This week: • TWOT™ • Taiwan • CongressManTrain • Darfur •
• iDoD • Oil for Votes • UCCTVK • Bunnyman • Stuff •

 

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the little red email recently. This has been due to our hosting company
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www.littleredemail.com.

 

No Muslim, no crime

When is a story, not a story? Seemingly when it does not involve Arabs. Here at Canned Revolution we have always made a point of telling you, our dear readers, the stories the Machine doesn’t want you to know about. Last Thursday it was revealed a far right wing British National Party (BNP) election candidate had been accused of possessing the largest amount of chemical explosives of its type ever found in Britain. His house was raided by the cops and the 22 chemical components recovered are the largest haul ever found at a private house in the UK.

The home of another man charged with similar offences contained a rocket launcher and a nuclear biological suit as well as BNP literature and chemicals.

Big story, right? The biggest UK terrorists you never heard of. If these terrorist bomb-makers hadn’t been white and had been Muslim, the headlines would have been endless, the media frenzy huge. As it is, the man accused of possessing the largest amount of chemical explosives of its type ever found in the UK only hit the headlines in local rags the Burnley Citizen, the Lancashire Telegraph, and an African news service the Revolution regularly trawls called Mathaba.

If your name ain’t Mohammed, you’re a nobody in The War On Terror™ (TWOT™).

 

 

Red or dead

The timing was remarkable. No sooner had a comrade at the Revolution asked for a red ribbon from the anti-Chen Shui Bian protesters in Taipei the other day, than the taxi we were in purely by chance screeched round a street corner to see a whole street bathed in red — we’d happened upon Protest Central. “Back the truck up,” we yelled. Into the throng of red-wearing Taiwanese we rushed and were granted an interview.

As many as 500,000 turned out on September 15th to protest the corrupt nature of Chen Shui Bian and his family. Wearing red as symbol of anger, the iconic image for these protests has been a thumbs down sign. Protesting against Asian politicians on the grounds of corruption is, to paraphrase one Francis Ford Coppola, akin to handing out speeding tickets at a Formula One race.

Anyway, a spokesman for the anti-Chen protesters stressed that this was an anti-corruption movement, not a political one per se. “We are asking for Chen to step down as he has acknowledged he has receipts for state funds,” the spokesperson said. Shih Ming-the, the leader of the campaign was a close ally of Chen — indeed when Shih was a political convict during the ‘80s and ‘90s Chen was actually his lawyer. Shih is trying to engineer a less fractious society. “Currently Taiwan is torn between blues (KMT) and Greens (Chen’s DPP) and Shih Ming-the is keen to get away from this volatile situation,” we were told.

As the protests have moved round the country to engender nationwide support for the big one 10/10 — the 10th of October — when organizers hope hundreds of thousands will march on the presidential residence, it has been noticeable that as the protests dragged on and on, the enthusiasm and numbers has waned.

The little red email would never go so far as to support the KMT — the founding party of Taiwan that ruled uninterrupted by elections for most of the time since 1949 — yet we do agree with their sucking up to mainland China as the more sane way to go compared to Chen’s sabre rattling which could lead to mass pulverisation by an angry Beijing with the stretched US military unable and frankly unwilling to come to Taiwan’s aid.

Sadly the red protesters are doomed for failure. Remember Chen, obstinate politician that he is, was happy to even take a bullet to ensure he’d win an election, that is the level of commitment this man will go to retain power.

Anyway, we lucked out leaving Taiwan with red ribbons, red hats, red stickers in that journalistic whore fashion that Canned Revolution excels at. Since then yellow scarves in Bangkok superceded the red ribbons as the military rolled in for a coup and now, running out of colours, protesters in the US, including actor Sean Penn, have taken to wearing orange in a movement to oust Bush. Protests are always colourful, sadly not always effective.

• Read an extract from Yahuda Bangs on past Taiwan protests here.

 

 

On the same page?

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
William Butler Yeats on politicians after World War I

The sight of Republicans squirming and desperately trying to spin their way out of the PR disaster that is the Mark Foley sex scandal is on the face of it hilarious and uplifting. With three weeks to mid-term elections the Democrats have taken such a lead in the polls that the White House dare not tamper with the Diebold electronic voting machines as it would be too obvious a fix.

And yes it is hilarious especially given how much the Republicans spent on investigating Bill Clinton’s own misappropriate sex and now the party who always likes to take the moral high ground has been busted for having a kiddie fiddler as their moral guide. Foley, lest we forget, the Republican congressman from Florida whose sexually explicit e-mail correspondence with congressional pages was uncovered last week, was the self-made advocate of legislation to protect children from sexual predators.

However, as Dave Lindorff, co-author of The Case for Impeachment, notes “how sad it would be if it is this, and the cover-up of his crimes by the Republican leadership, that undoes the Bush administration, when its real crimes are of such grandeur and seriousness?

“How are we to compare seeking to screw a 16-year old with totally screwing the Constitution? How are we to compare secret email solicitations with a secret plot to attack a nation of 62 million that poses no immediate threat to the US?

“How are we to compare the Republican Party’s cover-up of a member’s efforts to corrupt young pages with the same party’s conspiracy to cover up the Bush administration’s ineptness and possible foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks, and of the campaign of lies and misinformation it used to drum up hysteria for an illegal and totally unwarranted invasion of Iraq?

“And finally, how to we to compare the public revulsion over Foley’s indiscretions with the widespread acceptance or, or even support for abuse of American captives in the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, and the so-called “War” on Terror, which has included rape, sodomy, sexual humiliation and torture of all kinds, and murder.”

Life inside the biosphere that is the US is so desperately distorted. Are we on the same page, huh?

 

 

UN hubris killing thousands in Darfur

When George Clooney berated leaders at the United Nations telling them a disaster on the scale of Rwanda or Bosnia was unfolding “on your watch” in Darfur, Sudan, naturally his pleas for help received a lot of air time so Tony and George had to make some kind of ‘heartfelt’ gesture. They talk of the need to send UN troops there in the full knowledge that a) Khartoum won’t sanction that and b) no US or UK troops will ever be deployed there. Currently, demoralized underpaid African Union troops are on the ground who are essentially useless and whose mandate expires in December. These troops need urgent UN resources fast.

Amnesty International has kicked off a campaign to get UN soldiers to Darfur sharpish.

The government of Sudan has recently launched a major military offensive, the scale of which Darfur has not witnessed for over a year. The Darfur Peace Agreement of May 2006 was supposed to herald a new era of peace — it hasn’t.

“In violation of international humanitarian law principles, attacks by the government make little or no distinction between combatants and civilians. Civilians are also often specifically targeted on the basis of their association with the non-signatory groups. The armed opposition groups sometimes fail to distinguish themselves from the civilian population. Attacks such as the aerial bombardment of civilians generally demonstrate disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force, and often intentionally target civilians. The increased insecurity has resulted in the total withdrawal of humanitarian aid in some areas. If the fighting spreads, the entire Darfur aid operation is under threat,” Amnesty warns.

Conflict in this lawless region could spread further along the Chadian border and potentially into the Central African Republic.

“Darfur stands at the brink of chaos. To avert disaster, the government of Sudan must allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur and the African Union peacekeeping force (African Union Mission in Sudan, AMIS) must be bolstered until a handover to the UN is possible. Regular and irregular forces under Sudanese government control must stop indiscriminate attacks, as well as deliberate attacks, on civilians — both are crimes under international law.

“Amnesty International is calling on members of the UN Security Council and the African Union to develop a common united position to secure the consent of Sudan to the deployment of UN peacekeepers, and to bolster AMIS in the interim.”

In the meantime, Bush, Blair et al are happy to let the 21st century’s version of Auschwitz happen on their watch — their consciences already sullied from Iraq.

 

 

The new iDoD: music to die for

Funnily enough a career in the US military these days is not exactly a popular choice. The opportunity to enjoy exotic destinations in sandy places far, far away all expenses paid just doesn’t seem to be riffing with the youth of today. The Pentagon is getting desperate to fill its ranks. They even are offering three free iTunes music downloads if you sign up to be contacted by the Army National Guard — we are not kidding, click here for proof. Three whole free tunes for signing up, that’s one hell of an enticement. We wonder if you get bonus tracks for killing more A-rabs at the army of one album a day.

The Pentagon has clocked on to one other virtual site where its demographic tends to hang out, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled MySpace.com.

In February this year, the Marine Corps launched its MySpace profile. A thoroughly predictable page, it boasts a streaming video that might best be termed boot-camp-on-speed — complete with clips of a stereotypical drill instructor barking out commands and a bullet-cam speeding toward a target on the rifle range. The site even offers downloadable desktop wallpapers, mainly Marine Corps “anchor and globe” emblems or photos of World War II vintage Marines. Conspicuously, there isn’t a modern image in sight in any way evocative of the war in Iraq (deployment pressure from which recently caused the Corps to announce that it would force reservists to return involuntarily to duty due to a lack of volunteers).

In August, not to be left out, the Air Force launched its own page which it then pulled a month later. In November the Army will launch its own profile.

Even while meeting its current recruiting goals this year, the military is feeling the heat and pulling out all the stops to attract potential recruits and fill the ranks. Like their sponsorships of the Professional Bull Riders, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys’ Association, and NASCAR, their use of specially engineered video games, and snazzy television commercials, the Pentagon’s new focus on finding “friends” on social-networking sites is a symptom of how hard-pressed its officials really are. Increasingly desperate to recruit and retain bodies, the military continues to invade new media territory, from text-messaging to Pentagon podcasting.

“The militarization of MySpace,” says Nick Turse, a doctoral candidate at the Center for the History & Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University, “is just the latest Pentagon effort to occupy a new realm that will put the military product in front of ever more young eyes. The role of ‘friendly’ MySpace.com, taking a desperate military’s money to target their hordes of young friends searching for popularity online, is troubling. But it’s also typical of the business-side of the military-corporate complex, because it’s the civilian firms — producing everything from weapons to websites — that allow the military to function as it does.”

However, all this virtual recruiting might not be so needed as the army has lowered its standards to allow just about anybody to sign up helping swell the ranks.

In the latter half of the Vietnam War, the US military started to crumble from within and American troops began scrawling “UUUU” on their helmet liners — an abbreviation that stood for “the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.”

History is repeating itself.

In 2004, the Pentagon published a “Moral Waiver Study,” whose seemingly benign goal was “to better define relationships between pre-Service behaviors and subsequent Service success.” That turned out to mean opening more recruitment doors to potential enlistees with criminal records.

In February, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was “a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the Army terms ‘serious criminal misconduct’ in their background” — a category that included “aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats.” From 2004 to 2005, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent.

One beneficiary of the Army’s new moral-waiver policies gained a certain prominence this summer. After Steven Green, who served in the 101st Airborne Division, was charged in a rape and quadruple murder in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, it was disclosed that he had been “a high-school dropout from a broken home who enlisted to get some direction in his life, yet was sent home early because of an anti-social personality disorder.” Green had enlisted with a moral waiver for at least two drug- or alcohol-related offenses. He committed a third alcohol-related offense just before enlistment, which led to jail time.

Law enforcement officials report that the military is now “allowing more applicants with gang tattoos,” the Chicago Sun-Times reports, “because they are under the gun to keep enlistment up.” They also note that “gang activity maybe rising among soldiers.” The paper was provided with “photos of military buildings and equipment in Iraq that were vandalized with graffiti of gangs based in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities.”

In July, a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, found that because of pressing manpower concerns, “large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists” are now serving in the military. “Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don’t remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members,” said Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator quoted in the report.

The New York Times noted that the neo-Nazi magazine Resistance is actually recruiting for the US military, urging “skinheads to join the Army and insist on being assigned to light infantry units.” As the magazine explained, “The coming race war and the ethnic cleansing to follow will be very much an infantryman’s war ... It will be house-to-house ... until your town or city is cleared and the alien races are driven into the countryside where they can be hunted down and ‘cleansed.’”

Little wonder that Aryan Nation graffiti is now apparently competing for space with American inner-city gang graffiti in Iraq. Still, it gives Halliburton something else to clean up.

 

 

Oil on the grassy knoll

Huh? Oil prices slide as an election nears. Hmmmmm. In mid-May with gasoline prices at $2.95 a gallon and rising, 15 percent of Americans listed high fuel prices as their top concern, outstripping terrorism. By early September, though, with the nationwide average at $2.73 a gallon and falling, only 5 percent of those polled said that the price of gas was the single most important issue, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Since then, the price of gasoline has fallen even further, now down about 70 cents a gallon from its peak in August — with only a month before the elections. Nice timing.

As grassy knollers it would be remiss of the little red email not to inform you of the possible ways and means that Bushie is using to temporarily lower the price of oil.

First, as Craig Unger brilliantly demonstrated in his book House of Bush, House of Saud these two families are rather close so the Sauds are maybe doing the Bushes a favour once again, and will be repaid after the election with some “terror” event to ramp prices back up again.

Then there’s the theory known as the Goldman Effect whereby Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr has allegedly asked former partners at Goldman Sachs to dump gasoline futures before the November elections to help the GOP.

Others, meanwhile, believe that the Bush administration is selling oil from the 687.7 million barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And finally there’s the suspicion that the big oil companies, who let’s face it owe George a favour, are lowering prices to assist the Republicans.

One or all four of these theories is definitely behind the sudden drop in oil prices. Still, we’re guessing that Bush and Rove had factored in Mark Foley when they hatched this gas trick.

 

 

Middlesborough: Orwell’s 1984 in 2006

Behind Winston’s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard… How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork…

“Smith!” screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. “6079 Smith, W! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! That’s better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.”
— George Orwell’s 1984

Already carpeted with some 4.5 million CCTVs the police state of the United Kingdom just got a bit more scary. In the dull city of Middlesborough in the northeast of England, where an ex-cop called Ray Mallon aka RoboCop is mayor, the CCTVs now talk to the citizens. Watch this report from NBC on these talking CCTVs that admonish the locals and then say a little prayer to the British, their civil liberties have been totally washed away. Mallon is confident these talking cameras will be all over the UK in two years and across the US in five years. News even reaches us that bins now contain RFID tags in certain areas. We reported last year on how lampposts in London were being installed with microphones inserted so the state can hear everybody. There are some people though who have had enough, or maybe more specifically are tired of forking out shedloads on speeding fines. Many cameras that identify speeding cars have been vandalised of late. Now let’s take on the CCTVs before the Machine has totally won.

 

• In an earlier story we provide ways to avoid being spied upon by the state. Find out how to stop the Machine watching you.

 

 

Freaky frankenbunnies

Remember Frank, that giant rabbit thing in the brilliant movie called Donnie Darko? Course you do. He’s here if you’ve forgotten. And he might just be coming back beyond the celluloid as real flesh and blood sometime soon.

Scientists in the UK are to create human-rabbit hybrid: “The ‘chimeric’ embryos... would be 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent rabbit,” says this report.

The freaky ‘frankenbunny’ will be made by fusing together human cells with a rabbit egg which could one day help cure diseases such as  Alzheimer’s or spinal cord injury.

It’ll be a while yet before anyone actually rears a Donnie Darko Frank. Authroties in the UK have said the embryos will be allowed to grow for only 14 days, at which point they will be cells smaller than a pinhead.

 

 

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.

 

Google doesn’t just oblige the Chinese government with self-censorship
Alex Jones’ Terror Storm documentary’s viewing stats are apparently being altered downwards by the "do no evil” company. Help drive the figures back up: watch the movie.

 

Audio Halloween special
With Halloween around the corner, here’s Karl Rove’s ditty Monster Mash with his October surprise. Great lyrics

 

Caption Contest
We’d love to hear some of your captions for this picture of George W and Congressman Mark Foley. Send your caption to: info@cannedrevolution.com.

 

Video Are You a Manchurian Candidate?
Dr Nick Begich, son of Senator Nick Begich Sr, says you could be in this alarming video.

 

Video Are We Changing Planet Earth?
Uncle Dave Attenborough weighs in on global warming in the first of two documentaries looking at climate change. After looking at the evidence, his answer is that we are indeed to blame.

 

Getting your message across
TheRevolutionist provides a look at “the complete deception that is continually sold to the population.” It also has some handy tips on using MySpace to “go viral”.

 

Greenpeace: Apples not green enough
Greenpeace are after Apple to remove the worst toxic chemicals from all their products and production lines and offer and promote free "take-back” for all their products everywhere they are sold. And good on them. Its not like Apples are cheap.

 

And the truth shall set you free
Here’s a new site devoted to the search for the truth behind 9/11.

 

Video The Panama Deception
“The Panama Deception” Part I shows how the U.S. attacked Panama and killed 3 or 4 thousand people in an invasion that the rest of the world was against (Sound familiar?). It won the Academy Award for best documentary.

 

Video Oil, Smoke and Mirrors
Oil, Smoke and Mirrors is an independent 50 minute documentary on peak oil, 9/11 and the war on terror.

 

State of Denial
State Of Denial, Bob Woodward’s latest opus in which he finds his spine again having previously written slavish praise of Bush — he now comes out and tells 60 Minutes what secrets the White House is keeping from the public over Iraq.

 

Chomsky
Five centuries after the European conquests, Latin America is reasserting its independence, writes Noam Chomsky in the International Herald Tribune. Read on here.

 

The US will be Beijing’s b*tch soon
It’s 2056. After a coup in Saudi Arabia, the new government announces it is cutting off supplies of its dwindling stock of oil to the United States. The White House responds by sending in the troops, but is forced to withdraw after Beijing says it will only continue shoring up the dollar if the military action is called off.
Marking the 100th anniversary of Suez, the Americans have no choice but to comply. Fanciful? Ludicrous? Larry Elliott, economics editor of the Guardian explains how China and India will be holding the whip hand soon in this excellent article.

 

Sign of the times
From illegal to advised in under a hundred years. Isn’t progress wonderful?

 

 

MediaLens on ITN, BBC, New Statesman, Blair’s speech on TWOT™
MediaLens weighs in on Blair’s recent speech to the Labour party conference and how it was covered by the UK media. First they torment the TV news, and then they go for the New Statesman.

 

British army says Iran not arming militias
Now here’s a turn up for the books from a Washington Post article:
“I suspect there’s nothing out there,” the commander, Lt. Col. David Labouchere, said last month, speaking at an overnight camp near the border. “And I intend to prove it.”
“I have not myself seen any evidence — and I don’t think any evidence exists — of government-supported or instigated” armed support on Iran’s part in Iraq, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in an interview in Baghdad in late August.

 

Dahr Jamail on Iraq
Dahr has been continuing his fine work of reporting the stupidity in Iraq, with two recent articles highlighting how morale among the US forces is ebbing. One focuses on a US soldier’s suicide, one of the uncounted casualties. The other article looks at how the National Guard and their families are faring as the occupation grinds on.

 

US backing Sunni Militias
Now here’s a surprise if your one of the few people who still believe TWOT™ rhetoric: the US are setting up Sunni Militias in a bid to worsen the sectarian violence in Iraq. What next? The SAS running around dressed like Iraqis to bomb somewhere?! Oh wait, that already happened…

 

Another scary man running in 2008
Some of our keener readers may remember our pointing out that Christopher Walken was running in 2008. Now we present an even scarier candidate: General Zod.

 

Video Comedy Central’s take on Foley
The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have had a field day with Foleygate. Day one started out with the Daily Show laying straight into the sex scandal, with a nice reminder of the repeal of habeus corpus in the US. See it in two parts: part one here and part two here. The next day there was not let up for Foley. The day after that they were still milking it for all it was worth. Stephen Colbert was far more conciliatory, and admitted that the whole affair was actually his fault. The next day, however he admitted that a combination of the pages and alcohol were probably to blame. He followed by putting down many of the current administration’s gaffes to the demon drink.

 

Video The question mark & British Terrour Attack
In our trawl for Foley Daily Show excerpts we uncovered two hilarious clips, a look at the use of the question mark in US TV news, and that foiled UK terror plot and why it means that Britain is not a real democracy.

 

The Squirrels are restless
We have long known the threat that squirrels, especially the ones on crack, pose to society. Hell, as a public warning service we even made a tshirt designed to show the dangers that squirrels pose to society. Last year we reported on who these vermin were marauding through Russia. Now, we hear reports these monsters are rampaging through California. Be warned, squirells will f*ck you up.

 

Adbusted Advertising may be harmful to your health
The Philippine government is always reactive, never proactive. So when the largest typhoon to hit Manila for 11 years swooped in a fortnight ago and hundreds of oversized, ugly billboards fell down the next few days were spent tut tutting the explosion of mass advertising that blights the city’s streets. We could have told them ages ago — advertising is bad for your health.

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 three quarters of the UK’s barn owl population have been wiped out due to weird weather?