Category: Uncategorized

(June 09, 2009)

The self-appointed arbiters must be punished

WITHIN less than two weeks of a Daudkandi woman having suffered 39 lashes by a so-called salish decree, here is now a rape victim in Sirajganj whipped a hundred times with irreparable harm and trauma inflicted on her. To add insult to injury, she was fined Tk 7,000 on a seven-day notice and asked to withdraw the case she had filed, or face expulsion from her village.

The quick succession in which the incidents took place is indicative of a recurrence after a relative lull in fatwabaji, although nobody can be too sure it didn’t play out in some form or the other in the perceived interregnum.

All this is multiple victimisation, once by rape, the other by transfer guilt on to the victim, another by physical brutalisation through an unlawful decree and yet another by ruining the future of the girl. The acts of savagery were perpetrated taking full advantage of the vulnerabilities of women. These got exploited by the rural influential finding it expedient to use the services of village zealots to hide their crime. This is no less a pointer, however, to what should have been the role of the local administration, police and lower judiciary to be quickly cognizant of the offences and preempting them.

In the Daudkandi case, the woman appealed for a DNA test to establish paternity of the child she bore, but this was ignored. But in the Sirajganj instance, the victim had filed a case in the court whereupon the judge ordered investigation. The police officer who investigated the case submitted charges against the accused before the court after ascertaining facts from the local people. Then, apparently, a village influential who sheltered the offender taking the plea for socially settling the dispute held a salish at his residence under his chairmanship. That is how the atrocious ex-parte judgement got delivered.

The matter should be fully gone into and the perpetrators appropriately punished so that others are deterred from following in their footsteps.

In this context, it is worthwhile to recall a High Court ruling to the effect that in cases of sexual crimes there is no legal bar to accepting the victim’s testimony before the court, when no other evidence is available, as the basis for prosecuting the accused.

Daily Star for more

via South Asia Citizens Web

By NADIA HIJAB (Counterpunch)

In the days since Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo last week there has been a desperate search for substance in between the lines of a great performance. Where are the policies that can change the lives of people in the Middle East hit by the wars and occupations initiated or supported by the United States?

Many have read much into Obama’s speech – that was part of its genius – but it contained no policy announcements. That does not mean there are no policies. The Obama administration works differently from its predecessors in at least three ways.

First, it doesn’t do business on the basis of public pronouncements. There will, for example, be no reprise of Bush senior’s public appeal to the American people that he was “one little lonely guy” facing up to a thousand lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

At that time, the Bush administration wanted Israel to attend the Madrid peace conference in the wake of the 1990-91 Gulf war. The White House also announced its intention to tie loan guarantees to Israel to ending settlement activity. In contrast, the Obama administration looks unlikely to make any public threats.

Second, the Obama administration speaks with one voice. The same tough line – settlements must stop, peace must start – is delivered by Mr. Obama; Vice President Joe Biden, who used to call himself a Zionist; Hillary Clinton, the former stridently pro-Israel junior senator from New York; Rahm Emanuel, who twice volunteered for the Israeli Army; the national security adviser, General James Jones; and the special envoy, George Mitchell.

This seamless act makes it hard for right-wing pro-Israel forces to drive in a policy wedge. This is a far cry from Bush junior’s administration, when Vice President Dick Cheney and the deputy national security advisor Elliot Abrams actively undermined Condoleezza Rice’s efforts.

Third, this is an administration that does its homework. It has studied the rise and fall of previous peace efforts, including Bill Clinton’s hasty and ill-prepared convening of the Camp David summit in 2000. By contrast, weeks before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington in May, the Obama team reportedly briefed key Democrats in Congress about possible disagreements with Israel.

When Mr. Netanyahu visited Capitol Hill, expecting to be shielded from the administration, Haaretz reported that he was “stunned” by a coordinated attack against his stand on settlements. Several leading lawmakers, including Jewish ones, said they thought Mr. Netanyahu should be “very, very aware of the concerns of the administration and Congress.”

True, AIPAC secured 329 Congressional signatures on a letter urging Mr. Obama to pursue peace as “a devoted friend to Israel.” But the warnings of senior lawmakers still carry weight.

Meanwhile, it is worth noting some of the policy shifts, however small. For instance, Israelis maintain that they had an understanding with the Bush administration supporting “natural growth” in the settlements. Hillary Clinton shot this down in no uncertain terms. The Obama administration, she pointed out, had been given the official records by the outgoing Bush administration, and there “is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements. If they did occur, which, of course, people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the United States Government.”

Counterpunch for more

By HARIS GAZDAR (Economic & Political Weekly)

(Haris Gazdar (gasht@yahoo.com) is a political economist who works with the Karachi-based Collective for Social Science Research.)

The Pakistani military finally appears to have embraced the war against jihadi militancy as its own. If so, an important shift in perception and policy has taken place. Past experience, however, demands caution before coming to any hasty conclusions. Things are chaotic enough in any case, for there to be sufficient material evidence to support optimists and sceptics alike. It is possible, nevertheless, to post milestones that will need to be crossed if we are to decisively move in the right direction.

Swat was always going to be the first test of the Pakistani military’s will for confronting jihadi militancy. Recent reports suggest that the will has been found. After months of losing ground to the militants, the state’s forces now have the initiative. A full-scale military operation supported by air power seems to have loosened the grip of Maulana Fazlullah’s Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Swat on the scenic valley.Military action was accompanied by a large-scale exodus from the region – something that has now become a recurrent pattern in confrontations between the military and the jihadi militants. It is estimated that some three million people have left their homes for safer places in anticipation or as a result of the war. Military sources claim that over 1,200 Taliban and their supporters have been killed, and nearly a hundred, including foreign militants, have been captured. Military losses are put at around 80 deaths. There is no word on civilian non-combatant casualties.

It is difficult to directly verify most of these claims. The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who are registered at relief camps hovers around the 2,00,000 mark. While this is a huge figure in its own right, it represents a small fraction of the three million IDPs claimed by government and UN agencies alike. It is argued that most IDPs live with their relatives and friends in safer areas, and have chosen not to register for relief. This claim is, obviously, hard to verify. In any case, there is a humanitarian crisis, and it is officially acknowledged that populations are advised to leave their homes in areas where military operations are imminent.

The confusion surrounding IDP numbers is nothing compared to different interpretations of the run-up to the military operation. There is agreement that a “peace pact” between the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) government and Maulana Sufi Mohammad, leader of the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) or the movement for the enforcement of Sharia, marked the turning point. Critics of the civilian government say that the secular Awami National Party (ANP) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) were cowed into handing over Swat and the entire Malakand region (consisting of Buner, Malakand, Dir and Chitral districts) to the Taliban. Emboldened, the militants immediately expanded their operations beyond Swat, thus leaving the military little choice but to respond to external pressure.

The descent into war is seen as yet another case of policy confusion – alternate rounds of appeasement and containment – with respect to the Taliban and other jihadi militants. It is quite likely that the present military operation called Rah-e-Haq (the righteous path) will go down the route of previous such endeavours, which generated much sound and fury while leaving the Taliban unscathed. Sceptics fear that like before the Taliban will be back in the driving seat as soon as international (read the United States) optics are satisfied. In the meanwhile, the secular parties will have given up further ground to the jihadis.

A more optimistic view is that the Swat peace deal was a classic set-up. The peace deal delinked the jihadi demand for Sharia enforcement from their quest for political power. The government itself took over the responsibility for enforcing Sharia in the Malakand region, and Sufi Mohammad undertook to deliver peace. The government, according to this view, called the Taliban’s bluff. It also disarmed the jihad apologists among mainstream parties and media whose main policy plank was to negotiate with the Taliban. The peace deal was destined for failure, but Sufi Mohammad, his son-in-law Fazlullah and other Taliban leaders made the government’s job easier when they took the deal as a signal to escalate aggression. After that, there was nothing to say in the defence of the Taliban, and the path to war was open.

Economic and Political Weekly for more
(Submitted by reader)

SANSAD Forum

Dear Friends,
We respectfully remind you to join us at the important and timely forum on

Sunday, June 21, 2009
2:00 p.m.

Room A. 136 A, Langara College
100 West 49th Avenue, Vancouver

Aided by the wholesome adoption of the Neo-liberal agenda by the Indian state, the many-pronged penetration of Imperialism is now present in every sector of Indian econmy, every aspect of society and polity, and also in the defence-military establishment.

The focus of this Forum is however on only one aspect of this phenomenon: the large scale acquisition of hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land; either for building mega projects, or for setting up Special Economic Zones – to serve the local and/or multinational big capital. Large scale resistance of peasants and tribal people are breaking up all over India, often met with severe state repression.

The Forum will attempt to examine these by paying a close attention to one region, the resource rich State of Orissa. Very many national and multinational corporations are waiting in the wings. It is also in Orissa where the Hindutwa forces of VHP, RSS, and Bajranga Dal carried out the genocidal attacks last year against the Christian community. Thousands of affected families are still on run, unable to return to their homes and hearth.

Panelists

Dr. Hari Sharma, Imperialism and India, an Update and a Brief Overview

Dr. Manoranjan Mohanty, People’s Movement Against Neo-Liberalism and Imperialism: A View from Orissa

Dr. Bidyut Mohanty, Right to Livelihood from a Gender Perspective

Mr. David Pugh, Peasant Displacements in India: Encountering State Power in Orissa

Speakers:

Dr. Hari Sharma, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, SFU, and President, South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD)

Dr. Manoranjan Mohanty, Retired Head, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. Presently, Visiting Professor, Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. Bidyut Mohanty, Head, Women’s Studies Department, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, Presently, Visiting Professor, Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

As a husband-wife team Drs. Manoranjan and Bidyut Mohanty are orginally from Orissa, and have been very actively involved there with the people’s resistance movements.

Mr. David Pugh, a School Teacher, San Fracisco, California. On behalf of International League of People’s Struggles, Mr. Pugh travelled to India to investigate the phenonomenon of massive displacements of peasants from their land and livelihood, and had an unforgetable encounter with the Orissa police.

Additional Forum

Monday, June 22, 2009
2:00 p.m.
F125 – Centre for Indo Canadian Studies, University House
University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford BC

Organized by

South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD)

Endorsed and Supported by

Department of Sociology, Langara College, Vancouver; Centrefor the Indo-Canadian Studies, University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford; Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Institute for the Humanities, SFU; School for International Studies, SFU; and Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG)

for further information, contact:

Chin Banerjee, 604-421-6752; Harjap Grewal, 778-552-2099; Hari Sharma, 604-420-2972

For the Program in Abbotsford: Dr. Satwinder Bains, 1-604-854-4547

By AMY GOODMAN (Truthdig)

Ken Saro-Wiwa and Alberto Pizango never met, but they are united by a passion for the preservation of their people and their land, and by the fervor with which they were targeted by their respective governments. Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Nigerian government Nov. 10, 1995. Pizango this week was charged by the Peruvian government with sedition and rebellion, and narrowly eluded capture, taking refuge in the Nicaraguan Embassy in Lima. Nicaragua has just granted him political asylum. Two indigenous leaders—one living, one dead—Pizango and Saro-Wiwa demonstrate that effective grass-roots opposition to corporate power can take a personal toll. Saro-Wiwa’s family and others just won a landmark settlement in U.S. federal court, ending a 13-year battle with Shell Oil. Pizango’s ordeal is just beginning.

Peru and Nigeria are a world apart on the map, but both host abundant natural resources for which the U.S. and other industrialized nations hunger.

The Niger Delta is one of the world’s most productive oil fields. Shell Oil began extracting oil there in 1958. Before long, the indigenous peoples of the Niger Delta suffered from pollution, destruction of the mangrove forests and depletion of fish stocks that sustained them. Gas flares constantly lit up the sky, fouling the air and denying generations a glimpse of a dark night. The despoliation of traditional Ogoni land in the Niger Delta inspired Saro-Wiwa to lead an international, nonviolent campaign targeting Shell. For his commitment, Saro-Wiwa was arrested by the Nigerian dictatorship, subjected to a sham trial and hanged with eight other Ogoni activists. I visited the Niger Delta and Ogoniland in 1998, and met Ken’s family. His father, Jim Wiwa, did not mince words: “Shell has a hand in the killing of my own son.”

Family members sued Shell Oil, charging it with complicity in the executions. They were granted their day in U.S. court under the Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows people outside the U.S. to bring charges against an offender in U.S. courts when the charges amount to war crimes, genocide, torture or, as in the case of the Ogoni Nine, extrajudicial, summary execution. Despite Shell’s efforts to have the case (Wiwa v. Shell) thrown out, it was set to be tried in a New York federal court two weeks ago. After several delays, Shell settled, agreeing to pay $15.5 million.

Saro-Wiwa’s son, Ken Wiwa, said: “We now have an opportunity to draw a line on the sad past and … face the future with some hope that what we’ve done here will have helped to change the way in which businesses regard their operations abroad. … We need to focus on the development needs of the people. … We’ve created evidence, an example, that with enough commitment to nonviolence and dialogue, you can begin to build some kind of creative justice. And we hope that people will take their signals from that and push for similar examples of creative justice, where communities and all the stakeholders where oil production is are able to mutually benefit from oil production, rather than exploitation and degradation of the environment.”

Truthdig for more

(Times of India)

…

Last week, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) of Nigeria issued a press release stating that a large consignment of fake anti-malarial generic pharmaceuticals labelled `Made in India’ were, in fact, found to have been produced in China.

New Delhi has registered “strong protest” with the Chinese mission and China’s foreign trade ministry, according to sources in the commerce ministry.

India’s High Commissioner in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, Mahesh Sachdev, had earlier written to then commerce secretary GSK Pillai, alerting him to the large seizure: “While this is a case of a Chinese company exporting fake `Made in India’ labelled medicines which has been accidentally exposed, it is unlikely to be an isolated incident. Indeed there is no reason for Nigeria to be the only country to be receiving such consignments.”

His letter went on to say: “Fake foreign-made generics carrying `Made in India’ label can do tremendous harm to our interests. It not only dents our image and takes our legitimate market share, it also erodes the distinction between generic and fake medicines that we have been campaigning for at WHO and WTO”.

Commerce ministry sources said: “We have had many complaints about such fake drugs from China being offloaded as Indian drugs in countries like Ghana, South Africa, Ivory Coast and West Africa — in general, where India has a substantial market share. But so far there has been no formal complaint. This is the first time that such a large international consignment has been seized and this will be taken up strongly with the Chinese side.”

Sachdev in his letter said that he had spoken to the director-general of NAFDAC Dr Paul Orhii who said that the Nigerian preference for generics made such cases of fake drugs more common. He expressed NAFDAC’s determination to curb circulation of substandard fake medicines.

India and China have been held primarily responsible for fake drugs in the Nigerian market in particular and Africa in general. About 60% of drugs in Nigeria are imported. Between 2001 and 2007, more than 30 Indian and Chinese companies were banned in Nigeria for exporting fake drugs to the country.

Times of India for more

(Submitted by reader)

By WILLIAM BLUM

The praise heaped on President Obama for his speech to the Muslim world by writers on the left, both here and abroad, is disturbing. I’m referring to people who I think should know better, who’ve taken Politics 101 and can easily see the many hypocrisies in Obama’s talk, as well as the distortions, omissions, and contradictions, the true but irrelevant observations, the lies, the optimistic words without any matching action, the insensitivities to victims. Yet, these commentators are impressed, in many cases very impressed. In the world at large, this frame of mind borders on a cult.

In such cases one must look beyond the intellect and examine the emotional appeal. We all know the world is in big trouble — Three Great Problems: universal, incessant violence; financial crisis provoking economic suffering; environmental degradation. In all three areas the United States bears more culpability than any other single country. Who better to satisfy humankind’s craving for relief than a new American president who, it appears, understands the problems; admits, to one degree or another, his country’s responsibility for them; and “eloquently” expresses his desire and determination to change US policies and embolden the rest of the world to follow his inspiring example. Is it any wonder that it’s 1964, the Beatles have just arrived in New York, and everyone is a teenage girl?

I could go through the talk Obama gave in Cairo and point out line by line the hypocrisies, the mere platitudes, the plain nonsense, and the rest. (“I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States.” — No mention of it being outsourced, probably to the very country he was speaking in, amongst others. … “No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.” — But this is precisely what the United States is trying to do concerning Iran and North Korea.) But since others have been pointing out these lies very well I’d like to try something else in dealing with the problem — the problem of well-educated people, as well as the not so well-educated, being so moved by a career politician saying “all the right things” to give food for hope to billions starving for it, and swallowing it all as if they had been born yesterday. I’d like to take them back to another charismatic figure, Adolf Hitler, speaking to the German people two years and four months after becoming Chancellor, addressing a Germany still reeling with humiliation from its being The Defeated Nation in the World War, with huge losses of its young men, still being punished by the world for its militarism, suffering mass unemployment and other effects of the great depression. Here are excerpts from the speech of May 21, 1935. Imagine how it fed the hungry German people.

———————

1. I conceive it my duty to be perfectly frank and open in addressing the nation. I frequently hear from Anglo-Saxon tribes expressions of regret that Germany has departed from those principles of democracy, which in those countries are held particularly sacred. This opinion is entirely erroneous. Germany, too, has a democratic Constitution.

2. Our love of peace perhaps is greater than in the case of others, for we have suffered most from war. None of us wants to threaten anybody, but we all are determined to obtain the security and equality of our people.

3. The World War should be a cry of warning here. Not for a second time can Europe survive such a catastrophe.

4. Germany has solemnly guaranteed France her present frontiers, resigning herself to the permanent loss of Alsace-Lorraine. She has made a treaty with Poland and we hope it will be renewed and renewed again at every expiry of the set period.

5. The German Reich, especially the present German Government, has no other wish except to live on terms of peace and friendship with all the neighboring States.

6. Germany has nothing to gain from a European war. What we want is liberty and independence. Because of these intentions of ours we are ready to negotiate non-aggression pacts with our neighbor States.

7. Germany has neither the wish nor the intention to mix in internal Austrian affairs, or to annex or to unite with Austria.

8. The German Government is ready in principle to conclude non-aggression pacts with its individual neighbor States and to supplement those provisions which aim at isolating belligerents and localizing war areas.

9. In limiting German air armament to parity with individual other great nations of the west, it makes possible that at any time the upper figure may be limited, which limit Germany will then take as a binding obligation to keep within.

10. Germany is ready to participate actively in any efforts for drastic limitation of unrestricted arming. She sees the only possible way in a return to the principles of the old Geneva Red Cross convention. She believes, to begin with, only in the possibility of the gradual abolition and outlawing of fighting methods which are contrary to this convention, such as dum-dum bullets and other missiles which are a deadly menace to civilian women and children.

11. To abolish fighting places, but to leave the question of bombardment open, seems to us wrong and ineffective. But we believe it is possible to ban certain arms as contrary to international law and to outlaw those who use them. But this, too, can only be done gradually. Therefore, gas and incendiary and explosive bombs outside of the battle area can be banned and the ban extended later to all bombing. As long as bombing is free, a limitation of bombing planes is a doubtful proposition. But as soon as bombing is branded as barbarism, the building of bombing planes will automatically cease.

12. Just as the Red Cross stopped the killing of wounded and prisoners, it should be possible to stop the bombing of civilians. In the adoption of such principles, Germany sees a better means of pacification and security for peoples than in all the assistance pacts and military conventions.

13. The German Government is ready to agree to every limitation leading to abandonment of the heaviest weapons which are especially suitable for aggression. These comprise, first, the heaviest artillery and heaviest tanks.

14. Germany declares herself ready to agree to the delimitation of caliber of artillery and guns on dreadnoughts, cruisers and torpedo boats. Similarly, the German Government is ready to adopt any limitation on naval tonnage, and finally to agree to the limitation of tonnage of submarines or even to their abolition, provided other countries do likewise.

15. The German Government is of the opinion that all attempts effectively to lessen tension between individual States through international agreements or agreements between several States are doomed to failure unless suitable measures are taken to prevent poisoning of public opinion on the part of irresponsible individuals in speech, writing, in the film and the theatre.

16. The German Government is ready any time to agree to an international agreement which will effectively prevent and make impossible all attempts to interfere from the outside in affairs of other States. The term ‘interference’ should be internationally defined.

17. If people wish for peace it must be possible for governments to maintain it. We believe the restoration of the German defense force will contribute to this peace because of the simple fact that its existence removes a dangerous vacuum in Europe. We believe if the peoples of the world could agree to destroy all their gas and inflammable and explosive bombs this would be cheaper than using them to destroy one another. In saying this I am not speaking any longer as the representative of a defenseless State which could reap only advantages and no obligations from such action from others.

18. I cannot better conclude my speech to you, my fellow-figures and trustees of the nation, than by repeating our confession of faith in peace: Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos. We, however, live in the firm conviction our times will see not the decline but the renaissance of the West. It is our proud hope and our unshakable belief Germany can make an imperishable contribution to this great work.[1]

— End of speech excerpts —

How many people in the world, including numerous highly educated Germans, reading or hearing that speech in 1935, doubted that Adolf Hitler was a sincere man of peace and an inspiring, visionary leader?

NOTES

[1] Click Hitler for his entire speech

Wiiliam Blum is a historian and a critic. His website is Killing Hope He can be reached at bblum6@aol.com

[Cha-Cha means Charter Changer]

Perhaps the regime figured that enabling Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to extend her immunity by allowing her to run as representative of her district and then become prime minister is less costly politically — with less chances as well of inviting an upheaval — than postponing the 2010 elections or declaring martial law, without completely closing its doors on these options.

By BENJIE OLIVEROS (Bulatlat)

MANILA – After months of playing coy and testing the water, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s minions in the House of Representatives led by House Speaker (read: Stooge) Prospero Nograles have finally rammed through House Resolution 1109 providing for the convening of Congress as a constituent assembly to amend the 1987 Constitution with both houses of Congress voting as one.

The penultimate drama, perhaps played to lure the public into complacency, was the withdrawal last month of sponsorship of the resolution by Rep. Luis Villafuerte of Camarines Sur. The drama reached its climax with the midnight passage of the resolution on Tuesday, June 2, perfectly timed on the last week of the Congress’s session.

The administration party, which has recently emerged from a merger of Lakas and Kampi, explained the railroading of the charter change (cha-cha) resolution with the inane excuse that it just wants the Supreme Court to rule with finality on the supposed constitutional gray area of whether, in a constituent assembly, both houses should vote as one or separately. They probably thought the Filipino people are so stupid that we would accept such an silly excuse. It is no different from a criminal who fires a gun at a person and explains in court that he never intended to kill or injure the victim — he just wanted to see if the victim would die after being hit.

In the first place, the Supreme Court could not act on the matter if the Senate sits on the resolution and if nobody files a petition before the High Court. Well, of course, the Arroyo government has erstwhile Marcos loyalist Oliver Lozano who immediately filed, on cue, a petition before the Supreme Court to declare House Resolution 1109 as unconstitutional. In effect, this pulled the rug from under the Senate, which was planning to block the House resolution through its inaction.

It can be recalled that it was also Lozano who filed the weak impeachment complaints against President Arroyo in 2005 and 2006 to preempt the filing of the stronger complaints. Lozano’s action enabled the administration’s underlings in the Lower House to dispatch of these with ease.

Bulatlat for more

What is the purpose of publications? (…) The purpose of data is to support, directly or indirectly, the marketing of our product.” [1, 2]

BY JAQUELINE (Laika’s MediLibLog)

It is well known that studies with significant positive results are easier to find than those with ‘negative’ results. This so called publication bias can arise from the tendency to submit or accept manuscripts that have a positive rather than a negative or neutral result. It can also be the consequence of deliberately overemphasizing positive results or even worse: the results can be “embellished”, (partly) faked or negative results can be “hidden.”

In fact, pharma-sponsored trials rarely produce results that are unfavorable to the companies’ products [3, 4, 5]. For instance, none of the published 56 trials of NSAIDs in arthritis identified by Rochon et al in 1994 [3] had outcomes that were unfavorable to the company that sponsored the trials. Another study showed that studies funded by a company were four times more likely to have results favorable to the company than studies funded from other sources [1, 4]

Ghostwriters, who write articles that are officially credited to another person, are part of the tactics. Ghostwriters may be hired by companies to write articles for medical journals that appear under the names of scientists who didn’t substantially contribute to the paper. In extreme cases pharmaceutical companies and their agents control or shape multiple steps in the research, analysis, writing, and publication of articles. This so called ghost management can be outsourced to MECC’s, medical education and communication companies.

All the above approaches, -and more- are said to have been used by Merck to sell their Vioxx (rofecoxib) pills, the blockbusting painkiller, that could cause heart attacks and strokes [6]. Merck knew, but didn’t disclose (all) these adverse effects*. Later it appeared that many Vioxx- manuscripts were prepared by sponsor employees (ghost writers), but attributed to academic investigators who did not always disclose industry financial support. Distancing himself from one such article, first author Jeffrey Lisse said in an interview that:
“Merck designed the trial, paid for the trial, ran the trial…Merck came to me after the study was completed and said, ‘We want your help to work on the paper.’ The initial paper was written at Merck, and then it was sent to me for editing” [NY-times -[2005].

And although Merck has “voluntarily” withdrawn Vioxx from the market in 2004 and has agreed to pay billions to settle lawsuits in the US, the Vioxx-ghost keeps hunting Merck (and us).

In a few weeks 3 news-items have crossed my eyes.

A. The Guardian ( May 4) http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/04/merck-vioxx-campaign-parliament mentioned that Merck refused to compensate hundreds of Britons who have suffered serious cardiovascular problems while on Vioxx. Ministers apparently backed down from supporting these people after lobbying by the company.

B. May 1st NewsInferno reported that Merck was accused of hiring a ghostwriter for a Circulation paper (2001) to minimize issues linked to Vioxx’s safety, while the well known cardiologist Dr. Marvin Konstam agreed to act as lead author. This was revealed by Prof. Jelinek during an Australian lawsuit against Merck.

C. The above news story was covered by Australian Newspapers including “the Australian” . In its article on the lawsuit, the Australian also devotes one sentence to a fake Elsevier/Merck journal. It says:

“The drug company also allegedly produced an entire journal — called The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine — and passed it off as an independent peer review publication.”

It is this sentence that has caused a tsunami, starting with the Scientist, via blog.bioethics.net to many other blogs of researchers, publishers, librarians and to newspapers. “Everybody” was alarmed.

What were the allegations? Are they all true? Who is to blame? Merck or Elsevier? Most importantly: is it an isolated incidence, something completely new and what is its impact?

Laika’s MediLibLog for more