The little red email would like to apologise for its silence over the past weeks. Not only has the Bush ‘win’ been hard to take, but also regrettably our day jobs, the part that really funds this whole crazy venture, kind of went more berserk than normal lately. And then, when we got ourselves together, our webhost decided to maim the mailer script we use again, which took another week to sort out. As near to normal service as we’ll ever get has now been resumed at Canned Revolution. Four years further carnage has been accepted far too easily.

The whole complex nature of the US presidential election was designed back in the day to ensure that southern slave owners saw their views were carried at Washington. See this picture to see just how similar this year’s vote was to Civil War era times. No northern Democrat has won an election since Kennedy, who only just scraped past Nixon, though Kerry polled better than Carter and Clinton, but you have to break that central mass of the biosphere — blue around most of the coastline won’t do. Bush won both the dumb and religious vote, a vital part of the alleged 59 million idiots who voted Republican. Rigging appears to have been prevalent on November 2, most notably the electronic voting machines, provisional ballots, and good old fashioned hanging chads, which no doubt in the coming four years will become law everywhere as the Republicans have gained full legislative control in both houses with the Supreme Court soon to veer further right in this huge swindle in the supposed model of democracy. As well as the changes in the electoral processes what else can we expect in the next terrifying unhinged unaccountable next four years?

You just have to look at what gave Bush victory on November 2 to know what to expect in the coming years. He won thanks to war, fear, guns, gays, God, electronic voting machines, media subversion and of course snapping up the dumbest voters.

The immediate ramp up in the pounding of Fallujah is but a warm up to the coming onslaught where Bush in the knowledge he is untouchable and managed to wage war already without international consent, will wreak havoc both at home and across the globe.

Fallujah will be repeated time and time again across Iraq and the full tie up of military force in the country will deter Bush and friends from invading Iran ; it’s too big of a challenge for an army already stretched thin. Besides, Iran has recently signed up massive energy deals with Russia and China, something the US must be wary of. We feel that the Baathist al-Assad regime in Syria is a more likely target at some juncture in late 2005. Why? Simple: access to the Mediterranean, and compared to the axis of evil brethren — North Korea and Iran — it is easier to crush.

Let’s face it the more wars Bush has the happier his clients are in this military corporate administration including his dad who is a bigwig at the shadowy Carlyle Group which owns a number of major defence contractors.

Cosying up to Ariel Sharon will continue with the covert blind eye tactic adopted by Bush turning to all out support in the coming years as Sharon will continue to butcher the West Bank and Gaza.

Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, the ailing royal family will continue to be propped up by Bush and Co.

Watch out for the human rights disaster zone that will be Patriot Act II, son of Ashcroft (and he’s real pissed). Civil rights will be thrown out the window as privacy is invaded grossly leading to a Big Brother state. Fear will be pedalled constantly; homeland security funding will continue to dwarf health and education. Guantanamo will carry on regardless.

The economy already as fragile as can be amid massive debts and soaring raw material costs will plunge into a huge recession that will make Bush Senior’s recession seem miniscule. Oil prices will continue to soar — we have entered a stage of peak oil whereby $50 a barrel will seem cheap come 2008. The US dollar will continue to nosedive and the country’s financial fate will increasingly be up to China, which not only provides most of its goods, but is also aggressively sourcing energy all over the world and could sell its enormous US dollar reserves at any time. Though Bush fails to grasp it, China now has a huge sway over the day to day handling of the US economy, an economy which is soon to tank. Watch out for a major tariff war to kick off.

Expect to see many more military bases around the globe especially in Central Asia in such countries as Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — ensuring oil supplies are the dominant theory behind foreign policy.

At home, playing up to his vital religious right wing backers you can say sayonara to stem cell research, abortions will be outlawed, constitutional changes to gay marriage will be in the offing, as a serious Christian shadow spreads across the administration further straining the separation of church and state.

As for the environment there is no sense mincing words on this most fragile of issues — it is fucked under Bush. Drilling in Alaska will start soon, the Kyoto Treaty will never be signed and corporates will continue to be allowed to plunder everywhere.

Medicare will take a knock and people will have to fork out ever greater sums to ensure they can live. The current budget is completely untenable, the numbers don’t add up and something will have to be slashed, and it certainly won’t be defence or homeland security. Pharmaceutical firms’ stock prices leapt on Bush’s win as he will ban cheap Canadian drug imports. 

There will be another tax break as well as making the first one which stole from the poor to give to the rich permanent.

And amongst all these tragic developments the perversion and consolidation of the media to corporate poodles will only worsen.

At first we were amused and impressed at the post election statistic that emigration inquiries to Canada by Americans had tripled in the week since Bush snuck in. However, on reflection, while we understand your frustration we say hold up one moment. Use that anger in your home country NOW. Clearly there are many irregularities throughout the so called swing states. We urge you to check out the outrages reported at blackboxreporting.org and then call this vote invalid. Hell, we wouldn’t want to stay any amount of time under the current administration but if you’ve been there for years already just stay a little longer and make your anger heard.

Fraud has been perpetrated throughout the first four years of Dubya’s reign with the greatest swindle taking place on November 2.

And yet there has barely been any mainstream media investigations into all the allegations of fraud that took place especially Ohio, while the independent media seethes with a hotch potch of fearful predictions and election rigging tales.

However, now the Green Party have joined up with the Libertarian Party to call for a statewide election recount in Ohio.

For approximately $110,000, the party grouping can force a recount immediately after the election is officially certified, due this week.

Citing “widespread reports of irregularities in the Ohio voting process,” Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik said they were requesting the recount because the “integrity of the democratic process is at stake.”

Meanwhile, independent candidate Ralph Nader has won approval for a recount in New Hampshire which Kerry took narrowly despite having huge leads in the exit polls.

As it stands, Bush has a 136,000 lead over Kerry in Ohio. Greg Palast, the investigative journalist who made several splashes in Florida back in 2000, has, writing last week in Salon, said that 255,000 votes in Ohio have yet to be counted as they are fixed as spoiled, the majority of which are Democrat-leaning types. 3% of all votes in the US are deemed spoiled ­ a 3% that can be fixed in cloose swing states such as Florida and Ohio. As well as spoiled votes more than 175,000 in Ohio were unable to vote due to failed bureaucracy in registering, again mainly Democrats. Indeed Palast says these two factors are enough to hand Kerry both Ohio and New Mexico, and yet there is such little public debate about one of the most contentious elections of all time. The little red email viewed the superb Wag The Dog movie once again the other day, still so prescient in these fraudulent times.

As has been widely documented all the exit polls gave Kerry a clear lead in Ohio and yet somehow he gave in early, leading to some to suppose that the whole election event was rigged, a supra-party corporate coalition. Like in many other states, many counties in Ohio reported more votes than registered voters.

In Florida, 13 counties reported more votes than voters, these accounting for 39.4% of the vote. In Ohio, at the Gahana 1 Precinct, Bush received 6,253 votes, Kerry 1,916 votes, and the others, 23. This totals 8,192 votes, which is strange, since only 4,346 people voted.

At another Precinct in Gahana, Ohio, 4,258 votes were cast for Bush and only 260 for Kerry, while only 638 people were registered as having voted.

In Florida, electronic scan machines registered a gain of 128.45% for Bush and a decrease of 21% for Kerry, whereas in some places a gain of 400% was recorded for the Republicans and in Liverty County, 700%.

This is a blatant swindle perpetrated by the corporate administration of George Bush. See what you can do by checking out blackboxvoting.org. Bush didn’t win this one, we just let him steal it.

The Fallujah carnage has marked a new low in reporting by the world’s media. Despite the fact that the US are clearly the aggressors and initiated this whole tragedy, the BBC et al continue to nose in their reports along these Pentagon scripted lines: “US forces continue to meet resistance from insurgents in areas of the city…” It’s as if the entire city is made up of just insurgents and there are now innocent civilians who are being wiped out. This is truly alarming as it marks the first conflict post election day and a sign of things to come — complete destruction with the tacit approval from the world’s media. We can’t help feeling that the death of Arafat happened too conveniently to distract from the desecration that has taken place inside Iraq in the last 10 days.

Food and drinking water is now scarce for the local population in Fallujah who have been under American attack on and off for more than a year. Medicine and electricity are virtually nowhere. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society has been denied the right to provide essential medical and food supplies. The city has not been under American control since April this year. According to one Arabic correspondent: “This city smells of explosives and decaying flesh.” About half its residents decided to stay put as 12,000 American and Iraqi soldiers lined up to attack it eight days ago.

For months Fallujah has been the target of US air strikes almost on a daily basis. On 5 April 2004 US Marines launched a military operation in the city to seek the arrest of those responsible for the killing in March of four US security guards. The fighting in Fallujah lasted for days until a cease fire was agreed. However, it continued sporadically for weeks before US troops pulled out and control of the city was handed over to Iraqi forces. According to hospital and media sources at least 600 people died in the fighting; at least half of them were civilians including children.

Following a period of relative calm, US air strikes resumed ostensibly targeting insurgents’ “safe houses” including members of the group Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad, reportedly led by a Jordanian national, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility for a number of indiscriminate suicide bomb attacks and hostage takings. In July hospital sources said that 14 people, among them children, died as a result of a US air strike.

Further air strikes took place in August, September and October. At least 17 people, reportedly including three children were killed in early September. On 25 September and following an air strike the news agency AFP quoted a medical doctor as saying: “We have received seven dead and 11 wounded including women and children” while a US military statement said that an air strike had targeted a “terrorists meeting in the Jolan district of Fallujah”. On 8 October another air raid reportedly killed 11 people and wounded 17 others in what the US military said was “a precision strike” against a hideout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, while doctors and residents reportedly said that the strike has hit a house after a wedding party. On 20 October four children and their parents were said to have been killed in another air strike against the city.

Amnesty International is concerned that many of these civilian killings may have resulted form indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks by US forces. This latest attack by the US is the most severe to date with the whole city having that razed-to-the-ground, Grozny feel about it. The casualties from eight days of fighting have far surpassed 1,000 people and the area lies in ruins. Desertion rates by Americans and Iraqis fighting in and around Fallujah have leapt and now a whole new front has opened up in the north of the county in Mosul : for every time an American armament takes out an Iraqi, a new ‘insurgency’ is destined to explode, something the Bush administration fails to comprehend in its Great Game.

While we feel the Axis of Evil twins, Iran and North Korea, will probably survive four more years of Bush, with Syria the likely recipient of Pentagon pounding, Representative Roh Hoe-chan of South Korea’s Democratic Labour Party claimed last week in parliament that the re-jigging and downsizing of US forces stationed in Korea is part of a plan to launch surgical strikes against North Korea. Roh said the plan, codenamed OPLAN 5027-04, was first revealed by the North Koreans in August.

“High-tech weapons together with improved C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence) of the [US Forces in Korea] will bring a huge increase in the potential of surgical strikes,” Roh quoted a senior US official who participated in the ROK-US military talks in April, 2003, as saying. No wonder the US troops are being cut back and moved away from the border — Armageddon is being contemplated in Washington.

“A new OPLAN will add a new form of combat capability to the conventional one, which can be expected to improve the capacity to wage war,” Roh said, quoting the US official and suggesting the new plan was OPLAN 5027-04. “The current location of the US 2nd Infantry Division is not a proper place for conducting war (against North Korea ).

The politician went on to say that OPLAN 5027-02, drawn up after 9/11, also contains a plan to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and to pre-emptively attack North Korea without consulting the South Korean government.

On Sunday Japan’s Kyodo News Agency reported that as part of US scenario 5027 which is produced every two years, 25 jet bombers flew simulated missions at an air force base in North Carolina to drop mock nuclear bombs on a firing range in Florida between January and June 1998 — all very Dr Strangelove.

“The relocation of the USFK is a part of Washington’s new military strategy known as the Global Defense Posture Review (GPR),” Roh continued. “It is outrageous for the South Korean government to insist that the relocation has nothing to do with the GPR.”

With thanks to our old correspondent in Bangkok for this take on life in Sin City.

As the western world tumbles into irreversible wars and ultra consumerism, the pathfinders of future are really members of the old guard. They come to Thailand to find women who are ‘less independent’ than their counterparts in Europe or the US.

Occasionally, the two English language newspapers in Bangkok will run this type of story. But they mostly they skate delicately around the central reason why foreign men flock to the kingdom in increasingly record droves. And that one important word? S-E-X! The unspoken reason becomes obvious once you land at the airport. Where in Europe or the US for that matter, can you walk around town arm in arm with a 19-27 year old slim hipped, long raven haired young cutie without feeling like a child molester or worse? It just can’t happen in our advanced, moralistic and arrogantly ‘superior’ societies.

The nasty little secret about Thailand today, and for the foreseeable future, is that it’s primary a destination for lonely, pot bellied and rapidly aging men who have performed their societal duty of working hard most of their adult lives and now that they have retired just want to have some fun to stave off the grim reaper for awhile. They want to wrap their big mitts around some slim hipped local lass and mumble sweet things, probably in English, that she undoubtedly doesn’t understand, but will nod in tremulous agreement. But at least he got the chance to say them once more before he kicks off into the great waiting Neverneverland. And, the reason for this last great surge in male testosterone is that his mate of 40 odd years now probably looks more like Santa Claus without the beard than the sweet young thing he married over 40 years ago. And he is bombarded on TV and all the other European and US media with images of svelte approachable young things who seem to be waiting just for him.

What an incredibly clever/stupid world of capitalistic manipulation of the basic impulses of men and women and what a waste of valuable resources that could be used for solving such intractable worldwide problems of hunger, disease, and war?

And so these men will continue to come to this kingdom of sin with the hopes of answering the prayers of those mostly upcountry girls and young women who also watch TV and want what everyone else in the world wants: 49 “TVs, refrigerators, a pickup truck (the Thai pickup market is said to be the 2nd largest in world after the US) and even a new home.

And to get these treasures all these doe eyed beauties have to do is smile and pretend to enjoy it when some ponderous, balding, ham fisted lug in sleeveless t-shirt, tattoos from Vietnam, whispers something unintelligible like, “Come here baby, come to daddy do.”

Oh, I forgot to mention that other important marketing point. The girls shouldn’t have any problems in the globalised future of Thailand. More often than not, they are practiced schedule makers. For example, this month is November so Pierre from France will be arriving for a month’s stay: must meet him at the airport. And next month is December: Simon from England will be arriving from the UK. Must meet him at airport wearing his favourite Thai silk dress. And on it goes year around. The problem is when one of them arrives unexpectedly and catches the young up country girl in the apartment he is paying for in flagrante delicto. Ah, sweet mysteries of life.

Finally, I forgot to add that while the Thai Tourism Authority is currently boasting about the over 11 million tourist arrivals in the kingdom for this year, what they neglect to clarify in their statistics is the percentage of men. And that the overwhelming percentage of that group is here to meet and fall in love with a nice up country girl. The most elusive statistic in the kingdom is what percentage of net revenue of the nation is derived from what’s called the ‘social tourism’ sector. Most academics who will dare to talk about it say the figure is astronomical. Men don’t come to Thailand to walk around Thai temples in scorching hot tropical weather. They come to do what they would like to do in their home countries, sit in the air-conditioned coolness of a local bar and chat up the lassies.

By the way, they usually choose upcountry girls for obvious reasons. They are the most plentiful, the least educated and the least likely to find professional work. Oops! I should amend that to read, ‘educated’ professional careers in legitimate jobs. And as long as the Thai government insists on not solving the economic disparities between upcountry provinces and primarily locating and licensing 80% of the new factories in around the Bangkok and eastern seaboard areas, there will be a never ending supply of nubile maidens waiting at the international airport for her ‘new’ friends arriving from Europe and North America and, today, increasingly from oil rich Middle Eastern countries.

So, as Tina sultrily sang, ‘What’s love got to do with it?’

PS And I’ve been here 15 years and have had only one wife. Does that make me virtuous?

Human Rights Watch has blasted the Iranian government for its efforts to clamp down on the World Wide Web, “the last remaining outlet for freedom of expression in the country” the organisation states. Many have been arrested for speaking out on the internet.

“The internet has been a gateway for outreach and information sharing with the Iranian public,” said Joe Stork, Washington director of Human Right Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “With so many NGO activists arrested or under surveillance, the remaining members of civil society fear for their safety.” 

Human Rights Watch said that the arrests, which began on September 7, point to a disturbing development in which the government is attacking mid-level activists in the NGO community for the first time.

“We’re talking about rank and file activists working on social and cultural issues,” said Stork. “Their basic freedoms are being sacrificed as conservative leaders try to purge critics from society.” 

Human Rights Watch said that to date none of the detainees have been charged with any crime.

“The only criminal behaviour here appears to be that of Iran’s judiciary officials,” Stork said. “They seem to be ready to defy the country’s own laws as well as its international human rights obligations in solidifying their hold on power.” 

Human Rights Watch called on the Iranian authorities to end their harassment and intimidation of peaceful critics, and free the arrested activists immediately and unconditionally. 

Iran is also set to start its own national, government-controlled internet to avoid all the bad influence of the real internet, according to the BBC World Service.

Four more years of Bush will only accelerate the findings from the Artic Climate Impact Assessment which shows that sea ice will all but disappear by 2100 during summer months up North putting many species of birds and the likes of polar bears and ringer seals at the risk of extinction. 

All the signs are then of an impending environmental catastrophe. The sea ice in the Hudson Bay area of Canada, for instance, breaks up about two and a half weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago

The rapid and unprecedented shrinkage of the ice, and the extra burden it places on the animals, has resulted in the polar bears here weighing, on average, 55lb less than they did in the 1970s as they have to search greater distances for foods. 

And birds adapted to the high Arctic tundra are especially at risk as forests will increasingly replace the tundra. Several hundred million birds migrate every year thousands of miles to the Arctic to breed, largely because the cold region is almost free of egg-eating predators.

The ACIA is the product of four years’ work by more than 250 scientists. Its 139-page report, presented to a scientific conference last week in Reykjavik estimates that the polar region is warming at up to 10 times the rate of the world as a whole. In Alaska, western Canada and eastern Russia, average winter temperatures have risen as much as 3°C or 4°C in the past 50 years, and they are projected to increase by a further 7°C to 13°C, over the next 100 years.

A comparison of sea-ice measurements made during 1958-76 with 1993-1997 found it had thinned by 42 per cent.

Further measurements suggest sea ice has reduced from an average thickness of four metres to just under three metres in the past 30 years. Satellite measurements suggest that the area covered by sea-ice has diminished by about 4 per cent per decade..

The disappearance of the Odden ice tongue, a huge spit of ice that formed off eastern Greenland each winter could have far reaching consequences.

The Odden ice tongue, like all sea-ice, was considered an important driving force in the circulation of the ocean currents. As ice forms from salt water, salt is rejected, which causes a rise in salinity. This cold, dense, salty water sinks to the bottom of the sea, helping to drive the movement of deep ocean currents.

The Odden ice tongue was last seen in 1997 — the worst scenario for Britain from its demise could be the collapse or movement further south of the warm Gulf Stream, which could cause the British to experience a climate similar to that of Newfoundland, which regularly freezes in winter.

As the ice cover retreats, one fear is that it will reduce the amount of sunlight naturally reflected from the Earth back into space. In other words, a world with little or no Arctic sea ice will become even warmer as more sunlight is absorbed by the ground to heat the atmosphere. Another possible “positive feedback” resulting from a warmer climate in the Arctic could result from the release of huge amounts of heat trapping methane gas locked in the permafrost of the northern hemisphere.

“During the next 100 years, climate change is expected to accelerate, contributing to major physical, ecological, social, and economic changes, and the assessment has documented that many of these changes have already begun,” the ACIA warned.

Over the past 30 years already, the annual average sea-ice extent has decreased by eight percent, an area larger than Texas and Arizona (or Norway, Sweden, and Denmark ) combined, and the trend is accelerating.

The executive director of the UN’s Environment Programme (UNEP), Klaus Toepfer, also praised the report, noting that it “confirms worrying predictions and earlier research.” “The Arctic region,” he noted, “is like an environmental early-warning system for the world. What happens there is of concern for everyone because Arctic warming and its consequences have worldwide implications.”

“With these facts before us,” he added, “we need, more than ever before, a concerted and renewed international effort to combat the climate-change problem, one of the most serious threats to humankind today.”

A wide ranging environmental grouping is gearing up to fight Bush every step of the way in his bid to open up part of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.  The House has twice approved President Bush’s energy plan but the Senate has blocked it. Now the Senate is Republican. However, the coalition of wildlife groups said in a press release that “Americans will once again rise up and speak out for thoughtful conservation of the Arctic Refuge.”

The groups say drilling in the pristine spot would “ruin one of America’s last unspoiled wild places” — for little gain. The groups quote oil company executives as saying that only a few months’ worth of oil would be extracted from the area — and not for at least a decade.

“The American people don’t want that, and they’ve made that clear,” the press release said.

By letting drilling take place up in the Artic, the grouping argues big business will then have a blank cheque to drill in whatever pristine place they like.

“Ultimately, the battle over the Arctic Refuge says a lot about what sort of nation we are going to be. Are we a country that squanders its natural resources for short-term profit? Or are we a nation that stewards those resources, carefully conserving the most valuable natural and economic assets to ensure we will have them in the future?” the groups asked in their anti-drilling press release.