This week: • Burma • Al-Jazeera • Disappearing islands •
• Disappearing glaciers • Thai-dollar-try • Stuff •

 

Tourism back on the road to Mandalay

It’s one of the most pressing, debated questions among hardened backpackers the world over. Not whether Tiva or Birkenstock make the best sandals. Not how to survive on US$2 a day. Nothing so trivial. Indeed, it is an ethical dilemma that divides and angers the traveller community like no other: whether or not to travel to Myanmar, or Burma. With the launch this month of the latest edition of the controversial Lonely Planet Myanmar guide book, the little red email has done more than its normal research into this issue and in our typically contrarian way come down in favour of visiting rather than boycotting — not an easy decision given the stance of the democratically elected, house jailed Burmese leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who has commented in the past on the travel topic: “Burma will be here for many years, so tell your friends to visit us later. Visiting now is tantamount to condoning the regime.”

“Make no mistake: our decision to publish is not a show of support for the current regime,” Anna Bolger, marketing communications manager for Lonely Planet tells the little red email, “and we fully support the restoration of democracy in Myanmar. We do not, however, believe you create new freedoms by stifling information or banning books. Lonely Planet is committed to the provision of accurate travel information for every country across the globe.”

And yet there are those that argue vociferously that any highlighting of the country’s tourist potential is playing into the hands of the military junta.

Since Burma opened up to tourism in 1988, over $1.1 billion has been invested in the hotel and tourism industry, according to the Burma Campaign UK, who argue that income from tourism is helping sustain military rule and with it the lamentable human rights record that persists, not only through tourist spending, but also through investment in the infrastructure essential to support tourism — using both forced labour and forced relocation to build hotels, restaurants, roads, railways and airports. Official figures estimate Burma earns $100 million a year.

There are organisations such as Voices For Burma that take a contrarian point of view, suggesting that sanctions and boycotts only serve to make the regime more introverted, xenophobic, oppressive and isolationist while the people are poorer for the isolation and working conditions worse as neighbours such as China use the Burmese for excessively cheap labour.

The controversy surrounding to visit or not to visit has seen certain groups switch sides. The Free Burma Coalition, made up of Burmese dissidents in exile, for instance in 2003 swallowed “a bitter pill” by deciding sanctions and travel boycotts simply were not working.

“Our people are unhappy living in poverty and oppression; but they are also un-convinced that isolating the country economically, intellectually and politically will make their situation any better,” the coalition noted at the time.

“It is well-past time that all of us concerned about the country’s future explore fresh ideas and new initiatives. We must not allow Burma’s peoples to suffer from the double whammy of being subjected to the home-grown isolationist tendencies of the native rulers and the well-meaning, but categorically misguided isolationist/punitive policies of the West.”

Still can’t make up your mind whether you should visit or not? Even the Burmese are divided. The little red email spoke to two Burmese exiles, one in Singapore and one in Macau, whose opinions varied wildly.

“We want as many tourists to come as possible even though they might be supporting the regime so that most of the people outside Burma will understand us more, not for the revenues,” says the Singapore source while his counterpart in Macau is adamant: “Tourist money only serves to prop up a nasty regime. Stay away. Wait for the right time.”

We’ve been waiting for more than a decade, though have tentatively penciled in September for a Canned Revolution Burmese jaunt.

• Next week, the little red email will provide details on where your tourist dollar goes in Burma.

 

 

White House targets media… literally

Rule number one for any military engagement in the multimedia age we live in is to control the press. With the mainstream western media about as a timid as a bluetit, and groveling to the tune of the White House like a faithful Labrador Dubya thought he could steamroll all over Iraq with nary a dissenting voice. What he hadn’t reckoned for was the rapidly emerging Al-Jazeera, which quickly became and continues to be a central source for real news throughout the conflict. His solution, as revealed in a top secret British government memo by the Mirror last week was to bomb the TV station which is located in the friendly state of Qatar.

There’s no need to doubt the veracity of the memo since a civil servant has been indicted already for leaking it and the severity with which the government gagged the press, using the Official Secrets Act as its muzzle. One man, eccentric Conservative MP and editor of the Spectator, Boris Johnson has vowed to print the full memo regardless of the gag if someone sends it to him. (“Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for, and in an important respect we become as sick and as bad as our enemies,” Johnson wrote eloquently in the Daily Telegraph)

White House press spokesman Scott McClellan issued one of his typical nondenials in an e-mail to the Associated Press, writing: “We are not interested in dignifying something so outlandish and inconceivable with a response.”

Lest we forget on April 8, 2003, Al-Jazeera ’s office in Baghdad was bombed by US forces, killing a journalist, Tarek Ayoub, an event movingly described in the movie Control Room. This attack was despite the coordinates of the office being given to US forces, and despite huge markings being placed on the roof. [On the same day, a US tank slowly aimed and fired in broad daylight on the Palestine Hotel, killing two journalists.]

The April 8 attack was not the first or the only time the US attacked Al-Jazeera. In November 2002 the US destroyed Al-Jazeera’s office in Kabul, Afghanistan, with a missile.

In September 2003, the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council banned Al-Jazeera  [and the Al-Arabiyah station] for two weeks, and in February 2004 they were banned for a month. Later in 2004, the US/UN appointed Iyad Allawi banned Al-Jazeera  from working in Iraq.

According to Amnesty International, as they stated after the US bombed an Iraqi television station during its original attack, “the bombing of a television station, simply because it is being used for the purposes of propaganda, cannot be condoned. It is a civilian object, and thus protected under international humanitarian law.”

Of course, the Americans had had good target practice when they took out Serbian state TV back in April, 1999, an act that killed 16 and seriously injured another 16.

The White House message for journalists is simple: you’re either with us, or in our sights. Fortunately, there are signs that the mainstream is reactivating its long buried spine now that the White House is wounded with scandal after scandal. They should be looking after their own, rather than kowtowing to crony power.

 

 

Islands first casualties of warming

The first official evacuation caused by climate change was announced last week. For the 980 people — soon to become environmental refugees — who live on the six tiny U-shaped Carteret atolls in the Pacific, they will now have to seek new homes in Papua New Guinea as their islands disappear off the face of the earth thanks to global warming and rising water levels. By 2015 the islands — about the same size as 80 football pitches — will be completely submerged.

The Carterets will join many other Pacific islands that are on the point of being swallowed by the sea. “Much of Kiribati, the Marshalls and other low-lying island groups might only be visible through a glass-bottomed boat in decades to come,” the Guardian observed last week.

Two uninhabited Kiribati islands, Tebua Tarawa and Abanuea, disappeared underwater in 1999, according to the South Pacific regional environment programme.

In 2003 the government of Tuvalu said it would start evacuating its citizens in the face of climate change and rising sea levels, but plans have been tied up in red tape. We noted last year how Tuvalu, with a population of 11,000 in the Pacific, is best known for its sought after.tv domain name. Will the.tv be the islands’ postscript, we mused.

Sea levels are expected to rise by at least half a metre by the end of the century because of a melting of ice caps and because water expands when it warms. When and if the entire Greenland ice sheet melted in coming centuries sea levels would rise by 23 feet.

Many scientists say a 19.5-inch rise in sea levels could cause a 164-foot retreat of the coastline in low-lying areas.

Cartographers are set to be busy in the coming years, and are well advised to stock up on erasers.

• See this week’s regular Meteor-illogical Office report in Stuff We Like for alarming CO2 stats.

 

 

Water: worth its weight in gold

Chile is one of the most beautiful countries the little red email has ever visited. Yet, its pristine appearance has gradually been eroded by huge mining projects, the latest of which is one of the most controversial anywhere ever, destroying glaciers in order to go after gold. In the process — if Proyecto Pascua-Lama gets the go ahead — in the pursuit of highly prized gold, the miners will destroy something even more valuable — water. Even the gold crazed Spanish conquistadors were not this mad.

In the third region of Chile, there is a place called Valle de San Félix. This is a commune where there is no unemployment. It is inhabited by approximately 70,000 farmers who provide the region with the second most important source of wealth (as a region). This place is watered by two big rivers which get their water from glaciers in the close by mountain range. They give the purest water in all of Chile.

The problems started when someone discovered under these glaciers there existed billions of dollars worth of gold, silver and minerals.

In order to extract these metals, it will be necessary to destroy these glaciers (something that has never previously been done in the world) and to make two enormous holes the size of Chuquicamata, Chile’s largest mine which is located in the north of the country: one will be to extract the minerals, the other one to dump the waste (mining industries do not practice recycling).

And sure enough the rights to this development are owned by a North American firm by the name of Barrick, which has one Bush Senior as a shareholder.

The project has received government approval with work likely to start next year. The government has gone out of its way to censor the views of the local population who have managed to postpone the start of the mining for a number of years. The government even dismissed the negative opinions of its own environmental commission who warned against green lighting the glacier demolition. Activists presented the government with a petition containing 18,000 signatures to protest earlier this month. Environmental activists dumped ice blocks outside Barrick’s offices in Santiago in April. By June, as news of the project spread through Chile and over the Internet, the fledgling Anti-Pascua Lama Front drew more than 2,000 people to marches near the mine as well as in Santiago and in Europe.

The mine will unnecessarily contaminate the rivers and streams around it and all the profits will head straight out of the country, leaving the local population thirsty and out of pocket.

 

• Si usted puede leer a españoles, chasque aquí, para más información sobre este proyecto violentamente polémico.

 

 

Buddhists bow to the Baht

In the aftermath of Buy Nothing Day we came across this curious southeast Asian religo-consumer tale. The Thais have taken worshipping the dollar a tad literally with the Ministry of Culture announcing last week that monks will be installed in major department stores.

Under the “meet the monk in a quiet corner” project, shoppers can have a quiet chat with clergy in a bid to bring people closer to religion, officials said.

“People nowadays have no time to go to temples, only shopping malls. They can get closer to the religion if we provide the opportunity,” culture minister Uraiwan Thienthong was quoted as saying by local media.

Shoppers will be encouraged to participate in religious activities, and films or religious-themed comics will be available to attract younger participants.

Outspoken monk Phra Phayom Kalayano of Nonthaburi’s Wat Suan Kaew, on the outskirts of Bangkok, seconded the plan, saying he would encourage monks to go every day to attend to the masses at the malls.

Next up maybe Catholic countries could institute a similar concept whereby consumers could confess and say their Hail Marys for the Nike trainers they had just bought and the concomitant child labour.

 

 

Stuff we like

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.

 

Secrets of the CIA video
A hard-hitting documentary that looks at the history of the CIA, and doesn’t skimp on the nastier details.

 

Up the proverbial Gary Glitter
Though the little red email comes down firmly against the death penalty, we did chortle at this seasonal gag from the scurrilous crew at Popbitch:
The Vietnamese have gone all festive for Christmas… They’re hanging Glitter this year.

 

The Korean belief in fan deaths
Strangeness that make the little red email wonder which things we believe in are actually really dumb.

 

Aid George Bush’s Downfall
Watch him fall, throw him around the place. Go on, treat him rough, kick him when he’s down.

 

Music to soothe the savage beast
Bored at work? We always reccommend music to lull away the hours with a crafty, surrpeticious earphone. Radio Paradise is a mainstay of the revolution and is blessed with having no adverts. Another one that hove into view is Pandora — an interesting concept whereby you tap in the name of a favourite artist and a whole ‘radio station’ playlist is built around similar artists — pretty damn impressive.

 

TV channels developing a spine? Or have the neocons fallen foul of the media?
We told you a couple of weeks back how we expect Dick Cheney to exit stage left from the White House soon, now even CNN have crossed him out. CNN apologized early last week for a mysterious cross that appeared over Cheney’s face for all of a seventh of a second while he was trying to lambaste those attacking the administration’s handling of the War in Iraq. This week it was Dick Cheney, but it’s been an odd couple of months for the US media: an interview with Bill O’Reilly on the Plame leak was branded ‘the no-spine zone’ on NBC’s Today Show, and post-Katrina, Bush was hailed by Sky News as one of the worst disasters to hit the US.

 

Even whole communities are being branded now
That’s right! Welcome to the town of secretsanta.com, a town that holds true to those good old capitalist values such as selling your name to the highest bidder.

 

Telling on the Marines
And the Ministry of Defence wonders why UK militray recruitment figures are down! Not only are the prospects of going to war in Iraq about as enticing as shoving lead into your brain at high velocity, but also the inititiation tests for those signing up as shown in this News Of The World exclusive are outrtageously barbaric.

 

Neocon games
Yes it’s the neo-con monopoly game: fun for right-wing loons of all ages.

 

Aussie Army Adbusted
This week we thought we’d go old school. So we found a school advert, run in an Australian student paper, the adbust takes an army advert aimed at college students and turning it on it’s head.

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.

 

The Meteor-illogical Office report
This week, we ask: if the there’s-no-global-warming-honest,-no,-really,-we-might-be-funded-by-big-energy,-but-trust-us brigade are right, then how come CO2 levels are now at their highest for 650,000 years? Stock up on oxygen tanks and masks before there’s a rush.

 

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.