We know Bush enjoyed the odd line or three and Blair’s demented eye-bulging stare suggests he is partial to the occasional toot of marching powder. Such narcotic preferences might help to explain the schizophrenic hypocritical stance the pair takes towards Colombia.

Under Plan Colombia the inept government of President Alvaro Uribe is constantly praised by both governments, armed to the hilt (with the third highest US military aid in the world after Iraq and Israel) and allowed to perpetrate mass crimes against humanity.

And yet, the world’s media will always airbrush these actions by the Colombian army outing painting all tragedies as drug war related. Take Britain’s seemingly liberal Observer newspaper for instance: the “price of cocaine [was] paid with blood” it noted on 13 February, a typical broad-brush airbrush of the reality on the ground.

In his study of British foreign policy, Unpeople, the historian Mark Curtis writes: “The war in Colombia is essentially over the control of resources in a deeply unequal society: the elite, especially the large landowners, control most of the wealth while the majority of the population lives in poverty [similar to neighbouring Venezuela, another ‘problem nation’ for the US]. The basic role of the state is to marginalise the popular forces and ensure that Colombia’s resources — notably oil — remain in the correct hands. [US and UK ] strategy is to support this … the “war on drugs” is a cover.”

Death squads linked to Colombian governments have been so successful in driving people off their farms that 76 per cent of the land is now controlled by an elite of less than 3 per cent of the population. Given the close links between the military and the paramilitaries, says Douglas Stokes of the department of international politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, “US military aid is going directly to the major terrorist networks throughout Colombia, who traffic cocaine into US markets to fund their activities”.

In a nutshell, Americans snorting the white stuff ensure the oil keeps flowing out of Colombia or as the mighty John Pilger puts it in an article for the New Statesman, “the issue of cocaine is a distraction: the fuel of the conflict, not the cause”.

The Colombian military, funded and trained by the Americans and the British, protect the oil producing sites and pipelines in the South American nation. BP et al have a large and lucrative presence down south.

On 21 February, according to witnesses, soldiers of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army entered the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, in the northwest of the country. The community has no political alliance and is internationally renowned and “protected” by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

According to witness statements, the soldiers abducted and murdered eight civilians, including three young children and a teenage girl, all of whom were hacked to death with machetes.

Since 1997, this peace loving community has witnessed more than 130 murders; there have been no convictions.

Seven days after this latest slaying bout the US State Department issued its annual human rights report. As usual, the report praised the Colombian government for progress in human rights.

The Colombian military and police have the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere, according to Pilger.

“That the government of ‘Oxford-educated’ Uribe is any better than his predecessors’ and that drugs alone are the cause of more than 20,000 murders every year is a fiction promoted in Washington and London,” Pilger writes. There were nearly 7,000 killings and “disappearances” during the first year of Uribe’s reign alone.

And there’s worse to come with NarcoSphere reporting that the Pentagon is recruiting mercenaries to carry out dangerous missions in the Americas reporting to local US embassies while aerial crop-eradication efforts are to bolstered — an action that State Department statistics show received some 2,725 complaints last year alone from damage to crops and habitats — clearly no lessons were learned from the Agent Orange fiasco. Still the crop clearing helps clear the way for the all-important pipelines.

The Philippines is a tragic basket case of a country that for all its raw materials, abundant skills among its far flung peoples, is so riddled with a corrupt political elite — a legacy of its four hundred plus years of being browbeaten by colonial masters — first the Spanish, then the Americans.

The corruption has allowed multinationals to run amok and squash competition. They price fix in a cartel cabal that is runs contrary to the constitution which demands that the government prevent such monopolies from happening. The archipelago suffers from monopolies in three basic industries according to the Philippine Inquirer — oil, cement and pharmaceuticals — leading to unfair pricing in daily life necessities.

Petron, Shell and Caltex form a gas cartel with 90% of the market sewn up. Of course their prices are in turn dictated by the greatest cartel of them all — the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The cement industry is monopolized by four international conglomerates, which have bought out most of the domestic opposition and have lobbied the government successfully to impose tariffs on cheaper foreign imports. Their price fixing makes housing an expensive, unrealistic dream for most in this impoverished nation.

And then there are the drugs firms where the leading pharmaceutical multinationals have clubbed together to ensure the highest drug prices in Asia — in a nation that is one of the poorest in the region. Moreover, one drugstore — Mercury — effectively controls more than 80% of the nation’s distribution. Thousands are dying every year because the price of medicine is beyond their reach. And by using highly paid lawyers, these multinationals ensure that their drugs, even if their patents have expired, are not replicated in any way by local firms, which would be a catalyst to reduce prices. Domestic competition is stamped out.

These foreign cartels that dominate their industries have ruined Filipino competence in these sectors and take their enormous profits outside the country.

The back pedalling, all-words-no-action administration of Gloria Arroyo plays (or pays?) into the multinationals’ hands. The Oil Deregulation Law that came into being more than 10 years ago and has caused such tremendous hikes in prices has been under review for an aggravatingly long time — it must be repealed. The government is also about to extend the protective tariffs against cement imports, while worse of all the government’s Bureau of Food and Drug, is helping the drugs cartel by entertaining petitions for the extension of patents on certain medicines, instead of rejecting them.

There is faint hope though. Four congressmen have filed House Bill 3830 to institute a price regulatory board to control medicine prices. One of the bill’s sponsors Representative Ferjwenel G Biron, a former doctor who owned a small chain of drug stores, denounced the “greed of the giant multinational pharmaceutical companies and that of the largest drugstore chain in the Philippines” as behind the uncontrollable rise in the prices of medicines.

Biron explained how the pharmaceutical firms make their money without any controls.

The parent companies of these multinationals impose on their Philippine subsidiaries a mark-up profit. In the absence of government regulatory control, these subsidiaries ensure their own profitability by imposing their own unrestrained mark-up, including a huge allowance for marketing. The retailers, in turn, are allowed another 10-percent mark-up.

Arroyo’s failure to deal with the harmful effects of cartels is yet another reason to have her impeached to go alongside the growing list of illegal acts such as vote rigging and her husband being caught with his hand in the proverbial till.

D’oh! What was the BBC smoking when it emailed the Bob Marley Foundation asking to interview the great man who just happens to have been dead for the past 24 years? And can we get some? Had the Beeb invested in a Ouija board and were looking to perform some form of reggae séance?

No kidding, BBC Three, a digital TV station, last week apologized for the blunder. It had contacted the foundation keen to chat to the Jamaican star for a documentary it was making about his song No Woman No Cry. Fact checkers for the documentary-making department may well be looking for new jobs. Unless that is of course the Beeb aren’t letting on to some sensational story a la Elvis; that in fact Bob never died. A long shot, but you wouldn’t expect anything less of the scurrilous little red email would you?

The emailed request said the project would involve Marley — who as far as the little red email can ascertain died of cancer twenty-four years ago in May 1981 at the age of 36 — “spending one or two days with us”, and that “it would only work with some participation from Bob Marley himself”.

In a statement, the BBC, which prides itself on its cultural savvy, said: “We are obviously very embarrassed that we didn’t realise that the letter to the Marley Foundation did not acknowledge that Mr Marley is no longer with us.”

Marley would have been 60 last February 6, a date that was celebrated with great fanfare by his legion of fans worldwide.

A BBC press officer, contacted by AFP in London on Friday, confirmed that the gaffe was not an April Fool’s joke.

We suggest they roll another fat one.

For all your reggae needs, the little red email recommends this excellent reggae radio station out of Brighton, UK.

 

Two interesting revelations out of the United States Department of State make the motives behind the appointments of Paul Wolfowitz and “Strap On” John Bolton to the World Bank and the United Nations so much more obvious.

First up, the Bush administration is setting up a new office in the State Department to manage future occupations of sovereign nations in the wake of US military interventions following the ongoing testing times the imperialists are suffering in Iraq.

“The creation of the office assumes the United States should invade and remake foreign societies in the US image,” says Ivan Eland, senior fellow and director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute.

What’s more the Financial Times reports: “The US intelligence community is drawing up a secret watch-list of 25 countries where instability might precipitate US intervention, according to officials in charge of a new office set up to co-ordinate planning for nation-building and conflict prevention.

“Conceived out of the acknowledged failure of post-war reconstruction efforts in Iraq, the new State Department office amounts to recognition by the Bush administration that it needs to get better at nation-building — a concept it once scorned as social work disguised as foreign policy.”

So there you have it: Strap On John lobbies for war at the UN and then once the targeted country has been bombed to pieces dear old Wolfie hands out the reconstruction contracts to fat American firms. Inspired. Machine 1, Rest of the World 0. And you thought just Syria and Iran were in danger.

They’re watching you. Canned Revolution has been telling you this simple message for a long time now.

And it is all about to get a whole lot more paranoid with the increasing use of a technology called radio frequency identification tags or RFID — a microchip that transmits information to scanners and is being put forward to go on all US passports.

It is already in circulation in US dollar bills, euros, auto tolls and many work places and is increasingly used to move cargo around the world. Pop a new US 20 dollar bill in the microwave, for instance and watch President Andrew Jackson’s right eye pop out by way of an RFID-busting experiment.

The Department of Homeland Security in the US has just instituted it to all its employees’ work passes.

Realising that it is controversial and a huge invasion of privacy the American government and the primary manufacturer of the technology, Philips Semiconductors, have adopted doublespeak over the issue refusing to call its human tracking devices RFID but “contactless chips” instead.

Privacy rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and CASPIAN have for years argued that RFID tags on consumer goods could be used to spy on individuals.

That is why Homeland Security is engaging in doublespeak, to dupe Americans into accepting RFID tags on their passports, said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program.

“It’s a frightening, Orwellian use of the language,” said Steinhardt, referring to the “contactless” branding effort. Steinhardt called the RFID tags the Homeland Security Department is using, which have faster processors and more storage capacity than retail tags, “RFID on steroids.”

Potential misuses of RFID include electronic eavesdropping and ID theft. “Even while the US government pushed for these new, supercharged identity documents, it blocked privacy-enhancing security measures that would have protected citizens against identity theft, terrorism and surveillance, acting over the objections of security experts and others nations,” the ACLU said in a statement.

According to Wired News, “The Homeland Security Department is playing word games to dodge the privacy debate raging over RFID tags, which will eventually replace barcode labels on consumer goods.”

Over in Italy, it emerges that prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s company, Mediaset, which owns three of the six main TV stations in the country (boy, there is something wildly wrong with that), has been tagging employees with RFID since last December, allegedly violating the Italian workers’ charter.

Now the little red email does not normally go where we are about to in this article, but since what the following person has to say is suitably entertaining and in the wake of the Pope dying we are going to permit the following wacky rant from John Conner a spokesman for “The Resistance for Christ,” a reborn group that opposes the formation of the so-called new world order. He believes one day every student in the world as well as the population at large will be forced to wear tracking devices under the premise of security.

“What these devices are going to do is just, ultimately, turn over ever last bit of privacy that we have to this global system,” Conner tells AFP. Potentially, he warns, RFID will become a form of technological oppression that “dehumanizes every student and every person who is forced — mind you, forced — to take these beastly tracking devices, and this opens the door for limitless abuse.”

“This is the precursor to the ‘mark of the beast’ — the 666 Satanic mark that the Bible talked about,” Conner says, “and [the proponents of the RFID technology are] implementing this system under the guise of security and [saying] it’s going to keep your children safe.” But, ultimately, the San Diego activist warns, “what it’s going to do is it’s going to turn every single one of us into a piece of inventory — not a human being — a piece of inventory, a number.”

Conner says even though born-again Christians will be “raptured” from the Earth before the tribulation reign of the anti-Christ, they should resist the use of RFIDs and other Orwellian influences in society. He is urging people everywhere to boycott RFID technology and to oppose its incorporation into schools or other aspects of daily life in America.

Well, it’s a shame the Pope wasn’t around to see it, but the little red email finds itself concurring with a reborn organization — whatever next?!

The revolution will not be televised [when it is not in the interests of the Bush administration].

All was seemingly calm and collected at the multinational get together yesterday that was the Formula One Grand Prix in Bahrain, yet just nine days prior 12% of the nation — 80,000 people, mainly Shias — had marched in the streets of the capital of the tiny state demanding democratic reforms.

There was no branding to this revolution though: no velvets, or oranges. And precious little media coverage, especially in the US — making a mockery of Bush’s claims to be pushing for democracy in the Middle East — you can be ‘democratic’ when it suits the whims of the Oil Administration but if like in Bahrain your brutal leaders (in this case the rather uncharitable King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa) are good US clients then like the House of Saud you will receive the full support of America regardless.

Bahrain houses the US Fifth Fleet with 4,500 personnel on a 79-acre base. The country also served as a staging post for the Iraqi invasion. It also signed a free trade pact with the US last year that gives the US oil conglomerates a very strong hand in the nation.

The New York Times carried a brief of the march, nabbed from Reuters, while the Washington Post did what most of the American media did about this Middle East news — nothing. It was not US government sanctioned so it was not news. Case closed.

Bahrain, which became independent of Britain in 1971, has been ruled ever since by the Al-Khalifa clan. The downtrodden opposition boycotted last year’s election — a farcical exercise in a country with 25% unemployment where political parties are banned. The prime minister just happens to be the king’s uncle and 10 of the 21 government ministries are run by al-Khalifas. While Shias make up 70% of the population only five low key ministries are occupied by Shias.

Following the march, the authorities promised to crack down on those who had organized it.

In the past month, the regime jailed three young men for running an online discussion forum — Bahrainonline.org — that posted comments critical of the regime. It accused them of “defamation...inciting hatred against the regime and spreading rumours and lies that could cause disorder.”

The hypocrisy of supporting al-Khalifa, along with the Sauds, Mubarak of Egypt, Pakistan’s Musharraf and Karimov of Uzbekistan shows the true nature of American imperialism while Dubya continues to claim that his agenda is to push democracy in the region.

• Is yellow the new orange? Yellow scarf brandishing protesters were seen demonstrating the Friday before last in the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator. In a familiar complaint, protesters (the number of which ranged from hundreds to 5,000 according to varied reports) complained about elections held in June they deemed corrupt and which saw the former communist party get back in power. A larger demonstration is planned for Thursday. Ousting the communists would be handy for the Bush administration’s stated goal of encircling China with pro-US nations where it could station troops. It could also provide a unique wedge between Russia and China.

Forget your iPods, your USB memory sticks, or your mocha frappucino producing mobile phones for just one second. There’s one piece of technology the normally non-consuming Canned Revolution is promoting today — the Fox Blocker, an ingenious little metal plug that fits into the back your TV and filters out all that Rupert Murdoch inspired crap from the world’s most ardently right wing ‘news’ channel that laughably has as a tag line “Fair and Balanced”

Not only are the inventors of the gizmo looking to reduce Fox viewing figures, but they are also intent on cutting the ‘news’ channel’s advertising revenue. After buying the $8.95 device online, would-be blockers are shown a letter that they can send to advertisers via the Fox Blocker site, whose tag line is: restore balance — tell them to shut the FOX up!

On their website, the inventors counter arguments that they are contributing to a censorship nation.

“We don’t believe in censorship. Foxblocker is a voluntary product installed by homeowners. People choose to filter internet porn; filtering FOX News is no different. It is only censorship if the GOVERNMENT filters it for you,” the site’s creators state, before continuing: “I don’t have a problem with FOX News. If they would just come out and say that it is rightwing news for right wing nuts (wingnuts) we will take this site down and move on.

“I don’t care how often Bill O’spankme’s [Bill O’Reilly, the channel’s most pugnacious, repellent member] staff calls, I am not going on FOX News. Stop calling, I don’t want to hear your dirty fantasies.”

For more on this invention, 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.

 

Selling the next war
This lot are a tasty bunch of fear and hate mongers. We are reminded of the Kuwaiti incubator babies and Iraqs WMDs. Perhaps they’re working with Scott Ritter on his new June deadline for Invasion Iran.

 

Banning the pledge of allegiance
Pleding allegiance to a piece of cloth always seemed fairly absurd to the little red email, but after we saw this site, it is even more so. We do love Rex Curry though: if he had been in power in the 50s, he would probably have arrested McCarthy for being a socialist.

 

On the death of the holy father
Harry Harrison gives us of some of John Paul II’s works that seem to have been left out of the papal eulogies.

 

Government cracks down on dissident netsters again
No, not in China. Back in the good ol’ “land of the not quite as free as perhaps we lead you to believe”. This web admin is feeling the pinch, as are others according to Slashdot.

 

Man foiled in bid to get FGWBUSH number plate
Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

 

McSoundbite
Ronald f***cking McDonald hates fries and burgers, Ronald f***cking McDonald pukes under the arches... as good a tune about McD’s as you’ll hear all day. Not work safe, especially if you work for the big M.

 

Straight talk from Sgrena
"There Was No Checkpoint, There Was No Self-Defense" according to the victim of the US army’s latest propaganda coup.

 

Belgian minister regrets Bush-chimp comparison
This in from Reuters:
Belgian trainers helping police to understand body language have caused a controversy by likening George Bush’s facial expressions to a chimpanzee’s.

Interior Minister Patrick Dewael said he was unaware of the pictures when he signed a letter promoting the training package for police dealing with unruly soccer fans, and said the idea was “of bad taste,” Het Laatste Nieuws daily reported.

The training presentation pictured the US President’s face in various expressions beside photographs of a chimpanzee, the paper showed on its front page, in what was meant to be a humorous introduction to the subject of reading expressions.

Mr Dewael’s office was not immediately available for comment.

 

Grass is better than alcohol
Many have been saying it for years, but after our recent story on Ethanol, it turns out grass might be better for us than alcohol. But we’re not talking about recreational drugs, we’re talking about the world’s most destructive and dangerous addiction: oil. According to Professor Jerry Cherney of Cornell University, using grass pellets as fuel might not be a dumb idea.

 

Calling all adbusters
Here’s yet another chance to lay your hands on one of our t-shirts.

Simply brush up your Photoshop skills and send your finest corporate subversion images in to adbusting@cannedrevolution.com, such as Apple’s new personal torture device: the iRaq or Coke’s new Vietnam Campaign from these guys (see below) or to stand a chance of being selected the weekly winner of our brand new little red adbuster of the week competition. The winner will be chosen by the revolutionary collective here on our own Fantasy Island.

Alternatively, for those who don’t fancy your chances of winning but are still budding anti-establishment artists and hanker for one of our shirts, you still have hope. Simply send us five of your designs in five consecutive weeks and, so long as the images, are yours (and we have ways of checking!), a t-shirt will be winging its way to you.

Adbusting — the choice of a new generation. For more on adbusting, click here.

 

Trinity II or How George Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Nuclear tests may well be back in vogue in the new paranoid neo-con US, which would be in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. So says Spiegel Online in this article.

 

Terror nation
The government requested and won approval for a record number of special warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies, 75 percent more than in 2000, the Bush administration disclosed Friday, according to AP and the New York Times. Ah! That lovely legislation, the PATRIOT Act, helping Americans sleep safe at night!

 

Quote of the week
“When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.”
— African proverb

 

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.