European police to spy on Britons: Now ministers hand over Big Brother powers to foreign officers
By James Slack
26th July 2010
New powers: Police officers from European countries could soon be able to spy on and arrest Britons in the UK
Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.
Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons.
They will be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples.
Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers.
The move will spark a damaging row with backbench Tory MPs opposed to giving such draconian powers to Brussels.
The Tories were opposed to the directive in opposition, saying it showed a ‘relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties’.
But ministers have made a dramatic U-turn since joining the pro-EU Lib Dems in government, and the wide-ranging powers are due to be approved later this week.
According to the campaign group Fair Trials International, under the new rules it would be possible, for example, for Spanish police investigating a murder in a nightclub to demand the ID of every British citizen who flew to the country in the month the offence took place.
They could also force the UK to search its DNA database – which contains nearly one million innocent people – and send samples belonging to anybody who was in Spain at the time.
This could leave an entirely innocent person facing an agonising battle to establish his or her innocence.
Tory MP Dominic Raab, who has campaigned against the power grab, said: ‘This sweeping directive would put serious operational strains on hard-pressed UK police forces.
‘There are scant safeguards to protect the personal information of law-abiding British citizens. These serious issues should be properly debated in Parliament before the UK decides to opt in.’
Read more at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297621/Ministers-hand-Big-Brother-powers-EU-police.html#ixzz0yIqbIu7X
Categories: Changing Society, Civil Rights, Government & Politics, Law Enforcement, Social Change, Society and Culture, World Politics Tags: Big Brother in Britain, Fair Trials International, James Slack, Surveillance Society
Tribes Unite to Fight BP
A delegation of indigenous leaders from Ecuador visited Louisiana to share what they learned in a decades-long battle with Texaco.
by Sue Sturgis
A delegation of indigenous and community leaders from Ecuador visited Louisiana this week at the invitation of the United Houma Nation, a tribe in coastal Lafourche and Terrebone parishes that has been hit hard by the BP oil catastrophe. The Ecuadorians have come to share lessons they’ve learned dealing with another oil disaster: U.S. oil companies’ dumping of toxic waste in the Amazon rainforest.
Arriving in Louisiana, the delegates prepare to speak of their experiences with their own oil crisis.
To view the video documenting the first day of their visit to the Gulf, see the link below, or click here.
- From 1964 until it pulled out in 1992, Texaco—which merged with Chevron a decade ago—dumped some 17 million gallons of crude oil and 20 billion gallons of drilling waste water into waterways and pits in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The contamination has seeped into water supplies, where it’s killed fish and is blamed for health problems among local residents, who suffer from elevated rates of cancers, reproductive disorders, and respiratory ailments.
At a town hall meeting that took place July 1, in Dulac, La., the delegation discussed a report about their experiences back home. Titled “The Lasting Stain of Oil: Cautionary Tales and Lessons From the Amazon,” it offers advice for holding polluters accountable and planning for long-term recovery after severe environmental contamination.
“Although BP says that it plans to take full responsibility for the damages caused by its spill and restore the Gulf Coast to the way it was before, the experience in Ecuador shows that oil companies do the right thing only when compelled to do so by a combination of political, financial, media, and community pressure,” says the report, which was prepared by the Asamblea de Afectados por Texaco (Assembly of Those Affected by Texaco), along with Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/tribes-unite-to-fight-bp
CLICK to the next WEB page – see bottom ‘Next Page’ button
Categories: Changing Society, Community, Environment, Social Change, Society and Culture, World Politics Tags: Amazon Tribes, Bp Oil Spill, Ecology Disasters, Environment, Sue Sturgis
******* What Ties This All Together ******* ********* Friday, July 30, 2010 *******
************Here @ 3 (PST)**********
This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.
Why these items have been brought together in today’s issue of the Los Angeles Free Press
by Steven M. Finger
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My personal note to our frequent readers: One more evolutionary step – today is Part One of a two-part blog. This will serve to tie together all of today’s items, while Monday’s issue will add a certain something unique to what we have here.
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We start with a thought from Oliver Stone[1], who seems to have had some other thoughts in the past that, importantly, he has acted upon. Do I really think he is on the verge of making a movie on what could be the largest revolution in America’s history…? And am I yet convinced that this is the way to go?
Item[2]… may make you think more in favor of the notion presented above, than you do now.
Item[3]… there to say that even if profits so huge were, in fact, co-opted, they may prove to be insignificant; they are, in part, amassed because such small amounts were spent on precautions. Thus, if they were turned about, it is likely that they may be nothing more than the pound of cure for what would have been the very, very less expensive ounce of prevention.
Which brings us to BP (oh, how clever are these interlockings between one item and another! Hope we’re all having fun.). We’ve seen estimates that say that had they even done all that they could have – not just met the ‘requirements’ – the total additional expenditure would have been no more than another $30 million dollars. Yes, I know that the ‘no more than’ sounds like it’s pocket change. But, in their pockets, it is! They make that in profit in less than a week.
Item[4]… is here for two reasons; the first is it’s own point that ‘good’ news is, usually, followed by a reality that differs and, second, so that we could make that statement even stronger… take note that it was released weeks ago, and what you’ve heard since!
We end with Item[5], announcing the arrival of some of the very same people mentioned in Item[3] who all too well know the truth of Item[5]. Hopefully, the perspective they bring will enable a quicker recovery of our Gulf, and save the society that has been built about it.
From the top of this Issue to the bottom, it speaks of a change in culture – of what may come, to what has come, to what needs to come about. The impact on the region’s customs, on the future of its economy, to the sea creatures that were to travel the globe, is enormous. Laws will change, votes will change, new regulations will be put in place, something like this will never again be allowed to happen. You can believe that until you come right back here on Monday.
Here are the keywords to our thoughts today, hope they are a clue for you as to our thinking: Society and Culture, Amazon Tribes, Bp Oil Spill, Ecology Disasters, Environment, Halliburton oil profits, oil resources, Oliver Stone, Social Change
Links to the items in today’s Los Angeles Free Press:
[1] http://losangelesfreepress.com/oliver-stone-us-should-nationalize-oil-resources/
[2] http://losangelesfreepress.com/halliburton-profit-soars-83-in-q2/
[3] http://losangelesfreepress.com/tomgram-ellen-cantarow-blowback-crude/
[4] http://losangelesfreepress.com/the-gulf-well-is-still-leaking/
[5] http://losangelesfreepress.com/tribes-unite-to-fight-bp/
Categories: Business & Finance, Changing Society, Community, Environment, Government & Politics, Health & Wellness, Social Change, Society and Culture, World Politics Tags: Amazon Tribes, Bp Oil Spill, Ecology Disasters, Environment, Halliburton oil profits, oil resources, Oliver Stone, Social Change, Steven M. Finger
Categories: Business & Finance, Changing Society, Community, Government & Politics, Social Change, Society and Culture, World Politics Tags: Changing Society, Society and Culture
Where is the anti-capitalist ideology?
The claimed economic and social crisis means circumstances are ripe for a bold ideological response, yet it hasn’t emerged
by 
Pro-communist protests such as this one at the Sorbonne University in 1968 were once common, but where is today’s movement for change? Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Just as the heatwave ended and the sun went in, the government announced that “the deepest recession in Britain’s post-war history was even more severe than previously feared”. For some people this news may trigger further rounds of intense discussion about what the economic statistics mean and what the prospects are for a sustained recovery.
Very important, I’m sure. But for most of us, I guess – especially if, like me, your grasp of economic theory struggles to get beyond the 1960s Tory prime minister Lord Home’s reliance on matchsticks – our thoughts turn to the human cost, the devastating impact on people’s lives, whether for us personally, for already disadvantaged groups, the country as a whole, developing nations, or the more than 2 billion people already living on less than $2 per day.
Predictions about the consequences of the deficit-reduction measures proposed are already dire. And for many millions, the debilitating impact of financial retrenchment is a reality today. Commentators of all political stripes are falling over each other to tell us that state social programmes will collapse. Unemployment will rise massively. Millions will be impoverished. Health services will be curtailed, pensions reduced, infrastructure projects cut, educational opportunities diminished. Worldwide living standards will deteriorate. And things won’t get better any time soon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/13/anti-capitalist-ideology-economic-crisis
