internet pioneer urges independent oversight of government spying on internet

The government’s controversial plans to allow intelligence agencies to monitor the internet use and digital communications of every person in the UK suffered a fresh blow on Tuesday when the inventor of the world wide web warned that the measures were dangerous and should be dropped.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who serves as an adviser to the government on how to make public data more accessible, says the extension of the state’s surveillance powers would be a “destruction of human rights” and would make a huge amount of highly intimate information vulnerable to theft or release by corrupt officials. In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee said: “The amount of control you have over somebody if you can monitor internet activity is amazing.

“You get to know every detail, you get to know, in a way, more intimate details about their life than any person that they talk to because often people will confide in the internet as they find their way through medical websites … or as an adolescent finds their way through a website about homosexuality, wondering what they are and whether they should talk to people about it.”

Tim Berners-Lee warns against web snooping bill, in this audio-only interview.

The British computer engineer, who devised the system that allows the creation of websites and links, said that of all the recent developments on the internet, it was moves by governments to control or spy on the internet that “keep me up most at night”.

The government ran into a storm of criticism earlier this month when it emerged that it was planning to allow GCHQ to monitor all communication on social media, Skype calls and email communication as well as logging every site visited by internet users in Britain.

Berners-Lee said: “The idea that we should routinely record information about people is obviously very dangerous. It means that there will be information around which could be stolen, which can be acquired through corrupt officials or corrupt operators, and [could be] used, for example, to blackmail people in the government or people in the military. We open ourselves out, if we store this information, to it being abused.”

He said that if the government believed it was essential to collect this kind of sensitive data about individuals, it would have to establish a “very strong independent body” which would be able to investigate every use of the surveillance powers to establish whether the target did pose a threat, and whether the intrusion had produced valuable evidence.

But he said that since the coalition had not spelled out an oversight regime, or how the data could be safely stored, “the most important thing to do is to stop the bill as it is at the moment”.

The intervention of the highly respected internet pioneer creates a headache for Theresa May, the home secretary, who has said she plans to press on with introducing the new measures after the Queen’s speech next month, despite concerns raised by senior Liberal Democrats. It will add to the woes of ministers mired in damaging battles over unpopular policy proposals on several fronts.

Berners-Lee was speaking to the Guardian as part of a week-long series on the battle for control of the internet, examining how states, companies and technological developments are challenging the principles of openness and universal access on which the net was built.

Berners-Lee has been an outspoken defender of the “open internet”, warning in 2010 that web freedom was under threat from the rise of social network “silos” such as Facebook, “closed world” apps such as those released by Apple, and governments’ attempts to monitor people’s online behaviour.

via Tim Berners-Lee urges government to stop the snooping bill | Technology | The Guardian.

goldman-sachs banksters seize control of west’s economy

“Mark Carney, the governor of Canada’s central bank, has been informally approached as a potential candidate to replace Sir Mervyn King as head of the Bank of England in June next year,” reports the Financial Times.

“One of the world’s most respected central bankers, Mr Carney, 47, now heads the Financial Stability Board, which oversees global financial regulation. He was approached recently by a member of the BoE’s court, the largely non-executive body that oversees its activities, according to three people involved in the process.”

Carney is also a 13-year Goldman Sachs veteran and was involved in the 1998 Russian financial crisis which was exacerbated by Goldman advising Russia while simultaneously betting against the country’s ability to pay its debt.

"I have a god-given right to make billions of dollars from the death and suffering of the entire human race. Who can stop me? Only God-almighty, and that bitch ain't doin' nuthin'"

Although the appointment would see the highly unusual precedent of a foreigner heading up the 318-year-old central bank, according to one observer, “As a Canadian national he is a subject of the Queen…That is important.”

Carney’s possible ascension to become the next BoE head, although denied by the Bank of Canada, would be the cherry on the cake for Goldman Sachs’ financial overthrow of Europe in their bid to exploit the financial crisis to centralize power into an EU superstate.

Last year, former EU Commissioner Mario Monti was picked to replace Silvio Berlusconi, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Italy. Monti is an international advisor for Goldman Sachs, the European Chairman of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and also a leading member of the Bilderberg Group.

“This is the band of criminals who brought us this financial disaster. It is like asking arsonists to put out the fire,” commented Alessandro Sallusti, editor of Il Giornale.

Similarly, when Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou dared to suggest the people of Greece be allowed to have their say in a referendum, within days he was dispatched and replaced with Lucas Papademos, former vice-President of the ECB, visiting Harvard Professor and ex-senior economist at the Boston Federal Reserve.

Papademos ran Greece’s central bank while it oversaw derivatives deals with Goldman Sachs that enabled Greece to hide the true size of its massive debt, leading to Europe’s debt crisis.

Papademos and Monti were installed as unelected leaders for the precise reason that they “aren’t directly accountable to the public,” noted Time Magazine’s Stephen Faris, once again illustrating the fundamentally dictatorial and undemocratic foundation of the entire European Union.

Shortly afterwards,Mario Draghi – former Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International – was installed as President of the European Central Bank.

The U.S. Treasury Secretary at the beginning of the 2008 financial collapse was Hank Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs. When Paulson was replaced with Tim Geither, Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson was hired as his chief advisor. Current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has visited the White House 10 times. Goldman Sachs spent the most money helping Barack Obama get elected in 2008.

As the graphic below illustrates, the economies of France, Ireland, Germany and Belgium are also all now controlled by individuals with a direct relationship with Goldman Sachs.

Dominion over virtually all of Europe’s major economies, as well as the United States, by one international banking giant, notorious for its role in corruption and insider trading, is now almost complete.

Goldman Sachs rules the world.

via The Bankers Rule The World « Anti Oligarch.

Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists, stir zero interest by seafood industry, even less by government

New Orleans, LA – “The fishermen have never seen anything like this,” Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. “And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I’ve never seen anything like this either.”

Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.

Cowan’s findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP’s 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp – and interviewees’ fingers point towards BP’s oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

Eyeless shrimp

Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.

“At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”

Eyeless shrimp, from a catch of 400 pounds of eyeless shrimp, said to be caught September 22, 2011, in Barataria Bay, Louisiana [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

“Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico],” she added, “They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.”

On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded, and began the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil.

Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.

“I’ve seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out,” Ladner told Al Jazeera. “The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday.”

via Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists – Features – Al Jazeera English.

Argentinian president moves to nationalise oil assets, Spain threatens War

Argentina sent shock waves through the oil industry by announcing plans to nationalise local oil assets controlled by a Spanish company, in a controversial move that threatens to sour the already troubled relationship between the two countries.

The move to seize 51% of Repsol’s YPF business in Argentina sent the company’s shares spinning down 18% on Wall Street and will worry other big foreign investors such as BP.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina’s president, introduced the new measure to Congress in a bid to recover sovereignty over its national

hydrocarbon resources.

Kirchner accused Repsol of failing to produce enough oil through YPF to meet Argentina’s energy requirements. Repsol’s alleged failure threatened to “practically turn us into an unviable country,” Kirchner said. Economic and political interest in the country’s hydrocarbons has rocketed since the end of last year when YPF announced it had discovered a shale oil site that could potentially yield 1bn barrels.

Politicians have accused Repsol of failing to invest enough in future production at a time when the high cost of oil is undermining the country’s economy.

The nationalisation comes amid escalating threats against operators drilling for oil off the disputed Falkland Islands.

Argentina is expected to expropriate about 24% of YPF from Repsol and another 26% from Argentina’s Peterson Group at a price yet to be determined by the government.

Kirchner said the price would be set by the national appraisal tribunal and insisted the business could continue to be managed “professionally”. She said Argentina was one of the few countries that did not control its own oil.

YPF is Argentina’s biggest oil company and was in the hands of the state until the early 1990s. It was acquired by the Spanish group in 1999 and the boss of Repsol, Antonio Brufau, has been in Argentina since last week trying to head off a takeover. He told Mitre, a local radio station: “You’ve got to talk, not impose.”

Speaking in Madrid a few hours before the announcement, the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, warned: “Wherever there is a Spanish company, the Spanish government will be there defending its interests as its own.”

via Argentinian president moves to nationalise Spanish-owned oil assets | Business | The Guardian.

Thousands of Honduran farmworkers seize land

Thousands of farmworkers have seized 30,000 acres (12,000 hectares) of land around Honduras as part of a dispute with large landowners and the government, activists and officials said Wednesday.

Activists say the seized territory is arable public land that small farmers have the legal right to grow crops on under Honduran law. The large landowners who have been farming the land say they bought it legally from the government. A land dispute between small farmers and landlords in the northern Aguan Valley has led to dozens of deaths among farmworkers in recent years.

Mabel Marquez, of the organization Via Campesina, said that the largest seizure had occurred on the country’s Caribbean coast, where roughly 1,500 farmworkers had seized land held by a sugar plantation. The movement also took possession of several farms on the outskirts of the capital, Tegucigalpa.

“We want to avoid any type of confrontation,” Marquez said, adding that the farmworkers were unarmed and used no force. Marquez said the farmworkers didn’t rule out an official attempt to dislodge them from the fields.

Activists said they were seeking meetings with government officials to open a national dialogue on land disputes, make clear that the lands were public property and that the farmworkers shouldn’t be dislodged. According to United Nations figures, 53 percent of Hondurans live in the countryside and, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America, the residents of 72 percent of rural homes are below the poverty line.

via Thousands of Honduran farmworkers seize land | World news | The Guardian.

from via campesina:

17th of April Actions around the world

This action day will take place a few days before the World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty in Washington DC, April 23-26, 2012. The Via Campesina mobilisations will voice small farmers’ strong opposition to the World Bank initiative of Responsible Agricultural Investment (RAI) that is supposed to prevent land grab abuses but in fact legitimizes farmland grabbing by corporate and state investors.

“In the run up to the Rio+20 Earth Summit, farmers and supporters of the food sovereignty and agroecology movement are now actively opposing the “greening of capitalism” that is now promoted at the international level. We believe that land, water, seeds and all natural resources should be used by small farmers to protect them and feed to world, and not by transnational corporations to make profit”, said Henry Saragih, general coordinator of la Via Campesina.

On April 17 1996, in the Amazonian state of Pará, at Eldorado dos Carajás, the state military police massacred peasants organized in the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), killing 19 individuals.That day, 1500 women and men organized in the MST occupied and blocked the BR-150 highway in Eldo-ado dos Carajás, with the intention to pressure the state and federal governments for agrarian reform. At about 4pm, 155 state military police from two brigades surrounded the MST on the highway, firing tear-gas,live ammunition and machine guns. In addition to the 19 MST killed during the massacre, three more died later from injuries, and 69 people were wounded. State authorities, the police, the army and powerful local landowners were involved in planning and executing of the massacre. Fifteen years later, none of those responsible for the massacre at Eldorado dos Carajás has been imprisoned or punished.

see more: 17 April: More than 250 actions around the world for the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle

media is portraying mass-murdering coward as heroic figure in war against islamic extremism

news coverage of murdering coward anders behring print his politicized rantings without challenge, allowing him to spout racist propaganda to the world. photos of him are all flattering, and he is photogenic.

this cowardly racist massacred over 70 unarmed school children, after setting off a bomb on a street in oslo, which also claimed several lives.

he claims he is waging a war to protect europe from islam, but the only people killed in his racially-motivated attacks were fellow europeans, mostly fellow norwegians. all were unarmed, many were fleeing for their lives. his reasoning is like that of white supremacists in the u.s. who only rape and murder WHITE women. not everyone is taking this emotional abuse from the media passivelty, though…

Shackle Anders Breivik like the dog that he is

If we have to witness Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik’s trial – and the victims’ families are surely hoping to see justice done publicly – then truss him up and treat him as he deserves. As a morally void demon.

The court may find he was psychotic when he killed 77 people, but the latest reports are that experts reckon he was sane.

Sane when he gunned down children. Sane when he showed no remorse. Sane when he listened to devastating testimonies about their deaths. Sane when his only tears were shed for his own vile anti-Muslim propaganda.

It would be easier on the heart if he was judged to be psychotic, if his brain was found to be wired wrong, an aberration.

His state of mind will play a role in whether he is thrown in prison or institutionalised. The trial to determine his punishment will attract the world’s attention for the next ten weeks.

You can imagine that such extensive coverage is all of Breivik’s dreams come true.

from the punch (australia)

an attack on a norwegian youth camp and the bombing which preceded it in oslo were not carried out by islamic terrorists, but by a coward who wanted to glorify himself through human sacrifice to his one true god - himself. he had to chose his methods and targets carefully, lest his plans fail due to the ability of people to defend themselves against him. unarmed children are much easier to massacre than, say, armed islamic groups - who he was allegedly opposing with these murders. random, unsuspecting people are easier targets than a determined enemy in fortified bunkers. such a coward...being made into a celebrity demigod by the media...

another victory for the undead drug war – 14 dismembered bodies found in nuevo laredo

every sane leader in mexico, central and south america wants an end to the “drug war.” obama, meanwhile, has extended it to include legalized, medical marijuana. for the rest of his term, every death caused by drug cartels – made wealthy and powerful because of laws prohibiting recreational drug use – is further proof of the legitimacy of his policies. he clearly NEEDS more bloodshed, like some sort vampiric, undead thing that needs human blood to survive. the drug war is undead.

Dismembered remains of 14 men were found in plastic bags in a vehicle near City Hall in the border city of Nuevo Laredo,  Mexican authorities said Tuesday.

In a statement, the state prosecutor’s office in northern Tamaulipas state said a Chrysler Voyager minivan with 10 plastic bags stuffed with the remains was found downtown late Tuesday afternoon. The victims were men between the ages of 30 and 35, authorities said.

Nuevo Laredo, the busiest commercial crossing on the U.S.-Mexico border, and much of the rest of the state of Tamaulipas have been the scene of escalating violence between rival drug-trafficking gangs. The fighting, involving the Gulf cartel and its former allies, known as the Zetas, is believed to have swept in the powerful Sinaloa cartel, from northwestern Mexico, in opposition to the Zetas.

The months-long violence has spread into the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon and its largest city, Monterrey, a once-quiet industrial powerhouse that has been rocked by gun battles and an arson attack on a casino last year that left 52 people dead.

On Tuesday, officials said a “criminal group” had taken responsibility for killing the men in a message left with the bodies, but authorities did not identify the gang.

More than 50,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006 and launched what he called a frontal attack on traffickers. Most of the deaths are attributed to fighting among trafficking groups.

Nuevo Laredo, a scruffy, truck-choked city on the border with Texas, was among the first spots in Mexico to experience a rise in drug killings even before Calderon came to power. The violence later tailed off as the Zetas appeared to exert control over the city. Killings in Nuevo Laredo surged  again in recent months, and the victims included several people who reportedly had used social media to draw attention to criminal activities.

via Mexico authorities say bodies of 14 men dumped in Nuevo Laredo – latimes.com.