09.14.14

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• “Evil” Linux Users Teach Mac OS X Fans How to Improve and Destroy Their System

  Apple systems are actually Unix-based, which means that numerous features that you find in a Linux OS are also present in Mac OS X. This is also true for various commands that can be used in a terminal.

• Desktop

  • Hearing Footsteps

    In Ethiopia the big play for GNU/Linux is the student-desktop. Those students will eventually move to the world of work being familiar with GNU/Linux and choosing it for their IT at work and while shopping too. So, I expect as IT grows in Ethiopia, GNU/Linux will make louder footsteps.

• Server

  • How platforms attract developers: Docker shows the way

    While everyone covets developers, not everyone gets them. Take a look across the industry — it’s littered with the corpses of would-be platforms that never caught on with developers.

  • SK Telecom to Open a New “Do-it-yourself” Era in Network Equipment

    The network operating system will be based on Linux, with that solution that can offer a variety of features such as switching, routing, load balancing, firewall, and distributed denial-of-service. In addition, network virtualization, software-defined network controller, and other related features will be made available. Atto Research, the specialist in software-defined networking, will take the job of development work.

• Audiocasts/Shows

  • Fedora UK Podcast

    After last weeks shenanigans, it was decided that we should do the podcast every two weeks giving us time to get news etc, so if you was expecting one last night and it didn’t happen, then I certainly apologise.

    SE01EP02 will be next Thursday the 18th Sept, I’ll create a google+ hangout event for it nearer the time.

• Kernel Space

  • ZFS On Linux Is Called Stable & Production Ready

    ZFS on Linux is now considered production-ready by one of the biggest contributors to the ZFSOnLinux project.

    Richard Yao, the second most prolific contributor to ZFSOnLinux and who recently jointed ClusterHQ container data management company, wrote a blog post for his new employer about the state of ZFS on Linux.

  • Intel Core i7 5960X CPU Core Scaling Under Linux

    With the Intel Core i7 5960X Haswell-E is an eight-core processor with Hyper Threading to yield sixteen logical threads, we’re seeing how well this extreme Haswell processor really scales with modern open-source workloads as we benchmark the i7-5960X under Ubuntu Linux and see how the benchmarks scale with varying core counts.

  • GlusterFS Setup

  • Advice on how to become a linux kernel developer

  • Graphics Stack

    • Spliet Spills More Nouveau Re-Clocking Patches

      Roy Spliet has been one of the few open-source developers working to tackle re-clocking support for Nouveau so that this open-source, reverse-engineered NVIDIA Linux graphics driver can better perform. He’s already published several sets of patches improving various bits of GPU re-clocking through this work that’s being funded by the X.Org Foundation. Today he’s published another patch series.

    • Nouveau Lands A OpenGL 4.3 Feature & Fixes MPEG4 Video Decoding

      As explained by the OpenGL.org registry, “This extension allows a texture’s data store to be ‘viewed’ in multiple ways, either reinterpreting the data format/type as a different format/type with the same element size, or by clamping the mipmap level range or array slice range. The goals of this extension are to avoid having these alternate views become shared mutable containers of shared mutable objects, and to add the views to the API in a minimally invasive way.”

    • NVIDIA Maxwell GPU Support On Nouveau Still Requires More Work

      While the Maxwell-based GTX 900 series graphics cards are rumored to be launching in the weeks ahead, the GTX 750 Maxwell graphics cards on the open-source “Nouveau” Linux driver still need some more work before they’ll play nicely when not using NVIDIA’s proprietary Linux driver.

    • X.Org Server 1.17 Likely To Have Built-In KMS Modesetting Driver

      Work is moving forward to land the generic, KMS-dependent mode-setting driver into the X.Org Server itself.

    • For Now Intel’s Beignet Seems Better Off Than Radeon Gallium3D Clover

      While Intel’s Beignet project for providing open-source OpenCL support for their hardware on Linux was widely criticized upon its debut for being a new project rather than basing the work on Gallium3D’s “Clover” OpenCL state tracker, Beignet has matured much more quickly and for now at least seems to be better off than the Gallium3D OpenCL support.

• Applications

  • linkchecker: Relax your mouse clicker finger

  • lumail: You can probably do better

  • ipcalc and pipcalc: More than a one-letter difference

  • inotifywait, inotifywatch and incron: A package deal

  • httpry: Pry into your traffic

  • html-xml-utils: A sweet suite

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How To Install Kazam 1.5.3 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivatives

    • How To Install World Of Warcraft In Ubuntu Or Linux Mint (W/ Fixes, FPS Optimizations)

    • How To Install DeVeDe 3.23.0 On Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Elementary OS 0.3, Deepin 2014 And Other Ubuntu 14.04 Derivatives

    • How To Install Atraci 0.6.5 On The Most Popular Linux Systems

    • How To Install Atraci 0.6.5 Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivatives

    • PeerTV: Command-Line Tool To Manager And Play TV Series From EZTV Via Peerflix

    • HOWTO: Time Warner Cable and IPv6

    • Simple Ready to Roll Linux Backup Script

    • Enable Anonymous Account for Proftpd Server in RHEL/CentOS 7

    • How to Prepare for Linux Sysadmin Certification

    • How to install osCommerce on CentOS 7

    • How to Install LXQt Desktop Environment 0.7.0 in OpenSUSE 13.1

  • Wine or Emulation

    • RadeonSI Gallium3D-Nine Can Beat AMD Catalyst With Some Wine Tests

      The out-of-tree Direct3D 9.0 state tracker for Mesa’s Gallium3D continues to show much potential for allowing Wine-based games to better perform on Linux with the open-source Gallium3D drivers.

  • Games

    • Last Chance to Get Natural Selection 2 on Steam for Linux with a 75% Price Cut

      Natural Selection 2, an immersive, multiplayer shooter that pits aliens against humans in a strategic and action-packed struggle for survival, is now available on Steam for Linux with a 75% discount.

    • Garry’s Mod Sells 28K Copies on Linux, 6 Million in Total

      The developer of Garry’s Mod, a game that has been available on the Linux platform for more than a year, has revealed some sales numbers, including for Linux.

    • Garry’s Mod Is At 6 Million Copies Sold, Linux Sales At 28K

    • Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Is Getting Close To Launching On Linux

    • Rising Angels: Reborn Available On Linux & It’s Free

      I’ve play tested a bit of it since it was free (why not!), and it’s surprisingly well made. You take control of Natalie a seemingly smart military officer who has been stuck on a crappy assignment while many of her old classmates have been off fighting in war.

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • KDE Akademy 2014

    I’m writting this article sitting on 3 hour flight to Madrid where I’m going to spend next week being on holidays. Still on my mind there’s one thought How am I suppose to live and be happy not writing patches for Kexi??? Actually I know I will find answer to this question. Just want to make a point how spending two days at Akademy 2014 affected my attitude towards programming and life. But to start with..

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Akademy 2014: Aiming higher

      I am back from Akademy and this edition was particularly interesting in my opinion. Somehow it looks like there was a common theme hidden in this conference… let’s go through what I consider the most noticeable events of Akademy 2014.

    • Takeaway from Akademy

    • Using Baloo in Dolphin and Apidox love

      Dolphin has supported Baloo for a very long time and is able to display semantic places like “Today” and “This month” in the right-hand box that lists your preferred folders and your drives. It also allows you to perform simple queries that consist in looking for files containing specific words.

    • Akademy Wednesday and Thursday Photo Blog

    • KDEPIM back from holidays: You got mail!

    • Intermediate results of the icon tests: Treepata

    • KDevelop 4.7 Has Changes For Cross-Compiling, Bzr Support & More

    • KDE Frameworks 5.2.0 Released

    • Release of KDE Frameworks 5.2.0

      September 12, 2014. KDE today announces the release of KDE Frameworks 5.2.0.

    • Kate and KTextEditor 5 after Akademy 2014

      The yearly KDE conference Akademy just ended, so it’s time to look at what changed in the holy Kate in the Frameworks 5 land.

    • Akademy Wednesday and Thursday Wrapup

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • Syncthing GTK: GTK3 & Python GUI For Syncthing [Ubuntu PPA]

      Syncthing is a cross-platform peer-to-peer file synchronization client/server application written in Go, similar to BitTorrent Sync. It can be used to synchronize files between computers however, unlike BitTorrent Sync, Syncthing is open source.

• Distributions

  • SystemRescueCd 4.3.1 Is a Powerful and Easy to Use Recovery OS

    François Dupoux said that a new release of his popular SystemRescueCd Linux-based operating system for rescue and recovery tasks has been made available, and the latest version now ready for download is 4.3.1.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Fedora

      • Fedora 21 Has Been Delayed Yet Again By Another Week

  • Debian Family

    • Release Critical Bug report for Week 37

    • Debian LTS Off To A Slow Start But Progressing

      Earlier this year was the announcement of Debian to be handled with Long Term Support for the Squeeze, Wheezy, and Jessie releases. That LTS support is working but their initial funding is coming up less than desirable and there’s still open issues.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Munich Is Giving Free Ubuntu 12.04 LTS CDs To Its Citizens

          The city of Munich is now giving away Ubuntu 12.04 LTS cds to the citizens of the city, educating them with open source technologies in order to increase the number of people using open source software. This is a very good initiative by the the Munich City Library, promoting Ubuntu to the people as a replacement for their Windows operating system.

          The city is now well known for the migration of its public administration from Windows to Linux, an implementation that took years to take place which now is saving millions of euros. The city began migrating from Windows NT to an open source infrastructure back in 2006, reducing the costs of IT and giving freedom to the users.

        • PHP Exploits Fixed in All Supported Ubuntu OSes

        • Meizu MX4 Running Ubuntu Touch And Flyme In Dual Boot Will Be Released In December

        • Meizu Confirms MX4 Ubuntu Touch Release for December 2014

          Canonical will launch its Ubuntu Touch system on the new Meizu MX4 this December, according to a report made by a Meizu Italian blog.

          The Ubuntu community has been asking this question ever since the Meizu, Bq, and Canonical partnership was announced. The developers didn’t want to provide a clear answer to the launch question and only the launch window was provided, the fall of 2014.

        • The Meizu MX4 Phone With Ubuntu Is Expected To Be Out In December

        • Learn How To Create Origami Unicorns From Canonical

          As a reminder, Canonical is developing both Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn and Ubuntu Touch, the Ubuntu system for mobile phones. Ubuntu 14.10 will be an interesting release because the Unity flavor will be available in two versions: one using Unity 7 running over X.org, and the other one using Unity 8 and Mir, which are used only on Ubuntu Touch (for now).

        • The Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn Wallpapers Are Awesome. You Should Get Them Now

          Recently, the developers have chosen the default wallpapers of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn. And they really look awesome.

        • Nemo With Unity Patches Available For Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn [PPA]

          Quick update for Ubuntu users who have upgraded to Ubuntu 14.10 or are planning to do so in the near future: today I updated the WebUpd8 Nemo PPA with packages for Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Phones

    • Android

      • First Android apps for Chromebooks

        Chromebooks have turned out to be much more popular than most people expected when they were first released. But what could make Chromebooks even better? Well, how about running Android apps on them? Google has announced the first four Android apps for Chrome OS.

      • Chromebooks Now Can Run Android Apps

        Google Chromebooks can finally run Android apps, or at least a few of them.

        Google software engineer Ken Mixter and product manager Josh Woodward on Thursday announced the availability of four Android apps that have been selected for life in Chrome OS: Duolingo, Evernote, Sight Words, and Vine. These Android apps can now be installed on Chromebooks through the Chrome Web Store.

      • Analysts predict that Android Wear will beat the Apple Watch

        The Apple Watch was just announced earlier this week and it seems a new rivalry has already been born between Apple and Google. Which wearable platform will dominate? The Telegraph reports that some analysts think that Android Wear will quickly overpower the Apple Watch to take the lead.

      • Android Wear ‘to dominate Apple Watch’

        Android Wear is rapidly establishing itself as the de facto software platform for smartwatches, and will go on to dominate Apple’s recently announced Apple Watch, analysts predict.

Free Software/Open Source

• Web Browsers

  • Chrome

    • Updates for Chromium and Flash in sep 14

      Patch tuesday came and went. We have new Flash from Adobe and as a result, the Google Chrome browser also had a version bump and a new “PepperFlash” Plugin. Time for an update of my own Chromium package (just for Slackware 14.1 and current; the package for 13.37 and 14.0 remains at 37.0.2062.94 but you can of course compile a newer one yourself).

  • Mozilla

    • Debug Chrome, Safari apps from Firefox with new add-on

    • Mozilla Looking to Go Cross Platform for Development

      Developers today more often then not require multiple tools to build for desktop and mobile web applications. It’s a challenge that Mozilla is aiming to solve with a new cross-platform web development add-on. The new Firefox Tools Adaptor will now enable a developer to leverage the developer tools in Firefox for applications that will run on multiple platforms. The new plugin extends the reach of Firefox’s developers tools beyond the Firefox browser for the desktop and Android, to apps that will run on Chrome as well as Safari in IOS.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • HP Just Made A Brilliant Move Against Amazon By Buying Eucalyptus Systems

  • HP gets all open source in the cloud with Eucalyptus acquisition

    There was a time, when open source software was synonymous with being cheap or on the fringe. In other words, companies embraced closed source options, because that was the thing to do – there were not many options. Quite frankly, I do not blame businesses for playing it safe.

  • Open Source Robotics Foundation to Extend ROS Support to Qualcomm Snapdragon Processors

• CMS

  • OpenTickets: An Open Source Event Management and Ticket Sales Platform Built on WordPress and WooCommerce

• Funding

  • After the Fork: Financing Open Source Software

    One of the key moments in the history of free software was the rise of companies based around open source. After the first wave of startups based around offering distros and support for them – Red Hat being perhaps the most famous and successful example – there followed a second wave of companies offering open source versions of key enterprise software, many of them described in the early posts of this blog.

• BSD

  • FreeBSD 10.1 In Beta Ahead Of Planned Release Next Month

    Glen Barber announced the FreeBSD 10.1 Beta 1 release on Sunday for all of the popular CPU architectures. FreeBSD 10.1 is a minor but significant update over FreeBSD 10.0 with various package updates, bug fixes, and other modest improvements. Though some items worth noting include LLVM Clang compiler updates and native iSCSI stack improvements.

  • FreeBSD 10.1-BETA1 Now Available

    The first BETA build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • Running GCC 5 On Intel’s Haswell-E i7-5960X

    After comparing GCC 4.9 and LLVM Clang 3.5 as the latest stable compilers on the new Intel Core i7 5960X “Haswell-E” system, here’s benchmarks of the thousand dollar processor with the in-development GCC 5.

• Licensing

  • Understanding Conservancy Through the GSoC Lens

    Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity that serves as a home to Open Source and Free Software projects. Such is easily said, but in this post I’d like to discuss what that means in practice for an Open Source and Free Software project and why such projects need a non-profit home. In short, a non-profit home makes the lives of Free Software developers easier, because they have less work to do outside of their area of focus (i.e., software development and documentation).

• Openness/Sharing

  • Top 5 articles of the week: Learning Linux, cloud courses, and Drupal distros

  • Open Access/Content

    • Senator demands US courts recover 10 years of online public records

      The head of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee is urging the federal bureaucracy to restore a decade’s worth of electronic court documents that were deleted last month from online viewing because of an upgrade to a computer database known as PACER.

      Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) said the removal of the thousands of cases from online review is essentially erasing history.

  • Open Hardware

    • Intel’s Edison board is powering a 3D printed open source robot

      With an impressively small price tag and no shortage of potential use cases, the Intel Edison was already turning heads. To help drive home just how useful this little board can be, Intel has teamed up with Trossen Robotics to show what happens when you use Edison as the brain for an open source robot that can have whatever you want 3D printed as the outer layer of its body.

• Programming

  • JetBrains CLion: A New Cross Platform C/C++ IDE

    JetBrains has released news of its new cross-platform C/C++ IDE named CLion (pronounced “sea lion”), with its central proposition to enhancing productivity for every C and C++ developer on Linux, OS X, and Windows. It is available now as an Early Access Program build.

Leftovers

• Macworld Folds, Most Staffers Laid Off

  Well this is some unfortunate timing. One day after Apple announced two new iPhones and an incredibly ugly watch that no one needs, 9to5 Mac reports that Macworld magazine — which has covered Apple since 1984 — is folding.

  Macworld.com will continue on, albeit with a smaller — and seemingly completely new — staff.

• Security

  • How Google’s tiff with certificate authorities can impact you

  • Security software maker Veracode raises $40 mln, Wellington leads round

    Revenue at Veracode, whose investors include the CIA-funded venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, grew 50 percent to about $44 million last year, according to Brennan, who said he expects revenue to continue to grow at about that annual rate.

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • This Is the Russian ‘Invasion’ of Ukraine

  • A little New World Disorder is needed regarding Ukraine

  • Lies and Russia

    This makes it a lot easier too to include amongst those “facts” whatever lies are deemed most useful to corporate interests, particularly US corporate interests. US strategic interests are presently bound up with its attempt to achieve what its policy-planners call, “full spectrum dominance”, a fancy term for “rule the world”.

  • Brosnan Says New Film Has No Relation to Politics, Ukrainian Crisis

  • How 9/11 hastened the decline of the American empire

    Military historians say U.S. reaction to 2001 attacks symptomatic of fading influence

  • Police Threaten to Arrest Woman Who Films Arrest of Terminally Ill Man (Video)

    Jeffery Bane was arrested on Sept. 6 in Morgantown, W. Va., but outrage is growing over how police officers conducted themselves while taking the terminally ill man into custody.

    A video (below) shot by Sara Bostonia shows police officers arresting Bane for alleged public intoxication, but his family says Bane was sober and suffers from Huntington’s Disease, which can mimic drunk behavior, reports the Daily Dot.

  • Monongalia County police accused of assaulting man with Huntington’s disease

    The family of a Granville man who has Huntington’s disease is alleging officers from two Monongalia County police departments assaulted him.

    A ten-minute YouTube video appears to show Jeffrey Brian Bane, 39, bleeding from the face while being held down by police officers in Westover Saturday.

    On the Facebook page “Justice for Jeffery Bane,” Bane’s nephew Josh writes that Bane was maced and beaten before officers held him down while his children watched.

  • President Poroshenko’s Gift to America

    It seems evident that Barack Obama today still does not understand how much he owes to President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine. If he did, and if the cease-fire and negotiation terms Mr. Poroshenko has signed with the country’s pro-Russian insurgents in the Southeast of his country and their friends in Moscow continue to hold, he would thank the Ukrainian president for an invaluable gift of peace to Americans and NATO, as well as to his own countrymen.

  • Germans want cooler relations with USA

  • John McCain says Barack Obama went against national security team’s advice to arm Syrian rebels

  • Admin Lobbying to Pass Training of Syrian Rebels from CIA to DoD

  • Obama moves to aid Syrian rebels in fight against ISIS

  • Barack Obama offers support and training to Syrian rebels to combat Islamic State, but is it too late?

  • Levin: Obama has authority to arm rebels

    A senior Democratic senator said Thursday that President Obama already has the authority to train and arm moderate forces in Syria, raising questions over whether a congressional vote to approve the program is necessary.

  • Obama’s Going to Arm the Syrian Rebels? He’s Already Been Doing It Covertly for Over a Year

    In Wednesday’s speech, President Obama surprised some legal analysts by declaring that he would not seek congressional approval to carry out airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. He will not toss Congress completely aside, however. Though not mentioned in his speech, senior White House officials said that President Obama will need congressional approval to train Syria’s moderate rebels under Title 10 of the U.S. Code—meaning under the authority of the Defense Department. To those who have followed the Syrian civil war closely, this was also a surprise: After all, the CIA, with the help of allies in the Gulf, has been training and arming the moderate rebels since the spring of 2013.

  • US says no to Iran as member of anti-Islamic State coalition

    U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry accuses Iran of being “a state sponsor of terror” and backing the Syrian regime • Iran: U.S. is playing with fire in the region, it cannot attack Syria under pretext of fighting ISIS • Turkey withholds military support.

  • Pro-government dailies lose credibility with fabricated stories

    Pro-government dailies have eroded their credibility with the publication of many fabricated reports aimed at whitewashing the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government after four Cabinet ministers had to resign following a graft probe that went public in December of last year.

  • Chile Remembers 9/11: Why This Date Is Important To The South American Country’s History

    Sept. 11 is a date that many around the world remember as a terrible day against the United States. In 2001, terrorist attacks resulted in the loss of almost 3,000 people after al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger planes to be flown into buildings in suicide attacks. Two of those planes were crashed into the North and South towers, respectively, of the World Trade Center complex in New York City. A third plane was crashed into the Pentagon, leading to a partial collapse in its western side, and the fourth plane was targeted at Washington, D.C., but crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after its passengers tried to overcome the hijackers.

  • Henry Kissinger draws parallels between the current Middle East crisis and his own time in office

  • Kissinger and 9/11

    On Sept. 16, 1973, then-Sec. of State Henry Kissinger and Pres. Richard M. Nixon were talking (a conversation recorded on tape) about the recent right-wing coup that had just taken place in Chile against the democratically-elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende.

  • 9/11: Remembering Chile’s Fascist Coup

    September 11th is a calamitous date that holds different meanings for different people (in dependence of their experiences). In the United States, it is a day of mourning for thousands of families who lost a relative in the terrorist attacks on New York’s Twin Towers, whose planning still raises questions and doubts.

    For me, September 11th is a date that brings back many memories, for I was in Santiago de Chile 41 years ago, when the fascist coup against Salvador Allende’s constitutional government took place. Allende had been elected by the people and enjoyed the support of the majority of the population.

    I had arrived in the Chilean capital on the 1st of June to take a year-long course on communications theory, as part of a convention between Santiago de Chile’s State University and its counterpart in Havana, where I was a professor of journalism.

  • September’s a significant month in history

    It was on September 11, 1973, in Chile, when General Augusto Pinochet, in a CIA-backed coup, overthrew the democratically elected government of Allende.

  • Opposition parties in Jordan call upon govt. to reject US-led coalition against IS

    The leaders of the parties said that Jordan should combat Takfiri violence through its own political, cultural, intellectual and economic means.

  • Op-Ed: Obama may be contemplating intervention in Libya

    In Obama’s recent announcement of the expansion of attacks against the Islamic State in Iraq and also into Syria, he also spoke of the need for vigiliance in northern Africa.

  • I’m Not Afraid of ISIS

    It’s ironic that ISIS, formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, originated in 2004 following the US war on Iraq. And in a further bit of absurdity, ISIS has received arms from the US in Syria while at about the same time the US was bombing them in Iraq.

  • Turkish government co-operated with al-Qaeda in Syria, says former US ambassador

    Officials supported the extremist group’s Syrian wing in a failed attempt to moderate extremists, according to Francis Ricciardone

  • Daily Jihad: Beware of The ‘Vetted Moderate’ Syrian Opposition

    President Obama in his September 10 speech to the nation officially confirmed that the United States has been “sending arms to Iraqi Security Forces and the Syrian opposition.” While Obama did not state specifically what group(s) America is providing assistance for, Breitbart News has been meticulously documenting — since the beginning of the Syrian civil war — the administration’s cozy relationship with the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

  • Senator: US Covered-up for Saudi Support of Islamic State

    Co-chairman of 9/11 Commission Sen. Bob Graham says US did not investigate Saudi role in 9/11

  • Never Forget: Qatar’s Role in the September 11 Attacks

    Not many people realize this, but it was Qatar, not Saudi Arabia, who hosted the architect of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, from 1992-1996. The terror master lived in the Qatar’s capital city of Doha, a guest of Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, then Qatar’s Minister of Religious Affairs. KSM was on the payroll of the Qatari Ministry of Water & Electricity, “employed” with a no-show job that allowed him to groom his terrorist credentials. In 2003, when the international pressure to capture the perpetrators was at an all-time high, it was Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Qatar’s Supreme Ruler, who helped hand him over to George Tenet’s CIA.

  • Ex-Egyptian minister: We warned US ahead of 9/11

    In the weeks ahead of the September 11 attacks in 2001, Egypt warned the Bush administration repeatedly about an imminent large-scale terror attack to be carried out by al-Qaeda operatives on US soil, but the message was ignored, a former high-ranking Egyptian government official said.

  • Iraq: Survivors Describe Government Airstrike

    At least 31 Dead, 24 Children, in Attack on School Sheltering Displaced

  • Iraq’s prime minister halts airstrikes in civilian areas

  • When a robot takes the wheel, who’s in charge?

    The Civil Aviation Authority and the CSIRO are discussing the rules under which robotic planes and helicopters take to our skies. Currently, robotic or drone aircraft – used in tasks such as crop-dusting, weeding in national parks, data collection, and monitoring of power lines – must be under the supervision of a remote human pilot.

  • Drone strike kills 7 militants on Pak-Afghan border

    At least seven suspected militants were killed following a drone strike by coalition security forces on Pak-Afghan border.

  • Obama’s War in Iraq & Syria

    American President Barak Obama has made a transition from having “no strategy” a week ago to now outlining in a major speech (10 September 2014) how the US and its allies “will degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL” in an Obama Iraq and Syrian War.

  • Take realistic steps to succeed against ISIS

    President Barrack Obama has learned a lesson: Drone killing does not rid the world of terrorists.

• Finance

  • Joe Bahlke: Useful spying

    If the CIA/NSA had opted to spy on the means that drive the German economy instead of focusing their attention on Angela Merkel’s private phone calls, they would have been able to uncover a unique situation, once well within our grasp, but neglected if not dismantled over time.

    At issue is a system that promotes and maintains a vibrant middle class, along with the realization that rewarding the working class’ contribution to the process is also extremely important for their country’s continued success and stability.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • Scotland votes: Reporting the referendum

    A look at Rupert Murdoch’s role in the Scottish independence vote and the media’s scramble to catch up with the story.

• Censorship

  • Thai Authorites Are Cracking Down Hard on Internet Gossip

    Even with the NSA breathing down our necks and that ominous feeling of not-quite-privacy that comes with using the Internet in 2014, here in the West it’s totally chill to be a dissenter on social media.

  • Social media aids rehashing of historical hate

    The 1923 killings were referenced by the U.N. Human Rights Committee in July when it recommended Japan ban hate speech against minority groups. Attorney Yasuko Morooka told Tokyo Shimbun that the committee was dismayed by the Japanese delegate’s response, which was that the murders were not relevant to the hate-speech discussion since they occurred before Japan ratified the U.N. Human Rights Charter in 1995. According to Morooka, by refusing to recognize past authorities’ complicity in mass killings of a targeted minority the current government inadvertently creates a “warm nest” in which anti-foreigner sentiment can grow.

  • New Email Release Shows Peter King Demanded an Investigation to Find Journalists’ Sources Like Peter King

    On May 7, 2012, then Associated Press reporters Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo broke the story of a thwarted al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) underwear bomb plot. Within a day, several news outlets — including ABC News, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times – reported that the culprit was actually a Saudi agent.

• Privacy

  • David Sarasohn: Surveillance reform should be on Congress’ to-do list

    Last week, even Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper endorsed the bill — although that may have been on the principle that urging Congress to act is the best way to make sure that nothing happens.There might actually be some impact to the endorsement by Clapper, who recently admitted that the NSA had monitored thousands of phones illegally by accident because of “the complexity of the technology involved.”

  • US, UK had access to Deutsche Telekom network, Spiegel says

  • NSA, GCHQ have secret access to German telecom networks – report

  • Report: Snowden documents show NSA had access to German networks

  • Deutsche Telekom says finds no evidence of surveillance

    Der Spiegel said it had seen information suggesting the NSA and GCHQ had gained access to the networks of Deutsche Telekom and smaller German provider Netcologne.

  • NSA, British spy agency have secret access to Deutsche Telekom: report

    The U.S. National Security Agency and British intelligence services are able to secretly access data from telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom and several other German operators, according to Der Spiegel weekly.

  • The NSA and GCHQ Campaign Against German Satellite Companies

    “Fuck!” That is the word that comes to the mind of Christian Steffen, the CEO of German satellite communications company Stellar PCS. He is looking at a classified documents laying out the scope of something called Treasure Map, a top secret NSA program. Steffen’s firm provides internet access to remote portions of the globe via satellite, and what he is looking at tells him that the company, and some of its customers, have been penetrated by the U.S. National Security Agency and British spy agency GCHQ.

    Stellar’s visibly shaken chief engineer, reviewing the same documents, shares his boss’ reaction. “The intelligence services could use this data to shut down the internet in entire African countries that are provided access via our satellite connections,” he says.

  • Dotcom, Greenwald, Assange and Snowden target New Zealand

    With five days left until a general election, Kim Dotcom, founder of the Internet Party contesting that election, is being joined by Glenn Greenwald, who is promising to reveal information showing New Zealanders have been the subject of mass surveillance by their own government.

    If he delivers, that will draw statements made by New Zealand’s Prime Minister, John Key, into question. The Prime Minister has already promised to resign if mass surveillance has taken place.

  • Greenwald: I stand by everything I’ve said

    Glenn Greenwald also told 3 News that American spy agency the NSA has also been conducting mass surveillance on Kiwis, and he will prove it all tomorrow night.

    Mr Greenwald emerged from Kim Dotcom’s mansion to defend himself, and he isn’t backing away one bit.

    “I absolutely stand by everything I’ve said. What is unquestionably and indisputably clear is that they engaged in a programme of mass surveillance at a time they denied to the public they were doing so.”

    “There’s no ambiguity; there’s no middle ground – he’s wrong,” says Mr Key. “I’m right.”

  • NZ POLITICS DAILY: Liberty under threat?

    Will tomorrow’s Dotcom/Greenwald Moment of Truth revelations about state surveillance in New Zealand actually change anything in the lead up to polling day?

    Should the public really be concerned about this issue?

    Do any of the allegations amount to an ‘abuse of power’ or an attack on liberty?

    To make up your mind about these questions, it’s essential to watch some of the interviews from the last day – in particular, TV3’s 12-minute Interview: Glenn Greenwald and TVNZ’s 9-minute Interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald. Also of great interest is Q+A’s interview, Dotcom’s lawyer Bob Amsterdam: this is NZ’s Watergate.

    Prime Minister John Key has had an opportunity to reply to some of the issues raised – watch TVNZ’s Government considered mass surveillance but ruled it out – John Key (9:51). See also, Michael Botur’s The GCSB does not conduct mass surveillance on Kiwis – Key.

  • Key ‘wrong to use cyber protection to justify spying’

    John Key is trying to scare and confuse New Zealanders by saying mass surveillance by the GCSB is needed to achieve the country’s cyber protection, the Green Party said today.

  • Retired Gen. Hayden Compares U.S. ISIS Strategy To ‘Casual Sex’

  • What kind of sex is this guy having? U.S. general compares airstrikes to ‘casual sex’

  • WATCH: Hayden defends comparing U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State to ‘casual sex’

  • The Former NSA Director Picks Worst Metaphor for Airstrikes We’ve Ever Heard

  • Ex-CIA chief likens U.S. airstrikes on ISIS to ‘casual sex’

  • Ex-NSA director Michael Hayden: ISIS airstrikes are like ‘casual sex’

  • RAW DATA: Lisa Owen interviews Glenn Greenwald

    Well, the internet is a system, essentially, of physical devices that transmit digital data, and there’s all sorts of ways that the government, both in the United States and New Zealand and in the UK, Canada and Australia, invade that system, including by tapping directly into the underwater cables that transmit it, by putting devices on people’s computers that enable them to monitor what the computers are doing or to get it from the private companies that maintain the data, such as Facebook and Google and Yahoo and Skype and the like, and so all of those ways are used.

  • US court updates phone surveillance program

  • US court renews phone surveillance programme

  • Spy court renews NSA metadata program

  • Yahoo’s Innocent Victim Narrative

  • ​Over 2,700 Iraq air missions preceded Obama’s anti-ISIS campaign expansion

  • U.S. Flew 2,700 Iraq Missions Before Obama’s New Push

  • Ex-CIA chief Petraeus, master of “surge” in Iraq, gives 9/11 talk in Denver

    Petraeus declined requests for an interview and event organizers said he would not take questions from reporters.

• Civil Rights

  • Widespread arrests of “Anarchists” and “Radical Leftist Activists” in Egypt

    With the last contact we had with Egyptian Anarchists, they are in an emergency situation.

    Fascist military regime of Al Sisi / Mubarak more aggressively seeking to arrest all anarchists and any other radical left activists.

  • Australia’s whistlebower protections lag in private sector, national security

  • Transparently Bad: U.S. Whistleblowers Feel Blowback

  • Families of Beheaded Journalists were Threatened by US Government

    Foley’s mother Diane expressed similar sentiments and told CNN that her family was warned that they will face prosecution if they tried to raise ransom money. The family was also informed that the government was not planning any military action nor was there any intent for a prisoner swap.

  • Commentary: Restoring freedom to information in the FOIA

    Over time federal agencies have flipped the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, on its head. Congress clearly intended the FOIA to be a tool for the public to pry information out of federal agencies. In recent years, however, agencies have blatantly abused opaque language in the law to keep records that might be embarrassing out of the public’s hands forever.

  • CIA used ‘extreme’ torture methods on terror suspects: report

  • Torture report release on hold for redactions

    The public release of a long-awaited Senate report detailing the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques could be held up for weeks as the Senate Intelligence Committee and Obama administration negotiate what material can be included in the document, the committee’s chairwoman said on Monday.

  • Feinstein: CIA torture report will be delayed as Democrats decide redactions

  • Feinstein on torture report’s release: ‘We’re not there yet’

  • Top Dem: CIA ‘Torture report’ out by October

    The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee is confident that her panel’s declassified review of the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” will be out by the end of the month.

  • CIA torture and the “war on terror”

  • Former Bush Attorney General Questions Accuracy of Senate Intelligence Report on Torture

  • Public was misled on extent and effect of torture

    If that sounds glib, it’s not meant to be. As the massive and much-battled-over “torture report” by a Senate committee inches toward public disclosure, a British newspaper is reporting that the waterboarding employed against three top al-Qaida suspects far exceeds the widespread understanding of what happened. It is the latest trickle from the iceberg surrounding that report, all of which suggest that the torture program was even worse than it was thought to be – that the tactics were harsher and the results negligible, and that the CIA misled a lot of people about it.

  • Release of U.S. Senate Report on CIA Torture Delayed

  • The CIA’s Troubling Violations of Trust

    The story of how the Central Intelligence Agency came to operate a secretive program of rendition, detention, and interrogation under President George W. Bush has been made public by a number of investigations into the abuses that resulted. In 2007, the Red Cross detailed the methods used to interrogate suspects at CIA-run “black sites.” In 2010, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility strongly criticized the Bush administration lawyers who wrote the legal memos permitting the CIA to use torture. And last year, the Constitution Project Task Force on Detainee Treatment—a nonpartisan group that included a number of former military and intelligence personnel—analyzed what is known about mistreatment of detainees and the policy decisions that led to such ugly consequences.

  • Intercept Reporter: Journalist Shared Stories With CIA Prior To Publication, Resulted In ‘Glaring’ Alterations

    Where should we draw the line when it comes to a reporter and the subject of his story?

    According to documents obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request, this line became so blurred that it resulted in “glaring” alterations to one reporter’s story about the CIA.

    In a conversation with HuffPost Live, senior investigative reporter Ken Silverstein discussed his latest piece for The Intercept, which revealed that Ken Dilanian, who was a Los Angeles Times reporter at the time, shared drafts of his stories with the agency prior to publication.

  • CIA tortured suspects ‘until the point of death’

  • ‘CIA men tortured Qaida suspects to the point of death’

  • Release of Report on CIA Tortures Delayed

  • Tension Over CIA Torture Report Reaches Boiling Point

    Tensions between the CIA and its congressional overseers erupted anew this week when CIA Director John Brennan refused to tell lawmakers who authorized intrusions into computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a damning report on the spy agency’s interrogation program.

  • Judge says U.S. doesn’t have to reveal cost of Guantánamo prison’s clandestine Camp 7

    A federal judge agreed Thursday that the Pentagon does not have to reveal how much was paid to build the crumbling, secret Camp 7 at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center, rejecting a Miami Herald bid to make the cost public.

    U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., said that the document that contained the figure had been properly classified and denied a request from The Herald’s Carol Rosenberg that it be made public.

  • It’s Time to Close Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp

    Amnesty international has called the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp the “gulag of our time.” Since President Obama’s order to close the camp within one year on January 23, 2009, it has remained open because the president decided to amass political capital to use for his domestic agenda, which included “Obamacare.” On January 7, 2011, Obama signed the 2011 Defense Authorization Bill, which placed restrictions on transferring prisoners to the United States. As of May 2014, there were 149 detainees being held, at a cost to the government of roughly $1.9 million per detainee. Some of them have been held, without trial and without charge, since 2003. 46 of them have been declared by the government to be too dangerous to release, but they cannot be tried for any crime because there is insufficient evidence to try them. Approximately half of the detainees held today have been cleared for release, but may never regain their freedom. Many of their native countries have refused to repatriate them, and, because of the new legislation, they cannot be transferred to prisons in the United States.

  • MPs demand terror suspect evidence

    The parliamentary committee tasked with monitoring the intelligence and security services has issued a call for evidence on Britain’s treatment of terror suspects during the so-called War on Terror.

    The intelligence and security committee (ISC) launched an inquiry into the handling of detainees following the publication in December of the interim report of the aborted Gibson inquiry into allegations of British complicity in torture.

    That inquiry, pledged by David Cameron in 2010, was scrapped in 2012 but its interim report suggested that British intelligence officers had been told they could turn a blind eye to breaches of the Geneva Conventions by CIA agents interrogating suspects in Afghanistan in 2002.

  • UK Government changes story again on destruction of renditions evidence

  • UK Government Changes Its Line On Diego Garcia Flight Logs Sought in Rendition Row – Again

    The British government has announced that flight records from Diego Garcia, the Indian Ocean territory leased to the United States and implicated in the CIA’s rendition program, have been “damaged to the point of no longer being useful” — going back on their previous line that the documents were still intact.

  • CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Recounts How Prison Gave Him Wrong Medication in New Letter From Loretto

    In a letter from CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who has been serving a prison sentence in a federal correctional facility in Loretto, Pennsylvania for over a year, he recounts how he had a medical emergency in the prison and received virtually none of the appropriate care or treatment that a person should typically receive. The medical emergency also apparently stemmed from a “Physician’s Assistant” (PA) prescribing him a medication for his diabetes that only made his condition worse.

  • The compulsive browser: Spy vs Spy

    Ignatius draws the reader into the geeky world of hacking and cyber crime while giving us a history lesson on the origins and the working of the CIA which was apparently set up with the help of the British Secret Service MI5 to serve their aims in a post-war world. While Ignatius clearly may not have set out to write an edge-of-the-seat thriller, tighter editing would have contributed to a more gripping read. If you have not read Ignatius before, his previous novels Blood Money or Body of Liesmight serve as a better introduction.

  • CIA Plane in Big Aussie-American Heroin Bust

    The discovery of an American-registered plane delivering drugs at an Australian airport heralded, according to Australian law enforcement, a “sophisticated drug network” that had begun using the tiny Illawarra Regional Airport, 60 miles south of Sydney, to import guns and drugs.

  • Hillestad ’15: America supports terrorism

    In 1998, five Cuban counterterrorism agents were arrested in Miami and held in solitary confinement for 17 months. Then — after a dubious seven-month-long trial in which no hard evidence was ever presented — the group was convicted and given the equivalent of more than four life sentences.

  • Cuban 5: imprisoned for fighting terrorism

    Can you be imprisoned for fighting terrorism?

    Yes, if you fight terrorism in Miami.

    Today marks 16 years that five Cuban men known as the Cuban Five have endured prison — 5,840 days — precisely for having fought terrorism in Miami.

  • Remembering the Criminal Conviction of the CIA Director

    With yesterday marking the 41st anniversary of the U.S.-supported military coup in Chile, which resulted in the kidnapping, detention, rapes, torture, disappearances, and murders of thousands of innocent people, we would be remiss if we failed to commemorate the criminal conviction of Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA, for lying to Congress about the CIA’s role in trying to effect regime change in Chile prior to the coup.

    In Chile’s 1970 presidential election, Salvador Allende won with a plurality of the votes. Under Chile’s constitution, that threw the election into the hands of the Chilean congress. Traditionally, the congress would elect the person who received the largest number of votes, even if he wasn’t of the political party that controlled Congress.

    Since Allende was a person who believed in socialism and communism, however, President Richard Nixon decided that the U.S. government would do whatever it could to prevent Allende from becoming president of Chile, notwithstanding the fact that he would have been duly elected president by the Chilean people.

    So, Nixon ordered the CIA into action.

    The CIA operated on two tracks: One track involved bribing the members of the Chilean congress with enormous amounts of U.S. taxpayer money. The purpose of the bribes was to induce the congressmen to vote against Allende notwithstanding the fact that he had been the leading vote-getter.

  • DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA, OWNER OF DETROIT NEWS, TO CONSIDER SALE OF PROPERTIES

    Gary Webb (in inset) exposed the CIA crack cocaine controversy in articles for the San Jose Mercury News, now owned by DFM. Webb’s book “Dark Alliance” was published before his ALLEGED suicide by shooting himself TWICE in the head.

  • The Erosion of a Secret

    In connection with an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the CIA has agreed to “process” a set of records relating to the CIA’s use of armed drones to carry out “targeted killings,” “signature strikes,” “terrorist attack disruption strikes,” and other “premeditated killings.”

  • Father Of Jailed Belarusian Opposition Leader Gets Threat Letter

  • DA MP tells Kebby ‘You are an idiot’

  • ‘You’re an idiot’, MP tells Kebby Maphatsoe

  • Kebby Maphatsoe’s attack on the PP appalling – Mmusi Maimane

  • Kebby mum on MK camp escape claims

  • How to perfect the fine art of spotting a bloody agent

  • Maphatsoe’s CIA claims shrouded in mystery

    Sources close to Mr Maphatsoe then revealed that media speculation about a “CIA link” was a red herring. “Kebby had in mind another sinister organisation that is bent on world domination and installing a puppet regime: the African National Congress (ANC),” they said.

  • Madonsela evaluating CIA spy apology

  • US ambassador to launch diplomatic complaint on Madonsela “CIA” remark

  • Maphatsoe: My comments were misinterpreted

  • Government: Madonsela is not a spy

  • US embassy rejects Madonsela claims as ‘offensive’

  • South Africa-US Diplomatic Row Over CIA Remarks By Deputy Defence Minister

  • VIDEO: Kebby‘s CIA spy claim

  • Corruption Watch calls for Maphatsoe’s head

  • Playing the ‘spy card’ an old trick

    When Maphatsoe resorted to describing Public Protector Thuli Madonsela as a CIA plant or spy, he followed a long-established path within the ANC, for such labels were applied to the “other” in political and organisational battles all the way back to exile days. It is part of a deeply ingrained history in this country.

  • The ANC’s public relations fiasco

  • Madonsela not a judge – Zuma

• Internet/Net Neutrality

  • Comcast Continues To Pretend To Support Net Neutrality With Misleading Claims

    We’ve mentioned in the past how Comcast has been pretending to support net neutrality, with ad campaigns stating that it does — clearly in an attempt to confuse the public. Yesterday, Comcast even put a thing on its own front page claiming that the company is “committed to an open Internet and Net Neutrality.”

• Intellectual Monopolies

  • Copyrights

    • Jacob Appelbaum Gives Testimony in Gottfrid Svartholm Trial

      After a controversial first few days, the hacking trial of Gottfrid Svartholm on Friday completed its second week. The Swede’s Danish co-defendant took the stand for the first time and world renowned security expert and key Tor member Jacob Appelbaum appeared for the defense.

    • BitTorrent: Our Users Buy 33% More Music Albums Online

      In recent years BitTorrent Inc. has managed to get some of the biggest artists in the world to work with them, using BitTorrent technology as a promotional tool. The company is currently looking to add more partners to the roster and in their pitch they claim that BitTorrent users tend to be heavy music consumers.