Thinking about this, I remembered how much I loved (and still love) Linux. And I had to reminisce. I remember being a pimply high school kid circa 2002 and configuring Gentoo Linux by hand — kernel and all — onto my little beige eMachines computer, losing days of actual productivity in the process. And loving it. I remember diving into forums and arguing, however ineptly, over the merits of KDE over Gnome. I remember never quite mastering the command line, but getting pretty damn good at it. It let me do whatever I wanted, and my friends didn't get it. Back then, I was open source. Linux was safer, better, and cooler than the competition. We were gonna win the desktop. One day! I had my quiet, nerdy rebellion moment compiling code for hours when my friends were playing World of Warcraft. And I loved every minute of it.
Linux kernel 3.16.x is a relatively new release, but it was already adopted by a number of Linux distributions and it's available in the repositories for many others. The third release in the series is a little bigger than the previous one, but not much. In any case, it's going to be an interesting update nonetheless.
The F2FS Tools v1.4.0 release introduces fsck.f2fs for fixing corrupted images/partitions for Samsung's Flash-Friendly File-System. There's also now dump.f2fs for retrieving a specific file. Additionally, the f2fs-tools 1.4 update also has bug-fixes for the stat and fibmap utilities. Last but not least is some code refactoring for the Android build. The release was mentioned today on the kernel mailing list by Samsung's Jaegeuk Kim.
The X.Org Server 1.16 stable series is being maintained by Julien Cristau of Debian. Found in xorg-server 1.16.1 are just various bug-fixes over the feature-packed and exciting X.Org Server 1.16 release from this past July.
Some of you may have noticed that Quakelive dropped its Linux support at some point (when they got rid of the plugin based system and developed a dedicated launcher). Ever since then i was hoping for a worthy successor with a team of developers behind it that displays more passion than id software did in the recent years.
Geary, a lightweight email program designed around conversations and built for the GNOME desktop by the Yorba software group, has reached version 0.8 and it comes with a ton of new features.
The second 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.
The second beta ahead of next month's planned FreeBSD 10.1 release is now available.
A former Newport Harbor High School English teacher is suing Newport-Mesa Unified, alleging that district administrators retaliated against her after she publicly questioned the need for students to dissect cat carcasses in class.
It appears that the much-talked up budget crisis has disappeared because Tony Abbott’s government is spending big on war.
The Coalition government has quickly allocated half a billion dollars a year to join the new war on Iraq by another US-led “coalition of the willing”, or — if we call it what it is — a “coalition for the killing”.
The ABC's 7.30 program said on September 15 that the Australian government has "invested a billion dollars buying into a state-of-the-art military satellite system".
The western invaders of Muslim lands have never been their liberators and, bluntly speaking, are responsible for the majority of the problems plaguing those nation states today. Their interest has never been stability of those former colonies but the existence of a dynamic balance of power in which all players are effectively paralyzed so that no one would threaten them. Thus, they would rather have murderous criminals like Assad and Sisi rule those former colonies than someone who is perceived as a threat to western interest and hegemony. Period!
“HE PUT DOWN the newspaper and said, “Anything of interest this morning?”
Those were the actions of US President George W Bush on the morning of 11 September 2001, before any news of disturbances on domestic flights emerged.
In the Reagan 1980s, I often attended the annual gatherings of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. Several days of meetings featuring speeches by the most influential (domestic) thinkers on the right were capped off by a formal dinner that was often attended by President and Mrs. Reagan.
Among the 1,000 or so attendees in an ornate ballroom were a few tables of men who stood out because of their native dress. They were all male, wore turbans, and had beards. Despite their discordant appearance, when they were recognized from the dais, they were greeted with thunderous applause.
They were introduced as Afghan freedom fighters, representing the front lines in their war against the Soviets in the midst of our Cold War. And those of us gathering in the glow of the Gipper wanted desperately for them to succeed against communism.
In a recent article in The American Conservative titled “Does the CIA believe Obama?” former CIA officer Philip Giraldi stated: “I know of no former or current intelligence official who believes that the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe is a good idea, that toppling Bashar al-Assad would bring anything but chaos, or that bombing ISIS will actually accomplish anything.” Intelligence pros are far more skeptical of government claims than their bosses let on.
As a fellow CIA retiree, I have to agree that Giraldi’s observations are absolutely correct. Having been invaded at least seven times in its history, a Russia with few natural barriers needs a protective collar of friendly or neutral states as a buffer, and an aggressive NATO pushing ever-closer to its border constitutes a threat Russia cannot afford to tolerate.
All I was saying was that the threat of terrorism has been magnified and amplified, if not created, to justify war. I did not make this up myself, I got it from a BBC documentary that quotes CIA sources in challenging and rubbishing the perceived image of Al Qaeda.
US intellectual and commentator Noam Chomsky explains the likely consequences of US plans to attack Iraq to Nermeen Al-Mufti
Here's a national-security riddle: How can President Obama provide limited military support on the ground to help "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State without formally violating his pledge not to send U.S. combat troops? The answer may lie in the legal alchemy known as "Title 50."
Title 50 of the U.S. Code regulates the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. An often-cited passage is section 413b, which deals with presidential approval and reporting of "covert actions." In essence, this statute gives the president authority, with a proper "finding," to send U.S. special forces on paramilitary operations, under command of the CIA. The best-known example was the 2011 raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden.
Talking with U.S. and foreign military experts over the past week, I've heard two consistent themes: First, the campaign against the Islamic State will require close-in American training and assistance for ground forces, in addition to U.S. air power; and, second, the best way to provide this assistance may be under the command of the Ground Branch of the CIA's Special Activities Division, which traditionally oversees such paramilitary operations.
The U.S. is trying to win a war for the hearts and minds of Africa.
The old trick, a trial balloon, while POTUS sits pretty and has deniability. The important thing, build war sentiment, feed the public a steady diet of war propaganda. It is working.
Driven by ideological hubris, the Bush administration on the eve of the Iraq war rejected any suggestions that the war could destabilize the whole region and rock the foundations of the Arab nation-state system.
Fox News' Special Report left out necessary context when previewing former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's upcoming interview with 60 Minutes in which he stated, "it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq."
During his September 19 coverage of Panetta's statement, host Bret Baier depicted Panetta's account of the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as the latest in "a very public back-and-forth between the White House and the Pentagon." Baier added, "Now this weekend, 60 Minutes has an interview with former CIA director and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in which he will say the U.S. should not have pulled out all of its troops out of Iraq in 2011"...
President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill authorizing the military to arm and train Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State group.
Obama signed the bill Friday in the Oval Office. The Senate gave its final approval Thursday, a day after the legislation drew strong bipartisan support in the House.
President Obama’s new strategy for routing ISIS, the extremist Sunni group that controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, rests substantially and precariously on having rebels in Syria fight ISIS, even as they battle the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar Assad. The plan is full of hope and fraught with obstacles.
President Obama has long been reluctant to provide substantial aid to Syria's so-called moderate rebels, often dismissed as weak and disorganized. But the rapid rise of the group that calls itself the Islamic State has changed many calculations.
The CIA has been running a small-scale covert weapons program since early this year, according to rebels who have been trained and are now receiving arms shipments. The modest program has strengthened moderate battalions, according to Western and regional analysts, even as rebel commanders complain about the meager arms flow.
Even as the United States, post initial hiccups, enters into an all-out war to destroy Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, many Iraqi still believe in the conspiracy theory that ISIS is a CIA invention.
The fight against terrorism must begin by placing more pressure on those countries which are supporting and financing insurgents in Syria and Iraq, Syrian President Bashar Assad said while speaking with an Iraqi security official in Damascus.
Lawmakers back president's plan to expand new war in the Middle East.
The Guardian, as I did, had a certain amount of difficulty coming up with the suitable nomenclature for this force. I don’t think “proxy army” cuts it, because I expect this army, though composed of Syrians and not a US military unit, will be under the day to day command of the CIA and it will not be allowed to slip the leash and pursue its own political, strategic, and tactical agendas as happened with the feckless Free Syrian Army.
Former CIA director Robert Gates said so during his 2006 Senate confirmation hearings for secretary of defense, when he noted — while serving as a university president — that Iran is surrounded by “powers with nuclear weapons,” including “the Israelis to the west.” Former president Jimmy Carter said so in 2008 and again this year, in interviews and speeches in which he pegged the number of Israel’s nuclear warheads at 150 to around 300.
Think about all the official enemies that have scared the dickens out of the American people since the advent of the national-security state.
It’s dangerous to demonize a country. Washington can repeat its painful and costly mistakes from Iraq.
Anti-government secrecy organisation struggling for relevance without Julian Assange at the helm.
Germany has been criticised by the whistleblowing site for failing to block a ‘weaponised malware’ dealer selling to regimes with poor human rights records
On September 15, Wikileaks released copies of invoices and support tickets from Germany-based software company FinFisher. This revealed the names of most of their clients, and how much they’ve paid for their technology. If you’re wondering why they deserve this, you should know that this particular firm deals in weaponized surveillance malware that reportedly includes the following:
Whistleblowing organisation hits out at German government for not blocking developers from downloading the software
WikiLeaks' all-or-nothing approach to revealing shady government activity just took a new (if decidedly risky) turn. Julian Assange and crew have posted FinFisher and FinSpy PC, the intrusion software that Australia, Italy, Pakistan and other countries use to break into and spy on people's devices, no matter what platform they're running. The leak site hopes that privacy-minded developers will use the code to improve security and prevent governments from easily cracking down on dissidents; it also puts pressure on Germany to clamp down on FinFisher and live up to its anti-surveillance principles. The strategy may pay off, although there is a worry that unscrupulous downloaders may use the code for more sinister purposes, such as keylogging or webcam monitoring. Let's hope the tools don't fall into the wrong hands.
Finally, the fourth struggle rages over transparency. Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founding fathers of the World Wide Web, open code developers, and multiple forces in civil society and business sectors all have been working on making information more open and publicly accessible. For some, information openness has become a means to an end. The boundaries of openness have become a critical issue in the struggle for shaping the image of cyberspace and society in general. What are the checks and balances involved? Is the revealing of sensitive information at a security cost justifiable solely based on the freedom of information principle? Does blowing the whistle on systematic surveillance and tracking of civilians and users justify any means? And if limits are drawn, who should determine the boundaries? Information can be open, but its flows will certainly not be equal.
Cables sent from the US Embassy in Quito during Rafael Correa’s first three years as president document rising tensions between Ecuador and the US.
Correa’s government, first elected in 2006, increasingly rejected US hegemony and asserted control over Ecuador’s economic and political development.
The cables highlight the embassy’s preoccupation with Ecuador’s “difficult investment climate”, with many reports attempting to assess and predict Correa’s economic policies.
The embassy worried the Correa government would exclude the private sector from decision-making, and implement economic policies that would negatively affect US and other foreign investors in Ecuador.
To encourage Correa to “follow responsible and sustainable macroeconomic policies”, the embassy reported in December 2006 that it would ramp up “efforts to explain to the broader public the need to improve competitiveness and take advantage of globalization”.
Ecuador's pro-US neoliberal president Lucio Gutierrez was ousted in 2005. Since then, relations between Ecuador and the United States have deteriorated, with the Andean nation’s increasing rejection of US hegemony.
Despite the US’s failure to undermine Correa’s candidacy, as shown by diplomatic cables published by WIkiLeaks, further US cables suggest the US Embassy in Quito believed it could hold sway over the new government.
In the months leading up to Ecuador’s October 2006 presidential election, the US Embassy in Quito claimed to be impartial.
Rather than supporting one particular candidate, then-US ambassador Linda Jewell said the embassy only wanted to help facilitate “a fair and transparent electoral process”.
However, diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks show that behind the rhetoric of “democracy promotion”, the embassy sought to stop the election of “dark horse populist, anti-American candidate Rafael Correa”.
On a plane earlier this week, I watched The Wolf of Wall Street. The film’s outsized antics—public masturbation, the tossing of little people, lots and lots of Quaaludes—seemed too big for a seatback screen, or, for that matter, reality. As despicable as some of Jordan Belfort’s behavior was, I was able to occasionally laugh at Leonardo DiCaprio's version of him knowing that, by now, more than 10 years after his real-life sentencing, Belfort has been sufficiently punished.
But in fact, that’s hardly the case: After pleading guilty to fraud and money laundering, Belfort was ordered in 2003 to pay out about $110 million to those he wronged. Since then, he’s only paid $11.8 million. He was also sentenced to four years in federal prison, but he only ended up serving just shy of two years.
Gucci and Prada's financial results are disappointing and there's a fear that the west can't provide what sophisticated Chinese shoppers want
In this Thursday Sept. 18, 2014 photo, former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland arrives at federal court in New Haven, Conn. A jury convicted Rowland Friday, Sept. 19, 2014 on all charges that he conspired to be paid for work on two political campaigns while disguising those payments in business deals. It is the second felony conviction for Rowland, who resigned as governor a decade ago in a scandal over illegal gifts he received while in office. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Banned Books Week begins tomorrow and runs through Sunday, bringing focus to the censorship of books throughout America. The event began in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries. You might remember in the 1984 film, "Footloose," a group of citizens burning books in front of the library.
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Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Association of American Publishers, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the National Association of College Stores, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the National Council of Teachers of English, PEN American Center and Project Censored.
In this provocative study of censorship as it was practiced in three different places at three different times, the distinguished scholar Robert Darnton argues that it can be a considerably subtler and more nuanced undertaking than it is generally assumed to be. He has not written a defense of censorship — far from it — but he emphasizes that when the state sets itself up as arbiter of what goes into books and what does not, the results are not always predictable, but are sometimes surprising and even — occasionally — beneficial to authors and their publishers.
If the concept of censorship is extended to everything, it means nothing. It should not be trivialized. Although I would agree that power is exerted in many ways, I think it crucial to distinguish between the kind of power that is monopolized by the state (or other constituted authorities such as religious organizations in some cases) and power that exists everywhere else in society. Censorship as I understand it is essentially political; it is wielded by the state.
Benjamin Franklin is a man for all centuries. His relevance today is as fresh as the latest headlines about computer hackers' breaking corporate security fire walls, or nerdy perverts' posting stolen naked photos of celebrities.
The growing trend was highlighted this week by announcements that new phones and tablets from Apple and Google would automatically encrypt and protect people’s data from police and thieves alike.
Google's next major update, Android L, will provide data encryption by default rather than making it another option in the "powered by Android" list.
In what is yet another example of the NSA overexerting its legal authority, leaked documents reveal that NSA and British intelligence agents targeted, infiltrated and gathered data from German satellite and telecommunication companies.
For lawmakers from Germany and other European nations, a three-day stop in Washington was one step in getting to the bottom of U.S. National Security Agency surveillance of U.S. allies, revealed last year by former government contractor Edward Snowden.
The Florida woman whose suspicions led to an FBI investigation that brought down former CIA director David Petraeus will be allowed to continue with a privacy lawsuit against federal officials.
Kelley, who unwittingly exposed an extramarital affair Gen. David Petraeus was having with author Paula Broadwell, can move forward with suit versus the FBI, that alleges the spy agency violated her privacy when officials leaked information about her to the media.
Stung by the backlash over Germany being caught selling secrets to the US and the revelations of surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA), the CIA has stopped spying on friendly governments in Western Europe, some current and former US officials have said; however, they added that the CIA still maintains its surveillance and spying activities on Turkey, as it sees the country as a “high-priority target.”
Miller entered North Korea as a tourist in April, but tore up his visa after arrival and demanded asylum. According to a North Korean official, cited by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Miller’s behavior has been considered an unacceptable offence and sneer of the country, which required proper punishment measures.
Al-Thinni had been prime minister from March until the June elections but had wanted to step down. He was re-appointed by the new parliament just at the beginning of this month. The new parliament has little power. The capital Tripoli has been taken over by an umbrella group of mostly Islamist militias after driving out the Zintan brigades who are allies of CIA-linked General Khalifa Haftar.
It sounds like something out of a spy novel: clandestine after-hours meetings, burner phones, even encryption.
But it isn’t. Instead, it’s a description of some of the steps that reporters covering the federal government must take to try to protect their sources.
Editors and reporters meeting in Chicago raised concerns Wednesday about what they described as a lack of access and transparency undermining journalists' work, several blaming the current White House for setting standards for secrecy that are spreading nationwide.
My Sunday column explores the controversy and the context of “Kill the Messenger,” the upcoming film about “Dark Alliance,” the 1996 series by San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb that examined the links between the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras and the drug trade.
The Central Intelligence Agency declassified hundreds of documents Thursday from its in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence. Among the articles was a compilation of quotes, apparently from the 1980s, culled from years of real CIA performance reviews where the supervisor clearly failed to fully articulate the intended critique.
His words signaled to the world that the United States was committed to turning the page on a dark chapter in U.S. policy. We also know there is more work to be done by the U.S. government to fully reckon with the past illegal use of torture and cruelty, including the public release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture.
Every September 17, Constitution Day is observed to commemorate the signing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787.
Inherent in the Constitution is the fundamental and inviolable system of "checks and balances" created by the Founding Fathers to prevent the concentration of power in any one branch of government, to check and restrain government, and to protect rights and liberties of citizens.
This essential framework of our American government limits official power and maintains oversight among the branches of government and the public to help ensure our government makes prudent decisions and to protect our rights and the values and institutions of our nation.
President Obama’s refusal to fire Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan is appalling. Even more appalling is his statement, “I have full confidence in John Brennan.”
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) criticized CIA Director John Brennan for the agency's "culture of misinformation" on Friday, after Brennan appeared to backtrack on an apology for snooping on Senate investigators.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund is pleased to announce an important victory in the ongoing case of peace activist Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst, who was brutalized and arrested by officers in 2011 for standing in silent protest during a speech given by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
This American mindset appears to be alive and well. At least four hostages held in Syria recently by Islamic State militants, including US journalist James Foley, were waterboarded during their captivity. The Washington Post quoted a US official: “ISIL is a group that routinely crucifies and beheads people. To suggest that there is any correlation between ISIL’s brutality and past U.S. actions is ridiculous and feeds into their twisted propaganda.”
Her CIA ties go back to her exile in Switzerland where she not only ate gruyere cheese but had her first romance with Yankee intelligence. Now, after several years of counterrevolutionary activities in Cuba that have made her a millionaire, Yoani Sánchez received a Yahoo grant of $ 60,000 to upgrade at Georgetown University, the Alma Mater of a rich collection of luminaries of American intelligence.
After screening in many festivals and winning several awards, Roozbeh Dadvand's short film about the most popular Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (1882-1967) is now available for general viewing. Mosaddeq is widely regarded as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history. Mosaddegh was removed from power in a coup on 19 August 1953, organised and carried out by the CIA at the request of MI6, which chose Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mosaddegh.
In his first year in office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. put new limits on when the government could dismiss lawsuits in the name of protecting national security. Now, in what he has said is likely his final year, Holder has claimed broad authority to do just that in a case unlike any other.
The Justice Department intervened late Friday in a defamation lawsuit against United Against Nuclear Iran, a prominent advocacy group that pushes for tough sanctions against Tehran. The government said the case should be dropped because forcing the group to open its files would jeopardize national security.
In an unprecedented move, the United States government has moved to invoke the state secrets privilege in a private defamation lawsuit, which does not appear to hinge upon any government activity. The government has also called for the court hearing the case to dismiss the lawsuit.
The United States has engaged in intelligence gathering since the end of the 18th century, when its first president, George Washington, was in office, but it was only during the World War II era that the overall intelligence effort came to be coordinated at government level. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed New York lawyer and World War I hero William J. Donovan as Coordinator of Information, promoting him to head the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), after the United States entered World War II in 1942.
Not only is the American-Israeli alliance characterized by $3 billion in yearly aid from the United States to Israel, along with unyielding political and diplomatic support, it is also characterized by shared values in perpetual war and indefinite detention.
Unlike what happened in Ferguson, MO, Savannah has not had any riot police called out, and there have been no acts of violence.
Yesterday, Vox somehow managed to write an entire article about the history of Oracle and its founder Larry Ellison without mentioning the CIA even once. Which is pretty astounding, given the fact that Oracle takes its name from a 1977 CIA project codename. And that the CIA was Oracle’s first customer.
In the 70’s and ‘80’s (Iran/Contra), the CIA could out wait Congress and the Senate. Moreover, they now had numerous allies in both and could downplay reporting in the press. Namely, by making sure news editors could call reports “old news” and junk stories. Ironically, this is after they had said they had abandoned sensational stories like “Mockingbird”.
Mockingbird was the brainchild of Dulles’ pals Cord Myer, CD Jackson, and Frank Wisner. While it officially kicked off in 1952-53, Mockingbird had been around since 1948. Moreover, if we include the OSS, and its ties to the media in WWII, we can see there had been an extremely long relationship.
There are some excellent articles and books about Mockingbird out there. The most celebrated is by famous Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein “The CIA and the Media” from 1977. (18) Deborah Davies’ controversial “Katharine the Great” and “Into the Buzzsaw” by Kristina Borjesson. (19) (20)
This year’s National Defense Authorization Act contains provisions that build upon the infamous indefinite detention clauses of 2012, giving Big Brother even more illicit power.
Section 1071 of the 2014 NDAA gives the feds expanded power to seize your personal information, authority that goes beyond even beyond the broad powers the Patriot Act and Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) allow.
Events last month in Ferguson, Missouri (read my detailed thoughts here) forced Americans to confront the frightening reality that many of of the nation’s police departments have been quietly, but consistently, militarizing over the past couple of decades. It’s one thing to intellectually understand that this has happened, it’s quite another to see cops deploy tanks and point sniper rifles at peacefully protesting U.S. citizens.
In the United States of America, home of the free, our police are gearing up for war, crushing peaceful protests and intimidating journalists.
“Why Wall Street executives walk off scott free,” he wonders, his voice rising, “torturers walk off scott free, rule of law having very, very little status in that regard. I think those are major, major failures. It would make major failures of any presidential administration, not just his.”
Russia may remove itself from the global internet to protect itself against perceived threats from the west, a Kremlin spokesman suggested on Friday.
Mr Peters also suggested NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and US journalist Glenn Greenwald are "thoroughly credible witnesses" in recent mass spying allegations.
If you think Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald have stopped attacking NSA, you haven’t been following them closely enough. While American media have largely lost interest in Snowden and Greenwald, the pair continue to campaign outside the United States against the intelligence agency.
The opposition Labor Party received just under 25 percent of the vote, its lowest vote total since taking 24 percent in 1922. The left-leaning Green Party took 10 percent, with the populist anti-immigration New Zealand First Party taking 9 percent. The results were disappointing for Labor and the Green Party, Jennifer Curtin, an assistant professor of politics and international relations at the University of Auckland, said in an e-mail. Both parties had expected better results.
Kim Dotcom's Internet Party has scored just over 1.2% of the vote in New Zealand's parliamentary elections. It's a disappointing result that doesn't come close to the 5% required for a seat in Parliament. Dotcom takes full responsibility for the failure which he attributes to his "poisoned brand."
Internet Party leader Laila Harre will not say if she will stay on with the political movement after it failed to win a seat in parliament.
Dotcom spent big on the party, ploughing just shy of $4 million into a political marriage of convenience.