This week: • Sperm • Young • Bizarro Bangs •
• Dirty Copper • Daechuri • Stuff •

 

Sex, lies and hazardous chemicals

“What business does a chemical company have between your bedroom sheets?” Greenpeace asked this week.

Across the industrialised world sperm counts have fallen as much as 50 percent in the last 50 years. (The ‘endangered sperm’, anyone?) Infertility rates have more than doubled in industrialised countries since the 1960s, while testicular cancer has become increasingly common. Reproductive system birth defects are increasing in baby boys. The exact cause of these changes is unknown but one of the suspects is our exposure to the increasing amount of hazardous chemicals in our daily lives. So great is our exposure that unborn children can be exposed to over 100 manmade industrial chemicals while still in the womb. Many of these substances have the potential to harm the development of an infant’s reproductive system.

Greenpeace’s report, ‘Fragile: Our reproductive health and chemical exposure’, shows for the first time a comprehensive picture of an increase in reproductive health disorders, mirroring the rising presence in our lives of man-made chemicals.

At least in Europe there is an attempt underway to address growing concerns about chemical pollution and the effects of hazardous chemicals on public health and the environment. A new law (REACH) is being drafted but has come under unprecedented, concerted attack from the chemical industry.

The chemical industry has led a massive lobby effort in Brussels to make sure the new law will do more to protect their short-term profit rather than provide long term solutions to chemical contamination of our environment, our homes and our bodies. Some of the ‘highlights’ of the chemicals industry’s efforts to trash REACH include complete denial, exaggerating potential costs, scaremongering about job losses, going all out to stall the regulation.

One of the main backers of the lobby effort is German chemical giant BASF.
While industry has argued that extra protection from hazardous chemicals will cost too much, the income of BASF rose 50 percent to a huge US$3.7 billion.

In 2005, over 235 politicians received money from BASF in Germany alone.
Greenpeace has been pressuring European politicians to stand up for the interests of the people who actual elected them rather than the chemical industry. Now the environmental group is exposing the companies who lobby against health and the environment.

• Write to the European Parliament to protest here and tell them to support those that elected them rather than industrialists putting cash in their back pocket.

 

 

Bright Young thing

First, an admission: We are huge fans of this guy so any effort at objectivity goes out the window when it comes to this story about Neil Young and his latest album, Living With War. In the aftermath of 9/11, old Shakey — his film directing alter ego — got hoodwinked and in a pretty lamentable album called “Are You passionate?” He included a song called “Let’s Roll” about the folk who allegedly brought Flight 92 down in a Pennsylvania field. Now though he roars back in what is the strongest Bush blasting album yet released which you can listen to by clicking here. This album has spread quickly on the net helped by peace groups such as True Majority. Never before has any album moved so quickly from concept to completion to pre-release controversy, to the ears of millions of listeners. Young hits his target with the kind of pinpoint accuracy the Pentagon could only dream about.

“Living With War” begins with Neil Young singing that we “won’t need no shadow men running the government, won’t need no stinking war.” Angry, emotional words, but this is the most joyous and beautiful angry album you’ll hear this year.

When released the album will come wrapped in a plain brown wrapper, but it bleeds red, white and blue. “When the night falls, I pray for peace…. I never bow to the thought police… I’m living with war in my heart and my mind,” sings Young.

Another song titled “Let’s Impeach the President for Lying” goes like this:

“Let’s impeach the president for lying and misleading our country into war. Abusing all the power that we gave him… The White House shills who hide behind closed doors that bend the facts to fit with their news stories of why we had to send our men to war… Let’s impeach the president for spying on citizens inside their own homes…. Tapping our computers and telephones…. What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees? Would New Orleans been safer that way? ... Or was someone just not home that day.”

This rousing, upbeat song is backed by a hundred voice choir, as is the entire album, and is filled with audio clips of President Bush’s ‘flip flops’ and false and misleading claims, snipped from news conferences and speeches. This song is a show tune anthem. The entire album is a pro-American, pro-family, pro-troops challenge to citizens in the United States, Neil’s adopted homeland, to get it together and make change happen.

On Restless Consumer Neil targets the American addiction to oil and materialism, relating them to the war and to the greater failure to attack problems of poverty: “How do you pay for war and leave us dying? ... Don’t need no Madison Avenue War. .... Don’t need no more lies.”

Shock and Awe is one the best rock anthems Neil has ever penned or played:

“Back in the days of shock and awe…. history was a cruel judge of overconfidence … Back in the days of mission accomplished our chief was landing on the deck. The sun was setting on the golden photo op. Thousands of bodies in the ground brought home in boxes to a trumpet sound. No one sees them coming home that way…. We had a chance to change our mind, but somehow wisdom was hard to find…”

Looking for a Leader calls out for people to arise “to reunite the red white and blue … clean up the corruption and make the country strong. Someone walks among us and I hope he hears the call; maybe it’s a woman or a black man after all. Maybe it’s Obama, but he thinks he’s too young. Maybe it’s Colin Powell, to right what he’s done wrong. ... America is beautiful but she has an ugly side. We’re looking for a leader…”

Has Neil Young set the torch paper for other artists to rail against the administration? We hope so.

 

 

Bangs goes Bizarro on politics

Following a freak accident involving a linear particle accelerator, some radioactive isotopes, a stack of old DC Comics, and his fevered mind, little red email correspondent Yahuda Bangs spent the previous week on the Bizarro World, a planet at once very similar to and radically different from our own planet earth.

On the Bizarro Planet, the end of the cold war left China the dominant figure in a largely unipolar political landscape, and in their world it was Dubya who was heaped with indignity on his visit to Bizarro Beijing. 

Bangs was able to meet up with his Bizarro world counterpart Bizarro Bangs (who, oddly enough, is a correspondent for Bizarro Reuters) and returns to our world with his counterpart’s recent story concerning the meeting of Bizarro world leaders.

Beijing, Bizarro People’s Republic of China, May 2, 2006:  Despite strict control by Bizarro China secret service, Bizarro America President George W. Bush still not meet friendly reception in first China meeting with Bizarro China President Hu Jintao.

Outside great hall of Bizarro Chinese people am many protesters busy demonstrating against Bizarro American policy, both domestic and foreign.

“Bizarro America am have poor a human rights record,” say one protester “why President Hu am not bring up issue of Bizarro America’s continued discrimination against black minority?”  Protester then yell “Free Bizarro Mumia!” before peddling away on bicycle with sticker reading ‘No Bizarro blood for oil!’

Another demonstrator am point to fact that, despite hard rhetoric from central committee just half year ago, Bizarro China government still ‘a little too friendly with Bizarro America regime.’

‘Every time Bizarro leaders want drum up support for another five-year campaign, them say ‘oppose Bizarro America hegemony’ or ‘death to the enemies of the workers’. But only campaign-speak. After, always back into bed with Bizarro America for cheap shoe imports!”

Other Bizarro Chinese protest America’s 200 year occupation of Bizarro American Southwest and subjugation of Bizarro native peoples. 

Popular Bizarro Shanghai rap group Animal Boys (which am rocket onto charts with pop hit Fight Against Rightist Elements in Party in 1980’s) lead singer taunted visiting Bizarro president Bush for many minute.

“Why you oppress Bizarro Navajo, Cheyenne and Sioux people?” Yell rapper, who, since public conversion to Bizarro Native American mysticism, am become Bizarro China’s leading spokesmen for aboriginal causes.

While he spoke, other demonstrators am holding posters with images of Bizarro Sitting Bull and other Bizarro native leaders driven from homes by what Bizarro China’s trendy Tribal Freedom Movement call “Bizarro Occupation Force.”

But many protester say anger am against non-democratic government of Bizarro America, not against Bizarro Americans themselves.

“Me am like Bizarro Americans,” say one woman. “There am Bizarro Kentucky Fried Chicken on block, I eat there lots.” Woman also say she learn much about Bizarro American culture from movie Bizarro Brokeback Mountain, story of taboo heterosexual love among cowboys set in Bizarro American outback, surprise smash hit among Bizarro Chinese moviegoers.

Inside of the Great Hall of Bizarro People, discussions am cordial, but President Hu am have many disagreement with Bizarro counterpart.  One disagreement am centered on small Island of Bizarro Cuba, just 90 miles off Bizarro American mainland.

“Bizarro Cuban people am have right for self-determination,” Say Hu in a statement which drew many applause, “Bizarro Cuba am have different form of government different than Bizarro America, but peaceful relations am critical!”

Bizarro President Hu not say whether Bizarro China am defend friend Bizarro Cuba if much larger neighbor Bizarro America attack;  however, Hu affirm friendship with Bizarro Cuban people and say peaceful solution am in best interest for Bizarro Caribbean.  (Bizarro Cuba am break away from Bizarro America dominance in 1959 and am under blockade since. Bizarro America am never renounce claims to force to resolve issue, and am still have military base on the island despite Bizarro world opinion.)

Bizarro President Hu also cite other issues am of concern to Bizarro Chinese people, like Bizarro America’s role in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Still, Bizarro President Hu say visit am “great success.”  Bizarro President Hu say that he am look forward to visiting Bizarro America in future, and that Bizarro Chinese values am have much to offer Bizarro American people.”

“With the passage of time,” Say Bizarro President Hu “We believe your Bizarro country am become more open to embrace our Bizarro country’s values.”

 

 

Ascendant Copper plays dirty

Not the first time the little red email turns its attention to questionable practices by Canadian mining firms: previously we have called out Toronto Ventures Incorporated rather dodgy record in the Philippines .

A new campaign launched last week by Friends of the Earth Canada and MiningWatch Canada is focused on informing investors and potential investors in Vancouver-based Ascendant Copper, listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, of the true depth of community resistance and irregularities with respect to the company’s Junin project in northwest Ecuador.

The “No Means No to Ascendant Copper in Ecuador” campaign began one day prior to Ascendant’s annual general meeting on May 4 in Vancouver.

The two organisations have released a new documentary film on the subject, “The Curse of Copper”. Also released is official correspondence related to the community’s effort to enforce local environmental laws.

“The Intag cloud forest is blessed with some of the most important biodiversity on the planet. So properly, the communities of the Intag took the important democratic step of proclaiming their area an ecological county,” observed Beatrice Olivastri, chief executive officer of Friends of the Earth-Canada.

“To enforce this ordinance, they are insisting that all mining and prospecting arrangements located in the Intag be cancelled and are proceeding with legal steps to accomplish this. It is the height of arrogance to think that Ascendant, a Canadian junior mining company, believes it can ignore or can bypass this significant environmental law. What part of this does Ascendant not understand?”

The information Ascendant provides for the public and shareholders on its website is inconsistent with the official correspondence made public today, issued by elected local representatives of the Intag to the Ecuadorian Minister of Energy and Mining, reaffirming their rejection of the Junin mining project and highlighting grave irregularities in Ascendant’s development process.

“Ascendant shareholders and anyone concerned with proper disclosure and fair play in the market should pay close attention to what Ascendant management is telling them and what is really going on,” said MiningWatch Canada spokesperson Jamie Kneen.

Carlos Zorrilla, Executive Director of DECOIN, Ecuador, added “The Canadian government is about to embark on a series of Roundtable hearings on the need to regulate the activities of Canadian mining companies overseas and here is a perfect example of this need given that alleged violations by Ascendant Copper have already been documented in complaints to the Ontario Securities Commission and the Canadian government.”

The Intag region of Cotacachi County in the province of Imbabura is part of both the Choco and Ecuadorian Andes biodiversity hotspots. Cloud forests like that of Intagare among the most endangered ecosystems down to less than 10 percent of their original extent, mostly destroyed in the past 40 years and also contain exceptionally large numbers of plant and animal species found nowhere else in the world.

 

• Learn more about the beautiful region of Intag here and find out nine good reasons why you should not invest in Ascendant Copper here.

 

 

Daechuri Siempre

A follow-up to a previous story, this comes from comrades in Korea and is also available on www.saveptfarmers.org. Sadly the village has fallen to the 12,000 riot police, 1,500 plain-clothes hired ’workers’ or ex-military strike breakers, and 3,000 Korean soldiers the government brought in to squash the dissenting village.

For Min Byeong Dae and all my family

I first arrived in Daechuri out of curiosity. The man I was dating at the time had a friend who was working against the Humphreys base expansion who he wanted to visit before leaving on a trip. When I arrived that day, I was overwhelmed no only by the beauty of the fields and serenity of the village, but also by the murals that literally covered every available square meter of wall space. The murals were of peace, of people living in harmony with the Earth. They were messages of hope and community. The Daechuri primary school had been painted with the portraits of the villagers. Every window sang with the precious smiles of the elderly, of the children, of the hard labouring farmers who had built this village, literally with the sweat of their backs, after they had been forcibly evicted from their village by Camp Humphreys in 1953. Children were running around the yard, with balls and bikes. Two boys were sharing one pair of skates — each wore one on his outside foot while pushing with the inside feet in tandem and grasping hands.

When we entered the Tea House, we were greeted warmly and invited to sit with residents and solidarity activists, and I began to hear the stories of the village and the land woven through the casual conversation. The Tea House, like so many structures in Daechuri, had been abandoned by their previous occupants and had been taken by the village in common and turned into community services. One house was a free guest house for overnight visitors, another was turned into a children’s’ play house where the residents and solidarity activists held art, educational and cultural activities for the children. The Tea House had become a warm, dry place to wait for the hourly bus that goes into Pyeongtaek and a place for the village to sit around the large wooden central table and laugh and hold community events. We even held free, community English lessons there a few times.

I kept coming back, in large part because of the incredible warmth and community. The villagers had been organizing their own affairs, independently of the local government for years, possibly as long as the village has existed. They built their own roads; they donated land for the primary school. Together they had reclaimed land from the sea when they were evicted for the construction of the Camp Humphreys air strip.

Over time I got to know the villagers. Most of our exchanges began as challenges. “Who are you? What do you want here?” because of my Caucasian face, they immediately felt threatened. And you would, too. I have personally witnessed US Army MPs yelling and harassing the villagers through the fence line that separates the village from the base. If I had seen a white person in the village, I would have been frightened. As soon as I explained to them that I supported their desire to live in their homes, on their lands in peace, they would embrace me. It was surreal at times, to have an ancient Korean farmer confront and then embrace me. Over time some of us became close. When spring came, the whole community and their visitors would work together to prepare the spring planting. We would talk and laugh, the old women would talk about their old husbands, and we would all join together in joyful laughter. The small children played around us. The joy of that hard labour, done for ones self and ones friends and family, in voluntary community is the most precious joy and overwhelming beauty that I believe exists in this world.

After the devastation and destruction of the primary school on May 4th, I returned to the village to make sure my friends were well.

When I came around the bend in the road and could see the smouldering rubble, the trees uprooted and on their sides, the children’s’ play equipment twisted, burnt, distorted and scattered across the yard, I could neither speak nor move. And the villagers had erected a great, white flag bearing the word “Peace” over the centre of the rubble. I wept so bitterly. I can not express the sorrow or the rage.

All this beauty in ruins. Why? For a military base. A foreign military base. An American military base. My supposed country’s military base. In my ears rang the words of my own primary school teachers, “Liberty and Justice for All.” So was this “liberty”? Was this “justice”? If that rubble is America’s — or Korea’s “liberty and justice” then I want no part in either.

I crossed the ruined school yard and tried to find my friends, the villagers who I had come to consider my own family, my own grandmothers and grandfathers. Many were gathered atop the hill just in front of the Catholic church, which overlooks a wide expanse of the fields. The fields which were now swarming with troops, police and Concertina wire.

When I found some of my friends, we embraced and wept. We sat together there to sing and to try to soothe our sorrow with the strength of our human bonds and community. And then the police came to arrest us. They were defeated, at that time.

Towards the end of a very long and tense day, over the wide fields, we could see hundreds — No! Was it thousands? — of people marching towards us bearing colourful flags. What was happening? Again my grandmothers and I embraced and wept. We sat together again on the same grassy hill, this time accompanied by a beautiful array of people, and Mr. Min Byeong Dae found us and sat down.

Mr. Min collapsed to the ground, overwhelmed. He talked and talked, of farming, of his heart, of the long-past eviction, of the battle the day before. He wept and wept, and I could do nothing but cradle this tiny man, withered with advanced age, in my arms and cry with him. He and all of the villagers are my true, blood family. They are all my family.

This land is the land of the People. It is not a land for guns and bombs, or for elite power, or for someone’s profit. It is a land for peace, for people to live in community, with each other and with the Earth.

And then they declared martial law. And some 10,000 troops came. And today I am again separated from my loved ones. But the struggle continues. Through all time. Across all lands. Across all border. To all People.

La lucha sigue. Siempre.

 

 

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.

 

Video The Hidden Massacre
The Hidden Massacre is a RAI documentary showing US attack on Falluja, and includes the use of white phosphorous and chemical weapons there.

 

Wall of lies
Bob Fisk ponders the real meaning of the Israeli elections in his latest artice, Another brick in the wall: that the new wall will steal more arab land in the West Bank, which will ultimately mean less security for all.

 

It’s about the oil, stupid
CommonDreams.org review the new book by Kevin Philips, senior strategist for Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign, and now vehement Republican critic which argues that Iraq was all about the oil.

 

Ollie spins a tangled web and gets stuck
Professional liar Oliver North is back at work, with this party-line-toeing piece on military.com. Ollie offers his take on the Vietnamese and East European press and media, claiming they had “straightforward reports on the formation of a democratic coalition government in Iraq — and offered factual accounts of the joint visit to Baghdad by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.” he then bemoaned the US press’ far more anti-american stance.
We were stunned: how the hell does Oliver North knows what they’re writing about or talking about on TV at all? Then we twigged: he’s talking about the english-language news, which going on Hong Kong’s example means Reuters, AFP and AP reports and other recycled stories.
So we had a google and turned up Vietnam News (no foreign news), Nhan Dan (no foreign news),  The Vietnam Economic Times (no foreign news — it does have an External economic relations page); and finally, assuming Ollie speaks a bit of French, Le Courrier du Vietnam, which actually has an international section, each item of which has “AFP/VNA/CVN” at the bottom. It would appear Agence France Press is the source of all the international stuff, news agencies are generally not famed for their “editorial critiques and caveats”.
So Ollie’s basic argument boils down to this: Reuters AFP and AP are more fact-based and have very little editorial critiques. Insightful, not!
The irony of the article deepens though: hearing a frothy neo con like Oliver North proclaim that the communist press is more factual than the US press is already comedy gold, but this is compounded by the fact that Ollie North’s day job is... drumroll… working in the US media.
“Coming back to Washington is a reminder of just how anti-American the American media elites really have become.” damning words indeed, from syndicated columnist, host of the show War Stories with Oliver North, and a regular commentator on Hannity and Colmes, both on the Fox News Channel. Something of an Epimenides paradox — where Epimenides the Cretan states: “All Cretans are liars.”

 

Yet another retired general say Iraq is a mistake
This time it’s Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and professor at Yale University and the director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. Writing in Foreign Policy under the headline “Cut and Run? You Bet”, Odom has harsh words to say about Iraq: “invading Iraq was not in the interests of the United States. It was in the interests of Iran and al Qaeda.”

 

Video Colbert, the Corps and the crickets
Those uncomfortable moments in full, as Stephen Colbert savages Bush at the annual dinner of the sycophantic recyclers of administration press releases that is the White House press corps. Colbert’s skit and the uncomfortable silences it produced where the little red email was screeching with laughter stand as a ten-foot tall day-glo flourescent orange coloured example of how cowed the White House press corp is. The only person in the room who has the guts to tell anywhere near the truth is from Comedy Central. Quote of the event: “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” Although the backwash comment was priceless too. All in all the little red email loved the sound of crickets chirping in the evening… they sound like… victory.

 

Spooks rumble themselves?
Ouch! An Oregon attorney may have the first concrete proof of Bush’s domestic spying operation, writes AlterNet. Which means the illegal program’s days might be numbered. How did he get the proof? The FBI gave it to him by mistake.

 

New CIA boss unsure of 4th
For the non-American, the fourth amendment is: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Unless of course your the new head of the CIA, General Hayden, who skim reads it as just “unreasonable searches and seizures”.

 

Countdown to invasion
Standby for Operation Iran Liberation™. Iran is set to launch its Oil Bourse, with Euros as the currency of choice. The last person to pull that stunt was Saddam Hussein.

 

Timewaster A new way to put more stock in the headlines
See how well you can predict the news, with the odd but fun trendio.com. Sign up for a introductory $10,000 to start your portfolio. What can you buy? Shares in words, whose values go up or down based on how many times the word is quoted in 3,000 online media sources.

 

Adbust Conning Conoco
The wonderfully named California Department of Corrections bring us this adbust of oil company Conoco-Phillips. We present the original first followed by the bust. Ouch!

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 the glaciers in Tibet are receding so fast that they will be halved in size in ten years?