Linux -- the free open source operating system for enterprise, small business and home computing use -- is not used everywhere yet. However, its user base crosses nearly every industry.
Linux is in many places today. It's in consumer products like TVs and computer networking gear. Linux drives services that users do not even know run Linux. Think in terms of servers, Big Data farms and cloud storage facilities. The analytics and Big Data marketplaces host and run platforms and applications on top of Linux in data centers and in the cloud.
The Linux OS certainly is evolving in the connected car space, for example. Linux also is embedded in many appliances. It often controls the sensors in industrial machines, navigational gear and medical instruments.
If all goes well, the Linux 3.17 kernel might be released this weekend. For those not closely following the kernel's development over the past two months, here's a recap of some of the most interesting changes found in this new version of the Linux kernel.
To the dismay of open-source fans, NVIDIA is tightening the belt so to speak around their GPU hardware: with Maxwell and future hardware, certain aspects of the NVIDIA graphics processor chip will only be available to the "Falcon" (a.k.a. "FUC") firmware images that have been signed by NVIDIA. While this will throw a wrench at Nouveau's open-source effort, NVIDIA at least informed Nouveau and are jointly working towards an adequate solution.
Earlier this year I delivered the exclusive news how AMD was looking at a new Linux driver strategy for Catalyst that involved leveraging the open-source Radeon DRM kernel driver. The strategy at the time effectively meant just making Catalyst a user-space blob and riding off the open-source Radeon kernel driver to share more common code and hopefully lead to a better experience. It looks like this driver strategy is moving forward.
AMD is soliciting feedback on the Catalyst driver.
The Interstellar Marines developers have been very busy and this new update is bloody huge. It includes the first co-op level and it's quite big.
It adds "The NeuroGen Incident" which is the first ever co-op experience for the game, but it's not limited to that. It also includes their first pass at a revival system for downed marines as well like many other co-op games have.
It took longer than we ever hoped, but Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition is finally in opt-in beta for Linux. It may have taken over a year and a half, but they really are about to deliver on their promise. Better late than never right?
AMD is expected to release an updated Catalyst Linux driver in due time that will improve the frame rates for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Yesterday, Dmitry finished another part of his work on the transform tool. He added cage tranform and improved the anti-aliasing. Only liquify is still on the transform tool todo list!
I have spent the last few months of spare time working on the user interface. The purpose is to adapt the UI and use the great GTK+3 features when adequate. There is still much left to do, but here are before and after screenshots.
The OpenELEC team is proud to announce OpenELEC 4.2.0.
OpenELEC-4.2 is the next stable release, which is a feature release and the successor of OpenELEC-4.0.
Since OpenELEC 4.0 we have reworked many parts of the underlying OS. This release is the result of 6 months of development and testing and will be the basis for the upcoming OpenELEC-5.0 release series which is planned to release with Kodi-14 later this year.
A new release of OpenELEC is out for the Linux distribution designed around XBMC (now known as Kodi) for carrying out multimedia tasks with an easy-to-setup operating system.
We are releasing this maintenance shortly after our initial 2014.09 release to fix problems with the nvidia driver, and include a first fix for the bash shell vulnerability.
OpenMandriva is proud to announce the release of OpenMandriva Lx 2014.1, that aims fixing lots of bugs and improving the overall performance of the distro.
The OpenMandriva Lx 2014.1 release features the Linux 3.15.10 kernel, KDE 4.13.3 desktop, Firefox 32, Mesa 10.2.6, X.Org Server 1.15.2, and other updated but not too bleeding-edge packages.
The first release candidate to the RHEL7-based Scientific Linux 7.0 is finally available.
While the Scientific 7 Alpha came not too long after the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.0 release, today we're finally seeing the release candidate -- long after CentOS 7.0 was released as the other popular community-based RHEL alternative.
Do you have SELinux enabled on your Web Server?
Lots of people are asking me about SELinux and the Bash Exploit.
Builder is an in-development IDE that we reported on a few months ago as part of our GUADEC coverage. Builder aims to be an IDE that will focus purely on GNOME applications, with a goal of making it “Dead Simple”. The lead Builder developer Christian Hergert recently reported on his blog that there are now Fedora 21 COPR builds of the Builder master available for use and testing.
Of course, this week’s big news is the release of Fedora 21 Alpha — the first formal test release on the way to an early-December final release. This will be our first release with distinct Cloud, Server, and Workstation products — a first phase of Fedora.next. Read the F21 Alpha release announcement, and download the flavor you’re interested in (or launch the cloud image in EC2).
The next version of Ubuntu Linux is set to launch October 23rd. But you can take the first (and last) beta of Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn for a spin today.
The Ubuntu developers have announced the release of the final beta of Ubuntu 14.10 (also known as Utopic Unicorn). This final beta also includes each of the usual Ubuntu spins. So you can check out Lubuntu, Xubuntu and Ubuntu GNOME as well as the main version of Ubuntu. Download links to each version are included below.
In today's newsfeeds the elementary OS beta is getting good reviews. The Register says don't be disappointed that Ubuntu 14.10 is bring precious few new goodies. Both Bash bugs are now patched. Charles-H. Schulz blogs about reuniting LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice and Valve is giving Linux users 75% off all games.
On the Android 4.4.4 KitKat front, a Sprint Galaxy S5 file has emerged.
Netherlands based e-reader company Icarus has just revamped their wildly successful 9.7 inch Excel e-reader with Android 4.0. This will allow users to not only have a very large screen display to take notes but also install their own e-reading apps.
Google products and services have always been one of the most useful things about Android. But until now the company has not had particularly stringent requirements for how they are included in Android devices. Droid Life reports that that is about to change with a new contract Google has provided to Android manufacturers.
This hands-on review examines the Probox2 EX media streaming box, featuring Android 4.4, a quad-core Cortex-A9 SoC, 4k video, Miracast, and an air-mouse.
W2Comp began shipping the Android 4.4-based Probox2 EX media streaming mini-PC last month. Compared to the company’s earlier media streaming products, the $150 Probox2 EX uses a faster Amlogic quad-core processor and runs Android 4.4 (“KitKat”). On the wireless side it advances from Bluetooth 2.0 to 4.0, and features dual-band 802.11 b/g/n support that uses 5.8GHz instead of 5GHz as its upper band, resulting in reduced interference, according to W2Comp. (More hardware details appear farther below.)
This is the third part in a series of three articles surveying automation projects within OpenStack, explaining what they do, how they do it, and where they stand in development readiness and field usage. Previously, in part one, I covered cloud deployment tools that enable you to install/update OpenStack cloud on bare metal. In part two, I covered workload deployment tools. Today, we'll look at tools for day two operations.
It's Friday morning and marketing tells you they need a Wordpress blog up and running by Monday and they want a theme like this and features like that and, and, and ... you've not got much time if you plan to have a weekend off so the last thing you’re going to want to do is work with a remote server. If you did you'd be loading themes one after another, testing them with various plugins, and generally beating the application into submission while dealing with the delays inherent in using a machine that’s somewhere out on the Internet. That would mean you’d be waiting just that little bit longer (or quite possibly, a lot longer) to do everything than you’d prefer.
Xfce4-power-manager has now been updated to the latest version on my xfce411 COPR repo.One nice thing about this update for me is that it seems to fix the lid closing actions!
I'm very pleased to announce the release of a new version of GNU PSPP. PSPP is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a free replacement for the proprietary program SPSS.
The Catholic Church in Germany has even forbidden those who do not pay their church taxes from receiving communion.
The married dad-of-five exchanged X-rated pictures with an undercover reporter posing as a young female activist
“Today I am leaving the Conservative party and joining Ukip,” Tory MP Mark Reckless announced today in a second shock defection to the Eurosceptic party in recent weeks.
Mr Reckless, the MP for Rochester and Strood, made the announcement that he is quitting the party this afternoon at the Ukip party conference in Doncaster.
When parliament voted to invade Iraq in 2003, it was based on what we later found out to be disinformation and deceit. We were misled. The countless thousands who opposed the war were vocal in their opposition - but they were not listened to, they were ignored. And the UK went to war.
Before we move forward against ISIL in Iraq, we have to learn from our past mistakes, or we will be doomed to repeat them.
So yes, we need to do something. But that “something” is not more violence and war. Answering violence and war, with more violence and war, is always part of the problem, not part of the solution.
All pretense ended Monday night, when President Barack Obama became Commander-in-Chief at a time of war. He has never been reluctant to kill terrorists with unmanned drones, but now the United States military is bombing ISIS targets inside Syria. The president has authorized strikes by fighter planes, bombers, and Tomahawk missiles, the same weapons brandished by President Bush a decade ago.
The author of a new book on the U.S. drone program reveals an early attempt to pilot drones out of Germany, without the German government's knowledge.
Professor Christof Heyns asked Norway on Thursday to challenge its allies on the US’s use of armed drones which Heyns states violates international law and will, in the long run, make the world become a more dangerous place, reported NTB. Heyns, who normally investigates and reports to the UN on extra-judicial and illegal executions, said: “The world listens to the voice of Norway for it is often the voice of reason.”
The professor thinks Norway should bring the case to a human rights council of the UN and the general assembly.
The issue of the US’s drone attacks was the subject of a seminar in the Norwegian parliament on Thursday. The debate was raised by spokesperson for foreign affairs, BÃÂ¥rd Vegar Solhjell.
Every vote I cast in Parliament weighs heavily on my mind, especially as, unlike most other MPs, I have no whip telling me what to do – I consider the evidence, reflect on the principles I was elected to stand up for, listen to my constituents in Brighton Pavilion.
As the US, Britain and France are maneuvering to escalate military action in Iraq and Syria against the ‘Islamic State’ in an operation slated to last “years,” authorities are simultaneously calling for new measures to tighten security at home to fend off the danger of jihadists targeting western homelands. Intervention abroad, policymakers are arguing, must be tied to increased domestic surveillance and vigilance. But US and British military experts warn that officials have overlooked the extent to which western policies in the region have not just stoked the rise of IS, but will continue to inflame the current crisis. The consequences could be dire – while governments exploit the turmoil in the Middle East to justify an effective re-invasion of Iraq along with intensified powers of surveillance and control – the end result could well be accelerated regional violence and increasing criminalization of Muslims and activists.
US President Barack Obama pointed to “successful” campaigns in Yemen and Somalia as models for his strategy to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). But in both countries, US military action has only worked to embolden extremist groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Shabaab.
A US government Twitter account tasked with countering jihadist propaganda triumphantly posted pictures of dead Islamic State fighters only to delete them a short while later.
The US State Department runs a number of social media accounts to push back against Isil and al-Qaeda and convince young Muslims not to enslist with the jihadists.
The "Think Again Turn Away" Twitter account posted pictures of the corpses of four jihadist fighters reportedly killed in US air strikes in an apparent warning to those thinking of taking up arms.
The use of the US military in this operation should raise red flags for the American public as well. After all, if the military truly is the governmental institution best equipped to handle this outbreak, it speaks worlds about the neglect of civilian programs at home as well as abroad.
The current commentary about Australia’s latest Middle East military adventure ignores the obvious, says Dr Geoff Davies — oil and its impact on U.S. foreign policy.
U.S.-led warplanes are bombarding oil-producing facilities in eastern Syria for a second day in a row in a bid to cut off key revenue from Islamic State militants. According to U.S. Central Command, the refineries net about $2 million per day. On Thursday, the Pentagon rejected accounts that up to 24 civilians have been killed by U.S.-led strikes in Syria, saying there are no "credible" reports of civilian deaths. U.S. planes are also continuing to bomb Iraq with at least 11 airstrikes on Thursday. Pentagon spokesperson Rear Admiral John Kirby acknowledged the Islamic State remains strong.
It is hard to imagine that a campaign of aerial bombardment in Syria will make that dire situation any better.
A drone crashed into a mountain in Shabwa governorate, southeast of Sana’a, on Tuesday morning, eyewitnesses told the Yemen Times.
Administration officials say there has been has no dropoff in backing for Hadi, days after Shia minorities, who have endured a brutal crackdown, took hold of government and military installations in the capital of Sana’a. Barack Obama’s counter-terrorism chief, a critical manager of the relationship with Yemen, passed along the US president’s “strong support” for Hadi in a phone call to him earlier this week.
IF today, with remote in hand, you randomly flip through channels on your TV, or browse through nearly two dozen online newspapers, you will see video clips or photos of Pakistan Air Force jets pounding targets in North Waziristan, artillery firing into the mountains, or, perhaps, some other celebration of Operation Zarb-i-Azb. But hang on! You rub your eyes. Our jets bombing Islamic fighters within the territory of this Islamic republic?
Since his early days as a correspondent covering the wars in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, documentary filmmaker and journalist John Pilger has been an ardent critic of Western foreign policy. Following in the footsteps of Martha Gellhorn, Pilger set out to cover the Vietnam War from the perspective of those most affected by it – the Vietnamese people and US draftees. In 1979, he filmed Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia, which depicted the humanitarian catastrophe following the ousting of the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh. He would go on to make three more films about Cambodia and become an outspoken critic of the United States’ intervention in the country and the West’s support of Pol Pot.
The incessant drumbeat of war, accompanied by the harsh propaganda of "barbarism" and "brutality" directed at individuals in Syria and Iraq, is as wearily familiar as that used to demonize the German "Hun" a century ago and dozens of other "enemies" in the interim. The PR industry, which is the landing pad for many politicos from the Conservatives to the NDP, is having a field day, from allegations that "Islamic militants" are murdering seniors in hospital rooms (perhaps an update of the Hill & Knowlton-created falsehood that Iraqis ripped babies from incubators after the 1991 invasion of Kuwait) to claims that a group with no air force, weapons of mass destruction, overseas military bases, aircraft carriers, and hundreds of billions in other war infrastructure presents the greatest threat known to our generation.
Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad today shrugged off criticism over his use of the now-defunct Internal Security Act (ISA), saying it does not compare to the atrocities committed by the United States in the use of unmanned drones to kill suspected terrorists.
Hersh further explains the clandestine unit masqueraded as "a civilian aerial photography operation." He is referring, of course, to the units that ultimately found Pablo Escobar, in an age predating drones. Manhunting is a core competency of the United States, and the last thirteen years have seen no shortage of attempts to not only reinvent the wheel but form an octagon for no logical reason.
A suspected U.S. drone fired four missiles at a vehicle carrying Uzbek and local militants in the country's northwestern tribal region near the Afghan border on Wednesday, killing 10 of them, two Pakistani intelligence officials said.
President Barack Obama's blunt words on Islamic terrorism marked a striking shift for his annual address to United Nations, as he moved away from the language of accommodation to rhetoric reminiscent of predecessor President George W. Bush.
US drones on Wednesday fired missiles at a compound and vehicle and killed at least eight militants in a restive tribal area bordering Afghanistan, officials said.
A British teenager fighting with Islamist militia Al-Nusra Front in Syria has reportedly been killed in US airstrikes, with his mother finding only finding out via social media.
A day after Prime Minister David Cameron pledged British support for the American-led air campaign in Iraq, the counterterrorism police in Britain rounded up nine men suspected of having links to a banned Islamist group and searched 18 buildings across the capital and in the English Midlands.
In the propaganda video, Cantlie is again seated at a table wearing an orange jumpsuit, in a reference to the outfits worn by Muslim prisoners at U.S. detention centers at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He reads from a prepared script, explaining how the United States' involvement in the Syrian conflict will mirror its misadventures in Vietnam.
Man identified as British journalist criticises Obama preparations for US-led attacks on militant group in five-minute clip
So, the other day, he hipped me to some recently declassified CIA material, specifically National Intelligence Estimates dated April 17, 1963 and titled "Prospects In South Vietnam." These concerned, among other things, the CIA's assessment of the relative strength of the Viet Cong in our adopted Indochinese client state.
Our CIA and German BND triggered a coup in Kiev because independent Ukraine elected Victor Yanukovich president of Ukraine. He is the legal Ukrainian president. When the BND took over the government in Kiev, NATO and the European Union offered membership to Ukraine and Russia, detached Crimea and annexed it into Russian rule for its strategic importance, as well as its economic importance.
The number of shootings in which a gunman wounds or kills multiple people has increased dramatically in recent years, with the majority of attacks in the past decade occurring at a business or a school, according to an FBI report released Wednesday.
In the first case, federal prosecutors said Omar Gonzalez, 42, jumped the White House fence and raced into the front door before he was apprehended. He was carrying a small pocket knife and, apparently a message for the president about global warming. Later, authorities said they found two hatchets, a machete and 800 rounds of ammunition in his car.
The strikes killed 14 fighters and at least five civilians, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict.
Quick: Which U.S. president has authorized wars of various kinds in seven Muslim countries?
If you guessed Barack Hussein Obama, you are correct.
About two dozen anti-war activists rallied near the White House Tuesday against U.S. airstrikes in Syria, which began Monday.
Five of the mostly gray-haired protesters were arrested for blocking a White House gate after insisting they meet with President Barack Obama or a senior official to discuss their concerns.
Here we go again, I thought. This is how modern America goes to war. When superpower Goliath is challenged by sudden savagery, it has no choice but to respond with brute force. Or so we are told. Otherwise, America would no longer be a convincing Goliath. When war bells clang, politicians of every stripe find it very difficult to resist, lest they look weak or unpatriotic. And the American people, as usual, rally around the flag, as they always do when the country seems threatened. Citizens and members of the uniformed military are tired of war, but both in a sense are prisoners of the media-hyped hysteria that is the usual political reflex. Shoot first, ask questions later.
On Sept. 19, Benghazi witnessed a string of assassinations that seemed to be coordinated. The assassins targeted military and security personnel as well as civilians. Among those killed were two teenage civil society activists, Sami al-Kawafi and Tawfik Bensaud. They were 17 and 18 years old respectively. Their murders have capped off more than two years of extremist attacks on peace activists and journalists, killings that are endangering any remaining freedoms Libyans still have.
US and coalition planes pounded Islamic State positions in Syria again on Wednesday, but the strikes did not halt the fighters' advance in a Kurdish area where fleeing refugees told of villages burnt and captives beheaded.
Hours after the last airstrike, fighters with the group gathered on Tuesday in public areas of the city where the corpses of those executed by Islamic State are put on display. They told residents that Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which took part in the airstrikes, were attacking them, resident Abu Muhammad said. The militants threatened the Arab countries with car bombings in retaliation for cooperating with the West, he said.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also warns about jumping head-first into funding Syria’s rebels.
With congressional authorization in his back pocket, U.S. president Barack Obama stepped up American military aggression against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) this week.
While AP’s source claimed ten were killed in the strike, Reuters cited “intelligence officials” who said five to eight militants perished in the blast.According to AFP, eight suspected fighters died.
Many government supporters were worried about where events might lead because some of the countries in the coalition, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have called for Assad to step down or actively supported his enemies with money and arms.
Obama’s intention to bring his air war against IS to Syria may result in a serious violation of international law. The Damascus government has said it will allow the U.S. to act but Washington must first ask permission to bomb its territory. The White House indicated it has no desire to ask for authorization. In addition, the Russian government, which supports and supplies arms to both Iran and Syria, pointed out that any such strike against Syria would need backing from the UN Security Council. Otherwise, it “would constitute an act of aggression.”
The insurgency in Iraq, Syria and beyond is a fight for natural resources as much as political control. Why are we so busy giving leverage to terrorists?
CEP lists among its goals the compilation of the world’s most exhaustive database on extremist groups and their networks, and places unmasking the funding sources for IS high on its list of immediate priorities.
We are excited to announce the first four recipients of our next crowd-funding campaign, all of whom may now start receiving donations intended to cover the costs of installing SecureDrop, our open-source whistleblower submission system. The first round includes BalkanLeaks, the Government Accountability Project, Cryptome and Firedoglake.
Failure of the British government to inform Parliament of its intention to redeploy armed unmanned air vehicles outside recognised warzones may result in legal action, a charity and law firm have warned.
Following a notification by the UK's minister of state for the armed forces, Mark Francois, in July that claimed it was not necessary for Parliament to approve UAV strikes, charity Reprieve and law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn notified the government that action will be taken if it is not clear on where armed UAVs are being used.
As we just heard, so far there is no coalition behind U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. There is more support, however, for operations in northern Iraq, where France and Germany are actively involved. Peter Wittig is German Ambassador to the U.S. I spoke with him earlier this week and asked him to describe Germany's current strategy against ISIS.
Heeding the call to do something about ISIL, Congress passed and Barack Obama signed a measure approving weapons and training for “moderate” Syrian rebels. These moderates are ostensibly fighting against the new Islamic upstarts but are also sworn to overthrow Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad. Obama has repeatedly assured Americans that no boots would be on the ground in Syria (or Iraq, for that matter), sending out National Security Advisor Susan Rice to state, “This program will be hosted outside of Syria in partnership with neighboring countries.” Rice added the process would take “many months,” which the administration hopes will be enough time to sort out all of the various regional players.
We in the ANSWER Coalition oppose this war and are calling for demonstrations to oppose the bombing of Syria and Iraq from September 23 through September 28. This war, like the earlier ones, is being sold on the basis of misinformation and fear. The United States is a major part of the problem and cannot be the solution to the current crisis in Syria and Iraq.
Having expanded its air war against Islamic State jihadists into Syria, the US military can draw on a vast arsenal of aircraft, troops and hardware across the Middle East.
Here are the basic facts on the American military presence in the region and the strikes carried out so far, according to the Pentagon and defense analysts:
If the latest polls are accurate, most voters believe that Republican politicians deserve greater trust on matters of national security. At a moment when Americans feel threatened by rising terrorist movements and authoritarian regimes, that finding is politically salient—and proves that amnesia is the most durable affliction of our democracy.
Robert Murray, CEO of Ohio-based Murray Energy, kicked off a gathering of coal interests Monday presenting a gloomy picture of an industry in irreversible decline, a political administration out to get him, and a patient on an operating table waiting for electricity that’s bound to be cut off due to impending coal plant retirements.
How America abandoned its role as leader of the fight to save the planet -- and killed a movement.
The controversial plans have been billed as a battle between a small brown bird and homes for 11,000 local people but environmental groups say what is really at stake is the robustness of the entire conservation regime: this is the biggest attempt to build on an SSSI in England since the wildlife protection legislation of 1981.
The market-based mechanism received the endorsement of the U.N. Secretary-General and World Bank president at Tuesday's gathering in New York.
23 September 2014 - We are not here to talk, we are here to make history, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today told world leaders at an "unprecedented and important gathering" that aims to raise ambition, mobilize resources, and generate action towards a universal climate deal.
Barely a year removed from the devastation of the 2008 financial crisis, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York faced a crossroads. Congress had set its sights on reform. The biggest banks in the nation had shown that their failure could threaten the entire financial system. Lawmakers wanted new safeguards.
Don’t forget that much of this murder hardware is designed and conjured up by the best and brightest at our Western colleges. Lawyers abound in this industry. Unions love good Boeing missile making jobs. This is the legacy of killing, empire, a black president who isn’t and is, fabricated by the same shit schools and teachers who also advance murder, economic hits or direct hits with drones and napalm or guided bunker busters.
The Buenos Aires province's tax agency says it has used drones to identify around 200 mansions and 100 swimming pools that have not been declared by their owners.
It seems like ages ago that Americans spent 13 days wondering if we were on the brink of nuclear war as the Soviet Union and Cuban government engaged the Kennedy Administration in the tumultuous Cuban Missile Crisis. Or even longer ago when American CIA agents stormed the shores of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in a failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government. Cuba’s allegiance to the Soviets and their admiration for communism encouraged the US to go on the defense and place a trade embargo and severed diplomatic relations with our neighbors 90 miles to the south.
And now Mr. Amazon owns a newspaper that helps shape the debate on virtually every topic of public importance—including those that affect his grand ambitions. Bezos didn't buy a newspaper. He bought power.
Weeks after appearing at a VIP dinner for the Koch brothers-backed political group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), George Will devoted his Washington Post column to promoting one of the Kochs' favored political candidates without disclosing the conflict of interest.
The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA), the union and industry advocate for Australia’s journalists, has described the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill No 1 which been passed by the parliament an outrageous attack on press freedom in Australia.
Russian proposals on protecting Internet users against threats from the West could be a Kremlin ploy to crack down on critical voices inside Russia, a representative of Europe's main rights and democracy watchdog said.
A German citizen who crashed a drone into a lake in Yellowstone National Park this summer has been banned from the park for a year and was ordered to pay $1,600 in fines and restitution.
A Nevada-based security technology company says it has discovered proof of as many as 15 cellphone interception devices secretly operating in the nation's capital, capable of illicitly identifying the movements of prominent people, recording audio from mobile phones, listening to calls and reading email.
The commercial use of drones in American skies took a leap forward on Thursday with the help of Hollywood. The US Federal Aviation Administration, responding to applications from seven filmmaking companies and pressure from the Motion Picture Association of America, said six of those companies could use camera-equipped drones on certain movie and television sets. Until now, the FAA had not permitted commercial drone use except for extremely limited circumstances in wilderness areas of Alaska.
FBI Director James Comey on Thursday strongly criticized Apple and Google for hardening information stored in smartphones by encrypting data, making it inaccessible to law enforcement even with a court order.
Describing someone as a “conspiracy theorist” is usually meant as an insult, suggesting tin-foil hats and babbling rants on late-night radio talk shows. But when it comes to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, the list of important, seemingly credible public figures who count themselves as conspiracy theorists is long and impressive.
Fifty years ago this coming week, the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the panel led by Chief Justice Earl Warren and better known as the Warren Commission, published an 888-page final report that identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole gunman in Dealey Plaza and said there was no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.
Demonstrations continued in Greene County Tuesday as a grand jury spent a second day deciding whether Officer Sean Williams and Sgt. David Darkow will face charges for shooting and killing John Crawford III when they said he would not drop a BB gun at a Beavercreek Walmart.
The establishment media has seized on the killing to whip up an atmosphere of suspicion and fear over further “lone wolf” terrorist attacks, as well as outright anti-Muslim xenophobia, based on gross distortion, unsubstantiated speculation and outright fabrication. The lack of any regard for elementary journalistic standards was highlighted by the publication in the Fairfax press yesterday of a photo, allegedly of a well-dressed version of Haider, alongside an image from Haider’s Facebook page, showing him in military camouflage, wearing a balaclava and holding an Islamist flag. In fact, the well-dressed young man was not Haider, but another 18-year-old who told the media last night that he now fears going out in public.
A bill introduced Sept. 18 would make clear that consumers actually owned the electronic devices, and any accompanying software on that device, that they purchased, according to sponsor Rep. Blake Farenthold's (R-Texas).
The You Own Devices Act (H.R. 5586) would amend the Copyright Act “to provide that the first sale doctrine applies to any computer program that enables a machine or other product to operate.”
Attorney General Eric Holder announced he would resign yesterday, after serving as the nation’s top law enforcement official since President Obama came into office in 2009. Holder will leave behind a complex and hotly debated legacy at the Justice Department on many issues, but one thing is clear: he was the worst Attorney General on press freedom issues in a generation, possibly since Richard Nixon’s John Mitchell pioneered the subpoenaing of reporters and attempted to censor the Pentagon Papers.
From gay rights to voter-ID laws, this attorney general became the man to fight the way the president couldn’t. Yet his liberal voice was too often silenced on War on Terror issues.
But, it goes beyond that. As Trevor Timm highlights over at The Guardian, pretty much the entire drone bombing (drones, by the way, are also apparently "authorized" by the AUMF) of Syria involves the administration conveniently redefining basic English to suit its purposes.
Egyptian security forces stepped up security on Saturday ahead of the verdict in the murder trial of former president Hosni Mubarak and top security officials.
Eric Holder’s tenure as attorney general will be remembered for the failure to prosecute any leading bankers who were responsible for the collapse of the economy. While the SEC negotiated large fines, the DOJ prosecuted none of those who were guilty of crimes that robbed the wealth of tens of millions of Americans. The failure to prosecute bankers was one example of many where corporate power dominated the DOJ on finance, environmental, labor and other issues. This should have been an era of aggressive enforcement of corporate crime, instead corporate criminals were rarely investigated.
It wasn't difficult for Barack Obama and Eric Holder to be in the same orbit. Both were sons of immigrants, Columbia Ivy Leaguers, basketball fans and prominent African-American political figures.
...failed to prosecute any Bush administration officials for torture...
Senator Ron Wyden points our attention to a declaration from Neal Higgins, director of the CIA's "Office of Congressional Affairs" in a FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU demanding the CIA release the Senate Intelligence Committee's terror report. In that declaration, Higgins insists that the works on those computers are not the CIA's and the CIA cannot access them, contradicting the new story from Brennan's latest spin attempt. In fact, Higgins confirms Feinstein's claim that there was a clear agreement between the Senate and the CIA concerning these computers.
MoD and Foreign Office claim UK-US relations would be harmed if high court allows Yunus Rahmatullah’s case to go ahead
In a press release, the Glasgow Palestine Action Network (GPAN) said it decided to take action in protest against “the UK economy’s ever growing military industrial cooperation with governments that flout international law.”
The SEC this week promised an overseas whistleblower $30m – but others who have uncovered wrongdoing haven’t been so lucky
Investigative reporter and author Francisco Marín has written extensively about the case, with his research being published in a 2012 book titled “El Doble Asesinato de Neruda” (“The Double Murder of Neruda”). Based on extensive testimony offered by Araya, forensic evidence, and the circumstances surrounding the upholding of the official version despite the dissonance, Marín has managed to present a compelling case that the poet had indeed been murdered by the dictatorship.
Did the public remember nothing about the civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua? Of the dictatorships the U.S. backed? The Honduran coup blessed by Saint Obama? The U.S. invasion of Panama? Didn’t they have a clue where their 60 cents-a-pound bananas came from and at what cost? Apparently not.
Activision said its portrayal of Noriega, in which the former drug peddler and CIA operative aids the game's main villain during the Cold War, is protected under free speech laws. "Call of Duty" games have also portrayed historical characters such as President John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro, as well as semi-historical characters such as Nazi zombies.
PUBLIC Protector Thuli Madonsela on Monday fielded hostile questions from members of public accounts committees in the provinces and municipalities, prompting her to reveal for the first time that attacks on her office had assumed a "bizarre" level, including the emergence of a controversial intelligence report claiming to provide evidence that she was a spy for the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
[...]
Deputy Defence Minister Kebby Maphatsoe recently accused Ms Madonsela of being a CIA spy after she wrote a letter to President Jacob Zuma warning that Mr Zuma had not sufficiently responded to her findings in a report on Nkandla. Mr Maphatsoe later withdrew the allegations.
Mind you, their sacrifices had been made to preserve a political system free from the nonsense which is the recent exercise in democracy. They might have given an indulgent chuckle when told there was a party advocating liberalisation of marijuana use, but what would they have made of this Dotcom stuff?
Last month, we wrote about a troubling decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to give control over the new .pharmacy domain to big pharma -- thus allowing it to lock out sites around the world that threaten its generous profit margins.
Techdirt has written about Spain's new copyright law a couple of times. There, we concentrated on the "Google tax" that threatens the digital commons and open access in that country. But alongside this extremely foolish idea, there was another good one: getting rid of the anachronistic levy on recording devices that was supposed to "compensate" for private copying (as if any such compensation were needed), and paying collecting societies directly out of Spain's state budget. Needless to say, it is such a good idea that the collecting societies hate it, and have appealed against the new system.