This week: • Bangs TCB • Dr Jim • Thailand •
• Tesno • Keep Sven Down • Spinoza • Stuff •

 

Business is business regardless of war

Sick all week with an exciting new variant of influenza, Canned Revolution’s Yahuda Bang brings little red email readers a special radio transcript from an alternate Philip K. Dick-like historical timeline.

 

…We interrupt our broadcast of Louis Armstrong and his Good Negro Orchestra to go to the White House to bring you a live announcement from President Franklin Dubya Roosevelt…

My Fellow Americans, yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

As the President of the United States of America, I was particularly shocked by these dastardly and cowardly attacks, especially in light of my long held and close personal relationship with many of the leading industrial and government figures of the Empire of Japan.

The dastardly attacks by Japanese forces on our forces in Hawaii have caused some in our great nation to question the wisdom in continuing to do business with Japanese corporations. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that my administration cancel recently agreed upon — and perfectly legal — business agreements that will hand over the day-to-day management of the ports of Seattle, San Francisco, and San Diego to the Hirohito Port Securities Corporation of Tokyo.

To these nabobs, naysayers and other enemies of the free market I say poppycock, stuff, and nonsense. The global economy is and always must be one built on laissez-faire principals in which there is no room for prejudices based on racial or national origin. We must not allow ourselves to fall into the vicious trap that some — both in the opposition and my own party — would have us believe; namely that just because a particular nation may have been involved in attacks upon the United States of America in the recent past, that corporations with direct ties to the government of that nation should not be entrusted with tasks vital to the security of this nation.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu. However, my close personal friend Admiral Tojo (or “Toe-jam,” as I am fond of calling him) assured me just last night that his dual position as commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy and CEO of Tojo Munitions Incorporated in no way represents any conflict of interest whatsoever! Thus, American sailors on Tojo Munitions-equipped warships can rest assured that they are fighting with arms of the highest quality, all purchased at fair and reasonable rates from the very enemy whom they are now sworn to defeat at all costs.

As Toe-jam himself assured me last night on a trunk call from the emperor’s residence in Tokyo, “Sure Frankie, top shelf arms. A-number one for you, my friend.”

Some anti-business forces in both parties will say that it unwise to trust the Japanese government, which has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace, with defense contracts vital to the defense of our nation.

To these killjoys, I say, 23-skiddo to that notion, big time. Business is business.

The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. The close and long-held personal ties of my family to high ranking figures within the very government now seeking to conqueror our nation in no way impedes my ability to lead the very nation that my overseas partners now seek to destroy.  

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire. In the same breath, I declare to my friends in Tojo Munitions and Hirohito Port Securities that all existing business contracts will not merely be honored but, in light of the upcoming horrific and no doubt protracted war between our two nations, expanded upon. 

My fellow Americans, it is likely that our declaration of war on Japan will trigger a similar declaration upon the United States by Japan’s ally Nazi Germany. To the forces of Nazism intent on crushing freedom under its soulless black jackboots, I say bring it on! And to the management of German firms I assure you that, as President of the United States of America, a state of war between our two nations will in no way hinder the development of perfectly legal cross-Atlantic business alliances. The anticipated selling of this very radio network, for example, to Goebbels Media Group of Berlin is, as far as I am concerned, a done deal.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. However, this does not in any way supersede my own personal business alliances, or those of my family or closest associates, with the very enemies who have sworn to destroy the nation which I now lead.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that these international corporations are rewarded for their patronage of me, personally — regardless of their national origins or allegiances in the current struggle. 

God bless us all. We have nothing to fear but fear of itself, or in my case, fear of not properly rewarding those with whose assistance I clawed my way to power in the first place.

Good Night.

 

• What no one seems to have picked up on, in this whole ‘We-don’t-want-A-rabs-owning-our-ports-sham’ is that it is most likely an elaborate smokescreen created by the Teamsters who fund large portions of Congress and have merely called in a return on their investment.

 

 

The Doctor Will See You Now

Pharmaceutical companies are well versed in many techniques to ensure that their products are well known to the doctors that have the choice to prescribe them. Acknowledging sex sells, the big pharmaceuticals are even employing cheerleaders to hawk their pills.

There is a great deal of competition between different brands of medication for any given condition. The initial decision to prescribe one over the other has far reaching effects for the companies that manufacture them. The patient is likely to stay on the medication for a long time, and all the while the profits keep ticking over. The little red email’s recently married personal physician Dr Jim brings us this review.

Doctors are frequently reticent to change medications that have been initiated by their colleagues, perhaps fearing criticism for doing so. Drug companies are very aware of this, and continue to put a great deal of time and effort into making sure that the initial prescription is “the right one”. All over the world, people are employed to market specific drugs to doctors. Their methods are simple but effective. Freebies ranging from branded pens or mugs, all the way to sponsored holidays are generously handed out at every opportunity, along with vast amounts of technical information about their products. There is a very strong expectation that this will influence prescribing practice. Doctors strenuously deny that this tactic actually changes the way they hand out drugs, but it would be worthless to the drug companies if it did not. It goes without saying that continually rising drug costs are not in the interests of anyone except the drug companies, and the most expensive or most heavily marketed drug may not be the best prescription for any given patient.

Recently federal crackdowns are starting to put pressure on companies to stop this practice. The drug industry has had no choice but to fall back on simple one-on-one human contact. In a crowded field of around 90,000 drug reps in the US alone, where individual doctors wield vast prescription-writing influence over patients’ medication, who better than cheerleaders to sway the hearts of the nation’s doctors, (still mostly men)? The old adage that sex sells is still very obviously true.

Cheerleaders’ success in the role has led to a recruiting pipeline that fuels the country’s pharmaceutical sales force. Cheering coaches throughout the US regularly get calls from the industry to keep tabs on those about to graduate. “They don’t ask what the major is,” one coach is quoted as saying. Proven cheerleading skills suffice. “Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm — they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want.”

Drug companies will of course deny that they are actively recruiting attractive people. “Obviously, people hired for the work have to be extroverts, a good conversationalist, a pleasant person to talk to; but that has nothing to do with looks, it’s the personality,” said Lamberto Andreotti, the president of worldwide pharmaceuticals for Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Given our previous dealings with the drug industry, the little red email is not really surprised to learn of these new developments. They have no conscience, and will stop at nothing to ensure that their products are at the forefront of the minds of the medical population. The late great Bill Hicks was right about many things, but I think he might have changed one of his routines if he were still with us.

“I’ll tell you the commercial they’d like to do if they could, and I guarantee if they could, they’d do this right here. Here’s the woman’s face-beautiful. Camera pulls back-naked breast. Camera pulls back, she’s totally naked… legs apart. And it just says ‘Take Prozac’. Now I don’t know the connection here… but goddamn if Prozac isn’t on my shopping list that week.”

 

 

Thailand’s brewing blood red revolution

The little red email flew into Manila Friday to find yet another botched coup in progress. Over in Thailand, our man in the paddyfields on the outskirts of Bangkok, Mangoman, reports on similar revolutionary feelings brewing in another steamy southeast Asian nation.

Prime minister and media mogul Thaksin Shinawatra — the Silvio Berlusconi of Asia — is under pressure, with a mass rally expected Sunday. On Friday, he dissolved parliament and called a snap election amid myriad tales of his family’s corruption.

Thailand’s own ‘revolution in waiting’ is coming. If the Czechs had their ‘velvet’ revolution and the Ukrainians had their ‘orange’, the Thais will have their traditional ‘blood red.’ Stay tuned.

As you know, things are heating up fast and getting pretty interesting down here with former generals piling on the anti-Thaksin bandwagon.

They won’t be happy until a couple of dozen Thais are shot dead ‘dying for liberty’ in the streets by Thai military. What a waste. Then the king will step in again and ask Thaksin to take a long 73 billion baht vacation overseas. This all will be a repeat deja vu scenario from 1992’s bloodletting which they claimed led to democracy in the kingdom. Meanwhile, the spineless local media who have been cheerleading this entire exercise in order to sell newspapers will congratulate themselves for the important role they are playing in bringing down yet another Thai political monster.

What a joke.

Can you imagine? They still call it democracy down here when it’s actually a Thai form of Balkan tribalism.

Or, to put it more politely, we are still suffering from the ‘birth pangs’ of real democracy.

Oh, say can you see, any freedom for me...Just pay me my fee, and let’s call it a deal.

The sad thing about Thaksin is that under his leadership the country was moving ahead of many of its neighbours, notably the Philippines where Gloria Arroyo really does deserve the boot. This Saaturday marked the 20h anniversary of People Power, the moment when dictator Ferdiand Marcos was kicked out. 20 years on, and a grim sense of resignation hangs in the air in the archipelago — a sad acknowledgement that those at the top are such an untouchable clique that nothing will change. A state of emergency has been called– de facto martial law — but weary Filipinos dismiss it. They’ve been here before.

 

 

Tesno!

Finally, opposition is uniting to say no to Britian’s dominant retail chain and all-round answer to Wal-Mart, Tesco — or put another ‘net way, Tesno.

More than 200 local groups have joined an online alliance to fight the dangerous spread of Tesco, which accounts for 27% of all groceries bought in the UK and one in eight pounds spent at the shops in Britain. Such dominace squeezes suppliers to breaking point and destroys town centres.

A website, Tescopoly, has been launched — tagline Every little hurts, which highlights the wrongdoings of the two billion pound turnover retail giant. It is an excellent resource and whether or not you hail from the UK we’d recommend you view it as most countries have their own equivalent of Tesco or Walmart and the site provides useful tips in countering the spread of such stores.

The alliance is calling for: A legally binding code of practice to ensure that all suppliers, throughout the supply chain at home and overseas, are treated fairly; an independent watchdog to ensure the grocery market is operating in the interests of consumers, farmers and small retailers; a block on any new take-overs by Tesco or other major supermarkets; support for local shops from local authorities and Government; measures to hold supermarkets accountable for internationally recognised workers’ rights throughout their supply chains.

Find out how you can help. Click here to find out how to combat Tesco’s planning applications, read the latest Friends of the Earth report on the perils of over powerful supermarkets here, lobby the government here and send the Tesco top dog a message here.

 

• The little red email has written in depth about Tesco in the past here and here.

 

 

Operation Keep Sven Down

The White House will shortly commence a major smear campaign on Norwegians. Yup, that’s right, those snow loving, peaceful (post Viking era) blond folk up north are likely to be on the receiving end of the White House’s ire shortly. Why, you ask? Are they harbouring Osama? Is their salmon secretly carrying anthrax? Nope. Like the Iraqis and the Iranians, the Norwegians are calling for another oil bourse — and worse still, one that trades in euros. As we mentioned earlier this year, Iran is actually in America’s sights because it plans to open this year a euro-trading oil bourse, running counter to the US dollar denominated bourses the Yanks run out of New York and London. When Saddam Hussein mentioned doing something similar in the summer of 2000, it didn’t take long to find some spurious WMD tale to get rid of him.

The departing Norwegian Bourse director Sven Arild Andersen believes that Norway already has the prerequisites for building up a Norwegian or Scandinavian energy bourse.
“This would in such case compete with the bourse in London. Why not have the ambition to outcompete the British petroleum bourse,” Sven Arild Andersen told Energy Bulletin at the end of last year.

“Here, you could trade crude oil, natural gas contracts and establish derivatives for these products.”

Andersen is of the opinion that Norwegian oil must be traded in Euros, which can be advantageous for international customers.

“We have performed market studies and both Russia, which is a large oil exporter, as well as the countries of the Middle East have large parts of their economies in Euros. They would be able to view such a bourse as a contribution to balancing their economies in a better manner than at present, where their products are traded solely in dollars,” Andersen said.

Watch out for Operation Keep Sven Down kicking into action any time now. The Bush administration will never allow any government to open an oil exchange that trades petroleum in euros. If that were to happen, hundreds of billions of dollars would come flooding back to the United States crushing the greenback and destroying the economy. This is why Bush and Co are planning to lead the nation to war against Iran. It is straightforward defence of the current global system and the continuing dominance of the reserve currency, the dollar.

As long as nations are forced to buy oil in dollars, the United States can continue its profligate spending with impunity. (The dollar now accounts for 68% of global currency reserves up from 51% just a decade ago). No one, including Norwegians, will get in the way of the greenback’s dominance.

 

 

Spinoza goes on the cheap

It is the fashion, in laissez-faire, to brag about what a smart consumer one is, and how one is never ripped off: but I would suggest that this language replicates the idea that the working stiff or stiffette gets a square deal in the first place. It is time we all admit with Allen Ginsberg that when we go to Chinatown we never get laid.

I will be the first to admit that as an international man of mystery, I am budget basement, I am Blue Light special, I am Wal Mart, I am every day Low Rent: but I can kid myself that I am getting the latest deal.

I was amused recently, bottom feeding on Orbitz for a flight between Hong Kong and Chicago, to note that the cheapest flight was dear old Continental airlines straight through Guam, Honolulu, Houston and left into the Toddling Town.

Guam, Honolulu, Houston and Chicago, as an air itinerary, causes me to Quail, for it sounds like WWII shuttle diplomacy. Never having been to or through Guam, I wonder have they removed the crashed Liberator bombers from the alternate runway yet?

Ordinary everyday phrases do a great deal of ideological work. One is you get what you pay for. On one level a tautology, this bit of folk wisdom is an attempt to reconcile the ordinary slob to man’s fate.

Of course, our desires contradict the folk wisdom. I don’t want what I pay for. I want a sweet deal, insider trading, a market failure and a private island with a helipad.

These laissez-faire, microeconomic saws do the work of theodicy and false reconciliation which was performed by dat old time religion in former times.

Now, on the one hand, self-denial and discipline are goods. On the other, there is no denying that (in Emily Dickinson words) the soul seeks pleasure first — the history of the American empire confirms this.

We wanted. We got. And now, many Americans await the Bad Fire which the Puritans gleefully assure them they are going to get for maxing out their credit cards in the fat years. This may explain the current religious hysteria in America. Assured by unprincipled pols that we would expand in all directions, we did.

Therefore I search the Web in vain for a first-class straight shot to sweet home Chicago. In former times it was permitted to express a collective desire for material redemption: when we were kids, for example, the adults would actually let us listen to Burl Ives sing about the birds, and the bees and the cigarette trees in the old American folk song The Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Economic rationality only seems to dictate what turns out to be witch hunts and the stocks: the modern transpacific flight in coach is actually the punishment of labour for daring, like Prometheus, to be as mobile as capital.

As to being free of envy, a cardinal sin alongside a far more celebrated greed, as to accepting my place in the scheme of things, you have no idea: if Buddha was right, if desire produces suffering, Americans have been self-crucified in fact. Understanding the concept of the Id is understanding it as a tool for understanding and functioning in the world as we find it.

The Id is never, ever reconciled. Reconciliation is performed by the ego and the superego. It is the ego that mutters, like Caliban in The Tempest, I must eat my dinner, while the superego rolls its eyes skyward and plays anthems on a hand-organ.

The Id remains, well, the Id. Class distinctions in transportation present it with a puzzle; I was traveling first class on a British train during a football yobbo riot that started with a punch-up in the bar car, and I’ll never forget the scowling face of the yobbo as he peered into the rather shabby first class car.

He mah bruthah by anothah mothah, for as my first, only and former Yi wife was overfond of pointing out, I was as much a need machine as was the Arsenal berserker, and even in something so trivial as searching for a deal on the Web I am looking not for my desserts but for something much better. Hamlet reminded that damned fool Polonius that if we were, like Shakespeare, Puritans, to use every man according to his desserts, not one of us would escape whipping.

Which is why laissez faire globalization is the lie made flesh, for it teaches the stars down to earth in which the virtuous, the smart shoppers, the shrewd employee (not ever to be confused with anyone who knows his trade) are saved while the rest of us assent to our fate in a social contract which it would take the Three Stooges to sign in the first place.

The reality is that if bird flu becomes human to human, African countries which get most of their protein from chicken will starve. Meaninglessly, without meaning: suffering suffers while at best we help but most of the time stare dully. Therefore instead of awaiting punishment, awaiting its forgiveness, we just have to admit the soul seeks pleasure first.

Once more unto the Web, dear friends, to continue my search for a deal.

 

 

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.

 

OMG ROFLMAO WTF?
Ever struggle with acronym overload? We do, which is why we recommend this site to resolve all those pesky letter abbreviations. Now, why haven’t they got TWOT™ in there yet…

 

Chickens come home to roost at SCMP
Hong Kong is a town chock full of hypercondriacs, where people will often go to the Accident & Emergency at the nearest hospital with a case of the sniffles. When SARS blew in to town, most of the populace took to wearing surgical facemasks, living in fear of a disease that was less deadly than pneumonia. So it comes as no great surprise that in the face of the latest health scare, H5N1, the headless chicken of panic is taking hold at the South China Morning Post, where journos were issued this email: Dear colleagues, Since the bird flu alert, we have put in place a system to track the places where our editorial colleagues have visited in the line of duty. However, we cannot track trips that you make during leave or weekends. With dead birds dropping out of the sky at an increasing rate, I would like to ask you all to send in a note whenever you’ve been out of Hong Kong so we have a record to help us plan any emergency strategies. I know it sound like Big Brother but this is a sensible precaution that I hope you will all support. Something brief along the lines of: Noel, sports, Feb 24-26, Bali. will be much appreciated.

 

Be careful what you wish for over at Amazon
Type in an edgy type of novel such as Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegurt and you’ll have the FBI on your ass. We’d be screwed; are you? Find out here.

 

Video 9/11 revisited - were explosives used?
The freefall, straight down collapse of both towers raises the question: were explosives used? Particularly suspicious in this respect was the collapse of building 7. 9/11 Revisited looks at footage, eye witness statements and analyses them.

 

You reap what you sow
A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his “wife”, after he was caught having sex with the animal, reports the BBC.

 

Video War Corporatism
Made by Simon Robson aka Knife Party and friend, Barry McNamara, War Corporatism: The New Fascism is an animated look at the dogs of War Corporatism unleashed upon the world by Bush and the PNAC as stated in the September 2000 document Rebuilding America’s Defenses.

 

Video PBS Frontline looks at Iraq’s insurgents
The excellent Frontline programme answers the question that no mainstream media outlet has even thought to ask: who are the Iraqi insurgents really? The Insurgency takes a look.

 

Game: Evolution
See if you can screw up the world better that the real thing: play the BBC’s Evolution game.

 

Audio Hotel Anthrax
The story of the rather bizarre marriage between the Pentagon and the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the US Army’s biological weapons program.

 

Video Conspiracies: Iraq
Simon Reeve investigates the real reasons for the war in Iraq, in this programme made for Sky Television (even a stopped watch tells the right time twice a day). Starting with oil and the contracts set up between Saddam and non-American/British companies. The latter part of the film looks at the petro-dollar cycle and how OPEC members can threaten US power by using the euro to trade oil — could Iran be next?

 

Media Lens takes a new swipe at the UK media
The people at media lens are continuing their good work, holding the media to account for the bias that people don’t think about when reporting on Iraq.

 

Be corrupted absolutely
by Absolute Power. Enjoy episodes one, two, three, four, five and six of series two here.

 

Rebranding for Chevron
It might not technically be an adbust, but the little red email will never be able to look at the Chevron logo any other way from now on. So we thought we’d share this gem.

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 then how come southern England is experiencing the worst winter drought since the 1920s, expected to worsen further in the spring and summer? Hosepipe bans are becoming a permanent feature in this part of the world.