That was then this is Mao. Mao was then. Hu is now.

The ‘Hu-Jintao-is-a-jolly-nice-reformer’ brigade have quietened in the last few days. The annual Ooooh-isn’t-China-naughty scolding from the international community gets lamer and lamer as the trade contracts increase in value.

However, shuffling across to the Victoria Park, Hong Kong commemorations to the brutality performed by Chinese authorities in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 showed a great turn out remembering those who had fell on that fateful day of repression.

40,000 or say came by to an event made more sensitive by the passing away earlier this year of the deposed and arrested Zhao Ziyang, former secretary general of the China Communist Party, who came out in support of the students on the eve before the military bulldozed all before it.

To this day, many are incarcerated for talking or writing about the events of June 6, 1989.

6/4 also went down this year in an atmosphere already tinged by the arrest of the Straits Times’ Hong Kong-born correspondent, Ching Cheong, taken in by the dreaded national security bureau on April 22 on charges of espionage. His arrest only came to light last week. It took the man, a fine journalist with an impressive track record, three weeks to confess to his charges — three weeks where torture was most likely a daily occurrence. Said confession will be admissible in court — a trial that will be superfluous thanks to the encroachment of state secrets into the trial — an all pervading, all incarcerating term that relates to all facets of life.

The little red email continues to get the impression that the current president of China, Hu, is way worse than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin. Executions are up, detentions are through the roof and freedom of expression has been muted. What you have to remember with any top leader of thee CCP is that their primary goal that transcends all his other policies is to maintain the primacy of the party, something Hu showed he was brutally capable in his long tenure as governor of Tibet. However, a one party state is increasingly harder to control as a nation, such as China, endures such economic rocketing. Tougher measures have been installed to keep the normally revolutionary conscious fast growing middle class at bay. Hu Jintao who will launch the Olympics in 2008 is as cold hearted a politician as you are likely to see, outside of Pyongyang.

The little red email is gutted. A last minute change of mind over one question and it emerges I am a very bad man — so bad in fact that if everyone lived the same far out, whacked out existence that I consider to be daily life then we would need 4.9 planet Earth’s to deal with the exuberance in terms of the resources that I use up in a day. Try it, it is pretty alarming, just click here, or try the slightly more detailed one here. We took up 16.5 hectares of the Earth’s surface in terms of what we will have consumed when the day of our maker arrives.

The project is part of a world wide campaign dubbed Global Footprint — the indelible mark each and everyone of us makes on the sustainability of this planet through our everyday choices of how we conduct our lives. The issue of global sustainability has never been more pressing.

The people over at Best Feet Forward, who came up with that simple, free test to see what damage we do to the planet, note that the ecological footprint, as they describe it, “is over 20% larger than what the planet can regenerate. In other words, it now takes more than one year and two months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single year. We maintain this overdraft by liquidating the planet’s natural resources. This is a vastly underestimated threat and one that is not adequately addressed.”

When humanity’s ecological resource demands exceed what nature can continually supply, we move into what is termed ecological overshoot, something ever more worrying as the world’s population continues to explode.

The demise of mankind was actually officially announced on March 31 — newspapers ran momentarily and in a small way the literally Earth shattering news that the findings of an enormous worldwide scientific investigation projected that we will no longer be able to rely on the Earth to provide the air, water and soil we need to sustain life.

The findings of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which involved 1,300 scientists in 95 countries, showed quite clearly that we have overstepped the mark by a planet or three in our plundering of the Earth caused by over consumption, especially in the last three decades. Dead zones of the planet, wildlife extinction and human extermination are all likely if we continue to be in debt to the maximum nature can bear.

Forget Osama, this is the greatest ticking bomb they refuse to show properly in the mainstream.

Want to know how you could cut back to a planet a day? Read this Zero Waste document then.

It snowed last week in Somalia. Just to repeat this sensational news — it snowed in Somalia. This is about as unlikely place as we can think of having a snowball fight but is yet another instance of the world weather map flipping to extremes as global warming takes effect. Soon Eskimos will be sunbathing, no doubt.

Puntland, the northeastern part of Somalia, had never recorded snowfall before last Tuesday when snow storms with high winds destroyed homes in Rako town leaving a blanket of snow on the ground and many bewildered, shivering residents.

A Cambridge University scientist noted last week how powerful ocean currents are grinding to a halt, which will bring about a genuine climate “flip” that would chill Europe and make all of New Zealand tropical. The theory is not dissimilar, though less sensationalised than, last year’s Fox blockbuster, The Day After Tomorrow, a rare, though sadly rather crap mainstream movie about the effects of climate change.

Ocean currents control the climate across the world and all the evidence taken over the past 30 years shows that these currents are slowing.

The powerful ocean current system, often known as the ocean conveyor, creates a flow of warm surface water towards the North Atlantic, where it is cooled and sinks to form the circulation of cool deep-sea water throughout the world’s oceans.
As part of this process, large “chimneys” of very cold water spiral to the ocean floor, playing a key role in ocean flows.
However, Cambridge University ocean physicist and Polar Ocean Physics Group head Professor Peter Wadhams has released research showing the number of these chimneys has reduced from about 12 to two, reducing circulation dramatically.

New Zealand scientists have also been reviewing the potential impact of a change in ocean flows on New Zealand.
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research oceanographer Phil Sutton said the scenario had “such catastrophic implications” globally global attention needed to be paid to the issue.
“We would expect Europe to cool down by as much as 10 degrees Celsius- some people are saying worse — but what will happen in the southern hemisphere is a gentle warming.”
10 degrees cooler? That would at least give the polar bears and Eskimos places to roam once the Arctic disappears off the face of the planet!

Yet further proof has emerged on how Bush used 9/11 for the profit gains of the sprawling military-industrial complex. Since the fall of the Twin Towers US military aid has dramatically increased.

Already the largest arms dealer, the US managed to supply 18 of the 25 countries in conflict between 2001 and 2003, in many cases ensuring hostilities became wars.

Such actions are going very much against the spirit of the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act, which bar the transfer of US-origin military equipment into active areas of conflict.

An exhaustive report by the World Policy Institute recently released lays bare Bush’s weapons superstore.

And, using that tactic the White House avoids, historical perspective — the institute notes how great powers have been latterly hit hardest by those they have armed — the USSR and Afghanistan for instance.

“All too often, US arms transfers end up fuelling conflict, arming human rights abusers, or falling into the hands of US adversaries,” states the institute.

Further incriminating stats include that in 2003, more than half of the top 25 recipients of US arms transfers in the developing world (13 of 25) were defined as undemocratic by the US State Department’s Human Rights Report. Military aid these past four years, hitting an all time high in 2003, has been to those few who have deigned to call themselves allies in the wars on Iraq or Afghanistan.

“The United States provides the military hardware and know-how and then all too often turns a blind eye as governments suppress rights, squash legitimate dissent and sustain repression. In all, four of the five top US arms recipients in the developing world had major issues, ranging from undemocratic governments, to poor human rights records across the board, to patterns of serious abuse,” the institute noted, wondering, “Does US policy of providing military aid and selling weapons contribute to fighting the war on terrorism?”

“In the case of conflict zones like the Philippines or Colombia, where tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons are sold, Washington supplements military hardware with deployment of US troops, advisers, military aid, or training programs, representing an even greater level of US involvement in these wars,” the authoritative report continued.

The Pentagon’s largest military aid program, the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, increased by more than one-third (34%) between 2001 and 2005, jumping from $3.5 billion to $4.6 billion over that time period. President Bush is requesting $4.5 billion in FMF for 2006.

Many countries previously barred from receiving US military aid, because of nuclear testing, human rights abuses, or their harbouring of terrorists, began to receive aid in 2001. Two dozen nations — including Afghanistan, Algeria, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Uruguay — either became first-time recipients of FMF during this period or were restored to the program after long absences.

The good ol’ transparent nature of the War on Terror™ (TWOT™) at its finest.

Prior to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, 27 countries were banned from purchasing US-made military equipment, including Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Sudan, Syria, and Tajikistan.

In the aftermath of terrorist attacks, bans on security assistance to many of these countries have been lifted or suspended, giving the president broad power to provide military aid and weapons to nations contributing to the war on terrorism.

The Bush administration lifted sanctions against Azerbaijan and Armenia. Tajikistan was removed from the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) list of states prohibited from receiving US military goods and products.

In October 2001, Congress passed Public Law 107-57, which included a measure to reduce the notification deadlines for weapons transfers. While the 1991 Foreign Assistance Act required that the President notify Congress 15 or more days before any transfer of emergency drawdowns and excess defence articles, the new act requires only five days advance notice if the president determines that the decision is “important to US efforts to respond to, deter or prevent acts of international terrorism.”

This new law dismantled an important tool enabling the human rights and arms control community to lobby against weapons sales to problem countries.

That same month, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which handles government-to-government weapons sales, announced a series of changes to their policies aimed at accelerating the process of granting weapons contracts to countries allied with the United States against terrorism.

The DSCA established the amusingly entitled “Enduring Freedom Response Cell” to “fast track weapons requests from our allies.” Sales went through the roof.

That’s the TWOT™ laid bare.

or all you ever wanted to know on the US’ sale of arms to dodgy countries, click here.

The little red email’s medical correspondent Dr Jim is back with a broadside over the eminently under-liable pharmaceutical firms.

Another day, another example of doctors and the public being misled by the pharmaceutical industry; this time it’s in Australia. An article in last week’s British Medical Journal reveals Pfizer has been found guilty of breaching its own marketing code of conduct over a letter it sent out to healthcare professionals after the recall of Vioxx last year. They claimed in the letter that their product Celebrex (in the same drug class as Vioxx) was safe.

Doctors Down Under complained vigorously as there had been no studies on the long term effects of the drug at that time. This cause was championed by the group Healthy Skepticism, an Australian watchdog group. This was up held by the regulatory body and Pfizer were fined the princely sum of A$25,000 (£10,370 or $18,960). They must have been laughing all the way to the bank! This fine represents a tiny fraction of the A$100 million worth of Celebrex sold in Australia over the relevant time period. A spokesman from Pfizer was said to be disappointed with the committee’s decision (cough… bullshit… cough).

They are getting away with it and nothing has changed. This is the sad message from Dr Cardiff, the director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, as he surveys the influence of the drug companies on the clinical trials industry. Gag clauses in clinical trial agreements prevent the investigators from examining the data independently, or submitting a manuscript for publication without first getting consent from the sponsor. This gives the pharmaceutical industry the final say over how the results of a trial are presented and if it even gets published at all. They are allowed to suppress negative results and can interfere with data on safety.

Merck officials are alleged to have done just that in a recent drugs trial, covering up potentially serious side effects relating to Rofecoxib (another drug similar to Vioxx). They stand accused of hiding key safety data from the authors of the published work. This meant that the numbers of serious adverse events from the drug has been largely underreported. Only now is the full scope of what happened starting to come out, with 3 years of prescriptions and millions of dollars having gone by. All the drugs in this class are now being avoided because of significant risks of heart disease in long term users.

In 2001, the heads of 11 of some of the most highly regarded publications came together to demand that this practice stop. Four years later it is still rife within the industry. Commercial sponsors still exclusively control the database for most clinical trials. Fortunately, spurred on by rising distrust of the pharmaceutical industry, and public concern about the safety of medicines, a bill has been introduced in the USA to ban these contracts. They seek to prevent the exploitation the medical research industry by the pharmaceutical industry and provide tighter controls to protect the public.

The major hurdle remains funding for research. Currently there is no standardised approach to these gag clauses. That means that if one institution refuses to allow them they will be blackballed by the drug companies and the lucrative sponsorship will go elsewhere. The industry desperately needs a united front or the drug companies will continue to have carte blanche to mislead us all.

Seldom have we come across such a strange floating detritus story as the one below.

Australian scientists reported last week of a massive floating reef in the South Pacific. It was floating because it was made of rubber — more precisely millions and millions of rubber Johnnies. Yep, that’s right, a man-made condom island.

The two mile long, up to 60 feet deep agglomeration of prophylactics was so compressed that a small plane could be landed on it, which makes us ask two questions. 1. What scientific experiment does it take to test whether planes land or bounce on floating piles of condoms and 2. Will it become a tourist destination?

The report stated that the island had been been discovered by by the Australian Oceanographic Laboratory Outpost on Macquarie Island.

“Scientists there explained that the accumulation, which consists almost exclusively of condoms, is explained by a principle of physics called “like aggregation.” Like aggregation is caused by the massing of similar objects due to ocean currents and winds, the response of the objects to the earth’s magnetic field, and other factors.

“The tendency of dust to clump and mass in a house or under a bed is explained by the same principle,” the report continued.

“The Australian scientists are mapping the reef by satellite because it is a serious marine hazard,” it concluded. The fascination for the tale of the Titanic sure would be a different story if it had gone down by condoms as opposed to icebergs.

The news story was reported at the normally reliable African news service Mathaba. It was a perfect type of filler for that ‘and finally…’ slot that we tend to put in last story — the wacky, fun, strange type of tale. It was only once we had started investigating into it that we found, just like Nemo, it was all make believe — a brilliantly crafted internet rumour taken by many news services as truth that has been hoodwinkingly peddled time and again since as long ago as 1996.

For more on this brilliant urban legend that sheathed the truth, 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.

 

Book recommendation: Freakonomics
“This is a great book,” according to a rare investment banking source who goes on to say: “A lot of people have recommended it. Currently ranked #5 on Amazon. My only complaint is that it is not better yet… or longer, or loaded with more examples on how data can bring out counter-intuitive truths (teachers can cheat on behalf of students…; crime rates in ’90s dropped more due to Roe vs Wade abortion rights than Clinton/wealth effect, etc.)”
The New York Times wrote: “Steven Levitt tends to see things differently than the average person. Differently, too, than the average economist. This is either a wonderful trait or a troubling one, depending on how you feel about economists.”
Chapter excerpts are available on www.freakonomics.com.
Chapter 1: What Do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?
In which we explore the beauty of incentives, as well as their dark side — cheating.
Chapter 2: How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?
In which it is argued that nothing is more powerful than information, especially when its power is abused.
Chapter 3: Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?
In which the conventional wisdom is often found to be a web of fabrication, self-interest, and convenience.
Chapter 4: Where Have All the Criminals Gone?
In which the facts of crime are sorted out from the fictions.
Chapter 5: What Makes a Perfect Parent?
In which we ask, from a variety of angles, a pressing question: do parents really matter?
Chapter 6: Would a Roshanda by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?
In which we weigh the importance of a parent’s first official act — naming the baby.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
published by William Morrow
ISBN 0-06-073132-X

 

Extreme Commuting
This is a rather interesting clip of what the commute to work is like in Mosul when you’re working for the coalition.

 

Dubya’s Newspeak
The Bush administration has been busy developing the twenty-first century version of Newspeak and Doublethink. Dan Clore tells us why this is doubleplus ungood.

 

The Great Beast 666’s charge sheet
Why would someone do this to themself? Why?

 

Fallujah aftermath: Now spell “Blowback”
A guided tour to the US’s answer to Grozny, “Falluja — The day After”, was shot on home video in early January, 2005, when people were let back into the city after the American attack that started in November 8th, 2004. It shows the awful destruction that the Western media didn’t even touch on, and which should keep the insurgency good for recruits for decades to come.

 

Democracy Now shows you the war they don’t want you to see
Amy Goodman and guests James Rainey, Sidney Schanberg (he of The Killing Fields) and Aaron Glantz discuss why the Invasion of Iraq has been portrayed in such a sanitised way, and help to remind us that “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is still one of the oldest lies in the book. With apologies to Wilfred Owen — who said it far better.

 

A call to reopen 9-11 investigations
The little red email reckons re-opening the 9-11 case file is an excellent idea — there are so many odd aspects and unanswered questions surrounding the events: the peculiar and anonymous (peculiar in itself) trade of airline stocks, the missing F-16s, Building 7 at the WTC, the rush to get the bin Ladens out of the country, the classified frames of the Pentagon CCTV cameras, and the publicly unseen footage taken those elsewhere.

 

UN atlas shows how times are changing
The UN has just launched a shocking new satellite atlas, highlighting environmental changes all over the world. The BBC has some pics here, or if you’re feeling saucy (they retail at US$ 150), you can get your own copy here.

 

Tulsa, 1921: Another dark secret of the deep South
She heard tapping on the roof of her home in Tulsa, and in her young mind Olivia Hooker thought it was hail from a Midwest storm. Her mother grabbed her hand, crept to a small window and explained, to the 6-year-old’s horror, that it was actually raining bullets.
Read the full article here from the Whitewashington Post.

 

Base closures highlight pollution problems
Never the cleanest operator, the US armed forces’ looming base closures will come at a price: the Pentagon estimates it will cost $700 million to clean the seven bases scheduled for closure this year. One submarine base alone has already cost $57.6 million to clean up, and whilst the navy has pledged another $23.9 million, this will only “clean” it to “industrial standards”.

 

Calling all adbusters
This week’s adbust is a little different: Hong Kong-based International Action may be the first group to subvert a video advertising hoarding with a political protest. Matt Pearce, dressed as Spiderman clogged up central Hong Kong for a couple of hours with his Tian’anmen protest. AP has some video, but here’s the pic:

That’s right! You too can get one of our t-shirts. Simply brush up your Photoshop skills and send your corporate subversion images to adbusting@cannedrevolution.com, such as the one above 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.

 

Urine & the Qu’ran — it’s official
It’s time for Newswimp and the Whitewashington Post to grow a pair and stop all this journalistic kow-towing to the Commander-in-thief and his cronies at the White House. Confirmed reports of Qu’ran abuse are beginning to come to light.

 

You may have already been brainwashed by the corporate media if…
Just take the test. Trust us.

 

The Little Red Email Osama bin Laden Sweepstakes Shirt Contest!
Don’t forget: if you fancy a free Canned Revolution t-shirt, you can win one by simply guessing the date of Osama’s media debut as a US prisoner. Send your expected date of bin Laden’s first television appearance as an American prisoner to osamasweepstakes@cannedrevolution.com.