It had been a surprisingly quiet week, give or take the odd protest outside the capital here or there. And then a series of bombs ripped through the country bringing bloodshed and chaos. The total numbers of dead are still not confirmed, though upwards of 60 is the latest estimate. The indiscriminate nature of the bombs horrified all the nation’s citizens.

Transport was paralyzed, many left stranded. Yet the reaction by the nation’s citizens was one of stoicism — they had expected it. People tried to get back to their daily routines as quick as possible, putting this outrage behind them. Identifying some of the blown up corpses was near on impossible, so thorough was the carnage. The leader of the nation remained obstinate, claiming his citizens would not be brought down by terror.

Just another week in Iraq, where suicide bombs in Baghdad and on the border in Syria claimed yet more lives though because of their nationality they will remain underreported, and lacking a global two minute’s silence in the all pervading glare of London’s sad bombing attack. “London bombing victims remembered” reads the BBC headline, as indeed they should be, but might we suggest the subhead should read: “Baghdad bombing victims conveniently forgotten”.

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

— from “September 1, 1939” by WH Auden

It should have happened 26 years ago when enraged Iranians stormed the US embassy and held its occupants hostage for 444 days. It should have happened when US bases in the Middle East were attacked in the 1980s, when the USS Cole was sunk and most pertinently when 19 Arabs hijacked planes and flew them into an inferno on September 11, 2001 ushering the dangerous times of the War on Terror™ (TWOT™). Yet, every time Arabs hit out at the US, not once did the politicians of the day sit back and ponder the question: Why don’t they like us? Instead, they met fire with unremitting firepower. One sad indiscriminate death leads to another, even on separate continents as London witnessed last week, bringing to an abrupt end the shortest Olympic celebrations on record. Tony Blair has blood on his hands for failing to enter into dialogue with the Arab world, choosing RAF Tornadoes and depleted uranium over diplomacy.

“If you bomb our cities,” Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, “we will bomb yours,” noted the ever wise Robert Fisk of the Independent in the wake of last week’s bombs.

In Iraq the CIA has publicly stated that the enormous local death toll is likely to breed a more dangerous breeding ground for international terrorism than Afghanistan — the CIA training ground for bin Laden in the 1980s struggle against the crumbling USSR. Sadly, you reap what you sow. London was hit with the blowback its elected leader had committed to by sending his troops where they should never have gone.

What can be done to reduce man’s motivation to self-immolate for the sake of deadly protest: give the Palestinians a viable, genuine state for one thing, something anathema to the Israelis, who as our next story shows, are central to ensuring the US remains anti-Arab; get the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq and ensure no troops ever step foot in Saudi Arabia gain; cut the horsesh*t rhetoric like “you’re either with us or against us” that makes a mockery of the complex nature of the Middle East.

 

• It might sound corny but one of the best ways to understand the plight we, the West, find ourselves in when dealing with the Middle East is via a free online computer game. Click here to experiment with defeating terrorism through military strikes.

The electricity surge that was initially reported had changed after a suspiciously long hour or so into an explosion and then into a string of bombs across London. Accessing the overloaded BBC website for streaming news was impossible. We turned to the ‘fair and balanced’ Fox News website for moving pictures. The breathless reporter told viewers how the Israelis had had prior warning of these attacks. Hold on, we thought. How come? And somewhere in the deepest recesses of out collective memory we recalled a similar incident prior to the airplanes slamming into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon back in 2001. The Israelis, it would seem tend to be the harbingers of the War on Terror™ (TWOT™).

The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister (and former PM) Benjamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address an economic summit, so reads a report from an Israeli newswire that you can see here.

The fellas over at Stratfor.com clearly know intelligence we are not supposed to know: “Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned ‘minutes before’ the first attack, unconfirmed rumours in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks ‘a couple of days’ previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.”

Mr Blair may well have more blood on his hands than we had originally thought as the blasts went off.

This news that the Israelis had prior warning and indeed may well have told British authorities about the planned attack two days ahead of the carnage were quickly buried. The BBC stated stressed were no prior warnings given. The Associated Press went so far as to change its wording of articles from stating Netanyahu was warned ‘minutes before’ the first blast to Netanyahu was warned ‘after’ the first blast.

Who stands to gain from such a bombing? There are similarities for sure with the Madrid bombings last year which were clearly the work of an inside intelligence operation. Though quickly labelled an Al Qaeda cell, the perpetrators in Madrid were linked to the Spanish security service. They just happened to kill themselves just as this news came to light, a move that is strangely echoed in this latest outrage, thus dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s on yet another closely scripted TWOT™ episode

Now, with these London bombs, watch how quickly the national ID card system will whisk through parliament all of a sudden with nary a peep of protest.

MI5 have been caught involved in IRA bombings multiple times over, could this latest tragedy have the hallmarks of British intelligence to it? Whoever planted these bombs had to have access to the inner workings of the London transport system. The deaths of those on the Tube and the bus will be used to limit freedoms further in the heavily policed British state.

To bring you back to 9/11 it has been well documented that a few employees at Odigo (an Israeli instant messaging company that was used as a covert listening post with offices near the World Trade Center) did receive a two hour pre-warning, of sorts, on nine eleven, as noted by the corporate media.

Literally as the Twin Towers crashed to Earth some of the very first people to be arrested were Israelis, who turned out to be Mossad agents. The arrested spies worked for Urban Moving Systems, whose Israeli owner promptly fled the nation. This was part of a larger sting that led to the largest uncovering of a spy ring inside the US ever — all Israeli agents.

Days after 9/11 two Mossad agents carrying bombs were arrested at the Mexican Congress carrying guns and explosives, something that was underreported.

Suggesting something very fishy was going on the US Government classified the evidence that links all the arrested Israeli spies to 9-11. Like the bin Laden extended family the US Government hurried to get the arrested Israelis out of the country as quickly as possible, in one case releasing and deporting one Israeli even though he failed his polygraph test.

There may actualy be a stitch-up job going on in this latest bombing and the Israelis are in it up to their eyeballs.

 

• In other underreported news from last Thursday’s bombing episode. A New Zealander working for Reuters in London says two colleagues witnessed the unconfirmed shooting by police of two apparent suicide bombers outside the HSBC tower at Canary Wharf in London.

The New Zealander, who did not want to be named, said the killing of the two men wearing bombs happened at 10.30am on Thursday.

Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper reported an unconfirmed incident of police shooting a bomber outside the HSBC tower.

Canadian Brendan Spinks, who works on the 18th floor of the tower, said he saw a “massive rush of policemen” outside the building after London was rocked by the bombings.

The great mobile roll-back campaign is alive and well in The Netherlands where citizens are taking it upon themselves to ensure their cities are not radiation dens. There is a great backlash towards the introduction of 3G in the nation as concern mounts about the possible negative effects of the electromagnetic radiation the network, its masts and the handsets cause.

Mobile phones are the modern day cigarette — people whip them out whenever they are worried, alone or bored — a crutch for whenever they need a fix basically. And the health troubles, like cigarettes, are not immediately noticeable but are definitely there.

Now the big telecom corporations are getting threatening at the Dutch’s intransigence towards 3G. The leading newspaper ‘De Telegraaf’ writes that KPN (one of the five providers of mobile telephone services in The Netherlands) has threatened to start lawsuits against municipalities. KPN warns the local authorities have to keep the rules of the ‘antenna covenant’ between government, municipalities and providers. “We want to roll out, we have to roll out and we will roll out the 3G (UMTS) network”, says Stephen Hufton of KPN.

’De Telegraaf’ announces that the cities of Nijmegen, Apeldoorn, Haarlemmermeer, Zwolle and Lelystad have suspended all building licenses for masts of five metres and higher. According to the website www.stopumts.nl the same goes for the cities of Eindhoven, Haaksbergen, Barendrecht and Etten-Leur. Three housing corporations in Zwolle and the second largest nationwide housing corporation ’De Alliantie’ are not accepting new masts on top of their buildings.

The Monitoring Network Health and Environment reports a growing flood of complaints from victims of radiofrequency radiation. Anneke Bouwman: “The complaints are not only caused by concerns. These people have serious health problems. They notice that the complaints diminish or disappear if they are in an environment with less radiofrequency radiation. Back in their homes, the complaints start again.” Typical complaints include sleep disturbances, headaches, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, cognitive problems, emotional flames, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, tingling, blurry sight, loss of focus, and many more.

For more on the effects of having a mobile clasped to your ear constantly, click here and here.

Mount Everest is the latest victim of global warming with certain scientists even claiming the world’s tallest mountain is shrinking. Sir Edmund Hillary has joined environmental campaigners and lawyers in urging the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, who met in Durban, South Africa yesterday (TUESDAY), to place Mount Everest on the UN endangered list because of the impacts of climate change.

The World Heritage Convention legally requires all countries to pass the Everest (Sagarmatha) National Park intact to future generations. Campaigners argue that this will not happen unless urgent action is taken to stop the melting of the Himalayas and to prevent many glacial lakes from bursting, threatening the lives of thousands of people and destroying a unique and irreplaceable environment.

The campaign is organised by Pro Public (Friends of the Earth Nepal) and the Climate Justice Programme, and is supported by Friends of the Earth International and notable individuals including Sir David Attenborough, Sir Chris Bonington, and Reinhold Messner.

Sir Edmund Hillary, who was the first man to summit Everest, with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, said: “The warming of the environment of the Himalayas has increased noticeably over the last 50 years.  This has caused several and severe floods from glacial lakes and much disruption to the environment and local people.

“I agree the practical idea of remedial action of draining the lakes before they get to a dangerous condition is the only way to stop disasters. Therefore I support the petition to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee lodged by Pro Public and others, requesting the inclusion of Sagarmatha National Park in the list of World Heritage in Danger as a result of climate change and for protective measures and action”.

Meanwhile, Chinese scientists will make public their findings on the latest measurements of Everest, having dispatched a team earlier this year to measure the peak.

The snow-covered mountain top is believed to have declined by 1.3 metres to 8,848 metres, according to state media reports.

Officials are worried the snow and ice at the top are melting because of global climate change. Nepalese Sherpas have reported seeing signs of receding snowlines as temperatures warmed.

Just as alarming as the fact that the mountain is possibly shrinking is the swelling garbage dump that it is becoming. Those climbing in the region just dump their litter, making Everest the world’s highest litter bin.

Last month Sir Chris Bonington, 70, who conquered the peak in 1975, called on visitors to Nepal to observe a ban on glass or plastic bottles and instead take cans, which are recycled locally into cooking utensils.

He said: “Stunning natural beauty is in danger of being ruined by litter.”

“Local officials alone cannot control this issue. The recycling initiatives are the solution but will only be a true success if visitors bring drinks cans rather than bottles.

“This summer I would urge all people to consider the significance of their surroundings and the breath-taking beauty of the environment and help to eradicate this problem by observing the local ban.”

In total 379,027 people visited the area in 2004.

Mountaineer and green activist Ken Noguchi said: “A hundred crushed cans weigh just 1kg, making their journey off the mountain easier.” In 2001 Noguchi led a multi-national team of climbers who aimed to clean two to three tonnes of litter off the mountain.

Ever imagined what it would be like to ascend to the summit of Everest, but can’t quite tear yourself away from your sofa? Fear not: click here for a sensational 360 degree view from the top of the shrinking top of the world’s tallest mountain.

Editor’s note: the following story is extraordinarily parochial, dealing with a scandal from our very own little Fantasy Island: apologies.

Last Wednesday, close contacts of the little red email were the victims of a police sting, taken down for possession with intent to supply of around 400 grams of hash. The names of the three accused are Alan, Linda and Suzie. They are out on bail and a court hearing is scheduled for August 17.

It emerges that an addict had been tapped up by the cops to buy illicit substances from anyone on the island. Having failed at one destination, the man struck black over at Alan and Linda’s on Tuesday night. The following afternoon, in a moment of lights, camera, you’re arrested, the cops headed up the path to Alan and Linda’s, arrested them plus someone else who was washing the dishes, under the glare of the especially invited Hong Kong media and whisked them off for interviews on Hong Kong Island.

A top lawyer has been sourced to help them out of the pickle they find themselves in. The man in question was able to get a couple, who were caught for a large growing operation in Sai Kung, off scot-free around 15 months ago. However, costs are likely to be high — in excess of HK$20,000. We have produced a special non-Canned Revolution shirt, priced at just HK$75 with all profits going directly to the lawyer to help out. The ‘Free the Lamma 3’ shirt can be viewed over here at these feisty Lamma forums. On the back of the shirts are the words ‘Does anybody else smell bacon’ so we think their longevity is good what with the December gathering of the World Trade Organisation in Hong Kong.

The shirts are available from Nick the Book or alternatively contact info@cannedrevolution.com. They come in three different colours — bud green, jail orange or Christmas red. Many thanks for any donations. A&L are almost as iconic as the island’s three chimney stacks — let’s ensure they continue to be able to smoke freely!

• One curious thing about the case unfolding against ‘the Lamma 3’ is the prices quoted by the cops. The weight of the substances found on the premises does not tally at all with the prices les cochons are telling the press their bust would have been worth on the street. The little red email, for one reason or another, knows what street prices are and they certainly do not tally with what the police are saying, roughly 50% more in fact. We looked into this and it appears a regular trait of these busts — the weight and the prices never matching. Far be it from us to espouse a conspiracy theory here, but it certainly looks like the HKPD is either skimming money off the top, incredibly incompetent or inflating prices in order to make their case stronger and the headlines bigger.

Bringing a whole literal slant to why cops are often referred to as pigs we note with some amusement that fat policemen are being given desk jobs in Romania because they are damaging the image of the force.

Police chiefs say they will take them off patrol duties if they don’t shape up and lose their excess pounds.

Head of Romanian Police Dan Fatuloiu said: “Fat policemen should not be out on the streets but behind desks or doing something else.

“How can fatties run after thieves? Officers who put on too much weight will be doing something else than patrolling the streets.”

This news follows on from last month’s porcine roundup which included Thailand’s finest’s battle against the bulge.

Overweight traffic cops in the Thai capital have been ordered into a two-week “Fight for 40 inches” fitness programme to trim their bulging waistlines

Around 85 porky policemen signed up for the slimming plan after an annual check-up of 4,150 officers suggested nearly half of Bangkok’s finest had high cholesterol levels.

“For the traffic police, it’s not just a matter of being fat. They also create a bad image in front of the public who should have faith in their abilities,” said Police Colonel Yodchai Poosanti of city’s Traffic Control and Command Center.

Officers on the fitness programme, which combines workouts and yoga with a strict low-carb diet, are expected to reduce their waistlines to below 40 inches (102 cm). Successful participants will be given a new slim-line uniform.

“I’m fat, very fat, so I’ve got to diet. It’s hard to put on my clothes because they are so tight,” Sergeant Major Nitat Saisaard, who has a 46 inch waistline and weighs in at almost 130 kg (287 lb), told Reuters before waddling off to apprehend criminals.

Donuts and bacon are off the menu clearly amongst the boys in blue in Romania and Thailand for the time being.

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.

 

Iraq death toll way up
According to an inquiry by the Government of Puerto Rico into the total number of Puerto Rican war casualties, the full death toll of coalition troops is too high for the coalition to be winning. So says this article in the Coastal Post. Which may be why there’s talk of halving the number of UK and US troops.

 

Pork Pie Factory Flash
Eric Blumrich has made a new flash celebrating the West’s largest Pork Pie Manufacturing Company: the Bush Administration.

 

White House embedded Rove-ing reporter
Well it looks like Karl is in hot water. But it’s not just him: Scott McClellan is also finding the kitchen a little hot: I think they may be ganging up on him, and to be honest it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.
Greg Palast has joined the melee, but as usual he comes in from leftfield with an angle that the press has hitherto avoided. He writes:
‘The only thing more evil, small-minded and treasonous than the Bush Administration’s jailing Judith Miller for a crime the Bush Administration committed, is Judith Miller covering up her Bush Administration “source.”
Judy, Karl Rove ain’t no “source.” A confidential source — and I’ve worked with many — is an insider ready to put himself on the line to blow the whistle on an official lie or hidden danger. I would protect a source’s name with my life and fortune as would any journalist who’s not a craven jerk (the Managing Editor of Time Magazine comes to mind).’ Read on here.

 

Dining Chez G8
Has Mr H become uncharitable in his old age? Or is it true that the G8 won’t stop poverty in Africa? Ever critical of globalism, John Pilger argues that not only will the G8 summit promise not help, it might even make things worse.

 

Bush: “Time I grew up”
W said it was time he grew up after he ran into a policeman with his mountain bike. Bush, left with cuts to an arm and hand, showed off grazed fingers to reporters and grinned: “It goes to show I should act my age.”
W went on: “When you ride a mountain bike, sometimes you fall; otherwise you are not riding hard. The pavement was slick and the bike came off underneath me.”
His concern, he said, was for the Strathclyde officer adding: “I talked to him. He is doing fine.”
In other hard-riding incidents, in May last year Mr Bush crashed his bike on his ranch. In 2002, he famously fainted and toppled off his sofa in the White House when he choked on a pretzel and in June 2003, he fell off a Segway — the famously self-balancing scooter — at his not-so-cowboy family estate in Maine.

 

Russian in drag busted taking exam for sister
A young Russian man who dressed in women’s clothes to sit an exam for his sister was caught after his oversize bust gave him away, Interfax news agency reports.
The youth’s “unusually prominent female features” and heavy make-up drew security guards’ attention and they stopped him from sitting the paper, said Yasen Zasursky, dean of Moscow State University’s journalism faculty.
Suspecting the student was trying to smuggle in crib notes, the staff instead found a false bosom.
The man was refused entry and the woman he was impersonating was struck off the entrants’ list.

 

Iraq troop reduction
Well, we suppose that if you use the Bush administration’s doublethink (or should that be W-think?), what with only caring about liberating the place and major combat operations having been over for more than two years, and the only enemies left being Baathist remnants and a few foreign fighters, a withdrawl definitely seems in order, eh? First one to drag up the old “bring it on” quote, or Fozzie Blair’s “we won’t abandon you” with the appropriate chicken noises wins a Caribbean holiday...

 

Not booked your summer holiday yet? Try the Caribbean!
With the clamour from all sides to close down “the Gulag of our times” AKA Guantanamo Bay, the White House has launched a massive PR campaign on what a jolly nice place Gitmo is. Vice-President Dick Cheney claimed in a TV interview that inmates are well fed, well treated and are “living in the tropics”. His comments, made on the State Department’s very own CNN, echo those of fellow Republican Jeff Sessions who recently said that Gitmo’s location “would make a magnificent resort”. We wait with baited breath to see if Mr, Mrs and Ms Cheney will holiday there anytime soon.
Even more surreally, a publishing company is about to release The Gitmo Cookbook, which includes such unlikely tasty creations as baked Tandouri chicken breast, mustard-dill baked fish, Lyonnaise rice, and fish amandine. Given their insensitive use of the Koran down at the Gulag-by-the-sea, we were surprised to see pork chop was not on the menu.
California congressman Duncan Hunter, who has sampled the “gourmet fare” on offer claims that he has “never eaten better”, further lies which the wondrous American comedian Al Franken takes to task on his Air America radio show site.

 

Turn your machines off
Watching television is by its very nature a seriously lazy pastime. However, we beseech you after you’ve finished watching your latest soap opera or whatever to get off your butt and actually switch the television off rather than clicking it to standby with your remote. Why? Read on. In Britain alone, a million tons of greenhouse gas is released into the atmosphere each year as a result of appliances such as TVs, dishwashers and VCRs being left on standby, according to the Independent.
Dishwashers left “on” at the end of the cycle, for example, use 70% of the power used when they are running. Washing machines use a little under 20% of their normal electricity requirement.
Over a year, the power wasted in this way would be enough to keep all Britain’s street lights lit for four years. Yet according to the Energy Saving Trust, half of Britons are not even aware that household power contributes to global warming.

 

If you bump into Trent Mongan: keep walking
If by chance you happen to find yourself standing next door to a fella who hails from the Land of Oz called Trent Mongan, walk away FAST. The army medic was not only at the scene of the 2002 Bali bombings, but also was in the King’s Cross area last Thursday as the bombs kicked off once again. “I got blown up in Bali and it’s just that all over again,” an emotional Mongan told Australia’s the Age newspaper. “I walked out of the Sari Club 10 minutes before the blast. I went through all of that, nowhere is safe any more. Everywhere you go these days gets blown up by terrorists. What is this world coming to?”

 

Patron of lost items goes missing
The patron of lost and stolen items has gone missing from a church after a raid by thieves, who also took supermarket vouchers for school computer equipment.
The 2ft high, 100 year old statue of St Anthony of Padua disappeared from All Souls church in Park Road, Peterborough.
The wooden figure had been in the Roman Catholic Church since it was founded in the late 19th century.
David Jennings, parish priest, said: “We have good pictures of the raiders from CCTV cameras in the church.”
The large Italian and Indian communities who use the church both revere the Portuguese saint who was also a preacher and theologian in the 12th century.
He is the patron saint of many causes, but is best known for helping people recover lost or stolen items.
Jennings said: “Our people are mortified at the loss because it has been with the church for so long and is part of our heritage.
“All Souls and Peterborough Cathedral are usually the only churches open in the city throughout the day so we are going to have to increase security.
“The insurance will cover the loss of the statue but we hope the police may be able to trace the thieves and perhaps we can get it back.”

 

Calling all adbusters
A little bit of Madchester advertising gone wild this week, from Indymedia UK:

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.

 

War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds may be more than just a rubbish remake of the HG Wells 1898 classic book. As well as being straight multiplex fodder it’s the first nail in the coffin of George Bush’s presidency, according to this piece in the Guardian.

 

If Google can do this much - what can the CIA do?
We were sent a link this week showing us one of Google’s latest tricks — its map services — an incredible tool that allows you to zero in on the minutest of details from the sky. On seeing our houses on Fantasy Island, having zoomed in from a distant map of greater China, the first question that sprang to mind was: “If that’s free, then what the hell have the CIA got trained on all of us?”

 

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.