Greece's Middle Class Revolt against Austerity

Small business owners in Greece have long been the backbone of the economy and reliable taxpayers in a country where tax evasion is rampant. That, though, is now changing. Self-employed workers like Angelos Belitsakos have had enough of rising taxes and have begun to revolt. Info

The people who could ultimately give Greece the coup de grace are not the kind to throw stones or Molotov cocktails, and they have yet to torch any cars. Instead, they are people like 60-year-old beverage distributor Angelos Belitsakos, people who might soon turn into a real problem for the economically unstable country. Feeling cornered, he and other private business owners want to go on the offensive. But instead fighting with weapons, they are using something much more dangerous. They are fighting with money.

Belitsakos is a short, slim and alert man who lives in the middle-class Athenian suburb of Holargos. He is also the physical and spiritual leader of a movement of businesspeople in Greece that is recruiting new members with growing speed. While Greece's government is desperately trying to combat its ballooning budget deficit by raising taxes and imposing new fees, people like Belitsakos are putting their faith in passive resistance.

The group's slogan is as simple as it is stoic: "We Won't Pay."

Source: Der Spiegel

The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom

On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish "international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.

If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet's flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and quickly became the greatest deregulatory success story of all time.

Since the Net's inception, engineers, academics, user groups and others have convened in bottom-up nongovernmental organizations to keep it operating and thriving through what is known as a "multi-stakeholder" governance model. This consensus-driven private-sector approach has been the key to the Net's phenomenal success.

Read more: Wall Street Journal

Google Caught Violating Browser Privacy Settings to Track Users

Following the revelation that Google had been tracking the surfing habits of iPhone users via a code that disables the Safari browser’s privacy settings, Microsoft has now discovered that Google is using similar methods to bypass privacy protections and spy on the browsing habits of Internet Explorer users.

“When the IE team heard that Google had bypassed user privacy settings on Safari, we asked ourselves a simple question: is Google circumventing the privacy preferences of Internet Explorer users too? We’ve discovered the answer is yes: Google is employing similar methods to get around the default privacy protections in IE and track IE users with cookies,” reports Microsoft on their IEblog.

Last week it was revealed that Google had circumvented Apple’s efforts to block third party cookies by default, allowing Google to track which ads Safari users clicked on.

The Internet giant, whose motto is “don’t be evil,” has now been caught using a similar process to disregard cookie preferences of Internet Explorer users, allowing targeted ads to be served based on browsing history.

“Google is trying to do is figure out things based on what you have looked at, figure out ways to serve you more relevant ads,” explains Henry Blodget. “Google intentionally circumvented some privacy protections that Apple put in place, now Microsoft is saying ‘hey wait a minute, they did the same thing to us.’”

While Google’s actions are not illegal, they will only serve to underscore the fact that the company has a flagrant disregard for privacy, which is no surprise given Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s creepy 2009 warning, when he stated, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Indeed, as we have documented on numerous occasions, Google’s actions are completely consistent with the charge that the company is in cahoots with the National Security Agency, America’s foremost spying operation.

Last year the Washington Post reported that Google and the NSA had formed an “alliance…to allow the two organizations to share critical information.”

After the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a FOIA request in an attempt to glean an insight into the relationship between the two, the NSA claimed it “could neither confirm nor deny” the existence of any information about its relations with Google, because “such a response would reveal information about NSA’s functions and activities.”

Charges that Google is merely the private arm of U.S. intelligence outfits stretch back years. As we reported in late 2006, ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele claimed sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground. Speaking to the Alex Jones Show, Steele elaborated on previous revelations by making it known that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its very inception. Steele named Google’s CIA point man as Dr. Rick Steinheiser, of the Office of Research and Development.

Google’s attitude towards privacy also came under scrutiny when it was discovered that the company was spying on WiFi network data in violation of the Federal Wiretap Act as it gathered images for its Streetview program. Google insisted that the practice was a mistake, even though information published in January 2010 revealed that the data collection program was a very deliberate effort to assemble as much information as possible about U.S. residential and business WiFi networks.

Source: Infowars

Anonymous Hacks Greek Ministry Website, Demands IMF Withdrawal, Threatens It Will Wipe Away All Citizen Debts

If there is one war that Greece could not afford to join, that is with the global computer hacking collective known as Anonymous. Yet as of minutes ago, that is precisley what happened, after Anonymous, as part of what it now calls Operation Greece, took down the Greek Ministry of Justice (http://www.ministryofjustice.gr/). While the pretext for the hacking appears to have been an arrest of the wrong people, is seems to have angered Anonymous to the point where they have left an extended message of demands on the Greek website, warning that unless the IMF withdraws from the country and the government resigns, all debts of Greek citizens will be wiped clean.

Translated from the Greek:

Citizens of Greece

We are Anonymous.
We watch every day your government abolishes the constitution and institutions of the country.
We see them leading you closer and closer to poverty.
We see them pass laws that deprive you of any right to dignity.
We see them and deliver the country to the IMF and the bankers.
We know about the soup kitchens in schools,
for people who are left jobless and now wait in queues for a plate of food.
We know that your country voted ACTA in your effort to silence and other Greeks.
We know everything ...
The Republic in Greece has died.
He died while a government that has not been elected by the people.
And for this reason that the time for discussion came and went.
Not negotiating anything with any of those who murdered him.
Can you hunt as you like, you can even capture some of us,
When you attempt to silence us ...
But for every one that will capture 3 others will spring up. There are 5 or 10 or 100.
Now the Greeks are all Anonymous.
We are millions against you and the 300 in this war tear gas will not help you.

Occupying Government of Greece
These days are going to vote for a bill that will be the last nail in the coffin of the Greek.
A bill to return the country to a totalitarian rule.
To bring the country and its people in absolute poverty.
We will not allow another misery to the Greek people.
We demand your resignation immediately, and elections.
We demand not paid a cent to moneylenders 'friends' you.
We demand the immediate withdrawal of the IMF from Greece.
The Justice Department was only a small sample of what we're capable of doing
Even you have not seen the full wrath of Anonymous.
For each article of a bill that would shame the vote,
we will shut the system and deleting an Inland Revenue debts of Greek citizens
Debts which requires them to fascist pay.
Can the demonstrations of the Greeks to their encounter with incredible violence,
anexelekta hitting, but the internet is our field. And I love this war.
We are many and we will be brief.

Citizens of Greece, Anonymous is now fighting on your side ...

Government of Greece, let us wait ...

E X P E C T U S !

J U S T I C E I S C O M I N G !

Source: Zerohedge