'Rupert Murdoch’s News International company has been found by a parliamentary committee to have "deliberately" tried to block a Scotland Yard criminal investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World.
'The report from MPs on the all-party home affairs committee will be released on Wednesday morning. Its publication has been moved forward in time for a statement on the scandal by the prime minister, David Cameron. The report’s central finding comes a day after Rupert and James Murdoch testified before the culture, media and sport committee. The home affairs committee report marks an official damning judgment on News International’s actions. It finds the company "deliberately" tried to "thwart" the 2005-2006 Metropolitan police investigation into phone hacking carried out by the News of the World.
'The investigation came at a time when Andy Coulson was editor. Coulson went on to be chosen by Cameron to be his director of communications, before resigning.' (Guardian article).
'The unrest in the Middle East, the convulsions in Ivory Coast, the hunger sweeping across failed states such as Somalia, the freak weather patterns and the systematic unraveling of the American empire do not signal a lurch toward freedom and democracy but the catastrophic breakdown of globalization. The world as we know it is coming to an end. And what will follow will not be pleasant or easy.
'The bankrupt corporate power elite, who continue to serve the dead ideas of unfettered corporate capitalism, globalization, profligate consumption and an economy dependent on fossil fuels, as well as endless war, have proven incapable of radically shifting course or responding to our altered reality. They react to the great unraveling by pretending it is not happening. They are desperately trying to maintain a doomed system of corporate capitalism. And the worse it gets the more they embrace, and seek to make us embrace, magical thinking. Dozens of members of Congress in the United States have announced that climate change does not exist and evolution is a hoax. They chant the mantra that the marketplace should determine human behavior, even as the unfettered and unregulated marketplace threw the global economy into a seizure and evaporated some $40 trillion in worldwide wealth. The corporate media retreats as swiftly from reality into endless mini-dramas revolving around celebrities or long discussions about the inane comments of a Donald Trump or a Sarah Palin. The real world - the one imploding in our faces - is ignored.
'The deadly convergence of environmental and economic catastrophe is not coincidental. Corporations turn everything, from human beings to the natural world, into commodities they ruthlessly exploit until exhaustion or death. The race of doom is now between environmental collapse and global economic collapse. Which will get us first? Or will they get us at the same time?' (Adbusters article & audio stream).
'After six months under virtual house arrest, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange acknowledged Thursday that his detention is hampering the work of the secret-spilling site. His supporters accused Britain of subjecting him to "excessive and dehumanizing" treatment.
'The 39-year-old Australian is living at a supporter's rural estate as he fights extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over claims of rape and sexual molestation made by two women. Assange's bail conditions require him to observe an overnight curfew, wear an electronic tag and report to police daily.
'His supporters released a video to The Associated Press condemning the conditions. In it, WikiLeaks associate Sarah Harrison accuses authorities of treating Assange "like a caged animal."
'British prosecutors, who initially opposed bail, say the strict conditions are necessary because the claims against Assange are serious and he is a flight risk.
'The video also claims police have set up surveillance cameras near the house to record license plates of visiting cars.' (ABC News article).
'In an interview with Press TV, Charlie Veitch, political activist, elaborates on Queen Elizabeth II's recent comments that she may be the last royal head of state.
'Press TV: When the Queen of England is quoted as saying she's concerned about a UK break-up, what is she referring to?
'Veitch: She's referring to a 304-year-old union called the United Kingdom that was enacted in a document called the Act of the Union.
'The Scottish nobility eventually surrendered by corruption to the English crown. We're seeing a big campaign now in Scotland with the Scottish National Party [SNP] going to run a vote to see if Scotland wants to break away from England. I've just been in Wales over the last week and there's been a resurgent Welsh identity there.
'I think what we're seeing is a spread of the “Arab Spring” revolutions coming to Europe.
'You've just mentioned in your report that Spainish people are camping. Let's not forget that all royal families are a parasite upon natural order and upon natural law because we are all created equal under the eyes of God, the universe, or whatever you believe in.
'We are seeing the Queen, which is very nice, expressing her very rational fears that the slave ship that she and her parents helped create is about to crash into the rocks.' (PressTV article & video stream).
'Three anti-capitalist activists who were planning a mock execution of Prince Andrew with a guillotine to mark the royal wedding have been arrested and detained at Lewisham police station.
'Officers arrested Professor Chris Knight, a leading member of the G20 Meltdown group, outside his home in Brockley, south east London at around 6.15pm, according to an eyewitness. Also arrested were Knight's partner Camilla Power and Patrick Macroidan, who was dressed as an executioner, said fellow activist Mike Raddie, of north London, who was with them.
'The three activists were preparing to drive their theatrical props, including a home-made guillotine and effigies, into central London when three police cars and two police vans drew up near Knight's home in Brockley, said Raddie.
'"Chris was arrested first. He lay down on the pavement opposite his house to make the arrest difficult," said Raddie. "He was pulled up by four police officers and two bundled him into the back of a van. "Camilla was put in the back of one of the police cars. Patrick was dressed up as an executioner when he was arrested."
'Raddie said the police also seized a van containing the group's props, which included a wooden guillotine. "It's a working guillotine but it doesn't have a blade - just wood painted silver," he added.
'A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "This evening, 28 April, officers arrested three people - two males aged 68 and 45, and a 60-year-old woman - in Wickham Road, SE4 on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance and breach of the peace.' (Guardian article).
'Mankind's capacity to store the colossal amount of information in the world has been measured by scientists. The study, published in the journal Science, calculates the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes. That is the equivalent of 1.2 billion average hard drives.
'The researchers calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books. "If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we could cover the entire area of the US or China in 13 layers of books," Dr. Martin Hilbert of the University of Southern California told the BBC's Science in Action.' (BBC News article).
'A writer unearthed some interesting footage from a television program in 1956: A housewife experiments with acid. Making the viral rounds this morning is an eight-minute clip of a "stable" housewife willing to undergo research in the name of science.
'Dr. Sidney Cohen dosed volunteers at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Los Angeles to test the results of lycergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. The mild-mannered, well-dressed woman becomes stunned, high-as-a-kite and wide-eyed within three hours.
'LSD was extensively researched in the '50s and '60s by the U.S. government. The co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, even thought the drug could help with the recovery process for alcoholics, Don Lattin, the author who discovered the footage, writes.' (Washington Post article & YouTube video stream).
'Do you ever get those days when you question reality? One scientist has gone a step further; he is currently building an experiment that will hopefully answer whether or not we all exist as a result of a universal hologram.
'Confused? You're not alone. The holographic universe hypothesis is steeped in complex mathematics and descriptions that belong in hard science fiction novels.' (Discovery News article).
'In 2008, Fermilab particle astrophysicist Craig Hogan made waves with a mind-boggling proposition: The 3D universe in which we appear to live is no more than a hologram.
'Now he is building the most precise clock of all time to directly measure whether our reality is an illusion. The idea that spacetime may not be entirely smooth - like a digital image that becomes increasingly pixelated as you zoom in - had been previously proposed by Stephen Hawking and others. Possible evidence for this model appeared last year in the unaccountable “noise” plaguing the GEO600 experiment in Germany, which searches for gravitational waves from black holes. To Hogan, the jitteriness suggested that the experiment had stumbled upon the lower limit of the spacetime pixels’ resolution.' (Symmetry Magazine article).
'In the end, no one really knows what led Mitchell Heisman, an erudite, wry, handsome 35-year-old, to walk into Harvard Yard on the holiest day in his faith and fire one shot from a silver revolver into his right temple, on the top step of Memorial Church, where hundreds gathered to observe the Jewish Day of Atonement.
'But if the 1,905-page suicide note he left is to be believed - a work he spent five years honing and that his family and others received in a posthumous e-mail after his suicide last Saturday morning on Yom Kippur - Heisman took his life as part of a philosophical exploration he called “an experiment in nihilism.’’
'At the end of his note - a dense, scholarly work with 1,433 footnotes, a 20-page bibliography, and more than 1,700 references to God and 200 references to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche - Heisman sums up his experiment:
'“Every word, every thought, and every emotion come back to one core problem: life is meaningless,’’ he wrote. “The experiment in nihilism is to seek out and expose every illusion and every myth, wherever it may lead, no matter what, even if it kills us.’’' (Boston Globe article & Suicide Note pdf download).
'Several sources report, with accompanying photographs, that the Swedish ISP and broadband provider hosting WikiLeaks has moved its servers into an underground location first blasted from solid rock in the 1960s, yet recently refurbished and upgraded.
'First reported in a Norwegian paper, but then picked up by Forbes and several other online sources, it now looks like Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks organization are very media-savvy as well as smart and wily.
'The whistle-blowing website is being hosted by Internet Service Provider (ISP) Bahnhof, and they recently moved their servers into an empty Cold War bunker 30 meters (100 feet) deep under the streets of Stockholm. The underground data center is 4,000 square meters large and Bahnhof put much effort into redesigning the old bunker into a modern data center that could easily be featured in a James Bond movie.' (Fotograf panoramic views & Digital Journal article).
'BP has released hundreds of photos aimed at giving us all an inside glimpse of the Gulf oil spill and the company’s clean-up efforts. But it’s BP’s enthusiastic use of Photoshop that’s getting it all the attention. Which is too bad because the Photoshop blunders are unnecessary, cast further doubt on BP and erase whatever minuscule image boost BP received when Bob Dudley took over the Gulf oil spill response.
'The doctored images aren’t egregious. Silly, shoddy and unnecessary are better descriptions. The three images that have been discovered so far all try to add more “activity” to the photo. For example, images were doctored to fill in the blank screens at BP’s crisis command center. The helipad in another photo was removed to give the appearance that a helicopter was flying.' (BNet article).
'Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions.
'251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world.
'55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum (LPTM).
'The LPTM lasted 100,000 years.
'Those subterranean seas of methane virtually reshaped the planet when they explosively blew from deep beneath the waters of what is today called the Gulf of Mexico.
'Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again - and no known technology can stop it.
'The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.' (Helium article).
'So Afghanistan has overnight turned into the "Saudi Arabia" of precious metals, has it? The Pentagon's asseverations about the lucre contained in miserable Afghanistan testify to its tireless ingenuity in selling the war. But even if Afghanistan does turn out to possess everything the Pentagon claims it does, the sad truth is that precious natural resources are, more often than not, a curse for the Third World nations that harbor them.
'A scramble for Afghanistan's resources would simply intensify the tribal warfare that's already taking place in that devastated country. But it's not all that surprising that the Pentagon would float this little PR trial balloon. It isn't simply that the war isn't going well. It's that, according to a fascinating report in the Los Angeles Times by Alex Rodriguez, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence is actually represented on the Taliban leadership council, known as the shura. In other words, our close ally, Pakistan, the recipient of billions in American largess, is actually helping to coordinate the fight against America and its allies in Afghanistan.' (Huffington Post article).
'It has been more than 50 days since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico killing 11 workers. The rig burned and sank but BP is still struggling to plug the leak that is pumping millions of litres of oil into the ocean.
'Birds, sea turtles, dolphins and other animals are washing up on shore and the leak is not expected to be stopped for months. Residents of the Gulf coast depend on those waters and the marsh for their livelihood. From shrimping, fishing and oyster beds to tourism, the people who live there have built their lives around this habitat for centuries.
'The scale of the damage is unknown but many fear that this man-made disaster will destroy that way of life.' (Aljazeera video stream).
'I met Gary McKinnon a few years ago and interviewed him over a beer. Over time I have come to the conclusion that despite the serious hacking crimes he committed, he needs help and a period of coummunity service, rather than a 60 year prison sentence.
'McKinnon certainly broke the law and caused damage when he hacked into US military systems. He may not have deleted files, or damaged software, but security specialists had no choice but to rebuild each machine he compromised. That is expensive, time consuming, and disruptive.
'But I believe that McKinnon is telling the truth when he says that he was motivated to hack into US military computers by a desire to prove that the US government is covering-up evidence of UFOs.
'He talked passionately about his late night hacking episodes, discovering pictures of UFO's on military servers and evidence of a US space-corps. Sadly, for UFO conspiracy theorists, no evidence of his discoveries survives.
'Why are the US authorities so keen to extradite such a misguided soul? One rumour going around security and law enforcement agencies might offer an explanation.' (Computer Weekly article and Independant interview).
Ronnie James Dio is dead. This is very sad news indeed. I remember first seeing Dio at the Edinburgh Playhouse almost 23 years ago with support band Warlock. I was 17 years old at the time, and I'll never forget the sheer raw energy of that cold December night. My eardrums rang for three days after that gig. It was mindblowing, and I've never been quite the same since. \m/
'Ronnie James Dio’s powerful, multioctave voice was perfectly suited to the ear-splitting, histrionic style of heavy metal and he sang with two of the genre’s most important bands in Rainbow and Black Sabbath.
'After replacing Ozzy Osbourne in the latter, his striking singing on the album Heaven & Hell helped to revitalise Black Sabbath’s fortunes in the early 1980s when the band were at a low ebb. He did so by bringing his own personality to the band, rather than merely imitating Osbourne, and was renowned as one of heavy metal’s most distinctive stylists.
'He also left his mark during his time with Black Sabbath when he popularised the “devil’s horns” gesture. Sometimes refered to as “metal horns” and made with the second and fifth fingers of the hand, it became a popular symbol as a kind of heavy metal equivalent of the Masonic handshake, tapping into the genre’s long fascination with necromancy and the struggle between good and evil. Dio attributed the sign to the influence of his Italian grandmother, who he said had used it to ward off the evil eye.
'After leaving Black Sabbath he formed his own successful metal band Dio, and had recently been reunited with former Black Sabbath colleagues.' (Times Online article & Live At The Spectrum video stream).
'What on earth (or, rather, way out in space) has become of the Voyager 2 space probe? NASA scientists are baffled by a sudden and so-far indecipherable change in the data format of the signals that the probe has been sending back since late April, leading to some wild and colorful speculations that seem ripped from the screenplay of the original Star Trek movie.
'The Voyager space probes were launched in 1977 (Voyager 2 on August 20, Voyager 1 two weeks later on September 5) and embarked on a journey of exploring our solar system's outer planets. Having captured and transmitted data and images from Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus (as well as the planets' respective moons) during the 1980s, the two probes remain operational 33 years on.
'Both probes were installed with a Golden Record. Simultaneously a greeting card, map and time capsule, these devices contained images and sounds from Planet Earth and voice greetings in more than 50 languages. The records' content describing our home was selected and assembled by the late Carl Sagan, just in case someone out there might be listening as the Voyagers passed through.' (Tonic article).
'The appointment of Vince Cable as the UK's new business secretary throws the future of the controversial Digital Economy Act into doubt.
'As the country awoke this morning to the news that it has a coalition government for the first time since World War II, it also emerged that Cable, the Liberal Democrats' former Chancellor hopeful, has been made Secretary of State for Business, Skills and Innovation.
'This is one of the Cabinet seats formerly occupied by Lord Mandelson, the mastermind behind the Digital Economy Act, which created new powers to fight Internet piracy.
'While the Act was panned for tilting the balance of power online away from users and ISPs, some of its most controversial details – such as the provisions on disconnecting persistent pirates - were left to secondary legislation to be drawn up by the Secretary of State and Ofcom.
'The Lib Dems were the only major party to vote against the Act when it passed last month, and newly-appointed Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg spoke openly during the election campaign about repealing it.
'We doubt that the future of the Act would have been a priority in the talks that led to the creation of the new Conservative-led coalition, but with Cable now at the reins, it's far from certain that the DE Act's powers will be handled in the way Mandelson imagined.' (THINQ article)
'A team of 20 Nepalese Sherpas is planning to clean up rubbish and bring the bodies of dead climbers down from the top of Mount Everest. The Sherpas will work above 8,000m (26,240ft) - in what's known as the "Death Zone" because of the thin air and treacherous conditions. They expect to bring back the bodies of at least two climbers, including American Scott Fischer, who died in 1996, and Swiss mountaineer Gianni Goltz, who died in 2008.
'The expedition will set off from the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, this weekend and reach the Everest's South Col, just below 8,000m, by 1 May. After setting up camp on the South Col, the team will climb to the summit of Everest and start working their way down, picking up rubbish as they go.
'Everest climber Namgyal Sherpa is running the expedition. He says this is the first time anyone has cleaned up rubbish at this altitude, but that it is important to do so to preserve the environment and make the mountain safe. "I'm a climber and I can say frankly that I'm a little bit angry when I climb Mount Everest because of the rubbish," he says.' (BBC News article).
When I read articles like this one, I'm not afraid to say that I pray for a huge solar flare to occur, wiping out all the technology on this planet in a flash. In fact, nothing would please me more than to see the whole globe's technological infrastructure plunge into disrepair whilst morons scamper around relentlessly trying to get a mobile phone signal in an attempt to find instructions on what to do next.
It's sad enough that people use Twitter, without kettles joining in on the action too...
'Two London designers decided to come up with a get-rich-quick scheme whilst waiting for a bartender to mix their drinks. The result? A kitchen appliance which could communicate through Twitter. And what kitchen appliance would any self-respecting Englishman choose? An electric kettle, or the Twettle.
'When we first saw Tweeting appliances, they were a laughable novelty: a Twittering toilet designed to show up the banality of most Tweets, for example. But as the network has grown into a ubiquitous and always-on tool, a tool designed for fast, short and current messages, using it to tell you your toast is cooked now seems a lot less trivial.' (Wired article).
'Well may the pope defy "the petty gossip of dominant opinion". But the Holy See can no longer ignore international law, which now counts the widespread or systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity. The anomalous claim of the Vatican to be a state - and of the pope to be a head of state and hence immune from legal action - cannot stand up to scrutiny.
'The truly shocking finding of Judge Murphy's commission in Ireland was not merely that sexual abuse was "endemic" in boys' institutions but that the church hierarchy protected the perpetrators and, despite knowledge of their propensity to reoffend, allowed them to take up new positions teaching other children after their victims had been sworn to secrecy.' (Guardian article).
'London's oldest esoteric bookshop, which closed last month after more than a century, is to re-open.
'Watkins Books in Cecil Court off Charing Cross Road, whose customers included occultist Aleister Crowley and poet W.B. Yeats, owed £500,000 in tax.
'Now American Etan Ilfeld, who owns an art gallery in the street, has bought it from the administrators.
'The shop, which sells books on magic, astrology, the occult, Eastern religions and witchcraft, will resume trading from tomorrow.' (Evening Standard article & The Bookseller article).
'Glancing at the two McDonald's Happy Meals [pictured in article], you may feel they look pretty much identical.
'Astonishingly, however, this is the same meal, photographed 12 months apart.
'Where any other food might be a mouldy, decomposing mess after a year, the McDonald's meal shows few signs of going off apart from the beef patty shrivelling and the stale burger bun cracking.
'Proof, says the American nutritionist who took these photographs, that it contains so many preservatives that it is bad for the children it is aimed at.
Joann Bruso said: "Food is supposed to decompose, go bad and smell foul eventually. The fact that it has not decomposed shows you how unhealthy it is for children."
'Mrs Bruso left the Happy Meal uncovered on a shelf at her home near Denver, Colorado, to see what would happen. She has revealed the results on her blog, in which she gives healthy eating advice to parents.' (Daily Mail article).
'An investigation has begun into the mysterious and “highly unusual” deaths of scores of starlings which were found in the garden of a village house.
'Seventy-five birds were found in an area measuring only 12ft in diameter, each with severe injuries including broken beaks and legs, and abdominal wounds. Only six were alive and they were put to sleep.
'The householder, Julie Knight, 53, a nurse, returned to her home in the Somerset village of Croxley at 4pm on Sunday to discover the grisly scene.
'“It was like something out of a horror film, like Hitchcock’s The Birds. It was absolutely terrifying,” she said. “The sky was raining starlings. One of my neighbours saw them. They seemed to just fall out of the sky.”' (Telegraph article).
'A major diplomatic and political scandal is erupting that could have significant import for French-American relations. It involves new research into the mysterious outbreak of “mass insanity” in a village in southern France that affected some 500 people and resulted in five deaths.
'According to reliable US sources, the US State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research has been given a confidential inquiry from the office of Erard Corbin de Mangoux, head of the French intelligence agency DSGE (Directorate General for External Security).
'According to the report the inquiry regards a recently-published account of U.S. government complicity in a mysterious 1951 incident of mass insanity in France in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France.
'The strange outbreak severely affected nearly five hundred people, causing the deaths of at least five, two by suicide. For nearly 60 years the Pont-St.-Esprit incident has been attributed either to ergot poisoning, meaning that villagers consumed bread infected with a psychedelic mold or to organic mercury poisoning.
'Scientists with the highly respected British Medical Journal were quickly drawn in September 1951 to what it dubbed the “outbreak of poisoning.” After initial thoughts that the cause was bread infection, they concluded that mold could not explain the event or the afflictions that struck hundreds of people in the village.
'Scientists dispatched to the scene from the Sandoz Chemical company in nearby Basle, Switzerland also stated that the mold was the cause, but many other experts disagreed with them.
'Over time the mystery of the outbreak only deepened and no answers were found to be satisfactory. A 2008 book about the history of bread published in France by Professor Steven Kaplan emphasizes that the “mystery remains unsolved” and at the time, still continued to perplex scientists.' (War And Peace article & Rule Of Law Radio podcast).
'Since stories have started surfacing more recently, many have wondered, if the rumors are true. Are there really 'continents', or massive floating garbage patches residing in the pacific ocean? Apparently, the rumors are true, and these unsightly patches are reportedly killing marine life and releasing poisons that enter the human food chain, as well. However, before you start imagining a plastic version of Maui, keep in mind that these plastic patches certainly aren'tsolid surfaced islands that you could build a house on! Ocean currents have collected massive amounts of garbage into a sort of plastic "soup" where countless bits of discarded plastic float intertwined just beneath the surface. Indeed, the human race has really made its mark. One enormous plastic patch is estimated to weigh over 3 million tons altogether and cover an area roughly twice the size of Texas.' (Daily Galaxy article).
At the time of writing this, Google News lists exactly 620 articles telling us that the UK is out of recession.
And what amazing figures does the Office of National Statistics have to back up this claim?
0.1%
Yeah, that’s right folks. It’s over! Woo hoo! Pop open the champagne and go back to spending like there’s no tomorrow, because according to some boring old fart called Joe Grice from the ONS, the GDP is up point one of a percent, meaning that all the billions of pounds the tax payer has forked out in bailing out this fucked up system, 0.1% clearly indicates an amazing economic recovery.
Let’s put this in perspective people. If my boss came to me tomorrow and told me I was getting a 0.1% pay rise, I’d tell him to shove it up his arse or put it in the charity box for children with bloated head syndrome or something.
How about another analogy? If someone told you there was a 0.1% chance that you’d die tomorrow, would you be overly concerned about smoking that last fag or drinking another pint of bitter before dinner?
What utter bollocks! Here’s what I think of the ONS and their spastic statistics.
'Police are to use unmanned spy drones to monitor anti-social motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and flytippers.
'BAE Systems, which produces a unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for war zones, are developing the military-style planes for a consortium of government agencies led by Kent Police. Similar aerial devices have been used in the war in Afghanistan. Using the same techniques in the UK will undoubtedly raise concerns about the expansion of covert state surveillance.
'Documents from the South Coast Partnership, a Home Office-backed project, have revealed that the police are developing the drone plan with BAE. The documents have come to light under the Freedom of Information Act. They reveal that the partnership intends to use the drone in time for the 2012 Olympics. They also suggest that the police have talked about selling the surveillance data to private companies.' (Scotsman article).
'Here comes the great global fight for democracy. Who's in charge, banks or elected governments? President Obama puts up his fists and every other democracy had better stand with him. He is taking a colossal risk, as Goldman Sachs and the rest thumb their noses at mere governments. Someone had to take on the bully power of money – and only America has the clout. The world's economy depends on it, so Europe must stop pussy-footing and back his plans to dismantle "too big to fail" banks.
'In Britain this comes to lift the spirits after a week that saw a government powerless against malign market forces - forces it has too often extolled. The hostile takeover of Cadbury by Kraft, financed by RBS, is a deal that stands to be a loser for all but the deal-makers. Not even Kraft's biggest shareholder, Warren Buffett, could stop what he called "a bad deal", as financiers creamed off $390m in fees. Cadbury's CEO cried crocodile tears and flaked out for £12m. Mergers and acquisitions mania is back, despite voluminous evidence that takeovers often fail and only benefit the fixers. Think Sir Fred Goodwin crashing RBS with his macho capture of ABN Amro.' (Guardian article).