No one needs to listen to an expert on the subject to know that North Korea is a weird place. However if there’s one thing listening to Paul French expound on perhaps the oddest country in Asia will make you understand, it’s this: in reality, it’s even weirder than you thought it was. Of course, there was a nice lunch on offer too, and so the little red email jumped at the chance to hear him speak on North Korea.

There is practically nothing to go on with respect to data on North Korea, other than the official party line. In China and the USSR, there have been grand traditions of having dissenting writers and politicians. Not so in North Korea, and there’s not even very much of a party line to disbelieve. There is, for the most part, nothing. Hence North Korean commentators like Paul French are few and far between: and French has hands on experience, having actually lived and worked in North Korea.

Observers agree on things though: the economy has been savagely screwed over, for example. In the late 70s and early 80s, North and South Korea were economically similar: the North produced more steel, industrial machinery and so on. The populace’s calorie intake was actually higher than the South, and the two had similar GDPs. An example of how much weirder the reality is than what you thought.

Why did the economy implode? Mostly, French argues because of the North’s insistence on Juche or “self reliance”. So instead of following the Chinese Special Economic Zone example, or the South Korean and technology exchange, the North decided to build it for itself and thus bought entire factories from the USSR and even a Swiss watch factory, rather than making Swiss watches under license. Consequently, when North Korea failed to pay for the factories, they missed out on the technology exchange: no one taught them how to use the machinery, no one sold them spare parts, and the debt kept rising.

The collapse of the USSR did not help matters — the North Korean economy took a big hit there, when the USSR ’s oil and fertilizers stopped coming. By 1994, when the Great Leader died and Kim Jong Il stepped in, the country was hit by a famine due to no fertilizers, heavy erosion from previous deforestation, and the attendant mudslides, floods and droughts. French puts the deaths from the famine at between 2-3 million people, in a country of 22 million.

By 2001, the Chinese were hinting that the North needed to go on a bit of a capitalist bender, by showing him a tour of Shanghai’s model capitalist ventures. Instead the Dear Leader implemented a 5,500% grain price increase. With 70% of the population in cities, this was only going to benefit 30% of the populace, whilst driving up food prices for most of the population. There is more food now, and there is a big black market through China, but the average Korean is still poor. Even the elite rich Koreans are relatively poor: the North Korean Embassy in the UK is a terraced house in Ealing.

The Koreans have toyed with the SEZ model as per China, at Kaesong, but French feels that it has none of the advantages to the North that the Chinese model has they simply provide cheap workers in exchange for cash, and the South owns the businesses and property. French says in essence it is little more than ceding territory to the South. This, according to French, puts the Dear Leader in some peril, as the he hasn’t got the best relationship with the army, and they take a dim view of ceding territory. Things are exacerbated by the fact that relations with China are also primarily through the two armies’ cooperation during the Korean War. Finally there is a problem that the army is beginning to feel less important, especially post the nuclear announcement. This is a problem with such a large, important and powerful part of North Korean society.

French himself feels that North Korea has yet to acquire nuclear weapons, and notes that pronouncements on the topic often coincide with aid being cut back or dropped, and economic crises. These can only get worse: the USSR is no more, and China doesn’t really need or want to help. If there is anyway out, it is a path through light industry and low-skill jobs at first.

The name of the game with the Korean regime is survival — the leaders have very little money, and nowhere to go to: thus they have to make North Korea theirs. But will all the sabre-rattling and nuclear rhetoric come to confrontation with the US?

French says no. The Pentagon has done the maths, and really can’t afford to invade. Whilst they estimate 450 air strike sorties per day for 50 days (a figure much in excess of the shock & awe show in Iraq) would be enough to take out 70% of North Korean artillery. But by that time, Seoul would have been totally destroyed in that time. All the nuclear and missile sites are situated within spitting distance of the Chinese border, and given the bombing accuracy the US has displayed in the past; it would be extremely risky to bomb those facilities. Furthermore, the USSR, China and South Korea would all object to any military action. All of which means that Donald Rumsfeld looks slightly less ridiculous in the story that had him surprised to find that there were still 37,000 US troops in South Korea. With Iraq turning sour, that figure is now somewhere around 32,500.

French’s forecast for the future was that North Korea would have to change, and his best guess was that there would be a military coup removing the Dear Leader followed by economic reforms.

There’s more health dangers to long haul flights that deep vein thrombosis (DVT), we have learnt lately.

The other day, the little red email sat down to breakfast with a bunch of investment bankers at Hong Kong’s Mandarin Grill. After the bacon and eggs, much coffee and all round discussion of where the east Asian economies were heading, the conversation turned to the recently inaugurated Cathay Pacific long haul (21 hours) flights from Hong Kong to New York. One banker said that an air hostess had confided to him that he shouldn’t take this particular flight more than four times a year. Why, he asked, thinking DVT was the likely response. The answer, she gave, is more alarming than that. Cosmic radiation exposure, she said, which is much worse over the Artic, where these planes fly to reach NYC.

This bombshell troubled the little red email. We questioned a couple of sources who work as air hostesses on the airline. Cathay air crew are officially rostered to take this route only once a year, though they can change schedules with colleagues to do more.

Once a year though — not much. We fired off missives to Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways and the chief operating officer of Cathay (the three Asian lines taking this long haul route over the Arctic) demanding to know why if their employees were only allowed to take this route once a year, how come similar warnings or restrictions are not given to passengers?

Tony Tyler, Cathay’s COO was the only one to respond, describing our allegations as “complete nonsense”.

According to the Cathay website, the International Commission for Radiological Protection (ICRP) sets certain recommended limits for whole body radiation exposure. A trip to New York, according to Cathay’s website, accounts for 0.01 of an annual recommended limit of radiation exposure — i.e. you would have to fly the route 50 times return to exceed the limit. Having researched this topic we do not buy this figure one bit.

For years, scientists have gone on about the hole in the ozone layer in the Antarctic. The University of Colorado has just shown evidence of an exceptionally large ozone hole above Northern Europe, North America, Northern Asia and parts of the Arctic. The protecting ozone layer constricted by up to 60 per cent from February to March 2004, scientists from the university wrote in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Without the ozone as protection, humans are susceptible to ultraviolet rays which can lead to skin cancer.

A hole in the ozone on the route these Asian airlines are so heavily plugging at the moment would significantly up the rate of radiation exposure. Don’t be surprised if reports from ‘leading scientists’ claiming there are no holes in the ozone are sponsored by Cathay et al. These new high profile routes are too important to be spoiled by cancer.

Lights, camera, action! Ladies and gentlemen — we got him! Those words announced to the world the US had nabbed former Bush acolyte turned scapegoat number one Saddam Hussein. But with the Invasion of Iraq being the made-for-TV war fest that it is, we were not being told the whole truth. Ladies and gentlemen — we got him yesterday, is what they should have said.

The whole cock and bull story about finding Saddam down some hole has been thrown into doubt following revelations by Sergeant Nadim Abou Rabeh, who told the Saudi newspaper, Al-Medina, that the Iraqi leader was captured the day before and that “the public version of his capture was fabricated.” The entire event was apparently choreographed by a Pentagon public relations team like the symbolic pulling down of the Saddam statue in Baghdad or the debacle that was the Jessica Lynch episode (for the full story of her life, click here) or for that matter the whole issue of the missing WMD.

“I was among the 20 man unit who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced,” Rabeh admitted.

“We captured him after fierce resistance during which a marine of Sudanese origin was killed,” he said.

It emerges that Saddam, instead of cowering in fear of his life in a hole, actually stood up and “fought like a man” — not the image the Pentagon wanted to betray to both its recently conquered subjects and the world at large.

The portrayal of Saddam as disoriented and fearful was no doubt caused by a spot of drugs — something the US military are not averse to using.

Sergeant Rabeh’s confession is supported by the Kurdish Peshmerga who were in the area at the time and have long disputed the Pentagon’s version of events.

You’ve got to follow the script if you work for Pentagon Productions and there always has to be happy, fluffy endings. They’re lying to you.

We’ll miss Tung Chee-hwa for his koala looks. Beyond that though, the little red email is not exactly mourning of our dear leader for the last seven and half years. He did little to inspire and was such a stooge of Beijing that he lacked the spine to speak out at obvious unlawful mainland infringements of the Special Administrative Region’s Basic Law. His toadiness (which has won him a VP seat at Beijing’s talk shop, the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference) is hardly surprising. As a failed businessman, to match his political blunders later, Tung bankrupted his family run shipping line back in the 1980s and was bailed out with the help of the Chinese Communist Party. Ever since he has been in their pocket — indeed it is rumoured that his ships move the mainland’s weapons.

Anyway, about the best thing we have read on the departure of Mr Tung and the arrival of the bow tied former British civil servant, Donald Tsang, to the top job (hardly) in Hong Kong, comes from the Standard’s often disliked and malingered columnist Stephen Vines who suggests Beijing is going on the old adage ‘if ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

“Donald Tsang is about to become the first Knight of the British Empire to run a region of a communist state,” notes Vines. “Put like this, it sounds remarkable, possibly slightly unbelievable.

“But it only sounds that way if the fundamental purpose of Beijing’s grand plan for Hong Kong is misunderstood. When the People’s Republic of China resumed sovereignty over the former British colony, it wanted nothing less than to preserve the colonial nature of its new acquisition with all the implication of subservience that this entails.

“The putative appointment of Sir Donald to lead the SAR provides ample evidence of the mainland’s desire to preserve its version of a colonial system.

“Tung Chee-hwa had the credentials that impressed the old men in Zhongnanhai. He was a businessman unlikely to step on the toes of their other powerful business allies. He was a firm believer in autocracy and a paid-up patriot.

“Moreover he was not Cantonese, a big plus to the people in the north who have an instinctive distrust of southerners

“History will have a tough time judging whether Tung’s incompetence stimulated the demands for democracy or whether they would have come without his intervention.

“But the view from Beijing was that, whatever prompted this dangerous outpouring of support for the one thing that really frightens the Communist Party, there was an urgent need to get back to the placid days of British rule.

“Who better to perform this task than a knight of the realm?

“Unlike Tung, Tsang knows how the system operates and even appreciates the give-and-take necessary to make the upper echelons run smoothly. In opting for Tsang, it has opted for conservatism.

“In essence, the selection of Tsang is a cry from the heart to return to the old colonial days of civic calm and strong government.”

“The (UN) Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” — John Bolton, 1994

Just when you thought the appointments in the second reincarnation of Bush Jnr could not get any more twisted, sure enough Dubya comes along with the most bizarre yet — selecting the strangely carpeted John Bolton as ambassador to the UN.

Yet another step towards pulling the rug out from under the UN, Mr Bolton’s appointment guarantees that any thoughts of diplomacy in the coming years are out.

We remember Mr Bolton, then undersecreatary for arms control (a comical title for such a hawk) for his classic interview with Aussie journo John Pilger when at the end of the meeting, Bolton, who had lied, obfuscated and stammered his way through it, asked Pilger: “Are you a Communist Party member?”

A source close to the man with the funny hair says: “Bolton is to diplomacy what Jack the Ripper was to surgery.”

Just great, the UN will be battered by his hard headedness.

John Kerry, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, said the appointment was “inexplicable”. He wondered: “If the president is serious about reaching out to the world, why would he choose someone who has expressed such disdain for working with our allies?”

Bolton’s selection follows a roll call of old school villains such as the Iran/Contra tainted Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte to high positions for the second coming of Dubya. With Condi at State, diplomacy really is out the window.

The New York Times in an editorial mused: “On Monday, George Bush nominated John Bolton, an outspoken critic of multi-national institutions to be the [ US ] representative to the United Nations. He will undoubtedly do a fine job continuing the Bush administration’s charm offensive with the rest of the world. Which leaves us wondering what Mr Bush’s next nomination will be: Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva Conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission? Kenneth Lay for energy secretary?”

The real colours of Viktor Yushchenko emerged last week and bizarrely involve that kitch-fest that is the Eurovision song contest.

TV viewers were due to choose Ukraine’s Eurovision candidate last week. But with just days to go before the audience vote, the government realised the likely winner had stood on the other side of the barricades in November. Singer Ani Lorak was widely expected to win the nomination and sing at the finals, which this year are to be held in Ukraine, following the win last year in Turkey by Ukrainian singer Ruslana.

But Lorak, 26, voted Ukraine’s sexiest woman, had made the mistake of singing at concerts in support of losing presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich.

At the last minute, Greenjolly was entered into the finals at Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko’s request with a song that was sung by protesters during the long drawn out elections last year. The group therefore bypassed the heats, participation in which was supposedly obligatory.

Like last November, accusations of vote rigging began to fly as Greenjolly muscled out the favourite despite there being boredom across the nation with the government’s ongoing glorification of the Orange revolution, which the little red email firmly believes was CIA-inspired (See previous story here). Lorak claims the vote was rigged against her. Her manager says viewers could not get through to the telephone voting lines, and that the SMS number for his candidate also failed.

Greenjolly’s lyrics are nice and non-partisan for an event that is all fluff: “Yes, Yushchenko! No Lies! No falsifications! Yes, Yushchenko! He’s our president! We are Ukraine’s sons and daughters.”

Eurovision’s organisers have ruled that the rap is too political and must be rewritten to be suitable.

And to think we thought the Eurovision was all about dodgy outfits and woeful tunes.

• You can listen to the controversial tune that is suitably pap for Eurovision here.

• And for an idea of just how bad Eurovision really is, check out the Herreys and click on Diggi-loo Diggi-ley, the Danish winners of the 1984 event. If they won, just think what the rest must have been like.

A long delayed Energy Bill is struggling to get its way through the United States Congress. Lobbyists for the grain industry are pushing hard for greater use of ethanol so as to boost subsidies. However, ethanol is not the answer to America’s energy problems as these farmers would have you believe David Pimental, a leading Cornell University professor, has shown conclusively that it takes more energy to make ethanol from grain than the combustion of ethanol produces.

An acre of US corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre, according to Pimentel’s analysis. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.

The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented. As many as three distillation steps are needed to separate the 8 percent ethanol from the 92 percent water. Additional treatment and energy are required to produce the 99.8 percent pure ethanol for mixing with gasoline. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU. “Put another way”, Pimentel says, “About 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU”.

Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline. “That helps explain why fossil fuels-not ethanol-are used to produce ethanol”, Pimentel says. “The growers and processors can’t afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol. US drivers couldn’t afford it, either, if it weren’t for government subsidies to artificially lower the price”.

Most economic analyses of corn-to-ethanol production overlook the costs of environmental damages, which Pimentel says should add another 23 cents per gallon. “Corn production in the US erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of ground water. The environmental system in which corn is being produced is being rapidly degraded. Corn should not be considered a renewable resource for ethanol energy production, especially when human food is being converted into ethanol”.

The approximately $1 billion a year in current federal and state subsidies (mainly to large corporations) for ethanol production are not the only costs to consumers, the Cornell scientist observes. Subsidized corn results in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs because about 70 percent of corn grain is fed to livestock and poultry in the United States. Increasing ethanol production would further inflate corn prices, Pimentel says, noting: “In addition to paying tax dollars for ethanol subsidies, consumers would be paying significantly higher food prices in the marketplace”.

The average US car, travelling 10,000 miles a year on pure ethanol (not a gasoline-ethanol mix) would need about 852 gallons of the corn-based fuel. This would take 11 acres to grow, based on net ethanol production. This is the same amount of cropland required to feed seven Americans.

If all the automobiles in the US were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of US land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States.

Ethanol is clearly not the answer.

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!

 

Play that funky music, white boy
Why it’s almost as if he has natural rhythmn.

 

Vova the Dread
By Nina L Khrushcheva March 4, 2005 ; Wall Street Journal Page A14

Vladimir Putin’s presidency proves that Stalinism will never end in Russia. Emerging from the past, Russian dictatorship continues into the future almost without pause, changing only in name: Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Koba the Dread. Fourteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia ’s people discovered that their lives fare better with dictators. Hence the readiness with which we came to like “Vova” Putin’s firm hand. We support his jailing the “dishonest” oligarchs, his clamping down on the “irresponsible” press and promoting a dictatorship of order over transparent laws. We are eager to sing his praises — a hit pop song goes, “I want one like Putin” — and make chocolate statues of this, oh, so pleasantly sweet modern autocrat.

In fact, many Russians believe that clampdowns are necessary given the president’s agenda: bring the Kremlin back to the center of politics and economy; reduce the influence of the “oligarchs”; ensure the president’s “vertical power,” necessary to strengthen sovereignty and security; secure for the state Russia ’s vast energy production; return to Russia its international prestige. And while some of his successes are questionable, 72% of the public trusts him nonetheless. As a people relatively new to democracy, Russians still believe in “czars,” not peasants. We hate rulers who look and act like us: Khrushchev with his energetic fists and Ukrainian shirt, Gorbachev with a birthmark on his bald head, Yeltsin with his mujik drunkenness.

Stalin, on the other hand, cautiously built himself an official image that concealed from the demos that he was squat and pockmarked. Mr. Putin, too, carefully constructs his enigma: Despite many public appearances we are still guessing what lies beneath his “soul”: new technocrat or old spy? The historian Richard Pipes has consistently warned of a challenge to democratize Russia. People need, even want, protection from themselves, and so crave a stately strong hand. The current rise of Stalinism (in the polls Koba — Stalin — takes second place after Vova the Quiet), is not entirely Mr. Putin’s fault. When Yeltsin stood on the tank in 1991, Russia, with its history of oppression, didn’t know that democracy required individual contributions, whether or not there was Yeltsin leading the way. We haven’t yet come to grips with the democratic/free market idea that there is no one but yourself to blame if things don’t work out.

After the freedoms of perestroika and the anarchy of post-socialism, it turns out that without control from above, we don’t like our poor, dishonest selves. The new autocracy has discovered it doesn’t need a mausoleum to protect itself from the people: The fear of freedom makes us good volunteers, wanting a ruler who provides a sense of orderly life. So what if Stalin ruled by a different kind of fear, fear for one’s life, we now say. That fear wasn’t as threatening as having to live with decisions we take on our own. To a typical Russian question — who is to blame? — there is now an answer: the reformers, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin. To another typical question — What is to be done? — the answer is also ready: back to Stalin, to the great statehood. Back then, we may have been killed and imprisoned, but how grand were our victories and parades! The late Vyacheslav Molotov once lamented, “With Stalin we all followed the directions of his strong hand; when the hand got weaker, each started to sing his own song.” He blamed the “reformers” for “letting out a beast that brings horrible harm to our society. It’s called democracy, humanitarianism, but it’s simply a bourgeois influence.”

Today there is little doubt that Mr. Putin’s politics is a modern version of a strong-hand rule. Ever so obedient, Russian citizens take cues from the Kremlin: In the last few years, over a hundred books have been published praising Stalin. In one such, Elena Prudnikova, a journalist from St. Petersburg, insists, “The country, deprived of the high ideals, in just a few decades has rotted to the ground. After the denunciation of Stalin in [1956] we lived on, increasingly useless and dirtier.” Marshal of the Soviet Union Dimitry Yazov, former defense minister and a coup leader against Gorbachev’s “bourgeois influence” in August 1991, a political criminal only a decade ago, has become a hero. His memoirs are a bestseller. Moreover, today Yazov is shown as a victim: All those Khrushchevs, Gorbachevs and Yeltsins manipulated public opinion into wanting unnecessary freedoms back then.

Thanks to the steady and stately leadership of Vladimir Putin in a new century, people have returned to their senses.

Ms. Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, teaches international affairs at the New School University in New York.

 

Is Bush a fascist after all?
Normally the Bush=fascist thing is a tentative affair, in the little red email’s view. But Erich at bushflash.com may have an interesting point here.

 

Global Warming in pictures
Those of you who were intrigued by our before and after shot of the Muir Glacier in Alaska in the 05-05 issue of the little red email might enjoy this site. It has not just one but several before and after shots of glaciers and coastlines around the world.

 

Oh man, it’s Ohman
Jack Ohman is a budding savage wit.

 

PR Coup week for Operation Iraqi Freedom II
More people having been jumping on the old “US-Army-shot-her-on-purpose” bandwagon. Last week, Guiliana Sgrena’s claims were backed up by this Counterpunch article by Jerry Fresia, a former US Air Force Intelligence Officer.

This incident followed the rather low-key story in the usually sycophantic New York Times that the CIA was outsourcing the torture of prisoners so as to avoid blame. The practice known euphamistically in the trade as “rendition” — is supposedly “fully authorized, so the CIA is not doing anything illegal that has not been authorized by the president”. A nice turn of phrase that implies denial whislt actually only saying that if the CIA is doing illegal things, it’s doing them with presidential approval. The White House denies it is exporting torture: “We will not torture here in America, and we will not export torture. That is unacceptable to this president, and something that we will not tolerate.” The little red email’s cynical legal-minded side feels bound to point out that no one was accusing the White House of exporting torture, it was the CIA that was being fingered for that. So the White House denying it is doing so is technically correct even if the CIA exports all its prisoners to be tortured.

Even more interesting are the claims by the Iraqi health ministry that the US used napalm and mustard gas in Fallujah. First torture, now chemical weapons use? The US seem to be learning a lot from Saddam Hussein.

Still at least with the Iraqi elections done, and the government nearly ready, the insurgency’s days are numbered, right? Maybe not, says the Jamestown foundation.

 

Morally bankrupt?
We think so.

 

Corpohate websites
Hot on the heels of the little red email’s Stuff article on Corporate websites, comes this Forbes article on anti-corporate websites.

 

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.