there either. Reed Elsevier runs arms fairs through its subsidiary Reed Exhibitions in Britain, the United States, the Middle East, Brazil, Germany, and Taiwan which is the same subsidiary that runs Lancet conferences, including the forthcoming one in Asia.”

Dr Smith describes how The Lancet itself has: “told us how the fairs have in the past included cluster bombs, which are especially dangerous to civilians because they fail to explode and create minefields. Last year’s fair in the US included torture equipment sold by Security Equipment Corporation who use the grotesque slogan ‘Making grown men cry since 1975’.”

Dr Smith argues the best way of appealing to Reed Elsevier is by threatening its business. He writes:

“What might be the actions of the editors, authors, and readers of not only The Lancet but also the other 2000 medical and scientific journals published by Reed Elsevier? Alone they might achieve little, but together they might force the company to change, not by appealing to its non-existent conscience but through threatening its business.

There has been a long-term struggle between the editors and the corporate owners, but serious conflicts of interest appear unavoidable.

Republican clown Tom Delay – a man with a fondness for corruption – has just released a book (what, the man can write and embezzle funds at the same time?) During his book tour, virtually nobody seems to have noticed this shameful passage:

“I believe it was Adolf Hitler who first acknowledged that the big lie is more effective than the little lie, because the big lie is so audacious, such an astonishing immorality, that people have a hard time believing anyone would say it if it wasn’t true. You know, the big lie — like the Holocaust never happened or dark-skinned people are less intelligent than light-skinned people. Well, by charging this big lie” — that DeLay violated campaign-finance laws in Texas — “liberals have finally joined the ranks of scoundrels like Hitler.”

Actually, it’s just pathetic (like most Bush clones these days.) But I thought Bin Laden was Hitler? Or Yasser Arafat? Or Saddam?

Of course, De Lay is correct. “Liberals” are worse than Hitler and should, in all fairness, be placed in ovens before the 2008 US Presidential election.

Saddam Has the Last Laugh

Robert Scheer — The man who once famously took a sledgehammer to Saddam Hussein’s statue now says “the Americans are worse than the dictatorship.” That’s a growing sentiment in George W. Bush’s Iraq, where a majority of people view attacks on coalition forces as acceptable.

The consequences of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy continue to spill over from Iraq, as predicted by critics.

Paskistan’s President Pervez Musharraf is experiencing a backlash over suspending the chief justice of the Supreme Court, because he put the law before government policy. This is taking place while George Bush is facing a similar scandal over the firing of US government attorneys for investigating Republican corruption while not going after Democrat leaders with sufficient enthusiasm.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan–Thousands of lawyers and political activists in cities across Pakistan staged peaceful rallies yesterday as they continued their nearly two-week-old campaign against President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to suspend the nation’s chief justice.

In the capital, Islamabad, demonstrators converged on the Supreme Court building, chanting “Go, Musharraf, go!” and calling the president “Bush’s dog.”

If Tony Blair is Bush’s poodle, what breed does that make Musharraf?

In the rapidly unfolding crisis in Pakistan, no matter what happens to President Pervez Musharraf — whether he survives politically or not — he is a lame duck. He is unable to rein in Talibanization in Pakistan or guide the country toward a more democratic future.

Who didn’t see this one coming? Not only has Bush style corruption rubbed off on Musharraf, but the lame duck status is also catching on.

We watch with fascination to see how Washington reacts to this crisis if it deepens. With the focus directed at drumming up fear in the public mind about Iran possibly becoming an antagonistic Islamic nuclear power, Pakistan is posed to spoil their plans and become a much greater and more tangible threat.

Their obsession with Iran was exposed for its hypocrisy when they tried to trivialize the fact that North Korea had conducted a successful nuclear test in 2006. This could be a huge source of frustration for Dick Cheney, having only just managed to get another potential threat out of the headlines.

UPDATE: More fallout from the Bush Administration’s Middle East policy.

The US is scrambling to head off a “disastrous” Turkish military intervention in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq that threatens to derail the Baghdad security surge and open up a third front in the battle to save Iraq from disintegration.

Is this is what Bush meant when he described the Iraq adventure as a catastrohpic success?

Former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, is “damned proud” of the fact that he was instrumental in blocking ceasefire resolutions at the UN during the 2006 Israel war with Hezbollah.

Bolton captures the arrogance and total hypocrisy of the Bush war on terrorism. In a meeting last August, Bolton “implied that because Lebanon harbored Hezbollah, Lebanese lives were forfeit,” according to a UN official who heard Bolton commenting in meetings at the time.

As far as Bolton is concerned, the innocents were a justifiable expense in the name of destroying Hezbollah. This is the language and logic of ethnic cleansing, of blind nationalism, of firebombing Dresden and Tokyo. This is the same man that even with a Republican majority in the Senate, was unable to secure enough votes to confirm him for the post of UN Ambassador, which is why George Bush was forced to appoint him as a recesses appointment.

Bolton shares the sentiment with a famous academic, famous for advocating torture. Those familiar with Alan Dershowitz would be aware that whatever is good for Israel, goes. Period. War crimes, civilians slaughtered, torture, you name it.

During the conflict, Dershowitz argued that Lebanese civilians were legitimate targets because Hezbollah are Lebanese nationalists who live in Lebanon.

The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims.

How compassionate of him. Those who are bed bound or incapacitated are blessed by Deshowitz, but as luck would have it, they still have to die.

Of course the Nazis argued that all of the Jews they killed in Russia during WW2 were really partisans. If I remember correctly, the Germans tried this line of reasoning in trying to explain why they killed so many Frenchmen during their occupation – they were Resistance sympathisers, not civilians.

Bolton and Dershowitz should know that that argument didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.  They have lost both their minds and their soul.

At long last, Jews around the world are starting to speak out against the short-sighted policies of the Zionist lobby. A feature in Salon explains:

…In the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq war, that all changed dramatically. 9/11, and the Bush administration’s response to it, made it inescapably clear that America’s Mideast policies affect everyone in the country: They are literally a matter of life and death. The Bush administration’s neoconservative Mideast policy is essentially indistinguishable from AIPAC’s. And so it is no longer possible to ignore it — even though it is a notoriously touchy and divisive subject.

The touchiest aspect of all is the role played by pro-Israel neoconservatives in laying the groundwork for the Iraq war. Much of the media has been loath to go near this, for obvious and in some ways honorable reasons: It feels a little like “blame the Jews.” But that taboo has faded as it has become clearer that “the Jews” are not the ones being blamed for helping pave the way to war, but a group of powerful neoconservatives, some but not all of them Jewish, who subscribe to the hard-right views of Israel’s Likud Party. This group no more represents “the Jews” than the Shining Path represents “the Peruvians.”

Logic and forthrightness has traditionally taken a back seat to timorous self-censorship when it comes to discussing these matters. But in addition to the war debate, several other watershed events have helped erode the taboo against discussing the power of the Israel lobby. The most important were the publications of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s “The Israel Lobby,” and Jimmy Carter’s “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” The overwrought reaction to Mearsheimer and Walt’s piece, ironically, only supported its thesis. Similarly, the opprobrium heaped on Carter only succeeded in making it clear how little room there is for open discussion of these issues in America.

For all these reasons, a powerful spotlight has been turned on the pro-Israel lobby. And there are signs that increasing numbers of Americans, Jews and non-Jews alike, are willing to openly question whether it is in America’s national interest for AIPAC, whose positions are well to the right of those held by most American Jews, to wield such disproportionate power over America’s Mideast policies.

It appears that the disaster of the Iraq war – opposed by the vast majority of American Jews – has galvanised public opinion. Of course, the Likudniks won’t go down without a fight (or ideally in their view, a bombing campaign against Iran) and Congress is still utterly petrified of turning against both Jewish money and influence, but as ever, the public is far ahead of the game.

In Australia, after the recent launch of Independent Australian Jewish Voices, the Sydney Morning Herald today examines the inability of many Jews here to feel free in their criticism of Israel. Fear and intimidation are the order of the day. Though, like in the US, the once-scared Jew is awakening.

As the impending sham “trial” of Guantanamo Bay captive David Hicks approaches, Australian public opinion has soundly turned in his favour. This is not about supporting his alleged “crimes”, but his right to a fair trial.

Amnesty has launched a new campaign. Try and imagine what it’s like living in his Gitmo cage…

The violence in Iraq has reached a truly macabre stage with the first case of children being used in sacrificial bombing missions.

Insurgents detonated a bomb in a car with two children in it after using the children as decoys to get through a military checkpoint in Baghdad, an American general said Tuesday. . . . American soldiers had stopped the car at the checkpoint but had allowed it to pass after seeing the two children in the back seat.

“Children in the back seat lower suspicion,” he said. … “We let it move through. They parked the vehicle. The adults run out and detonate it with the children in back.

This is a level of cruelty and derangement that beggars belief.

One would assume that the Global War on Terror is predicated on the pursuit and disruption of Al Qaeda. Not so it seems.

The neoconservatives envisaged that once the US invaded Iraq, all the US needed to do was side with the Shiites, who would in turn assist the US in its plans to later attack Iran. The plan was based on the flawed assumption that after the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980’s, the Iraqi Shiites would oppose their brethren in Iran.

Not so it seems.

In spite of the fact that George Bush recently kissed the feet of Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, Leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq leader of SCIRI and the Badr Army. Hakim has made it clear that in the event of a US attack on Iran, he and his followers would do their duty, ie. side with Iran. Not surprisingly, Muqtada al Sadr has said the same thing.

What to do?

As Seymour Hersh explains , the new US strategy has been to switch sides and support the Sunnis. Yes, the same Sunnis who are killing and maiming US troops in Iraq.

Even more bizarre, as Hersh reports, is that the US are also supporting radical Sunni Jihadists, (with links to Al Qaeda) in Lebanon, to attack Hezbollah in the event of a war with Iran.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

So to summarize, Al Qaeda (a radical Sunni group) attacked the US on 9/11. Iran helped the US pursue Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and not only captured some key members, but offered to hand them over. Naturally, Washington rejected the offer.

The Bush Administration then uses 9/11 as the pretext to invade Iraq, and is now siding with Al Qaeda’s allies to go after Iran (enemies of Al Qaeda) and Hezbollah – both of which are no threat to the US, nor even enemies of the US.

All the while, Bin Laden remains a free man.

Makes sense right?

 UPDATE 1: The great irony about Iraq is that what the US most wanted was a secular leadership that was pro Western, and opposed to Sharia Law, Al Qaeda and Iran.  What group best fits that decription?  Why the Baathists of course.

As General William Odum (famous for describing the Iraq advanture as the greatest strategis misatke in american history)  said do eloquently, Victory is nto an option in Iraq becaus the Iraq war was not in US interests.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) presents “Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline.” It’s a devastating examination of the ways in which the mainstream media assisted the Bush administration in its campaign to invade and occupy Iraq.

When the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, rants and raves irrelevancies about Iraq and dodgy polls are released that “prove” Iraqi gratitude for the carnage, the media’s responsibility is to disbelieve all statements pouring from politician’s mouths.

My latest New Matilda column discusses the launch of Independent Australian Jewish Voices:

Another intriguing response to the IAJV petition has been the objection to our mention of ‘State-sanctioned violence’ — a clear reference to Israel (though we equally condemn Palestinian violence). For many Jews — and this has been shown in various letters in the Australian Jewish News and elsewhere — Israeli violence is not ’violence,’ merely self-defence. This Orwellian conceit gives comfort to those who choose to ignore the inhumanity of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and focus on Israel’s supposed victimhood.

Being a Jew means different things to different people. Critics of IAJV have revealed their parochialism by condemning Jews who, previously, have never spoken out as Jews. Perhaps they should wonder why. In the UK, US and much of Europe, Jews are starting to shun decades-old Jewish groups that have simply rubber-stamped Israeli policy and refused to allow true debate across a wider spectrum. 

My New Matilda archive is here.