CCTV now with loudspeakers

This is unbelievable - Britain’s first ‘talking’ CCTV cameras have arrived, well, CCTV cameras with loudspeakers next to them. The system allows control room operators who spot any illegal behavior to send out a verbal warning to the offender. Middlesbrough has fitted loudspeakers on seven of its 158 cameras in an experiment already being hailed as a success.

Middlesbrough has fitted loudspeakers on seven of its 158 cameras in an experiment already being hailed as a success.

Control room operators say phrases such as: 'Warning - you are being monitored by CCTV - Warning - you are in an alcohol-free zone, please refrain from drinking'; and Warning - your behaviour is being monitored by CCTV. It is being recorded and the police are attending.'

'It would appear that the offenders are the only ones who find the audio cameras intrusive. The vast majority of people welcome these cameras. 'Put it this way, we never have requests to remove them.' People are comfortable with this? Also, unbelievable. People submit to this like sheep and this is extremely unhealthy for people in this town to not be debating and questioning this.

“Orwell’s 1984 was a dire warning to ward off the totalitarianism of public monitoring authorities. This camera/speaker system is not ‘like’ Big Brother, it ‘is’ Big Brother incarnate,” says one American from Boston. A dire warning indeed. More via Ministry of Tech

U.S. holds AP photographer 5 mos, no charges

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer, Bilal Hussein, for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for "imperative reasons of security" under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.

"The vast majority of the 420 images show the aftermath or the results of the conflict — blown up houses, wounded people, dead people, street scenes."

He won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography last year. With this in mind, we see that he is photgraphing scenes in Iraq that are potentially bad for the Bush Administrations's image. From this we can conclude why he has been held for so long but never charged with a crime.

The 'American Way'

"The USA wouldn't be stuck in conflicts abroad if only we could stop believing that the American way is the best way." Exactly. In his recent article for AlterNet John Dolan couldn't be more right.

Excerpt from the article:
Montaigne tried to learn from the other cultures Europe was encountering around the world in the 1500s, rather than simply condemning them for all the ways in which they differed from Europe. He compared the cruelties of cannibal tribes with those of European "justice." His point was not that one culture was superior to the other, but that every human ever born finds it dangerously easy to revile the savagery of other tribes, but very difficult to see the brutalities of their homeland: "...while we quite rightly judge [the cannibals'] faults, we are blind to our own."

It is this nationalist psyche the majority of Americans have, that are sheltered from the rest of the world and brings conflict and irritation to other cultures. As Dolan states, "even if the [Iraq] war really was about liberation, it was an arrogant invasion born of the ancient belief that our tribe is the only one that knows how life should be lived." Precisely.

Read the full article.

How Republicans Hype Fear to Keep 1-Party Rule

In a series of columns and essays that renowned journalist and former presidential adviser Sidney Blumenthal wrote in the three years following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a unifying theme began to emerge: that Bush, billed by himself and by many others as a conservative, is in fact a radical--more radical than any president in American history. In "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime", Blumenthal provides a vivid account of the progression of Bush's radical style--from his reliance on one-party rule and his unwillingness to allow internal debate to his elevation of the power of the vice president.

Taking readers through pivotal events such as the hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the rise of the foreign-policy neoconservatives. Foreign policy is one of Bush's key areas that he needs to succeed in his power struggle. However, people are catching on now, coming together and realizing to propaganda and lies that the american public is being subject to. Bush is trying to change the Geneva Conventions and the way we go to war - Department of Defense, more like "Department of Offense" these days.

"From the experience of the Bush disinformation campaign used to justify the invasion of Iraq the congressional Republicans have apparently learned that they must advance disinformation campaigns even more aggressively than before. What the Republicans have to fear is the absence of fear itself." Read the rest of Sidney Blumenthal's post at The Huffington Post.

Europe may meet with Iran without U.S.

European diplomats are considering a meeting with Iran on the sidelines of next week's U.N. General Assembly in hopes of de-escalating the standoff over Tehran's nuclear program - but the United States won't be getting an invitation.

I think this a very good approach to handling the situation because bringing the U.S. face to face with Iran at this point in time may cause even more tension and resulting frustration. The U.S. is accusing Iran of all these things there is no proof of, and the Bush Administration continues to pour fearful thoughts all over the public.

People need to realize here what the U.S. government is doing, like making dishonest statements about Iran, and trying to get the American public hyped up about a threat that does not exist and even if it does exis, there is no solid evidence to go on. There is a pattern here going back to the Bush Admin's pre-war Iraq ideas and agenda.

The Bush administration, which is pushing for U.N. sanctions against Iran, has said it will join European-led negotiations with Iran only if it stops its uranium enrichment work first.

Full article via Washington Post

The U.S. vs. John Lennon

'The U.S. vs. John Lennon is a new documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a world class musician into an world class anti-war activist.

Check out The Nation's review of "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"

IAEA says U.S. report on Iran is 'dishonest'

A recent House of Representatives committee report on Iran's nuclear capability is "outrageous and dishonest" in trying to make a case that Tehran's program is geared toward making weapons, a senior official of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), has said.

Not surprising since the Bush administration has been dishonest on more than one occasion during the Iran situation.

The letter, obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday outside a 35-nation board meeting of the IAEA, says the report is false in saying Iran is making weapons-grade uranium at an experimental enrichment site, when it has in fact produced material only in small quantities that is far below the level that can be used in nuclear arms. Via Yahoo News

Iran wanted peace, U.S. ignored them

The U.S. has refused to pledge not to attack Iran militarily, despite appeals by Europe for it to do so. Press reports have indicated that the Bush Administration has made extensive and detailed preparations for military strikes against Iran, while the Administration in its public statements has refused to rule out a US military attack.

Even though Iran offered peace with Israel in propsal to U.S. in 2003, the Bush administration obviously didn't care very much since they have their own agenda:

In 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate peace with Israel.

The Iranian proposal also offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology". It offered "full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments".

As State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters last January, the [Bush] administration didn’t then see “anything that indicates the Iranians are willing to engage in a serious diplomatic process” on the nuclear issue. A complete and totally disgusting fabrication of the truth! Why do we allow this?

The Iranian threat to "wipe Israel off the map" has been a major propaganda theme of the Bush administration for months.

Another unnecessary war could accelerate a cycle of warfare and terror that could plague the world for many years to come. A former official of the International Atomic Energy Agency told reporter Seymour Hersh: “there’s nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it.”

Congress and the media should start to examine and discuss the real reasons for this stubborn rejection of diplomacy, which is rooted in the Bush administration’s aggressive politico-military and imperalistic aims toward Iran and the broader Middle East.

»Tell Congress to oppose President Bush's threats to attack Iran.

Also read "Burnt Offering" article by Gareth Porter

Mission Failed: The Taliban Resurgence

With Afghan Opium crops soaring,the highest ever, it's no mystery why the Taliban is resurging in an area called Waziristan on the northwest Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Troops fighting in Afghanistan face about as much danger as troops in Iraq, says The New York Times . Their investigation concludes that Afghanistan has become "a symbol of failure."

CBS reporter, Lara Logan, has the opportunity to travel deep into Taliban territory after 6 months of negotiations with Taliban leaders.

Logan is taken to a place with scores of Taliban fighters. The fighters are proud to show that they have taken back territory that U.S. forces occupied just 2 years ago.

The following video contains reports from CNN and CBS News.

The International Herald Tribune says,"The war seems, to many fighting it, to have been obscured by the glare of attention on the conflict in Iraq and undercut by the resources it has sapped from this mission."

Europe and Iran Report Progress in Nuclear Talks

Iran and the EU said Sunday that they had made progress in the search for a compromise to avert possible UN sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program. "The meetings … have been productive," said Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, after talks with Ali Larijani, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator. "We have clarified some of the misunderstandings that existed before." He added that he wanted to continue the negotiations. "We have made progress," he said. "We want to continue that line, and we are going to meet next week." Larijani said "many misunderstandings had been removed."

The cautious-but-positive tone of the statements from Solana and Larijani contrasted sharply with the US position outlined last week by Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs.

Reuters reported Sunday that Larijani had said Iran would be willing to consider a two-month moratorium on its uranium-enrichment program, but other Iranian officials denied that. Although both sides were unwilling to give many details about the talks, there were suggestions that Iran might be willing to suspend its uranium-enrichment program if negotiations on the package were to start. The US, however, might not accept the idea. NY Times

Will the Bush Admin. attack Iran next?

The Bush administration has already taken a crucial step in weaking Iran by blocking a major Iranian bank. Stuart Levey, the U.S. Treasury's under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence is already in Europe for talks this week on how to further limit Iran’s access to the global financial system. This must not happen! This is one of the reasons why Iraq became a place of unrest, the sanctions and the twisted Foreign Policy of the Bush administration.

As Noam Chomsky states, "There are ways to mitigate and probably end these crises. The first is to call off the very credible US and Israeli threats that virtually urge Iran to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent."

Historical facts are at play here and cannot be disputed.

"Iranians are surely not as willing as the West to discard history to the rubbish heap. They know that the United States, along with its allies, has been tormenting Iranians for more than 50 years, ever since a US-UK military coup overthrew the parliamentary government and installed the Shah, who ruled with an iron hand until a popular uprising expelled him in 1979." says Chomsky. Read full article.

The Bush Administration has talked seriously about the possibility of military strikes against Iran, which could dramatically escalate the level of violence in the region, already high. These threats have undermined real negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. As the Washington Post reported Friday, "The package presented to the [UN Security Council] Thursday provides no explicit assurances Tehran has sought to bar U.S. military strikes on its territory…President Bush…has resisted European appeals to provide Iran with such security assurances, insisting that the military option not be taken off the table." These threats also increase the likelihood of a wider war, a likelihood that seems to increase each day.

Maintaining the threat of a military attack against Iran not only undermines negotiations but also undermines the international regime of nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear inspections, which is based on multilateral cooperation, not unilateral force. Iran is at least 5 to 10 years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, were it to attempt to do so. There is no crisis justifying the threat of military force against Iran.

Congress should pressure the Bush Administration to take the "military option" of attacking Iran off the table.

We must be pro active and rule out attacks against Iran before it is too late!

Bush Admin. blacklists major Iranian bank

The Bush administration has blacklisted one of Iran's biggest banks, Bank Saderat, alleging that it is used to transfer money to terrorist organizations.

Stuart Levey, the Treasury's under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence said the bank had been blacklisted because "this bank, which has approximately 3,400 branch offices, is used by the government of Iran to transfer money to terrorist organisations."

According to Mr Levy, the bank had facilitated the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah, and what he called other terrorist organisations, every year. Via BBC

We need to stop the U.S. from putting sanctions on Iran, it will force the Iranian people to depend on the Iranian government, making things worse of course. Not to mention the fact that if economic sanctions are imposed on Iran, it may cause 10,000 Germans to lose their jobs.