This week: • Disney • Venezuela • Antarctic • Yahuda • Uranium •
• Spicer • Mexican scanners • US green pact • AIPAC • Russian Cows • Stuff •

 

In three weeks time Hong Kong Disneyland will open its gates to the public, a destination Canned Revolution will be giving a very wide berth to. Along with the well documented environmental disasters that have dogged Mickey’s progress (the toxic dredging, the concrete carpeting of a once green area, the enormous electricity consumption, the dedicated rail line, the daily fireworks, the killing of stray animals who ventured onto the site and the shark’s fin soup PR disaster) we take issue with this launch most heartedly on the grounds of the consumer imperialism it brings to what already is an overtly consumption-tastic society.

What, you have to ask yourself, by having Mickey, Pluto and the gang on your doorstep does it genuinely enrich you and your children’s lives or does it line the already fiendishly well lined pockets of the Disney corporation? Revenue at Disney’s theme parks and hotels increased 7 per cent in the third quarter to $2.4bn, yielding $448m in operating profit.

What will the average Hong Konger gain from having Disney nearby — we would suggest nothing bar perhaps an initial frisson of excitement on a first visit. Yes there will be employment opportunities but as was revealed in August American corporations are not exactly flash with the cash — McDonald’s was revealed as the Special Administrative Region’s lowest payer, paying a measly HK$15 (US$1.92) an hour. Could the Hong Kong government have spent its money better creating something uniquely Hong Kong with more long term, residual value to the city’s youth, rather than paying wildly over the top for the Mickey brand to come in and reap double digit returns on? The project costs around US$3.5 billion, yet Disney only has to front up with a tenth of this to make massive returns — kind of like a leisure version of Kellogg Brown and Root. By contributing 10% Disney strolls away with nearly 50% of the net profit from the venture.

The government, by eagerly signing on the dotted line, has ensured wholesale capital flight from the SAR. So there is much less economic gain for HK, than the optimists might think. People who come for Disneyland will for the most part stay in Disney. Disney products are exclusively sold by Disney, the Disney hotel is owned by Disney. Disneyland is a tourist attraction to keep you in Disney’s pockets having done the brainwashing via the Disney Channel.

Does Asia need such Cocacolonisation? There’s already a Disneyland in Tokyo, another is sprouting up in Shanghai in 2008 with Singapore and India on the drawing board. Why can’t the world’s most populous continent come up with its own ideas for diversion and entertainment rather than falling for the money fleecing antics of Disney?

What’s more, with Mickey and Co stamping their paws across the region, how viable a business model is this Hong Kong version? Shanghai opening up in 2008 means you can kiss the mainland tourists goodbye in three years (cheap and no major visa faff for them), and maybe even HK tourists (Shanghai=cheaper by far, and most likely bigger by far). Tokyo Disney = low Japanese tourism (why bother with foreign language and smaller premises?). Singapore Disney (as if Singapore wasn’t already Disneyland, anyway) = no Malay/Indonesian tourists. Other cities drain vast reserves of cash on Olympic bids, another sure fire capital drain: Hong Kong, Asia’s so called world city only set its sights as high as an oversized mouse.

And what of Hong Kong’s poor neighbours who have had to toil in dreadful conditions to bash out countless Mickey teddies etc? Disney merchandise has been manufactured in woeful sweatshops and those visiting the theme park should boycott these overpriced items. 

Employees are forced to work through the night during peak seasons, sometimes for 30 hours at a time, but are paid as little as 400 yuan a month with next to no overtime wages. 

“Accidents that leave workers with maimed limbs are common,” said the study by the Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, a group of Hong Kong university students and local and overseas academics. 

If you do head over to Lantau to see the new Disney, bring a handkerchief in case Mickey wants to shake your hand, there’s blood and muck on his.

 

 

Sandwiched between blurb extolling the virtues of honouring your parents and not committing adultery is the sixth commandment which in the King James version of the book of Exodus, chapter 20, verse three states something along the lines of “Thou shalt not kill” — something the despicable far right wing American evangelist Pat Robertson should probably reacquaint himself with having blurted out official US foreign policy directives last week suggesting the populist leader of Venezuela should be assassinated.

It has been yet another incredible ten days in the life of Canned Revolution’s Person of the Year, Hugo Chavez, (the soon-to-be recipient of a large Canned Revolution fist logo tshirt winging its way to Caracas in recognition of said prestigious award) who having been tipped off by the conservative televangelist of the CIA’s plans, said Friday, “If anything happens to me then the man responsible will be George W Bush. He will be the assassin. This is pure terrorism.”

Even when Pat Robertson attempted to apologise for his Fatwa issuance he continued to justify why killing Chavez should be official foreign policy saying that if Chavez “thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.”

Amusingly, Robertson’s rhetoric must have been taken seriously down in Caracas since the government there has temporarily suspended permits for foreign missionaries four days after the Robertson outburst.

The row continues to intensify: Chavez has just announced he will take legal action against Robertson, saying in a televised speech: “I announce that my government is going to take legal action in the United States... to call for the assassination of a head of state is an act of terrorism.” Chavez also said he may seek Robertson’s extradition to Venezuela.

Chavez, popularly elected time and time again, has survived a CIA sponsored coup as he continues to reengineer a polarized society to ensure a fairer distribution of wealth. Oil prices in the country are set at just 18 cents a gallon (in the UK, motorists are now forking out around $7 per gallon).

Further amusement was provided by Hugo when he suggested that he’d be happy to distribute oil at such cheap prices to the poor of the US (there were 36 million Americans living below the poverty line this time last year), an offer that did not go down well in Washington or at the boards of oil giants across the world who are all reeling from an ongoing state investigation organized by Chavez in July demanding more than $3 billion be paid in back taxes by the likes of Chevron et al.

Chavez is leading Latin America’s backlash against US dominance, by striking oil deals with neighbours including his buddy Castro, setting up regional news channels to counter the CNN spin with adverts including the Stars and Stripes with a swastika overlaid and by refusing to be the standard bitch to the shackles of the WTO, IMF and World Bank.

Since last October, Chavez has raised heavy-oil royalty fees to as much as 30 per cent from 1 per cent, begun paying for some services in nonconvertible bolivares instead of US dollars, and ordered oil well contracts converted into government-controlled joint ventures. Chavez wants to use the revenue to pay for homes, clinics and schools for the 58 per cent of Venezuelan families who live on less than $200 a month.

Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the western hemisphere and the US is watching aghast at deals being struck sending the oil elsewhere — just last week a big deal was signed with China for a new joint venture oil production firm.

One of the most perfidious routes the US uses to gain information and control of Latin American states is through posting seemingly well intentioned members of its Drug Enforcement Administration south. This is how the US can dominate nations such as Ecuador and Colombia. Chavez suspended cooperation with the DEA in July saying, “The DEA was used as a cover... to carry out intelligence work in Venezuela against this government.”

The longer he doesn’t play ball, the more bodyguards he’ll need.

 

• And for those of us like Pat Robertson whose memory of the 10 Commandments has lapsed, click here.

 

 

Forget the planned oil foray in the beautiful pristine reserves of Alaska. Dubya’s headed way south for a spot of seriously disruptive drilling. Last week the US admitted it is engaged in an ahem “salvage operation” as it claims it has found a NASA Mars module, called Red Genie, two miles beneath the ice lost during a disastrous training mission 31 years ago.

It emerges the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been using American military personnel to construct a new base at Lake Vostok, where a huge magnetic “anomaly” had been discovered a couple of years ago.

The Pentagon stepped up its lies. “Our salvage crew has found a piece of American spaceflight history at the bottom of an eleven-thousand-foot-deep ice gorge in East Antarctica,” Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood said. “But an icy gale crushed the robotic rover used to identify and photograph the spacecraft, putting recovery efforts on hold until the polar storm passes.” That could be weeks, he added.

Mercifully, many questioned the Pentagon’s tale with one French diplomat at the United Nations asking, “Why all the secrecy? When the Liberty Bell 7 space capsule was discovered on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, much hoopla was made. Now it sits in the Kansas Cosmosphere. Where is the publicity for this discovery?”

Some speculate that the Red Genie was powered by a compact nuclear reactor plant. That would be in direct violation of the International Antarctic Treaty. “The irony,” said one space observer, “is that in attempting to cover its past infringements, the US does even greater violation to the treaty.”

To this day NASA has refused to release details on the Red Genie or the names of its four occupants. But some old-timers from the Apollo space program recall Red Genie disappeared halfway through a 40-day training mission meant to simulate conditions on Mars after the ice beneath it mysteriously collapsed, revealing an ancient, scythe-like gorge almost one mile long and two miles deep.

We hypothesize that the “salvage” work is actually checking for raw materials — nothing is sacrosanct in this era of peak oil.

For superb Antarctic conspiracy theories we recommend @tlantis TV.

 

 

A dejected, yet colon-cleansed, Yahuda Bangs muses on Hong Kongers’ humour levels.

I returned from my intensive colonic cleansing in Thailand healthy, hale, and to the news that I’d been let go from my Hong Kong day job. My British (former) boss seemed devastated at having to deliver the news. Though utterly positive about the quantity and quality of my work, he had to inform me that my Hong Kong comrades of two months simply hadn’t taken a shine to me. Quite the opposite, in fact — for reasons best summed up as bad chemistry, it seemed that their feelings could best be described as active (or at least extremely passive aggressive) dislike. So as they say in China, my squid was fried (in other words, dear Mr Bangs, you’re fired).

Perhaps it did boil down to simple chemistry. Conflicts between Hong Kong locals and gweilos are common. Personally I chalk it up to differences in sense of humor. I have one. My comrades did not. I noticed this early on while enthusiastically pointing out to a HK coworker an article in colon-cleansed pertaining to the rather esoteric type of work our company was engaged in.

“This is not a real newspaper.” He seemed extremely puzzled at the concept of The Onion.

“Yeah, but it shows that what we do is entering the collective unconscious.”

“It is not real news. I do not want to discuss it any further.” He then shot me a look that said stop wasting my time.

I spent my first few days of unemployment walking the streets of Hong Kong and noticing — not for the first time — that Hong Kong people seem to smile a lot less than their counterparts in Beijing or Shanghai. Perhaps it’s the lingering scars of colonization, or a general feeling of malaise and loss of purpose in an era in which China no longer needs an intermediary with the west.

Searching for answers, I found myself in front of a building housing a number of lower-level HK SAR government offices. Eyes scanning the directory, my eyes settled on small raised letters which read Ministry of Comedy — Suite 223. Flabbergasted that such a ministry would even exist, I made my way to the second floor.

Entering suite 223, I was confronted by a wrinkled gentleman with outrageous tufts of gray curly hair that made him look like a wizened Chinese Shemp Howard. He was shocked by my presence, and stood up from a desk covered with what appeared to be fake dog poo, whoopee cushions, exploding cigars, and various other items sold in the back of American comic books. A plaque behind his desk read:

Honorable Kwok Sum-lik - Minister of Comedy

“Ah, cheerio old chap,” he began, his English clearly rusty. “Sorry about the mess. Pork floss?” He handed me a can of peanuts.

“These are peanuts,” I said, staring at the can dubiously.

“Ah, quite right. Have some.”

Wanting to oblige the old man, I opened the can, and wasn’t at all surprised when spring-loaded cloth snakes leapt out, much to Minister Kwok’s amusement.

“That one never gets old,” he said.

“Yes it does,” I answered. “That’s what I’ve come hear to talk to you about, Minister. Why don’t Hong Kong people have a sense of humour?”

The old man slumped dejectedly in his chair, and I immediately felt guilty at my bluntness. I began to apologize, but he waved his hand.

“No, old chap. You are… quite right. We Hong Kongers are sorely lacking when it comes to mirth of any sort. And I, Kwok Sum-lik, should know. After all, I am Hong Kong’s first, longest serving, and likely its last Minister of Comedy .”

Minister Kwok let out a deep sigh, and stuffed the snakes back in the can.

“But Hong Kong was a British colony for over a century! Didn’t the British ever try to instill a sense of humour in the place they called the jewel in their crown ?”

“Oh, indeed they tried, old bean. Indeed they did. Sit down, and I’ll tell you the whole bloody awful story.”

Mesmerized by the old man’s words, I took a seat on the couch and was immediately rewarded with a loud burst of flatulence. Minister Kwok began laughing.

“Now that one never gets old!,” he said, and launched into a truly unbelievable story which would call into question all I thought I knew about the history of Hong Kong…

 

Yahuda Bangs’ gripping essay, A Brief Account of Hong Kong’s Shortest Lived Colonial Administration continues next week.

 

 

Mining giants the world over are hoving into Australia’s Northern Territory now that federal resources minister Ian Macfarlane has put the area’s uranium deposits up for grabs. Aboriginals long repressed by Jonny Whitey will now have to contend with radioactive surroundings.

There are three uranium mines in Australia — Ranger in the NT, and Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia. The NT Environment Centre believes that just under 1 million hectares of the NT are currently under exploration for uranium by about 12 companies, and around 1.8 million hectares are under application for exploration. Mining firms are now lobbying hard for Western Australia and Queensland’s uranium deposits to be opened.

Australia is the world’s second largest producer of uranium (after Canada) and has up to 40% of the world’s known uranium deposits.

Uranium demand is expected to surge in the coming years — China alone plans to build 30 new nuclear power plants by 2020 — leading prices to double since January 2004. An Anglican Church ethical investment fund has scrapped its reluctance to invest in uranium related stocks so rosy are their growth prospects — a sad state of affairs really, the church putting profit before principle once again.

As Green Left Weekly reported in a indication of the propaganda push that can be expected from the uranium industry, Southern Cross chief executive Mark Wheatley told the Diggers and Dealers mining forum in Kalgoorlie on August 11 that, “Given the price increases of late, I think there’s renewed interest from the miners to make money from the uranium business and I think we can get better at helping the politician and the mums and dads understand the risks and rewards of uranium mining as opposed to other forms of power generation.”

 

 

As we trawl the ‘net all the time searching for weird and wacky tales often associated with the War on Terror™ (TWOT™) a name we keep coming across is that of British mercenary and all round black ops nastiness Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer, a man the UK and the US call upon time and time again to do their dirty work. The rise of private military firms has been an inescapable trend for the last 15 years as they do not have to appear on the official state death balance sheet and as any political leader will tell you, you can get away with murder and war so long as your side does not suffer too many casualties. What’s more, those not part of the state army can do the dirty torture work so fondly required by the Pentagon.

A former Lieutenant Colonel in the Scots Guards and the head of the private security company Aegis Defence Services, Spicer is a veteran of the Falklands War and served with the British Army in Northern Ireland where he is accused of muder and where he picked up an OBE from the Queen for his troubles. He is the former head of Sandline International, a private military company that closed in April of 2004.

As the leader of Sandline, Lt Col Spicer was involved in mercenary operations in Sierra Leone, which included importing weapons in violation of the UN arms embargo. This was known as the so-called Sandline affair in the United Kingdom. British and the US governments lent tacit approval to Sandline’s activities. Sandline butchered and repressed its way around the glove including supressing tribes in Papua New Guinea who were distarught at mining giant’s Rio Tinto’s entrance into the country. Sandline was the succesor to South African firm and major plunderer Executive Outcomes.

Aegis is the successor organisation to Sandline. Spicer continues to have common interests with Northbridge Services, widely believed to be the successor organisation to South African private military contractor Executive Outcomes. He helped out on the butchered recent Mark Thatcher linked effort to stir up a coup in Equitorial Guinea.

Aegis was awarded a $239 million contract by the US DoD to supply “75 close protection bodyguard teams to coalition and Iraqi officials” as well as “co-ordinate intelligence gathering for other private security firms in Iraq, including the multi-billion dollar US Dyncorp”.

It’s estimated that there are at least 20,000 mercenaries operating in Iraq (some put it as high as 30,000), earning between five and twenty times as much as their state-employed ‘comrades-in-arms’

As well as British and US government contracts Spicer is happy to take greenbacks from just about anyone, whether government or rebel.

In the wake of this summer’s London bombings Michael Elliot’s Time headline article offered this:

“According to a confidential report produced the day after the bombing by a private London security firm, Aegis Defense Services, Ltd., which was seen and read by Pentagon officials, the team was probably four to six strong … The Aegis report says it is possible that the explosives were ‘constructed by an experienced bomb maker, possibly coming to the UK for that very purpose.’”

How did Aegis conclude that the foreign origin for the bomb maker, when no such evidence was available? What role does this British security firm serve in helping drive Washington-London “war on terrorism” planning, and what was this confidential report “seen and read by Pentagon officials”? Look no further than Spicer to see how the axles of TWOT™ keep turning.

For more on the murky mercenary click here and here. And see just how much Aegis’ stock went up in wake of 7/7 bombs. Proof if ever was needed that terror pays really rather well.

 

 

Leering Latino airport workers are delighted with the nation’s latest technology, which has sent human rights campaigners frothy. A recently installed airport security scanner shows passengers “naked”, in a bid to help the cops detect guns, drugs and hidden money. Still the virtual strip searches might well be distracting the police from their real jobs.

It consists of a cabin where x-ray images of passengers are taken from various angles and sent to a monitor.

But Mexico’s National Commission of Human Rights wants the scanner removed.

A spokesperson told Terra Noticias Populares: “We consider the use of this machine to be violating human rights, it virtually undresses people!”

But airport communications secretary Pedro Cerisola said: “If people want to travel, that is the condition.”

Forget the invasion of privacy for a moment. That is bad enough but for those who travel regularly there is a far greater reason why these machines - that cost around $200,000 a pop and have been one of the big beneficiaries in the fear-driven War on Terror™ (TWOT™) — should be avoided. Ionizing radiation in the X-ray spectrum damages and mutates both chromosomal DNA and structural proteins in human cells. If this damage is not repaired, it can lead to cancer. Even very low doses of X-ray can delay or prevent cellular repair of damaged DNA. Unborn babies can become grotesquely disfigured if their mothers are irradiated during pregnancy.

Bring back the pat down search fast — the cops get to feel instead of being a voyeur and we avoid cancer.

 

 

Rather than choking and swimming down the main street in years to come nine American states have opted to take the threat of climate change more seriously and as the Guardian wryly noted “are on the brink of a declaration of environmental independence” by introducing greenhouse gas emissions mandatory controls — the same ones Dubya’s oil administration rejected when it opted out of the Kyoto Agreement four years ago.

This is a very hopeful sign — and one of the perks of a federal country. The nine northeastern states are expected to announce a plan next month to freeze carbon dioxide emissions from big power stations by 2009 and then reduce them by 10% by 2020. The combined states, from Maine to New Jersey, generate the equivalent emissions as Germany.

Two more states are signing on as observers with a view to joining later.

Meanwhile on the west coast five states including California are looking at pursuing a similar agreement.

“It’s huge. It’s a drumbeat, and more and more states and regions are heading down this road. It’s going to change the discussion at the federal level ... It’s going to take the argument off the table [that] we can’t do this because it’s too expensive, there are too many obstacles,” said Dale Bryk, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defence Council.

While commendable the northeastern pact is still not nearly as stringent as Kyoto though wildly better than the fluff opt-out agreement the US signed this summer with Asian countries and Australia.

In a separate initiative, the mayors of more than 130 cities, including New York and Los Angeles, agreed earlier this year to meet the emissions reductions envisaged in the Kyoto accord, independent of federal policy decided in Washington.

The age old maxim if you want something done then do it yourself might just avert the end of mankind, despite the worst profit-driven, fossil fuel-bought policies coming out of the smog stained White House.

 

 

We have already brought you plenty of comment on how Israel is leading the chorus for war in Iran. We knew of Israel’s movements around 9/11 and how instrumental the Middle Eastern state has been in dictating Bush’s foreign policy. The picture of involvement in Iraq is getting a whole lot clearer — with the number two at the US’ embassy in Baghdad, David M. Satterfield, being found out as the mole leaking documents to the pro-Israel lobbying group, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). However, Satterfield is but one of a large crew involved in keeping the Israelis clued up.

Steven J. Rosen, his AIPAC colleague Keith Weissman, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin have all been indicted with espionage charges. Along with Satterfield, it looks like his erstwhile boss, John Negroponte was in on the act plus senior members of the departments of defense and state, all of whom are likely to avoid mention let alone be indicted. Franklin, Rosen and Weissman are the scapegoats here to avoid higher powers getting smeared.

Of course, leaks to Israel can be traced back to the 1980s. There’s nothing new about making excuses for Israel’s espionage activities in the United States, and nothing partisan about aiding and abetting it. Republican and Democratic administrations alike have been doing it for years, as Stephen Green, a former UN official and a diligent user of the Freedom of Information Act, makes clear in this article, which covers the unauthorized leaks — and subsequent cover ups — of many of the usual suspects (Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, Ledeen, etc.) as well as some players most people have never heard of, like Stephen Bryen, ex-Senate Foreign Affairs Committee staffer, ex-deputy assistant secretary of Defense, and current member of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which is charged with monitoring the flow of advanced technology to the People’s Republic.

Israel, for all intents and purposes, is no longer treated like a foreign country in Washington notes this excellent website which deals with the occupation of Iraq, but more like Puerto Rico — an affiliated territory that enjoys most of the benefits of US statehood, without actually being one. Except unlike Puerto Rico, Israel has nukes, and the upper hand in the relationship. To the point where when Franklin wanted a job at the White House, he knew who to ask as the official indictment shows:

On or about February 14, 2003, FRANKLIN and ROSEN discussed FRANKLIN’s prospects for a position on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, and ROSEN told FRANKLIN that by working at the NSC that he would be “by the elbow of the president.” FRANKLIN asked ROSEN to “put in a good word” for him, and ROSEN said “I’ll do what I can.”

It isn’t clear from that paragraph whether Franklin was asking Rosen to put in a good word at the White House — or the Israeli embassy. Nor is it clear that it would have made much of a difference.

 

 

The stone cold winter months are set to get psychedelic for a herd of Russian cows as it has been decreed they will be fed confiscated pot this year.

Drug workers told local media they adopted the unusual form of animal husbandry after they were forced to destroy the sunflowers and maize crops that the 40 tonnes of marijuana had been planted among, Novye Izvestia daily reported.

“There is simply no other way out. You see, the fields are planted with feed crops and if we remove it all the cows will have nothing to eat,” a Federal Drugs Control Service spokeswoman for the Urals region of Sverdlovsk said.

“I don’t know what the milk will be like after this,” he added. We’ll be able to see whether the dairy produce will be akin to Bang Lassis by witnessing the vastly increased morning deliveries of pizzas in the Urals. Expect to see many spaced out, happy looking cows in western Russia this winter, mooing with contentment.

• In other mad cow related news filed in our “Only in Latin America” folder we learnt recently how a cow has been put in prison after it was blamed for a road accident in Colombia. The cow was wandering along a road in Giron when it was hit by a woman on a motorcycle.

A police spokesman said: “If it was a person who caused the accident, he or she would be behind bars, so why not a cow?”