European Union trade chief Karel De Gucht said Monday the bloc will shortly take action against Argentina’s government, after its decision to seize control of oil giant Repsol’s YPF subsidiary.

“We will soon be moving forward with a response to Argentina’s action in the Repsol case, in particular,” De Gucht said in a speech during which he complained of a “growing tendency towards protectionism across Latin America.”

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner on Friday signed a bill expropriating 51 percent of YPF’s stock from Repsol, its majority shareholder, sealing a measure that has roiled the country’s trade ties with Europe.

“Argentina has also continued other trade restrictive policies, like its import-licensing regime,” De Gucht added.

“And just last week we saw Bolivia take another step towards nationalising utility companies at the expense of a Spanish firm.

“These types of moves are of course a problem for Argentina and Bolivia — which will find it harder to secure the international investment they need,” he underlined.

CONTINUED at Yahoo News.

Facing intense criticism over the nationalization of its biggest oil firm, Argentina on Thursday ordered the seizure of YPF Gas, another group controlled by Spain’s Repsol, a move expected to further inflame tensions.

In a case that has sparked fears of a new wave of expropriations, a statement published in the official gazette said the Argentine government was declaring YPF Gas a public utility and taking 51 percent of the shares.

YPF Gas is not technically part of the YPF oil group ordered nationalized this week, leading to global condemnation, but a separate company.

However, an 85 percent stake in the gas firm is owned by Repsol Butano SA, a division of the Spanish energy giant.

Officials said the move was an extension of the takeover of YPF, the big unit of Repsol that Argentina decided to seize this week.

The government statement indicates that YPF Gas “plays an essential role in Argentina’s hydrocarbon policy.”

CONTINUED at Yahoo News.

Spain denounced the “hostile” decision by Argentina to nationalise Spanish-owned oil company YPF, a subsidiary of Repsol, and warned Monday that it would take “clear and forceful measures” in response.

Argentina’s decision had “broken the climate of friendship” between the two countries, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo told journalists, speaking after a crisis cabinet meeting called by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

The government strongly “condemns… the decision to expropriate” a controlling stake in the Repsol subsidiary, he added.

“It’s a hostile decision against Repsol, thus against a Spanish business, and thus against Spain,” said Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria, speaking at the same news conference.

“The government is announcing that it will take all the measures it considers appropriate to defend the legitimate interests of Repsol and of all Spanish businesses abroad,” he added.

The company itself said in a statement Monday: “Repsol considers that the measure announced is manifestly illegal and gravely discriminatory…”, and rejected the Argentine argument that it had been done in the public interest.

The company promised to take all the necessary legal measures to protect its interests and those of its shareholders.

Argentina said Monday it would expropriate the country’s biggest oil company, YPF, controlled by Repsol, allocating a 51-percent stake to the state and to Argentina’s oil-producing provinces.

Argentine authorities accuse Repsol YPF of failing to meet commitments linked to oil-drilling in the country.

YPF oil concessions had previously been revoked by 16 provinces, on the grounds that the company was not meeting its investment obligations.

Kirchner has pressured the oil companies operating in Argentina to increase production, after the country’s bill for oil imports shot up 110 percent last year to $9.4 billion.

Spain and the European Union last week warned that Argentina would damage relations with them if it went ahead and nationalised YPF.

“We will be accompanied, as we already are by our European partners… and also our partners elsewhere,” Cospedal said, without elaborating.

Last Friday, Margallo had warned Argentina against “aggression” in the Repsol case.

Source: France 24.

NaturalNews can now confirm that the Michigan Department of Natural Resources has, in total violation of the Fourth Amendment, conducted two armed raids on pig farmers in that state, one in Kalkaska County at Fife Lake and another in Cheboygan County. Staging raids involving six vehicles and ten armed men, DNA conducted unconstitutional, illegal and arguablycriminalarmed raids on these two farms with the intent of shooting all the farmers’ pigs under a bizarre new “Invasive Species Order” (ISO) that has suddenly declared traditional livestock to be an invasive species.

See our previous report on this subject at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/035372_Michigan_pigs_farm_freedom.html

And hear my interview with Mark Baker, who runs one of the farms to be targeted by the Michigan government, at:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=67C793DC0503D209399C21450485DA07

The ISO also deems farmers who raise these pigs to be felons, and DNR officials were ready to make arrests on the scene and haul away these farmers to be prosecuted as hardened criminals.

CONTINUED at Natural News.

A coalition of advocacy groups has begun a week of intensive protests against the latest attack on the free and open internet, The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The draconian legislation would force companies to ignore existing privacy laws and share information with the federal government.

New York City police are investigating death threats made against staff through the phone and on twitter. This after officers forcibly arrested more than 70 people during an Occupy Wall Street protest. Since the start of the movement, nationwide protests have faced numerous cases of police brutality with batons and tear gas often used to disperse crowds. As the movement continues, so too does Washington’s desire to silence the American public, as RT’s Marina Portnaya explains.

As Natural News readers already well know, the real agenda of the TSA has absolutely nothing to do with airport security (TSA security is a joke) and everything to do with “prisoner training” the public. It’s all about humiliation and dehumanization. It’s about teaching the slave citizens that they are animals to be ordered around by a bunch of lawless government tyrants who onlyimpersonateactual law enforcement officers (TSA “officers” are not sworn officers in any way, and they have no law enforcement training).

The latest example of all this involves a Hawaiian mother who recently attempted to board an airplane in Lihue, Hawaii. She was carrying a breast pump and several empty bottles to hold her breast milk later on. For those who may not know, many new moms frequently use breast pumps to fill bottles with their own natural mother’s milk which they later give to their children.

Remarkably, upon seeing these empty bottles, the TSA agent in charge lapsed into a power trip frenzy and told her that she could not carry empty bottles on the airplane!

Now the TSA targets empty bottles, too

CONTINUED at Natural News.

RAEFORD, N.C. — A Hoke County preschooler was fed chicken nuggets for lunch because a state worker felt that her homemade lunch did not have enough nutritional value, according to a report by theCarolina Journal.

The West Hoke Elementary School student was in her More at Four classroom when a U.S. Department of Agriculture agent who was inspecting lunch boxes decided that her packed lunch — which consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips — “did not meet USDA guidelines,” the Journal reports.

The decision was made under consideration of a regulation put in place by the the Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services, which requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs to meet USDA guidelines.

“When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones,” the Journal reports.

The student’s mother told the Journal she received a note from the school about the incident and was charged $1.25 for the cafeteria tray, from which her daughter only ate three chicken nuggets.

The note explained how students who did not bring “healthy lunches” would be offered the missing portions and that parents could be charged for the cost of the cafeteria food, the Journal reports.

The mother, who was not identified in the report, expressed concern about school officials telling her daughter that she wasn’t “packing her lunch box properly.”

Source: My Fox 8.

We can only be kept in the cages we do not see. A brief history of human enslavement – up to and including your own. From Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy conversation in the world.http://www.freedomainradio.com