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411 on 911 - Rally and March for 9/11 Truth and Impeachment

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Carol Brouillet

4/11/2007 heralds an auspicious convergence of the 9/11 Truth Movement and the Impeachment Movement in Lytton Plaza, launching pad for the 9/11 Truth and Impeachment Movements. Monthly 9/11 Visibility actions will be taking place, and the rally will urge people everywhere to participate in the national shopping boycott to impeach for peace and justice (from Tax Day to Earth Day- April 15th-22nd) and to spell out “Impeach” on the national day of impeachment action, April 28th. Tell Congress, Wall Street “We don’t buy the big lie about 9/11″ and “We’re not buying it” anymore. Join the effort in Palo Alto- or wherever you may be!

 On Wednesday, April 11, 2007, protesters will rally at 1:00 p.m. at Lytton Plaza in downtown Palo Alto to demand 9/11 Truth and the impeachment of Bush/Cheney. Speakers will include Janette MacKinlay—a survivor of the 9/11 attacks; David Kubiak—International Campaign Advisor of 911Truth.org; Gabriel Day—organizer of the “9/11- Revealing the Truth, Reclaiming the Future” conference; Ed Rippy—of the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance; and Riva Enteen—of the National Lawyers Guild. Music will be provided by “Annie and the Vets.” The march will begin at 2:00 p.m. and will conclude at Congresswoman Anna Eshoo’s office at 698 Emerson Street.

The grassroots demand for an investigation into 9/11 began in 2001, taking stronger form in January of 2002 with marches on Senator Feinstein and Congresswoman Eshoo’s offices. From a small weekly “Listening Project” in downtown Palo Alto (every Wednesday from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.), the 9/11 Truth movement has grown into an international effort with countless websites and numerous documentaries, books and articles criticizing and challenging the 9/11 Commission Report, the NIST Report, the “War on Terrorism,” the PATRIOT Act, and the policies of the Bush Administration that hinge upon the official story. In January of 2003 the demands of the 9/11 Truth movement to “stop the 9/11 cover-up, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and demand pre-emptive impeachment of Bush,” prior to the war, were dismissed by Eshoo and the Congress, who continue to fund the war and have failed to respond to growing public demands for the impeachment of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzalez. This failure can be seen in Eshoo’s response to Carol Brouillet after the recent March 14th Impeachment rally in Palo Alto:

“I’ve lived through an impeachment process and witnessed firsthand how it tears the country apart. The election in November was a resounding rejection of the President’s policies and the policies of his party. I think it’s time to bring the country together and move forward. In my view, impeachment will heavily distract from the important work of reversing the disastrous course this Administration has set and will virtually bring to a halt progress on important issues including healthcare and global warming.”

Activists have been outraged to see Congress expand funding for the war and work with those widely considered to be “war criminals.” Activists are calling for a truly independent investigation of 9/11, a nationwide shopping boycott from Tax Day to Earth Day, and a national day of ”impeachment actions” on April 28th. Citizen-led initiatives are taking place across the country to force a real investigation of 9/11 (Vermont, for instance), and to push Congress to initiate impeachment through state legislatures, as well as through city and county resolutions.

Grassroots efforts have included “becoming the media.” Activists have distributed millions of “Deception Dollars,” tens of thousands of DVDs, produced television shows, radio shows, music videos, CDs to reach people in the streets and via the internet. Polls show they have won over public opinion and that only 16% of Americans believe what the Administration has told them about 9/11.* Impeachment activists placed their bodies on the beach to spell “Impeach!” in San Francisco, to send a message to Pelosi and Congress. On April 28th people are encouraged to spell “Impeach” everywhere, forcing the topic into the national discourse. The national shopping boycott is designed to help people flex their economic muscle and send a message to the corporations who sponsor politicians and profit from war. There is a convergence of the anti-war, anti-corporate globalization, peace and justice, impeachment and truth movements taking place now, seeking to turn policies away from fear-mongering and war and towards community building, healing and a just peace. The rally and march are part of a larger continuum of educational and empowerment events addressing 9/11 and impeachment.

* Americans Question Bush on 9/11 Intelligence- Source New York Times/CBS News, http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/13469http

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Mind Training

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

David Edwards

Laughing At The New Generation

I am fascinated by the differences that separate peoples and cultures. If human beings are the animal for which life is a problem requiring an answer — liberated, as we are, from the autopilot of instinctual programming — then what could be more interesting than answers to life developed by radically different cultures over thousands of years?

Other cultures, after all, provide us with an entry point for investigating the nose-on-our-face problems, the nose-on-our-face mistakes that bedevil us individually and as a society. In one of his most telling observations, Thoreau wrote:

“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” (Thoreau, Walden, Penguin, 1983, p.68)

When we encounter, and quite possibly laugh at, foreign cultures, the precious opportunity also arises of laughing at our own. This is a laughter of liberation — not just from the disco flares and bowler hats of “the old fashions,” but from the worship of the flag, of the “fatherland”, from hatred of the official ‘enemy’. As I will discuss below, it is also an opportunity to laugh at our notions of how best to make ourselves happy.

The Internationally Famous Cabbage Dish

In late 2005, I visited South Korea for the first time. I was delighted to sit on floor cushions around low restaurant tables to be confronted by dozens of small dishes of food, most of it unknown, almost all of it devilishly spicy. Equally delightful were the loud noises made by my endlessly polite and kind Korean hosts as they slurped their noodles and guzzled their soup. The part of me that remains forever ten-years-old felt at last vindicated by the fact that a whole society deemed civilized and polite the same behaviour that had earned me fierce looks as a child. Thoreau again:

“The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behaviour. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?” (Ibid, p.53)

I also enjoyed slurping the mysterious, traditional herbal teas with curious objects bobbing about in them; the fruits I’d never seen before; the ornate rice cakes and other mysteries of the ancient Korean culture. I feel there is something heart-warming about seeing difference and thinking: ‘That’s how they like it — that’s what they enjoy,’ even when what they enjoy means nothing to me. I find it wonderful that Koreans are deeply proud of their spicy pickled Chinese cabbage, kimchi, the national dish. A guidebook declares with typically supercharged Korean enthusiasm:

“Visitors cannot really say they have been to Korea if they have not tasted kimchi, the internationally famous cabbage dish . . . These days kimchi is gaining popularity worldwide for its nutritional value and disease-prevention effect.”

In Seoul there is even a kimchi museum!

A few years ago I went with my Japanese girlfriend to an English pub for the first time. As we sat down, she took out two small, folded towels and placed them next to her glass on the table — one to wipe her glass, as required, and one to dab her face. The joy of seeing that little ritual carried out in the middle of a spit-and-sawdust pub is exactly what I have in mind. Difference reminds us of the uniqueness of others, of their preciousness, transience, and in fact of their fundamental aloneness in the world.

A sense of fellow feeling and compassion can also be found in a sense of unity beneath difference — others may do things differently, but we can understand what it is they like about it; we can empathies with their happiness in doing things ‘just so’ in a way that makes them feel more comfortable in the world.

By contrast, there is something depressing and dehumanizing about the thought of people as anonymous crowds, as blank “masses” of humanity. I’ve always recoiled from the title of John Carey’s book, The Intellectuals and the Masses. Regardless of the contents of the book, the title always reminds me of the sense, which many “intellectuals” seem to have, that a select few brainy types are real, serious individuals, while the rest of us are mere “masses”, “proletarians”, a kind of human porridge.

But what exactly is an “intellectual”? If someone describes themselves as an “intellectual”, I cringe, much as I do when I hear someone describe themselves as “a celebrity” or “famous”. I greatly enjoyed reading this description of an intellectual upper class in H.G. Wells’ novel The First Men In The Moon:

“These beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labors fall, form a sort of aristocracy in this strange society, and at the head of them, quintessential of the moon, is that marvelous gigantic ganglion the Grand Lunar . . . The unlimited development of the minds of the intellectual class is rendered possible by the absence of any bony skull in the lunar anatomy, that strange box of bone that clamps about the developing brain of man, imperiously insisting ‘thus far and no farther’ to all his possibilities.”

By some quirk of fate, Wells’ description finds amusing and contradictory echoes in Noam Chomsky’s analysis of the role of liberal intellectuals in our own society:

“[W]hat’s not recognized is that the role of the liberal intellectual establishment is to set very sharp bounds on how far you can go — ‘this far, and no further’”. (Chomsky, The Big Idea, BBC2, 1996)

In opposition to individual and cultural arrogance, it seems to me a far happier and more rational thing to recognize that the world is full of interesting ways of being — possibilities that may well be improvements on our own — than to think that our culture has all the answers, all the best solutions. It is brutal and foolish to look down on others, to dismiss their ways of living and loving developed over millennia as ’primitive’. Surely all human cultural responses to the extraordinary problem of living — even those we find unpalatable — are worthy of our interest and respect.

Certainly, when it comes to evaluating foreign cultures, little is as it seems to our prejudiced eye. During the Vietnam war, the American GIs referred to their Vietnamese enemy as ‘Gooks’, a term that has become synonymous with dehumanizing racism. How tragic and poignant that American use of the word in fact originated in the Korean War — guk is a Korean word which means ‘people’. The Koreans call themselves Hangukin, which means ‘the people of the Han river.’

Or to consider an extreme example, could anything be more alien to Westerners than the act of suicide bombing? Although it has almost never been reported, there had never been a suicide bomb attack in Iraq before the 2003 invasion. The UN’s IRIN news network reported on March 8 that a 41 year-old Iraqi woman, Um Abdallah, was learning how to turn herself into a suicide bomber. Revulsion, horror, incomprehension — isn’t her decision the epitome of the ‘alienness’ of foreign culture to many Britons? And yet IRIN fills in some of the background:

Um Abdallah is one of thousands of Iraqis who have lost their relatives in the past four years. Her two boys and one girl were killed during a US military attack in her neighborhood.

“My husband was killed four months ago by Iraqi forces. Killed alongside him were my son-in-law and his two children. I cannot even remember how many bullets the children had in their bodies,” she said.

She does not know exactly when she is going to detonate herself but she is sure she will be ready whenever she is asked.” (IRIN, “Killings drive women to become suicide bombers,” March 8, 2007)

Is Um Abdallah really such an alien being? She has lost her sons and daughter, her husband, and other loved ones besides. She has lost everything. Is her response really so impossible to comprehend? Is not our response to wish we could somehow do something to relieve her suffering and protect her from her own plan precisely because her suffering is so comprehensible? And yet, if our media are to be believed, our reaction should simply be one of loathing for this ‘alien’ product of an ‘alien’ culture.

So much of what we are taught to hate is actually the product of suffering — real, comprehensible and very human — rather than of some weird, mystical phenomenon called ’evil’. And far too much of that suffering originates with our own lack of compassion, our own system of domination and exploitation preaching hate. As Nietzsche said so well:

“Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!”

West Is Best…. Ignored!

In 1955, the British governor of Kenya, declared:

“The task to which we have set our minds is to civilise a great mass of human beings who are in a very primitive moral and social state.” (Quoted, John Pilger, “Iraq is a War of National Liberation,” The New Statesman, April 15, 2004)

In “civilizing” the country, the British army killed 10,000 Kenyans for the loss of 32 European lives.

In a March 2000 Guardian article, Polly Toynbee wrote in similar vein:

“In our political and social culture we have a democratic way of life which we know, without any doubt at all, is far better than any other in the history of humanity. Even if we don’t like to admit it, we are all missionaries and believers that our own way is the best when it comes to the things that really matter.” (Toynbee, “The West really is the best,” The Observer, March 5, 2000)

Unfortunately, this arrogance appears to be a common theme among the “beings with big heads, on whom the intellectual labours fall.”

Happily, the people that Westerners deem in a “very primitive moral and social state” do not share their view. Historian John Bodley reported:

“According to Captain Cook’s account of his first landing on the Australian mainland, Aborigines on the beach totally ignored both his ship and his men until they became obnoxious . . . a complete lack of interest in white people’s habits, material possessions, and beliefs was characteristic of Aborigines in a variety of contact settings.” (John Bodley, Victims of Progress, Mayfield Publishing, 1982, p.16)

In his book Re-Enchantment, Jeffrey Paine described a common Asian view of Westerners in 1912:

“Many Asians then thought that white people, though wizards at technology, were otherwise mentally deficient.” (Paine, Re-Enchantment, Norton, 2004, p.31)

If ever there was a shocking challenge to some key nose-on-our-face assumptions about the world, then this surely is it. Aren’t Third World people supposed to share Toynbee’s view of the magnificent West? Alas, there is more bad news. Paine added of a particular group of Asians:

“Tibetans had tended to view Caucasians as idiot savants, preternaturally good at, say, constructing engines but otherwise dumb to the subtleties of the spirit.” (Ibid, p.56)

Tibetan Buddhist teachings, in particular, were deemed completely beyond us: “One does not teach the precious dharma to Westerners,” was the operating assumption. (Ibid p.59)

Big ships, big engines, big buildings — small impression!

This might seem remarkable at first sight, but actually the reasoning is not so strange — Tibetans appreciated that Westerners were more or less completely bewildered when it came to matters of psychological understanding. Consider, for example, the issue of psychological health and happiness.

Living Life To The Full

Contemporary Western culture assumes that happiness can best be achieved by gathering to ourselves as many pleasurable experiences as possible. When we talk of “making the most of life” and “living life to the full”, we mean a life filled with pleasure. Our focus is therefore, of course, very much externally directed. The psychologist Erich Fromm asked:

“What is meant by happiness? Most people today would probably answer the question by saying that to be happy is to have ‘fun,’ or ‘to have a good time’ . . . What does this fun consist in? Going to the movies, parties, ball games, listening to the radio and watching television, taking a ride in the car on Sundays, making love, sleeping late on Sunday mornings, and traveling . . . we might say that the concept of happiness is, at best, identified with that of pleasure.” (Fromm, The Sane Society, Routledge, 2002, p.194)

What is so remarkable is that, as we are doing all this, we give barely a thought to the condition of the inner, psychological ‘receptacles’ into which these experiences are, as it were, poured and in which we hope happiness will arise — our minds! How sophisticated would we judge a farmer who eagerly planted seeds without giving a thought to the quality of the soil in which those seeds were sown?

Up until quite recently, many people in the West gave little thought even to the importance of physical fitness for health — the concern struck many of us as an effete indulgence, a symptom of hair-shirted hypochondria. But how many people today recognize the need, or even possibility, of maintaining psychological fitness and health beyond taking time out to relax? How many of us even believe it is possible to train our minds, much less for some version of mental or emotional fitness? Neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison comments:

“There is a tremendous lacuna in our worldview, where training is seen as important for strength, for physical agility, for athletic ability, for musical ability — for everything except emotions.” (Quoted, Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, Ballantine, 2007, p.231)

As it turns out, for all the accumulation of pleasurable experiences, the Western crop of happiness is blighted by psychological weeds, toxic mental soil and ideational frosts. For the truth is that the untrained human mind is almost guaranteed to be filled with suffering — a statement of obvious fact for many Asians, but an almost meaningless comment in the West.

Psychologist Oliver James reports that almost a quarter of Britons currently suffer from serious emotional distress, such as depression and anxiety, and that another quarter are on the verge of such conditions — that‘s half the population! James believes that much of this emotional distress is rooted in what he calls “affluenza”:

“It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous.” (James, Affluenza, Vermilion, 2007, p.vii)

These values, in turn, are all oriented towards external pleasurable experiences. So to what extent do they deliver happiness, for example for people who are maximally ‘successful‘?

One survey found that over one-third of a sample of super-rich people (those with net wealth of £70 million or more) were less happy than the national average. A second study found no difference between the happiness levels of lottery winners and comparison samples of people with average incomes, or even of paraplegics. (Ibid, p.34)

In truth, as the statistics make very clear, we in the West are tormented by the fact that our minds are more or less out of control. Who amongst us has not been kept awake at night by a storm of angry, fearful, craving, jealous, or grieving thoughts? From the moment we wake up, to the moment we fall asleep, day after day, thoughts can completely tyrannize the mind. Our emphasis, in response, tends to be on ‘action’ — by which we mean external action. We believe that doing something, going somewhere, seeing someone, drinking something, can bring peace of mind, control. Quite often none of this really helps.

I think one of the most shocking realizations we have as we reach adulthood is the dramatic power of the uncontrolled mind, the sheer intensity of psychological suffering, in the event of some kind of crisis. The feeling that nothing can be done, that we are helpless in the face of our own thoughts — often interpreted in the West as a belief that there’s nothing we can do about ‘life’ — is a cause of incalculable misery.

But it seems to me that our suffering is pointing us towards a solution. Indeed, I think this is a perfect example of how we can benefit greatly from opening our minds to non-Western cultural solutions. As ever, doing so requires the humility to see that we are not all-powerful, that we do not stride the world as giants among intellectual and cultural pygmies.

If we are tormented by uncontrolled thoughts, then perhaps answers can be found by asking the obvious question: Can some kind of control be gained over destructive thoughts? Can something be done?

Part 2 will follow shortly…

Media Lens is a UK-based media watchdog group headed by David Edwards and David Cromwell. The first Media Lens book, Guardians of Power: The Myth Of The Liberal Media, is now available (Pluto Books, London, 2006). Visit the Media Lens website (www.medialens.org) and consider supporting their invaluable work.

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Investigation into UK drug distribution

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Marianne Barriaux

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is to investigate the distribution of medicine in the UK following the implementation of a controversial new supply arrangement between Pfizer and Alliance Boots’ UniChem wholesaling business.

Until recently, all drugs were distributed through a network of wholesalers to pharmacists, dispensing doctors and hospitals.

But at the beginning of March, Pfizer implemented a new arrangement whereby UniChem became the sole supplier of its medicine, in a scheme which saw the pharmaceutical giant sell its drugs directly to pharmacists and pay UniChem a set fee for its services.

The direct-to-pharmacy move proved hugely controversial.

Pharmacists, dispensing doctors and wholesalers said it was anti-competitive, as wholesalers were no longer competing with each other to sell Pfizer products, and warned that it would increase costs for the NHS.

AstraZeneca and Swiss drug group Novartis have both invited wholesalers to tender for a similar direct-to-pharmacy model, and US company Eli Lilly is also looking at changing its supply chain in the UK.

Today, the OFT said it would study the distribution of medicine in the UK and report back by the end of the year.

Ann Pope, director in markets and projects at the OFT, said: “This is an important market study in one of the OFT’s priority sectors.

“Recent changes in the distribution arrangements for some medicines have caused great concern to many in the market. It is important for us to understand the likely impact of these changes on patients and costs to the NHS.”

The NHS spends more than £10bn a year on the purchase of prescription medicines, and pharmacies currently provide more than 800m prescriptions a year.

In response to the OFT move, Alliance Boots said this morning that the market study “does not affect the operation of the Group’s direct to pharmacy distribution arrangements with Pfizer”.

Alliance Boots is currently on the receiving end of a £10bn private equity-backed bid from its deputy chairman and largest shareholder, the Italian billionaire Steffano Pessina.

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Rosie O’Donnell Takes Fire in the Debate Over 9/11

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Joshua Holland

Last week, Rosie O’Donnell crossed a bright red line in the world of broadcast media: The outspoken actress and comedienne suggested that 9/11 was an “inside job.” She implied — never stating it outright — that the World Trade Center was destroyed by the Bush administration in order to start a permanent war and also to cover up for the Enron scandal (the story goes that the IRS had records of all sorts of corporate malfeasance locked up in World Trade Center Tower 7, which was brought down in order to stymie investigations).

The reaction was fast, furious and predictable. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly called for O’Donnell’s ouster, the National Review suggested she was insane and a host of right-wing bloggers held up the incident as emblematic of the way liberals think about national security. Right-wing talk-show host Joe Scarborough wondered if Rosie would bring about the end of “The View” host Barbara Walters’ decades-long TV career. An (unscientific) opinion poll by America Online was swamped with more than a quarter of a million respondents; almost twice as many said that Rosie had “crossed a line” and should be fired than believed that O’Donnell’s comments should be protected because “it’s free speech.”

Obscured by the predictable brouhaha were the rest of O’Donnell’s comments. The discussion started with a debate about the British sailors being held by Iran. Even as some of the bastions of our supposedly “liberal” media have uncritically accepted the narrative that Iran today poses a threat like Nazi Germany did in the 1930s, O’Donnell, a TV personality, asked: “Historically, have governments ever faked incidents or incited incidents in order to get them into wars?”

She said: “In America we are fed propaganda, and if you want to know what’s happening in the world go outside of the U.S. media because it’s owned by four corporations. One of them is this one (ABC).” “Go outside of the country to find out what’s going on in our own country,” she urged an audience of millions of security-moms tuned into America’s favorite coffee klatch, “because it’s frightening.”

“I think Democracy is threatened in a way it hasn’t been in 200 years and if America doesn’t stand up, we’re in big trouble,” she said. (You can watch the segment here.)

Of course, it wasn’t her first brush with controversy on the show. In her short stint on “The View,” O’Donnell has called for Bush’s impeachment, argued that the trial of Saddam Hussein was a joke and joined most of the world’s media in laughing at the Bush administration’s claim that accused al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had confessed to every dastardly act committed since the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand started World War I.

With those comments, O’Donnell displayed the courage that’s made her a nemesis to the right and a welcome voice for progressives. Joining Keith Olbermann, O’Donnell’s unapologetic skepticism toward the conventional TV talk-show wisdom fills a yawning void in the commercial media;

Rosie and a very few others fill a gap left by a timid and often-complicit opposition party, one comfortable with the premise of American empire, and a lick spittle corporate media too deeply vested in the system to raise questions about it. They should be commended.

At the same time, relying on pampered celebrities to “speak truth to power” has inherent pitfalls. Rosie O’Donnell is not someone who has studied U.S. foreign policy like a Noam Chomsky, or the history of empire like Chalmers Johnson; she’s someone trying to piece together what’s happened in her country since 9/11, just like millions of other Americans.

And like millions of other Americans, she has apparently rejected the idea that the United States could experience real “blow-back” after decades of aggressive bullying in the Middle East. The rest of her comments on that day’s show represented the worst of the left’s conspiratorial tendencies; Rosie ran with the great intellectual fallacy that supports the 9/11 “Truth” movement: Anything not adequately explained by the official investigations into 9/11 are de facto evidence of an inside job:

“I do believe it’s the first time in history that fire has melted steel,” she said. “I do believe that it defies physics for the World Trade Center Building 7, which collapsed in on itself, it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved — World Trade Center 7.

“One and two got hit by planes, 7 miraculously [for] the first time in history, steel was melted by fire — it is physically impossible.

“I don’t know, but to say we don’t know and it was imploded in a demolition is beyond ignorant. Look at the films, get a physics expert here from Yale, from Harvard — pick the school, it defies reason.”

Nobody knows the precise sequence of events that brought Building 7 down, but claiming that the collapse defied physics is patently ridiculous. (Popular Mechanics, Public Enemy #1 for the 9/11 Truth crowd, refuted O’Donnell’s specific claims.) What’s more, Rosie’s self-described “rants” support some of the prevalent right-wing story lines about liberals: that they’re extremists, that they’re defined by their fringe and led by out-of-touch Hollywood elites.

What’s unfortunate about the incident — and others involving celebrities jumping on the 9/11 conspiracy theory bandwagon — is the opportunity cost: What might have led to a challenging debate about the close ties between the Bush administration and terrorist financiers, or about the United States’ unshakable relationship with the Saudi Royal family or the nature of our energy policy or the toll of American militarism emerged instead as an easily-refuted argument based, at the end of the day, on a talk-show host’s knowledge about the melting point of steel.

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‘Talking’ CCTV scolds offenders

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

“Talking” CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England. They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.

About £500,000 will be spent adding speaker facilities to existing cameras.

Shadow home affairs minister James Brokenshire said the government should be “very careful” over the cameras.

Home Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, “in the minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions”.

“But the vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can’t go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people,” he added.

The talking cameras did not constitute “secret surveillance”, he said.

“It’s very public, it’s interactive.”

Competitions would also be held at schools in many of the areas for children to become the voice of the cameras, Mr Reid said.

Downing Street’s “respect tsar”, Louise Casey, said the cameras “nipped problems in the bud” and reduced bureaucracy.

“It gets across the message, ‘please don’t litter our streets because someone else will have to pay to pick up that litter again’,” she told BBC News.

“Half a billion pounds a year is spent picking up litter.”

‘Scarecrow policing’

Mr Brokenshire told the BBC he had a number of concerns about the use of the talking cameras.

“Whether this is moving down a track of almost ’scarecrow’ policing rather than real policing - actually insuring that we have more bobbies on the beat - I think that’s what we really want to see, albeit that an initiative like this may be an effective tool in certain circumstances.

“We need to be very careful about applying this more generally.”

The talking cameras will be installed in Southwark, Barking and Dagenham, in London, Reading, Harlow, Norwich, Ipswich, Plymouth, Gloucester, Derby, Northampton, Mansfield, Nottingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Wirral, Blackpool, Salford, South Tyneside and Darlington.

In Middlesbrough, staff in a control centre monitor pictures from 12 talking cameras and can communicate directly with people on the street.

Local councillor Barry Coppinger says the scheme has prevented fights and criminal damage and cut litter levels.

“Generally, I think it has raised awareness that the town centre is a safe place to visit and also that we are keeping an eye open to make sure it is safe,” he said.

But opponent and campaigner Steve Hills said: “Apart from being absurd, I think it’s rather sad that we should have faceless cameras barking at us on orders from who? Who sets these cameras up?”

There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain.

A recent study by the government’s privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner, warned that Britain was becoming a “surveillance society”.

BBC

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Wal-Mart Defends Corporate Spying

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Wal-Mart defended corporate security practices after a fired security worker confirmed a newspaper interview Wednesday in which he said he was part of a surveillance operation that spied on company workers, critics, shareholders and consultants.

The world’s largest retailer declined to comment on specific allegations made by former security technician Bruce Gabbard, 44, to the Wall Street Journal in a report published Wednesday. Wal-Mart reiterated that it had fired Gabbard and his supervisor last month for violating company policy by recording phone calls and intercepting pager messages. “Like most major corporations, it is our corporate responsibility to have systems in place, including software systems, to monitor threats to our network, intellectual property and our people,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Sarah Clark said.

Gabbard was fired after recording phone calls to and from a New York Times reporter and intercepting pager messages. Gabbard and his former supervisor, Jason Hamilton, have declined repeated requests from The Associated Press to talk about their security activities.

But in a text message to The Associated Press, Gabbard Wednesday confirmed the allegations as reported by the Journal. “I can confirm everything in the WSJ story is correct except the glass wall comment which I didn’t make,” Gabbard wrote, referring to a description of the Threat Group’s glass-enclosed work area at Wal-Mart’s Bentonville, Ark., headquarters, which the Journal said employees had nicknamed “The Bat Cave.”

Wal-Mart’s Clark noted that the company had gone public with Gabbard’s phone monitoring and had self-reported the issue to federal prosecutors to determine if any laws had been broken. “These situations are limited to cases which are high risk to the company or our associates, such as criminal fraud or security issues,” she said.

Wal-Mart’s union-backed critics, whom Gabbard identified as among the surveillance targets, accused the retailer of being “paranoid, childish and desperate.”

“They should stop playing with spy toys and take the criticism of their business model seriously. The success of the company depends on it,” said Nu Wexler, spokesman for Wal-Mart Watch. According to the Wall Street Journal report, the company found personal photos of Wexler and tracked his plans to attend Wal-Mart’s annual meeting.

Gabbard told the Wall Street Journal he was part of a large, sophisticated surveillance operation by the Threat Research and Analysis Group, a unit of Wal-Mart’s Information Systems Division.

Gabbard told the Journal he recorded the calls on his own, but added many of his activities were approved by Wal-Mart. The Journal said other employees and security firms confirmed parts of his account.

Clark said she could not comment on Gabbard’s claim of blanket approval because “that’s a pretty broad statement. We wouldn’t be able to comment on that without knowing the details he’s referring to.”

Gabbard told the newspaper that Wal-Mart sent an employee to infiltrate an anti-Wal-Mart group to learn if it was going to protest at the annual shareholders’ meeting and investigated McKinsey & Co. employees it believed leaked a memo about Wal-Mart’s health care plans. It also uses software programs to read e-mails sent by workers using private e-mail accounts, he said.

AP

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Iran releases British sailors

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

 

Iranian state television has shown pictures of some of the detained 15 British navy personnel smiling and personally thanking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after being released by the Iranian president.

Ahmadinejad said earlier on Wednesday that he had pardoned the sailors accused of illegally entering his country’s waters.

The shock announcement came at the end of a 45-minute speech in Tehran.

Ahmadinejad said the 15 navy service members, captured on March 23, were free to return to their families.

A short time after the conference ended, television coverage showed several of the sailors speaking with the president and one man could be heard telling him: “We appreciate it. Your people have been really kind to us, and we appreciate it very much.”

Family joy

One the other service members was heard saying in English: “We are grateful for your forgiveness.”

Ahmadinejad responded to him in Farsi: “You are welcome.”

An Iranian official said the 15 sailors were to return home to Britain on Thursday.

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, welcomed the news of the release.

He said Britain bore no ill will toward the Iranian people.

“I’m glad that our 15 service personnel have been released and I know their release will come as a relief not just to them but to their families,” Blair said.

“Throughout, we have taken a measured approach, firm but calm, not negotiating but not confronting, either.

“To the Iranian people I would simply say this. We bear you no ill will.”

The news of the release of their relatives was met with joy by the families of the captured service members.

“It’s been a long, long 13 days,” Nick Summers, brother of captive Nathan Summers, told Sky News after the unexpected announcement by Ahmadinejad.

The family of Royal Marine Adam Sperry said the announcement was “the best present imaginable.

“The one thing I wanted was Adam’s safe return to his family for Easter,” said his uncle Ray Cooper. “Whoever has been in the right or wrong, the whole thing has been a political mess, so let’s just get them home. It’s great.”

A spokesman for George Bush, the US president, also hailed the news.

Surprise announcement

The announcement of the release took most people present at the news conference by surprise.

Ahmadinejad had spoken at length about various historical matters and criticised Britain’s attitude to the diplomatic row before pausing to award the medal of honour to the guards who captured the sailors on March 23.

He then announced “although Iran has the right to prosecute them by following the model of the prophet the 15 people were pardoned and their freedom given as a gift to the British people.”

He said the Britons, some of whom had been paraded several times on state television “confessing” to trespassing in Iranian waters, “will be going back home today.”

He also said the British government had promised in a letter not to repeat the incident.

“The Blair government chose the path of media hype and sent the issue to the UN Security Council,” Ahmadinejad said. “The British people can ask its government what the British soldiers are doing in Iraq or in Iranian waters,” he said.

Ahmadinejad’s decision

According to Ali-Reza Ronaghi, Al Jazeera’s correspondent at the conference, the decision to wait until the very end of the news conference before making the dramatic announcement was typical of Ahmadinejad.

“It is very typical of him [Ahmadinejad], 40 minutes of history then cut through at the end just when people are making their verdict,” he said.

It was unclear whether the decision to release the sailors was taken at the behest of Ahmadinejad himself or whether it was taken with the approval of Iran’s religious leaders.

The decision to release the detainees came after Iran had earlier acknowledged a “change of tone” from Britain following talks between Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Blair’s chief foreign policy advisor, late on Tuesday.

Iran had insisted that they key to resolving the crisis was an admission from Britain that the sailors and marines did intrude into Iranian territorial waters when they were seized on March 23.

Britain maintains the group was carrying out routine anti-smuggling operations in Iraqi waters in line with a UN mandate, but Iran says the sailors’ Global Positioning System (GPS) devices show they intruded on Iranian waters.

The latest developments coincided with the release in Baghdad of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Iraq in early February. Iran had blamed US forces in the country for the abduction.

Iranian state media also said five Iranian officials captured by US forces in northern Iraq in January and accused of seeking to stir trouble were expected to receive their first visit by an Iranian diplomat.

Al Jazeera and agencies

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