Spain takes hatchet to Internet Freedom

To Protect the Press,’ Spain Tries to Muffle the Internet

by Don Quijones • Reblogged with thanks (and added illustrations) from wolfstreet.com

I would like to begin this article by warning that it features no links to any other website, for the simple reason that the Spanish government is in the process of passing a new law that would make linking to other Spanish websites “taxable.” The law, commonly and rather misleadingly referred to as the “Google Tax,” forms part of a draft reform of Spain’s Intellectual Property Law that was hastily approved by the Spanish cabinet last Friday.

According to Spain’s Minister of Education, Culture and Sport, José Ignacio Wert, the reform will permit the reproduction of “non-significant fragments” (i.e. quoted and hyper-linked texts from other websites) without prior authorization, but it will also require the payment of “equitable compensation” for doing so. In other words, whenever a website aimed at “informing,” “educating,” or “entertaining” users links to another website, it will have to pay a fee to do so. Continue reading “Spain takes hatchet to Internet Freedom”

STOP new Amazon oil devastation

”There are always oil spills in the Amazon. Because the criminal predator oil companies care nothing for the environment, the health of the people or even the genocide of whole indigenous nations. this has been going on for 50 years, the biggest crimes being the 1000’s of spills and abandoned chemical lakes created over 30 years by Texaco (now Chevron) which even today uses it’s massive wealth to defend its impunity. Today while science proves that 60% of fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground to save us from catastrophic climate change, the race to extract continues worse than ever, with the connivance of ourselves, the 1st world fossil fuel junkies!

Amazon oil spill has killed tons of fish, sickened native people

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Barbara Fraser

Dead fish from an oil spill in the Peruvian Amazon are mixed with oil-covered twigs gathered by local residents. Fish are vital to the villagers’ diet and income. Reporters discovered there had been another smaller oil spill only 4 days before which the company claims was a ”normal maintenance procedure”

By Barbara Fraser Environmental Health News July 23, 2014

CUNINICO, Peru – On the last day of June, Roger Mangía Vega watched an oil slick and a mass of dead fish float past this tiny Kukama Indian community and into the Marañón River, a major tributary of the Amazon.

Community leaders called the emergency number for Petroperu, the state-run operator of the 845-kilometer pipeline that pumps crude oil from the Amazon over the Andes Mountains to a port on Peru’s northern coast Continue reading “STOP new Amazon oil devastation”