Antony Loewenstein

Tom Cruise and Hillary Clinton may be twins from birth:

Indonesian dictator Soeharto died yesterday. He was one of the 20th centuries most brutal dictators, killing over one million people in the name of strengthening his rule.

The Australian newspaper, however, decides to praise the man and primarily discusses his economic “reforms”. Of course, if Cambodia’s Pol Pot had left his country in better financial shape, the Murdoch press would have undoubtedly praised him, too. These newspaper figures praise “stability”, “pro-Western” governments and “economic reform”. Human rights are largely irrelevant.

The paper’s editorial today proves this point:

Despite his many failings, Australia has reason to be thankful for the steadying hand former Indonesian president Suharto brought to the world’s most populous Muslim nation, immediately to our north.

Hitler improved Germany’s economy, too and the trains ran on time.

Once a friend of Western elite power – unless you’re somebody like Saddam Hussein who turned on his original Western backers – always a friend of the Western business and media elite.

UPDATE: The CIA has described the effects of Soeharto’s takeover of Indonesia as “the worst mass murders of the second half of the 20th century.”

Al-Qaeda is now fully esconced in Lebanon, according to leading Middle Eastern writer Nir Rosen.

The Iraq war is spreading like a cancer.

Wikileaks continues to reveal the issues ignored by the mainstream media:

Following an announcement this week that the infamous Japanese Monju fast-breeder nuclear reactor would be reopened, activists in Japan have leaked suppressed video footage of the disaster that lead to its closure in 1995.

The infamous sodium spill, an accident that long ago earned itself a place in the history of nuclear power in Japan, has returned one more time to haunt government and industry officials with images they had hoped they would never see again.

Named after the Buddhist divinity of wisdom, Monju, located in Japan’s Fukui prefecture, is Japan’s only fast-breeder reactor. Unlike conventional reactors, fast-breeder reactors, which “breed” plutonium, use sodium rather than water as a coolant. This type of coolant creates a potentially hazardous situation as sodium is highly corrosive and reacts violently with both water and air.

On December 8th, 1995, 700 kg of molten sodium leaked from the secondary cooling circuit of the Monju reactor, resulting in a fire that made headlines across the country. Although the accident itself did not result in a radiation leak, many argue that the sodium spill itself came very close to detonating Monju, a catastrophe which would have spilled plutonium into the environment.

Following the fire, officials at the government-owned Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation (PNC), operators of Monju, first played down the extent of damage at the reactor and denied the existence of a videotape showing the sodium spill.

Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, January 27:

First there was delight. Senior officials in Israel said that Egypt had taken on this trouble called Gaza. You could almost hear the chadenfreude in their voices. After not wanting to hear about Gaza or its refugees for a generation, Egypt received both, explosively. Now, at last, there will be a responsible country, and not Israel, to deal with the refugees.

Egypt will also have to safeguard the blasted gate, which looks like a modern sculpture, prevent the passage of explosives and terrorists and supervise the behavior of Hamas, because otherwise it will bear the consequences. The feeling is that Egypt has become a true enemy state at last, Syria-style. Just as Damascus is perceived as responsible for the actions of Hezbollah, so Cairo will be the custodian of Hamas. And what could be better for Israel than to have an address to turn to that is not an organization but a state, which at any given moment can have the screws applied to it in the form of sanctions that will affect not 1.5 million Palestinians but 75 million Egyptians?

Hey, Hamas really showed Egypt what’s what this time.

The case of the Afghani journalist sentenced to death for allegedly downloading a suspect article online is far more complex than we are being told, writes Afghan blogger Sanjar:

This is a power game, Karzai government has been critical of media for awhile, this incident allowed the religious scholar to rampage a journalist. In big picture it shows where power lies and where Karzai can rely. Parviz is a victim of the politics game. Media has a voice in the Afghan society, media feeds values into the power system. This game is about whose voices are heard and whose voices are marginalised. Media has made a lot of noise after the Taliban, far more than mullahs and Karzai government don’t want the power to go out of the classical circles into the hands of ordinary people. Mullahs and religion is a good tool to sanction unwanted groups which are perceived banal and dangerous. 

The Seattle-Post Intelligencer editorial board issues a call to arms:

With the clock ticking on our “commitments” in Iraq — the international mandate expires in less than a year — the Bush administration is left in an interesting position. It could create a plan for a troop withdrawal; instead, the plan being negotiated with the Iraqi government focuses on reasons to stay there, something The New York Times reports is seen by Democrats as a plan that would “bind the next president by locking in Mr. Bush’s policies and a long-term military presence.”

Imagine what this will mean for the next administration: A pre-packaged deal, leaving our military stuck in Iraq for decades to come, to guard against “external threats” — which external threats are they talking about? Could it be that the Bush administration is positioning itself for an attack on Iran? Or perhaps we’re to offer our troops as support for an Israeli attack on Iran? It’s not farfetched. The president has surely done his best yet to establish Iran as a real military threat, despite the lack of a shred of credible evidence.

Consider that he and his allies uttered no fewer than 935 false statements (when can we start calling them lies, by the way?). Falsehoods got us into Iraq; let’s not allow them to keep us there.

James K Galbraith, Guardian Comment is Free, January 25:

Five former Nato generals, including the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili, have written a “radical manifesto” which states that “the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the ‘imminent’ spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.”

In other words, the generals argue that “the west” – meaning the nuclear powers including the United States, France and Britain – should prepare to use nuclear weapons, not to deter a nuclear attack, not to retaliate following such an attack, and not even to pre-empt an imminent nuclear attack. Rather, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a non-nuclear state. And not only that, they should use them to prevent the acquisition of biological or chemical weapons by such a state.

Under this doctrine, the US could have used nuclear weapons in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to destroy that country’s presumed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons – stockpiles that did not in fact exist. Under it, the US could have used nuclear weapons against North Korea in 2006. The doctrine would also have justified a nuclear attack on Pakistan at any time prior to that country’s nuclear tests in 1998. Or on India, at any time prior to 1974.

American-style torture is now known throughout the world.

Iraq was a testing ground for various forms of humiliation, harassment and outright torture, all condoned by the American government.

A whistle-blower, who ran the military intelligence at Abu Ghraib, speaks out.

After a week that saw Hamas courageously break Israel’s illegal and immoral blockade of Gaza, the democratically elected government issues a warning to the Jewish state:

A senior Hamas official warned yesterday that the next breakout from the Gaza Strip could be into Israel, with 500,000 Palestinians attempting to march towards the towns and villages from which they or their parents fled or were expelled 60 years ago.

“This is not an imaginary scenario and many Palestinians would be prepared to sacrifice their lives,” said Ahmed Youssef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

It’s hard to imagine half a million Palestinians trying to march into Israel – their legal right, it should be stated, to reclaim stolen property – but how would the international community react? As long as the Jewish state refuses to acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinians and enlarge the occupation – ably assisted by the Zionist lobby – Palestinians have the right to demand equal rights in their own homeland. It’s clear that Israel is afraid Palestinians want full access to their ancestral homeland and a complete end to the occupation. This is, by definition, a one-state solution and the end of the Jewish state.

It cannot come a day too soon. A state with equal rights for all its citizens should be welcomed by everybody who believes in true democracy.

The siege of Gaza has failed.

In praise of the Jewish blogosphere.

We need America’s help.

There Won’t Be Peace in the Middle East Till There’s a Naqba Museum in the U.S.

Arab Woman Blues blog knows a few things about dealing with stress.

The Arab way.