When neo-Nazi James Von Brunn opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Europe’s far-Right won major victories in the same week, the fascist, terrorist threat to the U.S. both home and abroad became too large to ignore.

This one is pretty good too

http://af.reuters.com/…

Sweden’s Pirate Party, striking a chord with voters who want more free content on the Internet, won a seat in the European Parliament, early results showed on Sunday.

The Pirate Party captured 7.1 percent of votes in Sweden in the Europe-wide ballot, enough to give it a single seat. The party wants to deregulate copyright, abolish the patent system and reduce surveillance on the Internet.

“This is fantastic!” Christian Engstrom, the party’s top candidate, told Reuters. “This shows that there are a lot of people who think that personal integrity is important and that it matters that we deal with the Internet and the new information society in the right way.”

Previously an obscure group of single-issue activists, the party enjoyed a jump in popularity after the conviction in April of four men behind The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s biggest free file-sharing website.

The case cast a spotlight on the issue of internet file-sharing, a technique used to download movies, music and other content. The defendants have called for a retrial.

Despite the similar names, the party and the website are not linked. The party was founded in 2006 and contested a Swedish general election that year, but received less than one percent of the vote.

Engstrom credited the party’s appeal to young voters for its success. “We are very strong among those under 30. They are the ones who understand the new world the best. And they have now signalled they don’t like how the big parties deal with these issues.”

The Pirate Party will take up one of Sweden’s 18 seats in the 785-seat parliament. “We will use all of our strength to defend personal integrity and our civil rights,” Engstrom said.

Seven’ish percent of the vote isn’t bad… and while 1/785 vote in the EU parliament isn’t much… it’s better then nothing.

http://arstechnica.com/…

Having just passed its super-controversial Création et Internet “graduated response” law, you might think the French government would take at least a brief break from riling up the “internautes.” Instead, the government is prepping a new crime bill that will, among other things, mandate Internet censorship at the ISP level, legalize government spyware, and create a massive meta-database of citizen information called “Pericles.”

French newspaper Le Monde has the details on the new law, dubbed “Loppsi 2.” Together with the recent Dadvsi law (which banned DRM circumvention) and Création et Internet (which disconnects repeat online copyright infringers), Loppsi 2 will “fix” France’s various cybersecurity issues.

Think of the children

Loppsi 2 allows the state to install software that can “observe, collect, record, save, and transmit” keystrokes from computers on which it is installed. In essence, it allows for government-installed Trojans for a period of four months; a judge can extend this period for four months more.

In the US, the FBI has used similar techniques for several years, installing a program called CIPAV on suspects’ computers to record and transmit “pen register” data back to investigators.

Under Loppsi 2, French ISPs would also need to participate in a Web censorship regime that initially appears targeted at child pornography. Critics like Jean-Michel Planche, who advises the French government on Internet issues, are already calling the new bill the end of an open and neutral Internet.

Finally, the bill allows for a database called “Pericles” that can pull together information from various existing French databases to create a “super-dossier” on people. According to Le Monde, such a database could contain all sorts of crucial, personal information, and sounds certain to set off the same debates that have taken place in the US whenever similar projects have been floated.

Oh—and did we mention that Loppsi 2 funds all sorts of other crime-fighting techniques, including automated camera systems that record the license plates of cars passing by on the motorway?

Taken together, the Loppsi 2 draft shows just how serious the Sarkozy government is about getting some control over this crazy Internet thing that all the kids are using now. Actually, this is a situation playing out in most developed countries at the moment, and it’s not yet clear whether a global consensus will emerge on how to deal with law enforcement challenges on the ‘Net.

Numerous countries in Europe already run Internet child porn blacklists; massive government databases exist or are being developed just about everywhere; graduated response laws are slowly moving into the mainstream. France just seems more interested than most in adopting all of these ideas in the shortest possible timeframe.

http://arstechnica.com/...

Although the Obama administration is indicating that it will be more aggressive about enforcing antitrust regulations, the European Union has been pursuing high-profile cases for years, having levied a large fine against Microsoft back in 2004, and hitting the software giant again last year. The latest target of the EU’s Competition group is the chipmaker Intel and, this morning, the EU announced that it too would face a hefty fine: slightly over €1 billion, which comes in just shy of $1.5 billion. Intel is already promising to appeal but, in the meantime, it’s going to have to drop over half a year of its current profits into a bank account in case its appeal fails.

The full decision, which is over 500 pages long, hasn’t yet been released to the public, but a summary of the EU’s case is available. It focuses primarily on the company’s pricing practices during the years 2002-2005, when Intel was facing growing competition from AMD in the desktop and server space. The EU authorities also cite an instance of similar practices in the notebook space in 2007, a time when that market was rising in prominence.
Read More…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…

Drivers face having their every move tracked by a ’spy in the car’ black box.

The system will constantly check a vehicle’s speed – making cameras redundant – and allow for pay-as-you-go tolls.

The £36million EU project is partly funded by the UK Government and backed by car makers and the telecoms industry.

It will be unveiled later this year with a view to its integration into future cars. Manufacturers suggest this could be as early as 2013.

Vehicles fitted with the system will emit a constant ‘heartbeat’ pulse revealing their location, speed and direction of travel.

EU officials believe the technology will significantly reduce road accidents, congestion and carbon emissions.

Engineers say the system will be able to track cars to within a yard, making it significantly more accurate than existing satellite navigation technology.

Experts say the system will link up easily with the pay-as-you-drive road tolls being backed by the Government.

The system allows cars to ‘talk’ to one another and to roads wired up to the system. A communication device behind the dashboard transmits the car’s location every half a second.

The messages are transmitted through mobile and wireless networks, as well as on short-range microwave or infrared routes. Vehicles will be able to warn each other if they are on collision course.

I have a hard time believing that the government or those companies contracted to provide this technology could get it to actually do half of what they claim. I do believe that no matter what they end up with it will be used to harm the people of Europe. Big Brother just keeps on trudging along over there.

Now taking bets on how long they look into doing that in the United States. Yes we have Massachusetts and I believe Washington looking to tax people based on miles driven but this EU program is far more serious.

http://www.cnn.com/

Scuffles were reported outside the Bank of England Wednesday, as thousands of protesters, including anti-capitalists, anarchists, and environmental campaigners, gathered in the heart of London’s financial district a day before the G-20 summit. Eleven people were arrested for being in possession of police uniforms, a police spokesman said. They had earlier been stopped while riding in an armored personnel carrier near Bishopsgate, near the Bank of England, and the vehicle will now be examined by police, the spokesman said. Protesters occasionally lunged forward against the police line, and one masked protester hit out at polices with a long black pole. One police officer was whisked to the side after apparently being hit. Police held their line and occasionally pushed protesters back with their hands. Organizers of the protest insisted their intentions are “theatrical,” promising “mirth, merriment and the love in our hearts” and urging participants to “bring food to share, water, tea making facilities, something to sit on, a pop up tent if you plan to stay late.” But activists also published a map Tuesday with the details of scores of banks, financial companies, law firms and trading exchanges with offices in the City, prompting fears that symbols of capitalism could be targeted. “It is believed that the majority of the protesters intend to conduct a peaceful demonstration,” the police said in a statement. “Businesses should however, remain vigilant at all times and ensure that buildings are secure. Banks and financial premises are the targets of the protest although this could extend to all premises in the city.”

I’m not seeing any stories yet but I see on the office TV on CNN that there are individuals throwing items through windows of banks or local businesses. Looks like we have vandarchists, not anarchists. At least not American, libertarian anarchists but European, leftist, anti-establishment ‘anarchists.’ Which I prefer to describe, as above, vandarchists. They give us real free market anarchists a bad name. I’d also like to correct the article. The banks, financial companies, law firms and trading exchanges which are in London are not symbols of capitalism. They are symbols of fascism, corporatism, neo-merchantillism, or at minimum state-capitalism which really dissolves into those former names. It is just as wrong to call the UK or the USA capitalist as it is wrong to call the old Soviet Russia, Cuba, or China ‘communist.’

Update:

Looks like there were a few free marketeers out and about.