• Ten litres of orange juice needs a litre of diesel fuel for processing and transport, and 220 litres of water for irrigation and washing the fruit.

• For every calorie of carrot flown in from South Africa to Europe, 66 calories of fuel is spent.

• The production of animal-based foods accounts for 8 percent of the US’ national consumption of fossil fuels.

It’s not a case of you are what you eat but more rather you reap what you eat. If you eat the wrong kind of food you are not just harming yourself but the environment as well. This week British scientists have reported on the increasingly vast lengths foodstuffs travel to get to stores harming the environment in the extra travel.

“Food miles by road are far more important than we had thought. In environmental cost terms, buying local is even more important than buying green — although we would like people to do both,” Professor Jules Pretty of Essex University said on Wednesday.

In a groundbreaking study of food distribution patterns and hidden costs, Pretty and co-researcher Tim Lang of London’s City University said food in Britain now travelled 65 percent further by road than it did two decades ago due to centralised storage.

Furthermore, massive out of town supermarkets are increasingly shuttering local stores meaning shoppers always drive to get their groceries.

“This is a global issue. It cannot be resolved by Britain alone,” Lang told a news conference last Wednesday. “This is the first study of its kind. The figures are shocking. Other countries need to follow it up. The European Union needs to tackle this now.”

Centralized distribution networks in the developed world often mean that even staple foods like potatoes and beans travelled hundreds of miles to main depots only to be packaged and sent straight back.

“The real cost of food miles madness are seldom reflected in the price of food,” says SAFE Alliance co-ordinator Hugh Raven, “It costs in terms of diverting land in food-deficit countries from producing food for local consumption into crops for export as with soya production in Brazil. It costs in terms of air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions from air and road transport. It’s madness to fly food halfway around the world when UK growers are going out of business— like the American raspberries on sale in the UK at the height of the raspberry season.”

Perhaps the most compelling reason to become a vegetarian is provided by Cornell University professor David Pimentel who notes the production of animal-based foods accounts for 8 percent of the US’ national consumption of fossil fuels— nearly as much as driving their cars. It requires nearly 10 times as much fuel as production of plant-based foods. The additional fuel is used to grow animal feed, to operate factory farms and slaughterhouses, and to process and refrigerate meat/dairy products.

Food for thought for when you next tuck into a hearty, cholesterol and environment busting big breakfast as the little red email did yesterday.

For more on food miles and where what’s on your plate comes from and just how much that meal you just had ripped a hole in the ozone layer, click here.

The get Syria mob are at full throttle, using all the tricks honed over the years by such successful regime changes as those seen in Ukraine, Georgia Iraq and Haiti over the past couple of years.

Make no mistake about it, in the case of the death of former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, if one pulls the lead in far enough, was handled by the Israelis and the Americans, allowing the US to blame Damascus for his death as well as suggesting Syria sponsors terrorism in Iraq.

This false assertion is the neo-con way of getting onto a military footing sharpish. Witness the WMD claims in Iraq, a nation Bush et al claimed had ties to the 9/11 terrorists — both assertions false. Witness the invasion of Afghanistan — there were no Afghanis on any of those flights that crashed into Washington, New York and Pennsylvania. Still, if the government and a sycophantic media repeat these falsehoods enough times people will believe you (see Stuff for the latest Harris poll proof).

Another similarity Syria has with Iraq and Afghanistan is the falsehood that the US is only looking to spread democracy in the region. If that was the case why not criticize Central Asian republics like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — despotic places the US has recently managed to build military bases in.

Following Hariri’s death even after Syrian head Bashir Assad condemned the murder as a “horrible crime,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recalled the US Ambassador to Syria for “consultations,” while threats of possible US military action emanated from neo-con offices in Washington. Meanwhile, a token, made for TV crowd assembled in Beirut which the news channels dutifully filmed in such a fashion as to make one believe the who nation was up in arms against Syria, similar to the immediate aftermath of the first Ukraine election where, with American prompting, a similarly small crowd gathered in the capital to protest in front of TV cameras.

Spun properly, Hariri’s murder transcended the commonplace assassinations in the Middle East and became an international cause célèbre like the pockmarked Yushchenko had done in November and December last year.

The neo-cons correctly counted on the media to maintain “temporal atrophy.” The press neither commented on how assassinating one’s “enemies” impacted the rule of law, nor on how routine extra-judicial assassinations by Israel and the United States had become.

Bush had already used his February 2005 State of the Union address to confront “regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder. Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region.”

The next day, Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee members that Syria should stop “destabilize[ing] Iraq” as if Syria, not the United States, invaded Iraq in March 2003 without UN Security Council authorization.

The Senate panel’s curiosity did not extend to asking Wolfowitz about Israeli destabilization of Lebanon during the 1980s or how Israeli-backed Phalangist militias massacred thousands of Palestinian refugees in 1982 at Sabra and Shatila.

Indeed, historical amnesia after Hariri’s murder permitted Bush officials to sanctimoniously demand that Congress warn Syria to end her “occupation” of Lebanon and support Lebanese “sovereignty.” Even Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who commanded massacres in Lebanon in 1982, made such a demand

The media found nothing wrong with this demand yet Sharon demanding Syrian withdrawal while Israel continues its 38-year occupation of Palestinian territories; in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 is a tad hypocritical. Indeed, Israel still occupies Syria’s Golan Heights in violation of UN Security Council resolution 497. Still, these pockets of truth just get in the way of a good lie to further ‘democracy’ in the region.

Oil prices are set to remain the $40 to $50 bracket all year, says the Saudi Arabian oil minister, Ali Naimi. Meanwhile, this year will see the oceans rise by another millimetre or so as the ravages of global warming, partially caused by man’s love of motors, catch on.

Petrol guzzling cars are believed to contribute around 10% to global warming, yet there is technology available today that would change this. Cars with the correct gear can run 500 miles to the gallon — but would someone as oil loving as Bush support their development?

It is now possible to build cars that are powered by a combination of electricity and alcohol-based fuels, with petroleum as only one element among many.

Over the last five years, technology has matured in various fields, most importantly in semiconductors, to make possible cars that are as convenient and cheap as current ones, except that they run on a combination of electricity and fuel, Newsweek reports. Hybrid technology is the answer to the petroleum problem.

You can already buy a hybrid car that runs on a battery and petroleum. The next step is “plug-in” hybrids, with powerful batteries that are recharged at night like laptops, cell phones and iPods. Ford, Honda and Toyota already make simple hybrids. Daimler Chrysler is introducing a plug-in version soon. In many states in the American Middle West you can buy a car that can use any petroleum, or ethanol, or methanol — in any combination. Ford, for example, makes a number of its models with “flexible-fuel tanks.” (Forty percent of Brazil’s new cars have flexible-fuel tanks.) Put all this technology together and you get the car of the future, a plug-in hybrid with a flexible-fuel tank.

The current crop of hybrid cars, those that use can both petroleum or ethanol or methanol, get around 50 miles per gallon. Make it a plug-in (a car with a super battery and fuel) and you can get 75 miles. Replace the conventional fuel tank with a flexible-fuel tank that can run on a combination of 15 percent petroleum and 85 percent ethanol or methanol, and you get between 400 and 500 miles per gallon of gasoline.

Progress though on this simple technology is being thwarted by the oil majors and car manufacturers who have a vested interest in not seeing any progress and are powerful lobby groups in Washington. For the Machine the environment counts for nothing.

Got a car? Belching fumes everyday? Got a conscience? Hop on over to here, to see the benefits of owning a hybrid car.

We say to those residing in the UK, vote for the Lib Dems — there simply is no other choice at the forthcoming general election. Charles Kennedy of the Liberal Democrat party might occasionally seem a bit off-message and is supposedly prone to the odd whisky or five, but his party is Canned Revolution’s choice come May 5, despite one of our members having voted Natural Law in the past (the tantalising offer of having a Tory MP taught vedic flying was too much for him to resist).

If you vote for the main opposition, the Conservative Party, then we’re not sure how you can stomach reading the little red email. The Tory leader, Michael Howard, was a shocker as Home Secretary under John Major in the 1990s and has made the contentious issue of immigration as a central theme for this election, upping racist thoughts among the British electorate. A curious platform for a man whose own father was turned away from the UK as an illegal immigrant, only to be saved from return to Romania by a Labour MP. (For our favourite ever political interview that really skewered Howard, click here for the moment on TV where he failed to answer a straight “yes or no” question posed 12 times by tough interviewer Jeremy Paxman. Kennedy actually got an apology from Paxman for his pushing the alcoholic question in Kennedy’s Paxman nightmare interview.)

Meanwhile, there is the Labour party, in power for eight years under the helm of Tony Bliar, a man with blood on his hands and lies on his conscience. Before voting for Tony, remember this — he consciously lied to ensure the invasion of a defenceless nation which has led to as many as 100,000 dying according to the latest John Pilger estimate. Personal liberties have been washed away under the threat of terror. Poverty levels are actually worse now in Britain than under either of his predecessors, Major or Margaret Thatcher.

A two party state is risky in the extreme as they tend to meld many policies together. A third party makes for a far healthier political system, although really proportional representation produces the fairest and most democratic form of government — the Liberal Democrats have the policies that would make Britain a far more decent place. Besides, they cant be any worse than the other two options. Kennedy for PM? We can drink to that.

Britain’s most famous nuclear whistleblower, Herbie Lyall, knows all about Karen Silkwood, his Oklahoma equivalent who was killed in a questionable car crash back in 1974 and spawned a Meryl Streep film called Silkwood. Her demise many feel came at the hands of the powerful nuclear industry.

Mr Lyall, speaking in the Sunday Times, trashes the working practices of one of Britain’s most dodgy nuclear facilities, Dounreay in Caithness, Scotland.

Highly radioactive waste has been dumped in Britain’s seas and washed ashore, and nuclear research station workers covered up the pollution, according to Mr Lyall, a health physics surveyor at the plant from 1960 to 1989.

Radioactive materials were handled inappropriately, leading to at least two deaths from cancer.

The Sunday Times said Mr Lyall had spoken out about the pollution despite facing prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

“There have been so many lies told to con the public about Dounreay that I feel I must put the record straight,” Mr Lyall said.

He said he was part of a survey team in 1984 that covered up health risks on a local beach, Sandside Bay, one of northern Scotland’s most beautiful strips of sand, where a highly radioactive particle was found. Tourists continued to visit the beach for 13 years after that, until new concerns were raised, the paper said. Since 1997, 51 radioactive metal particles have been found on Sandside beach.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority, which owns the plant, has admitted that “at least several hundreds of thousands” of particles of plutonium and uranium, about the size of a grain of sand, had been released from Dounreay, the paper said.

One instance, noted by Lyall in 1988, involved the disposal of 40 litres of highly radioactive glycol oil. Waste liquid went into effluent pits which were then flushed into the open sea — sometimes on an incoming tide.

He was on duty on the night in 1977 when there was an explosion in a deep shaft that had been used to dump radioactive waste since 1959. The blast had blown the concrete plug out of the shaft like a cork from a bottle.

“This contamination is a legacy being left for my children’s children. It is an absolute disaster. They are talking about prosecuting these people — they deserve execution, not prosecution. This was people’s lives they were playing with. They were acting like nuclear cowboys,” Lyall concludes.

A new report to be published in the UK next month on cancer clusters around nuclear installations will reveal worrying irrefutable findings the paper warned.

The nuclear plant has had a litany of complaints in recent years. In 1998 for instance inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive moved onto the site in June after a digger sliced through a power cable, leaving reprocessing facilities without electricity for 16 hours.

Parts of the plant without electricity held some of the most potentially lethal substances known.

There had previously been reports of fires, leaks and explosions at the site.

Just last November 2004 a laboratory at the Dounreay nuclear plant was closed and sealed off because it contaminated at least 10 workers with plutonium over the previous three months.

High levels of radioactivity were detected in “nose-blow” samples taken from three workers. One was 200 times the “action level” that triggers a health investigation, and the highest that Dounreay safety officials could remember — some decidedly glowing bogey.

For more on the strange passing of Karen Silkwood, which has hints of the Diana car crash to it, click here.

And for more about the perils of Dounreay which is right next door to the UK’s nuclear submarine base, click here.

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.

 

If you fancy your luck, on the other hand...
You could try our latest competition! Yes, that’s right: another chance to be cool for free. Head on over to here to try your luck in our latest revolutionary contest.

 

The revolution invites...
you to it’s party out in Hong Kong on March 18th. On the 19th, anti-war marches will take place across the world against the ongoing US occupation of Iraq. As a curtain raiser (and yes, we freely admit, a perfect moment to unveil our 12 new t-shirt designs), on the evening of March 18th, Canned Revolution will be celebrating two glorious years of Iraqi occupation, and extending an offer of help to disliked Americans around the globe.

34,000 postcards have been sent around Hong Kong, with one our t-shirt designs (pictured) on it — pick a few up for details on this explosive party and send them to others — it is free after all.

Come along to 5 o.p.t. Studio Gallery on Prince’s Terrace, Mid-Levels, Hong Kong and get bombed on B-52s at Canned Revolution’s expense. Moreover, try our brand new cocktail called WMD — a heavenly concoction.

Marvel at the body count that is Operation Iraqi Freedom, a project that might cost half a trillion dollars by 2015, according to conservative Congress estimates.

Meet the stupid, ugly muppets who put the little red email together.

Witness the unveiling of our latest bullet-proof technology — a shirt to spare your life when you next come across people who either mistake or blame you for being from the land of Bush.

Recoil in horror at Guantanamo recast — Canned Revolution’s mock up of a typical Gitmo existence — orange jump suit included — showing you the horrific conditions that more than 500 are still enduring.

Seriously though, even though Boney M and the Hong Kong Sevens rugby are both going on that evening, the best night you’ll have that particular Friday will be with the Revolution.

Celebrate an axis of good times — it’ll be a blast!

 

Gunner Palace in HKIFF
For those residing in Hong Kong the essential viewing during the upcoming Hong Kong International Film Festival is the documentary Gunner Palace, playing on March 23, 26 and 29 — a look at a bunch of GIs and their daily lives in occupied Iraq. “I don’t feel like I’m defending my country anymore,” says 19 year-old PFC Michael Commisso. For them, wide-eyed optimism of being welcomed by Iraqis has faded into the daily realities of war. Gunner Palace is the first unbiased documentary to truly give a voice to the American soldiers in Iraq. Shot with hand-held DV that shadows the US Army’s 2/3 Field Artillery unit, the film captures raw moments of tension, fear and hilarity as they mount patrols and raids on suspects. Most memorable are the glimpses of these young men being themselves, expressing their thoughts via their own rap lyrics and guitar riffs. For more info on where and when, click here.

 

Haiti: the democracy before the Middle East
As detailed by the little red email both this year and last, everything is not coming up roses over in Haiti, another instance of US-imposed democracy in action followed by a quick Blue rinse to avoid blame. A year on from the US Special Forces’ kidnap of the elected Prime Minister, things are still looking bad, according to the Independent.

 

Save Toby: buying a conscience online
One of the more bizarre and sick money-making efforts via the web we have ever seen — savetoby.com rivals Halliburton’s Invasion of Iraq II or Jardine Matheson’s Opium War I in the cynical money-making exercise department. The little red email notes that there is no money back guarantee.

 

Poll shows US people still gullible enough for Bush
Last month a Harris poll showed that 64 per cent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda, that 47 per cent believe Saddam helped plan and support the 9/11 attacks, and that 44 per cent believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis.

 

Brief History of Bush
A History of the Bush Administration in One Sentence.

 

PR Coup week for Operation Iraqi Freedom
Well, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer imperialist superpower. We at the little red email have often been of the opinion that the Pentagon targets journalists, but the Giuliana Sgrena shooting incident last week was taking it up more than a notch or two.

Sgrena, the released Italian journalist, didn’t even make it as far as Baghdad airport before the US army started shooting at her, injuring her and killing Italian spook Nicola Calipari in the process.

The Pentagon PR machine must have woken up that day to an extra ration of Prozac all round. By the end of the weekend, they had probably doubled the rations again, as acusations surfaced that they had shot her on purpose, putting a crimp on the official party line of “a terrible accident” caused by the Italians failing to stop, a story Sgrena herself says is a lie.

Those eager to keep the “trigger-happy redneck” army image off the screens were dealt a further blow by the revelation that US soldiers had also shot dead Gurdi Gurdev, a Bulgarian soldier on the same day, in Southern Iraq. “Paging Dr Rove... paging Dr Rove. Dr Rove to spin surgery!”

 

Popbitch’s popebitch conspiracy
According to the old scandal-monger Popbitch: “The pope was shot in May 1981 in Rome by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish hired assassin. This week KGB defector Oleg Gordiesky claimed Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev, his Defence Minister and the head of the KGB persuaded the Bulgarian dictator Zhizkov to order the killing “Agca is either a fool or pretends to be one,” added Gordiesky. An Italian parliamentary commission decided last week to re-open the file on the attempted murder.”

 

US casualties pass 1500 with little fanfare
The Guardian notes the passing of another fatal milestone in Iraq. Perhaps even less fanfare is attached to the 11,200 wounded, over half of whom were too seriously wounded to return to duty within 72 hours. And no fanfare accompanies the over 5,500 deserters.

 

Paranoid Penisula in Hong Kong
For those in Hong Kong this Wednesday, friend of the Revolution, Paul French, is in town to give a talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club on his new book: North Korea — The Paranoid Peninsula. This accessible, up-to-date and comprehensive introduction to North Korea provides an overview of the politics, economics and history of the DPRK with particular emphasis on the current economic situation since the collapse of the Soviet Union and Pyongyang’s relationship with America leading up to the current nuclear crisis.

This book seeks to explain how the North Korean economy has moved from one that maintained parity with, and even surpassed, South Korea until the mid-1970s since when it has spiralled down into industrial decline and severe famine. The author argues that the country’s collapse has been due to its rigid adherence to central planning, international isolation, military-first line and an inflexible political philosophy — Juche.

The book also deals with the long troubled relationship between Pyongyang and Washington as well as the continued division of the Korean peninsula. The author considers the likely scenarios for the future of the DPRK and the history and possible ramifications of a reunited Korea as well as the guiding personalities of the country and the recent diplomatic initiatives, economic reforms and nuclear crisis.

Come along for a slap up lunch plus hear Paul at 2 Ice House Street, you will need to book in advance so click here to do so.

 

The Snowman Vanishes?
In the weird world of North Korea’s neo-Stalinist state they even manipulate pictures to include snowmen. For our own modern history of manipulation click here.

 

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.