The Machine often likes to masquerade its cheekiest profit drives under the guise of charitable efforts. The worst offenders for this trick are the big pharmaceutical companies.  The little red email’s medical correspondent, Dr Jim in New Zealand explains.

Drug dumping is the practice of donating large amounts of unwanted and often unusable pharmaceutical products to developing countries in times of crisis. US tax laws have made this an extremely profitable business. Although there are several methods of calculating the tax relief, even the method that gives the smallest financial gain to the company still means the company gets to offset twice the value of the product. Given that the alternative ways of disposing of the unwanted drugs involve costly controlled incineration, you can understand the corporation’s motivation behind the practice.

For the recipients however these are far from welcome donations. The reality is that large amounts of out of date, short dated, or inappropriate drugs are sent to emergency zones. In the current climate the corporations must be overjoyed. The war on terror in Iraq will provide the perfect excuse to get rid of any unwanted products (Vioxx anyone!).

One of the most infamous examples of the practice involved the dumping of appetite stimulants to the famine stricken region of Sudan. The fact that this was financed by the US taxpayer is almost unbelievable. Unfortunately this is not an isolated example. The people of Bosnia were on the receiving end of so much unwanted and unusable material that they were forced to pay $34 million to build an incinerator for it all. In the makeshift camps of Albania, 10 tonnes of depilatory cream and haemorrhoid cream were dumped. I doubt this provided any relief to the starving people involved.

It is an ironic situation where the US taxpayer subsidises corporations to donate products to the needy that they would never dream of using themselves. Perhaps more importantly, drugs used inappropriately can be lethal. Drugs that are consumed past the end of their shelf life could have untold side effects and minimal useful effect. By informing people about this practice perhaps we can remove some of the kudos from the self-righteous charitable stance of the pharmaceutical companies.

More information available at: www.waronwant.org

Our comrades at Hong Kong-based International Action organized a protest on Friday to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster. They delivered this letter to the Dow Chemical CEO (Dow bought Union Carbide in 2001):

Dear Mr. Stavropoulos,

We feel very strongly about the inherent right of people to a livelihood and life with dignity. We are appalled at the singular lack of respect Dow Chemical has shown towards the environment, human life, and Indian and international law particularly in the manner in which it has chosen to handle the just demands of the survivors of the Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India....

Touted as the world’s worst industrial disaster, the Carbide gas leak of December 3, 1984, has killed more than 20,000 till date, and poisoned at least 500,000, 80 percent of whom were from poor workers’ families. Many local factories, including a textile mill and a paper board manufacturer, were forced to shut down and relocate after their workforces were killed or irreparably injured by Carbide’s gases. Even today, at least 150,000 people are chronically affected by gas-related ailments. More than 50,000 people are too sick to work for a living.

After paying a pittance in damages — approximately $500 for injury or lifelong loss of health — Carbide fled India to dodge outstanding criminal charges against it in Bhopal.

The International Committee for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) has called today as a Global Day of Action, not just to remember Bhopal, but against corporate crime wherever we are.

We express our deep outrage that:
1. There was no siren and no warning--people woke with the gases already in their faces, filling their mouths, noses and lungs with excruciating pain.
2. NONE of safety systems were functioning on the night of the disaster—six in all.
3. Union Carbide under-invested in an inherently hazardous facility located in a crowded neighborhood, used admittedly unproven designs, stored lethal MIC in reckless quantities, dismantled safety systems and cut down on safety staff and training in an effort to cut costs.
4. Union Carbide and its new owner, Dow Chemical, continue to blame the disaster on a fictitious and unnamed worker, and deny their own negligence.
5. In the wake of the disaster, Carbide claimed that the gas was harmless, when it knew it was lethal (as described in its own manuals).
6. Dow-Carbide refuses to share all its medical information about the health effects of the gas it released, MIC--information that doctors could use to save lives--claiming the information is a “trade secret”.
7. Union Carbide fled India and abandoned its Bhopal plant, leaving thousands of tons of dangerous chemicals behind, which are now poisoning the water of the same people Carbide first poisoned 20 years ago. As more people grow sick, Dow-Carbide still refuses to clean up its pollution in Bhopal.
8. The Union Carbide Corporation, charged criminally with “culpable homicide” in the wake of the disaster, has refused to appear in court or stand trial. Union Carbide is now an international fugitive from justice, considered an “absconder” under Indian law.

In Hong Kong, where we are struggling for democracy, Bhopal stands as one of the most extreme and tragic examples of what can happen when powerful people and companies can act with reckless impunity and without accountability, and when ordinary people have no control over their city and their lives. We can already see the effects of such corporate crimes in China, where companies commit violations of basic labor rights, occupational health and safety laws, and environmental provisions. We want lives of workers and people to be considered more important than the profits of the company...

Dow Chemical must:

• Face Trial: Ensure that prime accused Warren Anderson, former chairman of Union Carbide ceases absconding from criminal justice in India and the authorized representatives of the company [Dow-Union Carbide] face trial in the Bhopal criminal court.
• Provide long term health care: Assume responsibility for the continuing and long term health consequences among the exposed persons and potentially their future generations. This includes medical care, health monitoring and necessary research studies. The company must provide all information on the leaked gases and their medical consequences.
• Clean up the poison: Remove the contamination of the ground water and soil in and around the abandoned Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Provide for supply of safe drinking water to the community.
• Provide Economic and social support: The corporation must provide income opportunities to victims who can not pursue their usual trade as a result of exposure induced illnesses and income support to families rendered destitute due to death or incapacitation of the breadwinner of the family.

These motions were echoed by Amnesty International and Greenpeace in their Washington protest, outside the Dow Chemical offices. Activists there delivered a container of poisoned well water from Bhopal to the office of Dow Chemical board member (and former US Commerce Secretary) Barbara Franklin [pictured], also demanded Dow accept responsibility, clean up the site and compensate victims.

“Barbara Franklin has the power to tell Dow what to do and to do the right thing now — after 20 years,” said Rick Hind, a legal director with Greenpeace. Dow Chemical, he said, should assist the Indian government remove the extensive groundwater contamination and toxic waste from the ruins of the decaying plant.

“Dow cannot run away from its responsibility and we are here to send them a very strong signal that it could be 20 years, it could be 200 years, we will come after you,” said T Kumar, advocacy director with rights group Amnesty International.

Amnesty issued a report on the incident, saying it had identified “a pattern of serious failures” over safety by Union Carbide ahead of the leak, as well as subsequent attempts to frustrate survivors before courts in both the United States and India.
The Dow Chemical website on the other hand maintained its long-time refusal to accept any further blame, arguing it had already concluded a $470 million compensation settlement with the New Delhi government in 1989.

This settlement, which was only paid to victims last July is not enough to cover even five years of basic medical costs for the victims, and ignores the growing number of victims from a new generation of Bhopal residents who are affected by parents’ illnesses and by the toxins still present in the water and environment from the as-yet-decontaminated Union Carbide plant. Families who had since moved into the area are also reporting health problems from drinking the water.

“The disaster shocked the world and raised fundamental questions about corporate and government responsibility for industrial accidents that devastate human life and local environments,” according to an Amnesty international report, Clouds of Injustice.

“Yet 20 years on, the survivors still await just compensation, adequate medical assistance and treatment, and comprehensive economic and social rehabilitation,” Amnesty said in an unusually hard hitting commentary. “Astonishingly, no one has been held to account for the leak and its appalling consequences,” Amnesty added.
Amnesty accused the firm of failing to tell medical authorities on the fatal night the name of the gas let alone the scale of the release.

It also accused the firm of still failing to provide full data on the cocktail of chemicals involved, and the Indian government of prematurely closing down a medical inquiry into the consequences and failing to keep a record of gas deaths.

“What happened at Bhopal was one of the worst industrial disasters ever witnessed. But it was not just a tragedy of the past, it has continued to be a tragedy ever since,” Amnesty said.

Many survivors, mainly slum-dwellers who were living around the plant, still suffer from illnesses including cancer, gynaecological problems and tuberculosis, as well as poor eyesight and breathing problems.

One Bhopal resident told Greenpeace: “The compensation to the victims of the World Trade Center and cleanup of the site was done within a year; we are still waiting for both even after almost two decades.”

Amnesty called on the United Nations to draw up a charter setting out the human rights responsibilities for businesses in the light of the disaster, and the US government to force UCC and/or Dow to court in Bhopal on criminal charges.

Canned Revolution encourages you to support the people of Bhopal’s struggle for justice and sign onto the petition calling on Dow to resolve the outstanding legal and moral obligations it has there. http://www.petitiononline.com/bhopal. Also head on over to stuff for a Bhopal movie.

The Singapore government has hit back with a typically spurious excuse as to why its media is so restricted. Reporters Without Borders latest annual survey of media freedom around the world found the Lion Republic had slipped another three places to 147, putting it alongside the likes of North Korea and Burma. Singapore’s ranking was the lowest by far of any developed state and reflects the tight controls on society there that though independent since 1965 has never tasted freedom in the truest sense of the word. The government

Information Minister Lee Boon Yang said the survey failed to take into account the “special circumstances” that journalists in Singapore work towards “nation building” hence their non-adversarial attitude towards the government. Hmmmm. Every facet of the media is strictly controlled in the Lion Republic, including all the art performances. Any foreign news organisation that steps out of line, such as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the International Herald Tribune or the Asian Wall Street Journal, faces heavy fines as well as having their circulation restricted.

Singapore’s two big press groups, Singapore Press Holdings and Mediacorp are still controlled by supporters of the People’s Action Party, which has been in power for nearly 40 years. Indeed, Tjong Yik Min, head of SPH, used to be a director of the security services in the 1980s. Chua Lee Hoon, the star columnist of the daily The Straits Times, admits to also acting as an “expert” for the political police. (As an aside, when the little red email stayed in Singapore last, there were some bad Indonesian forest fires causing untold pollution — Straits Times headline read: ‘ Pollution levels worst of the year, but not that bad really’ — every story has to be crafted into a happy tone) There are no independent media, just a few brave websites who dare speak out.

All this repression then is strange give the government’s avowed goal of making Singapore a “global media city”. The BBC shifted its regional HQ from Hong Kong to Singapore four years ago to much rejoicing by the government, but really international media should shun the financial incentives on offer for relocation because of the interventionist, repressive attitude the PAP takes towards the media.

Of course the similarities between Singapore and North Korea do not end with their draconian media regulations. Oh no, there is something much more similar. Both suffer from being led by dynasties — the Lees and the Kims. Kim il Sung handed power in Pyongyang to his son Kim Jong Il, while in Singapore, ‘founding father’ Lee Kwan Yew became Senior Minister on retiring, and there was a brief inter-regnum as the state was led by Goh Chok Tong, allowing enough time for Lee’s son, Lee Hsien Loong to mature. Te ruling PAP snared 82 out of 84 seats in the ‘election’ this August and the younger Lee assumed the reins of power, with his octogenarian dad taking on the curious title of Mentor Minister.

Singapore has always struck the little red email as a strange, strange place — a Disneyland without the rides. Everybody smiles, everyone is seemingly naïve about the restrictions placed on them and they all appear to live in a very weird happy, happy cocoon.

Been to a rubbish dump lately? No reason why you would, I guess. Well we have, one of the world’s largest — Payatas, a tragic, putrid morass of humanity south of Manila.

Amid the squalor, the atrocious smell, the squelching sensation underfoot, what sticks out most visibly in these mountains of garbage are the plastic bags. They perforate every seam of the garbage hills, one of which collapsed in 2000 causing many deaths, and only then does the true disastrous nature of the proliferation of these largely superfluous bags hit home. Amid the decaying detritus, it is the plastic bags that refuse to break down, leaching chemicals into the environment. Plastic bags, which are of course made using oil, represent one of the great stupidities of mankind — the damage they do, compared with the amount of use the average bag gets is shocking but at least there are simple remedies to this environmental catastrophe.

Hong Kong became the latest place to voice concerns at plastic bags. A coalition of environmental groups last week called on the territory’s two main supermarkets, run by two of the most powerful companies in the region, to place a levy of HK$0.50 per bag used, citing successful implementations of similar schemes in South Africa, Bangladesh, Australia Ireland, Shanghai and Taiwan. Bangladesh instituted a blanket ban on plastic bags since they blocked drains, contributing to floods.

According to the Green Student Council Hong Kong shoppers plough through 24 million plastic bags a day in Hong Kong, and half of these are from the supermarkets.

Already Hong Kong supermarkets have a current program to pay a cash refund of HK$0.10 for every plastic bag not used by shoppers. Both chains commented they were unwilling to take the next step in charging for plastic bags.

Across the Pacific meanwhile city officials in San Francisco are mulling a charge of 17 US cents a bag. “Yes, it’s going to be a pain the ass, but that’s part of the point,” said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste. “One thing we’ve learned is that sending a financial signal to the marketplace tends to modify behaviour much better than voluntary approaches.”

Heidi Melander, president of the Northern California Recycling Association, a supporter of the proposal, said the fee was a tangible way the public could participate in helping reduce waste.

“We’ve been trained to want bags,” she said. “It’s gotten out of hand — everywhere you go, they force them on you, and they think you’re weird if you don’t take a bag. We might not have control over the blister packaging around the electronic equipment we buy. But we have control over taking that bag.”

The mayor is believed to be in favour of the resolution. A report prepared in support of the proposal by Robert Haley, recycling program manager for the environment department, says plastic bags gum up recycling and composting machines at Norcal — San Francisco’s waste management provider — resulting in $1 million in extra costs and lost revenue from the sale of recyclable materials.

The bags account for 2 percent of the city’s total “waste stream,” and picking up and disposing littered bags cost an additional $7.4 million annually, according to the report. It notes that an estimated 12 million barrels of oil go into the production of plastic bags, while 14 million trees are felled to make their paper counterparts.

Recent figures from the Department of Environment and Heritage Down Under show Australians use 6.9 billion plastic bags every year and up to 80 million of them end up in streets, parks and waterways.

The World Wide Fund for Nature says more than 100,000 whales, seals, turtles and birds die annually because of plastic bags.

There is clearly growing global support for a phase out of these ridiculous things. Other countries mulling taxing them are India, Kenya and Scotland.

Ulster Unionist Party president Lord Rogan of Lower Iveagh said last month ordinary disposable plastic bags can take 100 years to degrade. He called for the British government to follow Ireland’s lead, where usage has dropped by more than 95%, by levying a tax and failing that to at least spend money developing bags that degrade faster, say between three to five years. The bags leach toxins into the ground if put in a landfill, he warned, and they caused more damage than fossil fuels if burnt. DIY retail chain B&Q has instituted a five pence charge on each bag at its Scottish outlets, the first of hopefully many independent initiatives. B&Q says the revenues go towards the charity scheme ‘Keep Scotland Beautiful’. If the trial is successful, it could be launched at B&Q shops across England and Wales.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces approximately 4.4 pounds of waste each day. The plastic bag was introduced 27 years ago, and Americans now use 70 billion disposable shopping bags every year, needing 12 million barrels of oil to manufactures, as reported by BookTrackers Co.

Five of the top six chemicals that the EPA reports generate the most hazardous waste are necessary for plastic production: propylene, phenol, ethylene, polystyrene and benzene.

Somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year, and of those, millions end up in the litter stream outside of landfills.

So what’s the alternative and surely whatever you use will cause some harm to the environment, you ask? The Sierra Club’ answer is that “a sturdy, reusable bag needs only be used 11 times to have a lower environmental impact than using 11 disposable plastic bags.”

In short, bring your own bag — there’s no excuse — it is a simple contribution YOU can make to improving the environment. You don’t have to wait for your government to ban or tax your bags to make a personal choice not to use these evil mass creations. Don’t be slothful and wasteful!!

Time’s Person of the Year is at it again. This torture stuff appears to be endemic and it is abundantly clear that the US armed forces must face massive overhauls rather than the cop out, scapegoat under-the-carpet manoeuvres post Abu Ghraib seen earlier this year.

More and more lurid images are surfacing of American soldiers indulging in what seems to be fast becoming a recreational pastime — a spot of good ol’ fashioned torture for the digital camera.

How much longer can the Pentagon supported by the mainstream media pass this outrage of as minuscule minority? Like Fallujah, like Mosul, Abu Ghraib and so many other desecrated places of Iraq, the media is failing in its duty to report the truth, the full horrors being perpetrated by the US Army. Of course they won’t. War is good for the networks — and not always because of the ratings: NBC is owned by military industrial complex stalwart, General Electric — but war can only proceed so long as the public are disengaged enough not to care. By and large the American public is still in a Fox induced hypnotic trance, but can it be maintained?

Never has torture been so overt. Back in the day, the CIA and other friendly foreign intelligence services such as Mossad would do all the torture stuff, claiming it got intelligence results. Under the Gipper, torture peaked until now. Old Reagan was no saint on the torture front, as many Central Americans can testify, but he wasn’t a patch on this current administration.

Now it is a sport practiced by the masses with too many Americans still brainwashed not to care or question — watch out soon for Fox Sports’ Monday Night NTL (National Torture League) game, tagline: More bone crunching than football!

Seriously though, the little red email feels it is its duty to show the world the following horrific images in order to get people’s livid attention that this is now way for the military of the Land of the Free to behave.

So here are the latest “bad apples” in the barrel of Time’s Person of the Year: tentatively identified by AP as SEAL team 5.

Also we bring you images from another destructive episode in recent US military history, namely the atrocities committed in Fallujah which very few Western outlets concentrated on: www.fallujahinpictures.com.

It isn’t even enough to call for the resignation of defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld — of course he should have been locked up ages ago. It is the commander-in-chief who is ultimately responsible.

Click here www.votetoimpeach.org to show your support for the impeachment of torturer-in-chief George W Bush. Over 472,854 people have voted in a referendum to impeach Bush now.

A hotchpotch of stuff we’ve found and enjoyed recently on the Weird Wide Web.

Get your lovely T-shirts while they’re hot!
Everybody loves a winner. Nobody likes a loser. Nobody likes to be a loser. So with this in mind, Canned Revolution have set it up so that you can now buy your own Canned Revolution T-Shirt, and pretend that you won it in our competition. We’ll back up any claims to being a lucky winner by anyone who purchases a freshly tinned t-shirt to help the cause.

Owning your own Canned Revolution shirt could be a great way of life for you — imagine the friends, the opportunities, the fame, the copious offers of gratuitous sex.

Don’t delay! Buy your way into coolness today by clicking here.

 

International Human Rights Day
The 10th of December is Human Rights Day. You could celebrate it by donating to a group committed to protecting everyone’s rights, such as Amnesty International. Or how about emailing your government/premier a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a timely reminder?

 

Reports of his arrest have been greatly exaggerated...
...But oh how we wish this CNN report were real.

 

Land of the not quite so free anymore, home of the paranoid
Would you like to be special? It’s easy under the Bush administration. All you have to do apparently is protest against the US government or its illegal war in Iraq. Capitol Hill Blue shows you how.

 

Bhopal not Bollywood
Check out this great film free on the web set in Bhopal in 1984.
BHOPAL EXPRESS is the charming and heartbreaking story of a romance set against the deep tragedy of the Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal in 1984.

 

Bush campaign sinking at last
The little red email glanced up from the dim sum to catch this gem yesterday on ATV news at lunch. It seems the Bush campaign is in deep water after all. Whilst obviously having trouble taking off, this Bush supporter was almost stereotypically having trouble spelling, too: yes, it really does say “Eelect George W Bush” on the side. Both pilots got out OK, after the ditch in Maule Lake, Aventura, Florida. However, what with the hurricanes and now this, if the little red email were religious, we’d think someone on high was trying to tell Floridians something...

 

Reaping what was sown
According to the Sunday Herald, ‘the Pentagon has admitted that the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq have increased support for al-Qaeda, made ordinary Muslims hate the US and caused a global backlash against America because of the “self-serving hypocrisy” of George W Bush’s administration over the Middle East.
The mea culpa is contained in a shockingly frank “strategic communications” report, written this autumn by the Defence Science Board for Pentagon supremo Donald Rumsfeld.
Referring to the repeated mantra from the White House that those who oppose the US in the Middle East “hate our freedoms”, the report says: “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedoms’, but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favour of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the long-standing, even increasing support, for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.
“Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that ‘freedom is the future of the Middle East’ is seen as patronising … in the eyes of Muslims, the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. US actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self-determination.” ’ For the little red email, the mystery is why anyone thought it would turn out differently.

 

CIA had detailed plans of Chavez coup
According to this site here, the CIA had some fairly detailed plans of the Chavez coup. Which may explain why the US State Department came out congratulating everyone on a marvelous coup so fast.

 

The Little Red Email Osama bin Laden Sweepstakes Shirt Contest!
Well we had been for sometime advocating that Osama bin Laden would be paraded in front of the US public for a little publicity boost. Time ran out for the little red email, but not for you. We guessed October 23rd for a pre-election Osama... and we feel a mite foolish, although Osama did show up on video. If you fancy a free Canned Revolution t-shirt, why not sign up. There is of course much speculation that Osama was caught ages ago and now is stewing in jail awaiting his upcoming moment in front of the cameras. Now, by simply guessing the date of Osama’s media debut as a US prisoner you can win a t-shirt. Send your expected date of bin Laden’s first television appearance as an American prisoner to osamasweepstakes@cannedrevolution.com. May you be luckier than us.