Want a brand new desktop, media centre, gaming machine or server? Build it yourself! You'll save money and have complete control over what components go into the PC. We show you what you need to consider, and what software, distros and tools you need to build your very own Linux PC.
We show you how to install Linux on a Chromebook.
Linux server demand is rising due to demand from cloud infrastructure deployments, according to IDC, and is expected to continue to grow in the future. In the first quarter of 2014, Linux server revenue accounted for 30 percent of overall server revenue, an increase of 15.4 percent, IDC said.[1] IBM has supported development of Linux on System z for more than a decade, and today there are over 3,000 certified applications for Linux on System z. In addition, IBM is supporting the development of skills to take advantage of these applications through the IBM Academic Initiative.
It’s always a great show of solidarity when two organizations with similar values figure out a way to support each other, and that’s exactly what the Linux Foundation and Code.org are doing.
Olof Johansson sent in a bulk of the new ARM work on Monday that's targeting Linux 3.16. Among the highlights of this Linux ARM work include:
The eighth release candidate for the Linux 3.15 kernel has been released. The official release of Linux 3.15 should happen next week, but meanwhile Linus has decided to open the merge window for Linux 3.16 one week early.
The first pull request for the Xen virtualization updates for the Linux 3.16 kernel have now been submitted.
David Vrabel sent in the early Xen features and fixes this morning for the Linux 3.16 merge window. Most prominently to Xen in Linux 3.16 are ARM architecture improvements. In particular, there's now ARM suspend/resume support and ARM multi-call support.
Merged for the Linux 3.13 kernel was the multi-queue block layer allows for better SSD performance with reduced latency and by balancing I/O workload across multiple CPU cores and supporting multiple hardware queues. With the upcoming Linux 3.16 kernel, the "blk-mq" code is expected to be feature complete and deliver great performance.
After sharing the views of another developer this weekend about OpenGL being broken compared to Mantle and Direct3D, another game developer has come forward with his own "rant" that also says OpenGL has problems but it also has potential.
Support for Direct Rendering Infrastructure 3 and the Present Extension are finally supported by the mainline Intel X.Org graphics driver.
Similar to functionality offered by other drivers, Mesa might finally have a shader compiler cache to save compiled GLSL shaders to the disk in an effort to reduce the start-up time for modern Linux games.
Before moving to the raw number, lets first clarify the terminology.
A lossless compression algorithms is a mathematical algorithms that define how to reduce (compress) a specific dataset in a smaller one, without losing information. In other word, it involves encoding information using fewer bit that the original version, with no information loss. To be useful, a compression algorithms must be reversible – it should enable us to re-expand the compressed dataset, obtaining an exact copy of the original source. It’s easy to see how the fundamental capabilities (compression and ratio and speed) are rooted in the algorithm itself, and different algorithms can strongly differ in results and applicable scopes.
To complement the recent ACPI CPUfreq vs. Intel P-State Scaling With Linux 3.15 testing that was done using an Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge Extreme Edition system, here's some similar tests done using a low-power Intel Celeron N2820 "Bay Trail" SoC within the Intel NUC.
While yesterday's Linux testing at Phoronix revealed Intel Bay Trail graphics are slower than Windows when running in comparison the updated open-source Intel Linux graphics stack, at least the Bay Trail performance for Intel's N2820 NUC has improved in the past few months under Linux.
Maybe you already heard of the cwrap project. A set of tools to create a fully isolated network environment to test client/server components on a single host. socket_wrapper is a part of cwrap and I released version 1.1.0 today. In this release I worked together with Michael Adam and we implemented some nice new features like support for IP_PKTINFO for binding on UDP sockets, bindresvport() and more socket options via getsockopt(). This was mostly needed to be able to create a test environment for MIT Kerberos.
Nuvola Player, a web interface for cloud music services that runs in its own window and provides integration with a Linux desktop, has advanced to version 2.4.0.
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that relies primarily on computers for presentation and consists of pictures put together from characters defined by the ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) standard. These characters are letters, numbers and special characters such as # / and \. ASCII art is as much a constituent element of the Internet as emoticons, cats, or acronyms such as ROTFL.
If it hasn’t happened already, there will come a time when you’ll wish your computer was running a different operating system. Whether you’re a competent software developer or simply a user desiring an application exclusive to an OS other than your own, there are plenty of valid reasons for why you’d want to use another OS. Despite what you might think, however, you don’t necessarily have to adhere to your supposed monetary and spatial restraints given the amount of available virtual machines.
Nuclear Throne the excellent 2D procedural death labyrinth that becomes quite the bullet hell has been updated with alpha #29 with more weapons!
I don't say "bullet hell" lightly either as it gets increasingly frantic as you reach higher level enemies and I've not made it very far at all due to the game being so unforgiving at times.
Steam Skin Manager is a tool developed by +Martin Kozub for changing the Steam for Linux appearance. The app comes with 4 skins by default: Ambiance, Radiance, Light and Blue and it also lets you easily add more themes.
The latest monthly update to the popular Unvanquished open-source game is now available.
Crytek has just announced Homefront: The Revolution as a new first-person shooter game that will feature native Linux support with the CryENGINE and launch on the same-day as for other platforms.
After Homefront developer Kaos Studios was shut down the property was passed on to Crytek, who quickly got to work on a sequel and acquired the franchise rights after THQ filed for bankruptcy. Crytek and Deep Silver have now announced that Homefront: The Revolution is coming in 2015, and have revealed the first cinematic trailer. The game is exclusively new-gen, and is set for release on PC, Mac, Linux, PS4 and Xbox One.
You like to have a polished and nice KDE Frameworks 5 release?
We are pleased to announce Plasma Media Center 1.3 beta release!
The previous week i was working on the Activity Switcher (it is the sliding button on right of your screen), which is written in QML2. The activity Switcher is reusing the activities component for managing the activities. So the only real difference between the Activity Switcher and the desktop Activity Manager, is its layout which has been created with QML2.
The most famous and loved will always be the balad of the Active lands of Plasma where the society became so enlightened they managed to expel the Royal Society for Putting Things on top of other things.
What the future (KF5) brings?
Ok, stopping with the story now.
Almost two weeks have passed since we returned from the sprint, but we are now only beginning to sort out and formalize all the data and notes we did during the meeting. The point is, this time (as well as during the last sprint in 2011) we had three painters with us who gave us immeasurable amount of input about how they use Krita and what can be improved. This is the case when criticizing and complaining was exactly what we needed :)
Apple has just announced OS X Yosemite, the new and improved Mac OS, but it turns out that at least one of the design decisions from the new operating system is not "original."
A candidate vying to become one of the directors of the GNOME Foundation has raised the issue of Red Hat's "domination" of development of the GNOME Desktop Project, claiming that "for the last several years, Red Hat's wants/needs have trumped what anyone else wants/needs, including the larger user base of GNOME."
Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. I am pleased to announce the release of Finnix 110, which includes Linux kernel 3.13, updated Debian upstream software, bug fixes and feature enhancements.
Summary: The companies expect the effort to enable customers to take their existing SAP license to the cloud and add Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA to their service mix on the SAP Marketplace.
Here's a list of activities and bugs fixed the KDE team has been working on the past month.
SnowBird Linux 20.1 has been dubbed Misha and is based on Fedora 20. This distribution is considered to be a respin of Fedora, which means that it shares most of the features, but there are also a few major differences.
“Run any of the Windows Flavours (XP, Vista, 7 or 8) and want to give SnowBird a try but don't know where to start? Run SnowBird Linux directly from the disc. Download the latest version and burn it to a dvd using your favourite burning tool. In case you need a free disc burner, download CDBurnerXP. Keep the disc in the drive and restart your computer to boot from SnowBird Linux without modifying your computer,” reads the website.
The distribution uses the same GNOME 3 desktop environment like Fedora, but the developers have also integrated a number of GNOME extensions that should make users’ lives much easier. On the other hand, GNOME 3 is pretty far from anything done in Windows operating systems, so the potential Windows users will have to be pretty open to new things...
Overclockix, like KNOPPIX STD (remember that one?), is one of those rare use specialist distributions that will always prevent it from widespread adoption, but that's not the point. It was discontinued in 2005 and has recently been revived by several enthusiasts on the Overclockers forum. Read the full announcement here. Back then it was built around the KDE 3 desktop, but the new development team have held a poll where Gnome Shell came out top as preferred environment.
The Linux-based Ubuntu OS is finding its way into tablets with Dell’s latest Inspiron hybrids, which can function as tablets and laptops.
The PC maker is offering Ubuntu as an OS option alongside Windows 8 on its new hybrids, the Inspiron 11 3000, which has an 11.6-inch screen, and Inspiron 13 7000, which has a 13-inch screen.
The hybrids turn from laptops into tablets when the screen is rotated 360 degrees, much like Lenovo’s Yoga, which pioneered the design. Dell announced the 19.4-millimeter thick hybrids at the Computex trade show in Taipei on Monday.
The Ubuntu Software Center has been around for quite some time and it changed a lot since its launch. The project hasn't been improved in a while and it looks like things are stagnating a little. This is where the App Grid comes into play, an application that is fully capable of replacing Ubuntu Software Center right now.
There is no doubt that some of Ubuntu’s success as an operating system can be attributed to the Software Center.
Although most people think of Windows-based PCs when they think of Dell Computer, Dell has actually been more friendly to Linux over the years than any of the other major hardware makers. The company has delivered computers running Ubuntu in both India and China, and the company's "Project Sputnik" effort involved customizing a Linux-based laptop for developers. Now, Ubuntu has found its way onto tablets from Dell, under the Inspiron hybrid product line.
The Linux ecosystem is full of Ubuntu-based distributions, but building such a Linux OS is not as hard as you might think, especially if you have the proper tools – in this case Ubuntu Mini Remix. Users don't need to be programmers (although it's useful) in order to build a custom Ubuntu OS.
OpenStack has been in the news a lot... well, we have just had the OpenStack summit in Atlanta after all.
Many say that the "problem" with OpenStack is that it is still regarded as a "moving target" and work in progress, augmenting and updating as it does twice a year.
1. Mint (3546 average number of hits per day) / 2. Ubuntu (2028) / 3. Debian (1851) / 4. Mageia (1401) / 5. Fedora (1353) / Source: DistroWatch
Minimalist distros are an important option for many Linux users. Not everyone wants tons of desktop glitz and zillions of bells and whistles. Lubuntu has always been a terrific option for minimalists who prefer to stay within the Ubuntu family. Now Lubuntu 14.04 LTS is available and it follows in the footsteps of previous releases by providing a high-quality desktop distro that is light-weight and fast.
Linux Mint has long been one of the most popular desktop distributions, so it’s always a big deal when a version is released. This time around it’s Linux Mint 17. This review covers the Cinnamon version of Linux Mint 17, but much of it also applies to the MATE version with the exception of changes to the MATE 1.8 desktop.
As to which desktop environment you should use, I think it just gets down to your own personal preference. MATE is a more traditional desktop while Cinnamon has a more modern feel to it. If you aren’t sure which one you might like better, my advice is to try both of them and then make your decision.
Linux Mint 17 is a long term support release. It will receive security updates until 2019. The Linux Mint developers plan to use this package base until 2016, so upgrading should be a piece of cake once you start using Linux Mint 17.
Ah Linux, we meet again. I am on a perpetual journey to find the perfect Linux distro. Sadly, I am finding it not to be elusive, but downright non-existent. You see, operating systems based on the open-source kernel are very fragmented in experience. It is hard for the stars to align and have everything you want be represented. Maybe you like the available environments for a distro, but hate the package manager. Or maybe you love the community support, but find the release schedule too slow.
Linux Mint 17 "Qiana" MATE is now available for download and it looks like this flavor is gaining more popularity with the community. Let’s take a closer look at this MATE-powered version and see some of its features in this screenshot tour.
Linux Mint 17 "Qiana" MATE is in the first tier of flavors that usually ships and it's one of the most used versions from the entire Mint family. It all has to do with the MATE desktop environment, which is much appreciated by the fans of the former GNOME 2.
The good news is that Mint 17 isn't just another update to an increasingly popular Linux distro - some would claim the most popular distro.
The really good news is that Mint 17 is a great release on which Mint can build a solid base. Of course it remains to be seen whether Mint can get the software updates and backports that users might want and need while remaining with the LTS base. In the mean time though, Mint 17 is off to a great start.
You'll get Mint 17 in two different flavours, both of which feature the project's homegrown desktop environments - MATE and Cinnamon.
When most people think of Ubuntu derivatives, they usually categorize them into an "Ubuntu with a different desktop environment than Unity" category. However, according to Ubuntu, they refer to Ubuntu-based distros with different desktop environments as a derivative as well as distros using their own tools/apps/goals as customizations.
In this article, I'll be exploring the upside and downside to Ubuntu-based customized distros.
The OpenPandora is a handheld, Linux-based game system with the guts of a low-power PC and the ability to emulate classic video game consoles. It’s based on open source software… and now the hardware designs are also open source.
The autonomous Raspberry Pi-powered robot yacht built by British students that competes worldwide
Anyone looking for an extraordinarily small Linux mini PC might be interested in the new AsiaRF Linux mini PC which has this week launched over on the Indiegogo crowd funding website looking to raise $6,000 to make the jump from concept into production.
Aaeon announced a compact, wireless IoT gateway that runs Linux on an Intel Quark X1000 Series SoC, and works in conjunction with an Asus Cloud Service.
The Aaeon “AIOT-X1000ââ¬Â³ IoT gateway supports the Gateway Solutions for IoT architecture (aka “Moon Island”) unveiled by Intel in April. Aaeon’s product joins other “Moon Island capable” gateway systems previously announced by ADI, Adlink, Advantech, Eurotech, and Portwell, not to mention Intel’s own Gateway Solutions for IoT reference design. Although Intel’s reference design supports a choice of either Atom or Quark processors, Aaeon’s device, introduced this week at Computex in Taipei, casts its lot squarely with Quark.
Company executives announce the new center at Computex, and say it will be established in Taiwan. ARM is ramping up its efforts in the increasingly competitive markets of the Internet of things and wearable devices with the creation of a new chip design center in Taiwan.
LG is today congratulating itself on selling one million of its webOS smart TVs. After announcing the new Smart+ TVs at CES in January, the Korean manufacturer released a range of models in March, and took just under four months to hit today's milestone. It's now predicting it will sell 10 million by "the first half of 2015."
"Rather than continuing to add more and more functions into our smart TVs that few people will ever use," says LG's head of TV In-kyu Lee, "we've decided to focus on simplicity ... consumers seem to share our view that this is the right direction for the evolution of smart TVs going forward." The new models are still in the process of being rolled out globally, and LG says webOS TVs will be in over 150 markets by the end of June. It's also planning to bring more "LG Smart+ TV Experience Zones" to retail outlets in order to better promote the range.
The Nokia N900 smartphone launched in 2009 and for a time was quite popular with Linux enthusiasts, now has a modem driver within the mainline Linux kernel.
With Computex Taipei happening this week and the Tizen Developer Conference starting tomorrow in San Francisco, Samsung has finally announced their first Tizen smartphone. The Samsung Z is this forthcoming Tizen phone.
After years of rumoured launch dates, Samsung has unveiled its first smartphone powered by the "open source" Tizen operating system, the Z
Officials in China have pushed for domestic operating systems on both PC and mobile for some time now, but they’ve never been able to unseat the foreign standard bearers on either platform.
It looks like major computer makers are finally warming up to operating systems other than Microsoft Windows, and they are also experimenting with open source operating systems. Not onlly is Dell out with new tablet hybrid devices that run Ubuntu, but Hewlett-Packard has announced a new Android-only laptop. The 14-inch, Tegra-driven Android system is called the HP SlateBook 14, and will be available on August 6 for $399.
While Samsung is trying to create an early-bird monopoly in the smartwatch market, Apple and Google are busy working on a smartwatch of their own. Though both the smartphone giants haven't announced anything yet, it's only natural to assume that they're not going to overlook such a huge market. Samsung, with their Galaxy Gear smart watches was the first big company to make a foray into wearables. Serving as a mere companion to Samsung's Galaxy smartphones, these smart watches haven't been met with glowing reviews. Many find the Gear smartwatch clunky, lacking features, and overall, an unbaked product. Though Samsung made the first Gear watch based on Android, it has quickly realized its mistake and switched to Tizen instead. Thus, we don't have any major Android-based smartwatch available yet. Given that the smartwatch competition has just commenced, we, as tech fans, have some seriously high expectations from Google. If Android were to make its face shown on a watch, it better be good. That's why we've listed some of the things we want from an ideal Android smartwatch.
Dell also is adding a new entry-level all-in-one (AIO) system, the Inspiron 20 3000 Series, which offers a 19.5-inch high-definition display and is powered by quad-core Pentium chips. In addition, Dell rolled out new Venue 7 and 8 tablets that run Google's Android mobile operating system.
Google has quietly begun rolling out a new version of Android to its flagship Nexus devices, but so far it has remained shtum on just what has changed.
Support pages from US wireless player T-Mobile reveal that the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 handsets and the 2013 version of the Nexus 7 tablet all began receiving over-the-air updates to Android 4.4.3 on Monday.
The FreeXperia team of contributors help maintain CyanogenMod support for Xperia devices, and they've done such a great job that Sony has decided to hire one of the group's developers. Alin Jerpelea was one of FreeXperia's founders in 2010, and he is now the newest member of Sony's Developer Program. Having already built up a reputation for his work bringing the freshest CyanogenMod ROMs to Sony devices, he will now help the company with its open source initiatives.
What’s the point of releasing open-source code when nobody knows about it? In “Release Notes” I give a round-up of recent open-source activities.
angular-rt-popup (New, github)
Skymind is providing commercial support and services for an open source project called deeplearning.4j. It’s a collection of of approaches to deep learning that mimic those developed by leading researchers, but tuned for enterprise adoption.
Badgers spend a lot of time underground, which make it difficult for biologists and zoologists to track their whereabouts and activities. GPS, for example, doesn’t work well underground or in enclosed areas. But about five years ago, University of Oxford researchers Andrew Markham and Niki Trigoni solved that problem by inventing a wireless tracking system that can work underground. Their system is clever, but they didn’t do it alone. Like many other scientists, they turned to open source to avoid having to rebuild fundamental components from scratch. One building block they used is an open source operating system called Contiki.
Telecom service providers may acknowledge the value of open source technology, particularly as they adopt virtualization, but they are not entirely ready to embrace it warmly, a panel discussion here revealed.
Five large service providers -- AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA), Orange (NYSE: FTE), Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S), and Telecom Italia SpA (NYSE: TI) -- were represented on a single panel as part of a pre-conference NFV workshop, and while they agreed on a lot, open source technology didn't get a consensus vote.
Do you trust the National Security Agency or the Internal Revenue Service more than Google or Facebook? If so, you're not alone. A recent Reason-Rupe poll found that most Americans do not trust big tech companies.
Mozilla's Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs, Denelle Dixon-Thayer, says "data hygiene" should be something every new or established tech company should be thinking about. Dixon-Thayer sat down with Reason TV at the 2014 South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas this year.
The open-source OpenStack cloud platform is now in the development phase for its next major release code-named Juno, set to debut in October. Among the major new features in development is a technology known as "Ironic," which provides bare metal server provisioning capabilities.
Another Big Data analytics company has entered the open source realm. Guavus has become an official sponsor of the AMPLab, a research initiative hosted at the University of California at Berkeley to drive open source Big Data innovation.
In historical terms, NASA worked with Rackspace to develop OpenStack back in 2010.
ownCloud announced in their blog that Claudine Bianchi has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). The move aims to secure a stronger position in File Sync and Share for the most popular open source software in this category.
The developers from The Document Foundation have launched the first Release Candidate for 4.2.5 branch and it comes with numerous changes and improvements.
According to the changelog, the text rotation has been fixed, the upper margin of multi-page floating table has been fixed, the set-all language menu has been added, output file extension is now adjusted when exporting, accepting and rejecting changes in a selection is now allowed, the strange brightness and contrast adjustment from Microsoft Office has been corrected, and the mapping between ATK and UNO roles has been improved.
Who has time to handle post-CMS deployment needs when there's so much to do developing the platform? That's the thinking of the creators of Tendenci, an open source content management system (CMS) project for associations and other nonprofits (NPOs).
Trifacta, which specializes in data transformation to help companies prepare data for analysis and interpretation, has secured $25 million in series C funding.
Those interested in downloading FreeBSD 9.3 Beta or upgrading to it from an existing release can find all of the information via this mailing list announcement. FreeBSD 9.3 has many driver improvements, the hardware random number generators are disabled by default, the ZFS file-system support has been updated, and there's support for Xen hardware-assisted virtualization (XENHVM). FreeBSD 9.3 also supports Apple's MacBook trackpads and adds Radeon KMS, after the kernel mode-setting support was first found in FreeBSD 10.0.
This month, we welcome: Mohammed Isam Mohammed, author and maintainer of the new package GnuDOS. Edscott Wilson, author and maintainer of the new GNU package libdb. Vaibhaw Pandey, new maintainer of GNU groff. Sebastien Diaz, new maintainer of gnukart, along with his work on many other GNU packages. * Amadeusz Slawinski, new co-maintainer of GNU screen. Thanks to all.
Open government is great. At least, it was a few election cycles ago. FOIA requests, open data, seeing how your government works—it's arguably brought light to a lot of not-so-great practices, and in many cases, has spurred citizen-centric innovation not otherwise imagined before the information's release.
The OSS Watch blog has been on our radar for a while now as a great resource for open source commentary. We've looked to their team, including development manager Mark Johnson, for thought leadership on how open source software is being used and to gauge the pulse of the open source movement. I wanted to find out more about what Mark does day-to-day to promote better understanding of open source. He's got a knack for communication: concise with impact.
IT strategists working for the French Gendarmerie and the Dutch municipality of Ede will participate in a conference organised by South Korea's Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the National IT Promotion Agency, to be held on 3 June in the capital Seoul.
The press has taken a near-sighted view of the crisis, spinning in ways that only create a partial picture.
The New York Review of Books is a leading intellectual publication in the United States, and it (like all of the major U.S. “news” media) has "reported" on the Ukrainian civil war as having been incited by Russia's Vladimir Putin -- a simple-minded explanation, which also happens to be deeply false. The reality is that the residents of southern Ukraine, the part of Ukraine adjoining Russia, were overwhelmingly opposed to the overthrow of Ukraine's democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, though they are portrayed in NYRB (and other “news” media) as being mere stooges of Russian propaganda for their opposing the coup that overthrew the President for whom they had voted overwhelmingly. (The only thing that America’s “news” media had previously reported about Yanukovych is that he was corrupt; but so were all of his predecessors, and U.S. media ignored this crucial fact. Selective reporting is basic to propaganda, and the U.S. major media are trained masters at it. Without a person’s knowing that Ukraine is by far the most corrupt country in the former Soviet Union, and the one with the worst economic performance of them all, Ukraine’s politics just can’t be understood at all: it has long been an extreme kleptocracy, ruled by psychopathic politicians, for the benefit of psychopathic oligarchs, who have robbed the country blind. That’s the deeper truth -- and it's key to understanding the current situation there.)
Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, highlighted at the conference that an open and transparent government is not enough if it lacks civic participation. “In my view, openness and transparency should stimulate their sense of ownership in open government.”
Dr Alanna Simpson, Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist, World Bank-Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, told me that the Indonesian Government is a leader in making open data and open source available.
The Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) was established in May 2012, by a group of public plant breeders, small seed company plant breeders, farmer-breeders, and advocates for seed sovereignty. OSSI was formed in order to enhance vigorous innovation in plant breeding by the creation of a licensing framework for germplasm exchange that would preserve the right to unencumbered use of shared seeds and their progeny in subsequent use. We had hoped that we could develop a legally defensible license for germplasm in the way that the free and open source software movement developed its licenses.
The highly publicized journey of HealthCare.gov has major implications for the relationship between open source standards and government technology.
But playing the game—a sendup to traditional adventure games like The Legend of Zelda, which place players on quests that involve battling monsters, collecting artifacts, and solving puzzles—requires no programming knowledge whatsoever. Nor does it demand familiarity with coding tools. Instead, Hack 'n' Slash makes manipulating the game's source code part of the game itself. To play it is to hack it.
Family members said one of the other victims was the wife of a New Jersey borough commissioner. James P Leeds Sr told the Associated Press that his 74-year-old wife, Anne, died Saturday night in the Massachusetts crash. Leeds said he got a text from his wife from the plane at 9.36 p.m, four minutes before the crash.
The island's appeal is simple: couples of mixed religion can have a civil ceremony that, though not allowed back home, will still be recognised in law
[...]
In 1980, 61 Lebanese brides and 78 Lebanese grooms were married there, as well as 98 Israeli grooms and 99 Israeli brides. In 2013, there were 2,131 Israeli weddings, 581 Lebanese ones, and 35 Syrian unions. Some municipalities, such as tourist-friendly Livadia, report even more startling figures; last year, of the 1,000 or so weddings it recorded, 350 were Lebanese, 425 were Israeli, and 20 were Syrian.
Soviet cosmonaut and first spacewalker in the world, Aleksei Leonov, celebrated his 80th birthday on Friday. In March 1965 he was outside his spaceship for 12 minutes, connected to the craft by a 5.35 meter tether. Later, Leonov commanded the Soviet side of the Apollo-Soyuz mission, the first joint space mission between the Soviet Union and the United States. Leonov is also an accomplished artist, whose works are displayed in many art galleries in Russia and abroad, and an author of several popular books about space. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev have congratulated the legendary cosmonaut, who was twice awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title, on his anniversary and wished him good health, happiness and success. “Your professional biography, rich in significant and truly historical events, and all your life is a worthy example of unblinking devotion to the cause and of enormous personal courage,” Putin said in a telegramme, published on the Kremlin website on Friday.
“It’s interesting that 4.2 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, the early Earth experienced a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment where there were a lot of impacts, including large impacts, and this period also overlaps with the evidence of the earliest life on Earth,” said Haley Sapers, an astrobiologist at the Canadian Astrobiology Training Program at McGill University in Montreal. “One might ask why life arose during such an inhospitable part of Earth’s history. Maybe impact cratering had a role in the origin of life.” Impacts on a water-rich planet like Earth or even Mars can generate hydrothermal activity — that is, underwater areas boiling with heat. Seafloor hot springs known as hydrothermal vents more than a mile beneath the ocean’s surface can be home to thriving ecosystems on Earth, including giant tube worms 6 feet (2 meters) tall. The impact that created the Ries crater may have generated hydrothermal activity lasting as long as 10,000 years, given microbes time enough to colonize the area.
An unholy alliance of pro and anti- GMO countries have struck a deal that will sweep away the obstacles to genetically engineered crops in the EU. By allowing - under limited circumstance - individual member states to prohibit the growing of GMO crops on their territory, the European Commission expects to boost GMO cropping in the EU overall.
Belinda worked as a model, lived in a nightclub and often went to noisy parties. There was loud music wherever she went. Then she went to art school, where she listened to music through headphones while she painted. Now, with a quieter job in finance, she lives with the legacy of irreversible damage to her inner ear.
Both prosecution and defense lawyers have begun to present their closing arguments as the trial against several News Corp. employees for compromising the privacy of crime victims, royalty, celebrities, and politicians.
It’s not surprising then, that, picking up on one of the latest technology trends, the United Arab Emirates’ Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum would launch a “Drones for Good” competition, offering $1 million for the best positive drone design. The UAE will be taking international entries for drone ideas in categories like disaster relief, humanitarian aid, economic development until August.
The American government has killed four Americans with drone strikes since 2009, all of which were completely detached from any notion of due process. At best, the DOJ builds a case against the foreign-located citizen and, if the target resides in a nation where the US can get away with utilizing weaponized drones, the American citizen is sentenced to death via push-button operator.
A four-year-old girl whose face was blown off during a US drone strike in Afghanistan was kidnapped by American troops and hidden by an international organization, her family says.
The child, named Aisha Rashid, was travelling with her parents, a sibling and several other relatives from Kabul to their home in the village of Gamber in Kunar province on a hot September day, when the drone exploded, Expressen.se reported. An uncle, Meya Jan, is at home on his farm in that village when he receives a phone call about the strike from the neighboring village. He and others rush to the strike.
Suddenly they hear a voice. "Water, water..."
It is Aisha. She is missing a hand, her leg is bleeding, and there is nothing left of her eyes or nose.
Richard Clarke served as the nation’s top counterterrorism official under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before resigning in 2003 in protest of the Iraq War. A year before the Sept. 11 attacks, Clarke pushed for the Air Force to begin arming drones as part of the U.S. effort to hunt down Osama bin Laden. According to Clarke, the CIA and the Pentagon initially opposed the mission. Then Sept. 11 happened. Two months later, on November 12, 2001, Mohammed Atef, the head of al-Qaeda’s military forces, became the first person killed by a Predator drone. According to the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, U.S. drones have since killed at least 2,600 people in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Clarke has just written a novel about drone warfare called, "Sting of the Drone." We talk to Clarke about the book and his concerns about President Obama’s escalation of the drone war. "I think the [drone] program got out of hand," Clarke says. "The excessive secrecy is as counterproductive as some of the strikes are."
A few days ago, Phil reported on Yousef Munayyer’s take on the nauseating Wolf Blitzer interview with “CNN analyst” (and former Israeli Ambassador to the US) Michael Oren on the recent IDF sniping murders of two Palestinian teenage boys.
Every time the working class and poor of Latin America try to take a step forward and write their own history they confront the power of U.S. imperialism. It uses whatever is in fashion at the time — coups, blockades, manufactured protest movements, referendums or trade sanctions — to turn back the clock.
When longstanding polarization in Venezuela erupted into street protests in February and March, the United States, true to form, played its usual role in the unrest. Using money, tough talk and lobbying among Latin American countries, the U.S. tried to shore up opposition to the elected government of Nicolás Maduro, Hugo Chávez’s successor.
Not wavering from his foreign policy mission of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood to restore an Islamic Caliphate under their control, Mr. Obama has ordered the training and arming of Syrian jihadists to overthrow Assad. Current reports indicate that the forces loyal to Assad are gaining ground against the Muslim Brotherhood–supported rebels.
The release of U.S. government contractor Alan Gross from a Cuban prison depends solely on the “political will” of President Barack Obama, a Havana spy who spent more than 15 years behind bars in the United States said on Monday.
To support that assertion, Fernando Gonzalez cited Obama’s decision to trade five senior Taliban members being held at Guantanamo for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American POW in Afghanistan.
Through constant use of false flags deceptively blaming the designated enemy of the United States, starting with the dual threat of the Soviet Union and China’s spreading Communism in the early 1950’s, then in this century fabricating the al Qaeda enemy’s spreading terrorism and now back to a revitalized cold war stopping the expansionist spread of Russia and China again, the US has been busily justifying its aggressive interventionist policy throughout the world.
Last weekend, a White House press report distributed to 6,000 journalists, included the name of the CIA’s station chief in Afghanistan, alongside said title.
A night-time car chase in Cleveland that ended on a schoolyard where more than 100 shots were fired at the suspect's vehicle appeared to be over when an officer opened fire again, a prosecutor said in announcing charges against the patrolman and five police supervisors.
President Barack Obama’s decision to keep American troops in Afghanistan until 2016 is likely to mean two more years behind bars for America’s most secret detainee population, according to Pentagon officials.
On the outskirts of the massive Bagram airfield, about an hour’s drive from the capital of Kabul and in what the military calls the Detention Facility in Parwan, the US holds about 50 prisoners. The government has publicly disclosed nearly nothing about them, not even their names, save for acknowledging that they are not Afghans.
Jeffrey White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, believes that captured weaponry appears to be the most important fuel of the armed rebellion, followed by self-made arms and materiel, and then foreign-supplied items.
The US House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation mandating sanctions against Venezuela as officials there presented evidence of US involvement in a plot to bring down the government of President Nicolas Maduro.
The bill, passed in a voice vote by the House with only 14 members in opposition, demands that the Obama administration draw up a list of Venezuelan officials allegedly responsible for repression during violent protests that have been organized across the South American country since last February. They would be sanctioned with the freezing of any assets in the US and the denial or revocation of visas.
Washington’s step closer toward another blatant imperialist intervention against Venezuela came on the same day that government officials in Caracas publicly presented what they described as evidence of US involvement in a plot by the far-right in Venezuela to overthrow the government and assassinate President Maduro.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched into a full-throated attack on the evils of communism at a fundraiser on Friday for a monument to its victims.
A group of people, including religious leaders in Berrien County, are taking to the road from Chicago to Battle Creek to protest what they see as a menace from the sky.
The participants will walk from Chicago to Battle Creek on June 3-14 to protest the use of armed drones in the "War on Terror," that they say kill innocent civilians, create more enemies and undermine America's standing in the world.
"The use of armed drones pose many legal, strategic, tactical, and ethical problems," said the Rev. Dan Scheid of St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Benton Harbor, who will walk and host discussions on the issue. "As a citizen of the United States and of the world, I am convinced that the use of armed drones is bad public policy. As a follower of Jesus, I am convinced that the use of armed drones is immoral, and my baptismal and ordination vows compel me to witness against them."
According to local officials in the eastern province of Kunar, the US-launched drone was on a targeted attack which killed and injured unknown people, some of them civilians.
San Salvador - Sanchez Sanchez Ceren, 69, a former leader of the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front(FMLN) was sworn in as the president of El Salvador. He had won the presidency in a close March runoff vote against his conservative opponent.
Bay Area officials in Oakland are reviewing seven years of police disability retirements after learning last month that one of their former officers was collecting a disability pension even while he was working for the FBI.
Former Oakland police officer Aaron McFarlane received more than $52,000 in disability benefits each year while he was working as an FBI special agent in Boston.
His parting shot was a call for a European FBI to tackle cross-border crime gangs and the call for UKIP to follow in the footsteps of Sinn Fein ex-MPs Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who did not take up the seats they won in the Commons.
In the words of Charles Krauthammer, a strong critic of Obama and supporter of the George W. Bush administration who has neoconservative tendencies: “And you didn't hear much of anything in the West Point speech. It was a somber parade of straw men, as the president applauded himself for steering the nation on a nervy middle course between extreme isolationism and madcap interventionism. It was the rhetorical equivalent of that classic national security joke in which the presidential aide, devoted to policy option X, submits the following decision memo...
[...]
The difference between Bush and Obama is that the latter is much more selective in his interventions. Such a correction was what the American people wanted when they elected Obama in 2008 -- and inevitable after the two unsuccessful wars of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson characterized the naysaying surrounding climate change as par for the course in footage aired on Monday from his interview with MSNBC host Chris Hayes,
Friends of the Earth claims chancellor handed out €£2.7bn of incentives to North Sea oil and gas firms
Even as it faces increased regulatory scrutiny at home, America's dirty and unwanted coal is being embraced in one of the world's cleanest energy markets: the European Union.
At the biggest power plant in the U.K., operated by Drax Group PLC, a small black mountain of a million tons of coal sits at the base of a dozen 374-foot cooling towers.
A fierce debate has been raging between climatologists and Superfreakonomics authors Stephen J Dubner and Steven Levitt, culminating in an impassioned New York Times blogpost yesterday by Dubner. From RealClimate, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Green capitalism is destined to fail: You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. We can’t shop our way out of global warming nor are there technological magic wands that will save us. There is no alternative to a dramatic change in the organization of the global economy and consumption patterns.
Many anthropologists think this egalitarian lifestyle was an essential feature of hunting and gathering societies. In contrast with both today's titans of Wall Street and the alpha males of the great apes, people in these societies “had an ethic of sharing that was central to their way of life,” Lee says. “No one takes precedence over anyone else.”
Illegally logged timber in Brazil is being laundered on a massive and growing scale and then sold on to unwitting buyers in the UK, US, Europe and China, Greenpeace claimed on Thursday.
After a two-year investigation, the environmental campaign group says it has uncovered evidence of systematic abuse and a flawed monitoring system that contradicts the Brazilian government's claims to be coping with the problem of deforestation in the Amazon.
In a report released on Thursday, Greenpeace cited five case studies of the fraudulent techniques used by the log launderers, including over-reporting the number and size of rare trees, logging trees protected by law, and over-extraction. It notes how forest management officials are implicated in the wrongdoing and several have previously been fined or detained for similar crimes in the past.
During his speech at West Point Military Academy earlier this week, President Barack Obama described climate change as a "creeping national security crisis" that will require the armed forces to "respond to refugee flows, natural disasters, and conflicts over water and food."
The speech emphasised that US foreign policy in the 21st century is increasingly being honed in recognition of heightened risks of social, political and economic upheaval around the world due the impacts of global warming.
A more detailed insight into US military planning could be seen in the report published a couple of weeks earlier by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) Military Advisory Board, written and endorsed by a dozen or so senior retired US generals. Describing climate change as a not just a "threat multiplier," but now - even worse - a "catalyst for conflict", the study concluded that environmental impacts from climate change in coming decades...
With poverty at 15 percent, inequality rising and Republican politicians talking about addressing the problem by cutting federal programs that help the poor, one might expect poverty to occupy a solid spot on media agendas.
As many as 227 million Americans may be compelled to disclose intimate details of their families and financial lives -- including their Social Security numbers -- in a new national database being assembled by two federal agencies.
We are joined by Aviva Chomsky, whose new book, "Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal” details how systemic prejudice against Mexicans and many other migrant workers has been woven into U.S. immigration policies that deny them the same path to citizenship that have long been granted to European immigrants. She also draws parallels between the immigration laws now in place that criminalize migrants, and the caste system that has oppressed African Americans, as described by Prof. Michelle Alexander in her book, "The New Jim Crow." Chomsky’s previous book on this topic is "They Take Our Jobs! and 20 Other Myths about Immigration." She is a professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts.
Seattle has voted unanimously to raise the city's minimum wage to the highest level of any major US city - $15 (€£9) per hour, twice the national minimum.
Wages would begin to rise next year, ultimately reaching $15 from Washington state's minimum of $9.32 over three to seven years, depending on the business.
A councillor who supported the push said the vote "sends a message heard around the world".
Well, this ought to cause a stir at this summer's garden parties among Canada's elites.
Mark Carney, former Bank of Canada Governor (now the Governor of the Bank of England) has come forward to condemn what he calls "unchecked market fundamentalism."
He delivered the remarks last week at the Conference for Inclusive Capitalism, an annual gathering of global political and financial elites that featured keynotes by Carney along with Prince Charles and former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Residential and commercial buildings are seen in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. Home prices in major Chinese cities registered their first monthly decline in 23 months in May.
Amid the upheavals in Thailand, Ukraine and Egypt, wealthy elites have used popular movements and elections to ratify decisions in their favor.
Except for one big difference. By early 2016, the era of record-low interest rates is over. Borrowing is getting steadily more expensive. And the result is starting to destabilise our entire economic model.
A few weeks ago, an official from the Cabinet Office gushed on his blog about a jolly exciting trip, a kind of pilgrimage, to Amazon and Google in Seattle and San Francisco. Francis Maude, the unofficial government minister for paperclips and parsimony, led the expedition. It was mindblowing, the official reported afterwards.
They looked at the IT, were given a sneak preview of the cutting edge innovations. It seemed they had unlimited time to talk about all manner of things. But there was no indication that anyone raised the fact with these multinational behemoths, that on any right-thinking estimation, they owe us billions of pounds in tax. Amazon's UK subsidiary paid €£2.4m in corporate taxes in 2012, despite sales of €£4.3bn. Google paid €£11.6m in the same period despite sales of €£506m.
Senior football officials in Africa received over $5 million in bribes to make sure Qatar won the bid for the 2022 World Cup, the Sunday Times reports citing leaked documents.
According to the paper, the money came from former FIFA vice-president and infamous Qatari businessman, Mohamed Bin Hammam.
Bin Hammam reportedly used 10 slush funds controlled by his private company – as well as cash handouts – to make dozens of payments of up to $200,000 to the heads of the 30 African football associations.
The front page of USA Today (5/23/14) blew the whistle on federal workers: They are tax deadbeats who owe billions in back taxes.
The story also revealed that they owe less than most people.
Confused?
A new progressive tax code would end the assault on shared prosperity, create jobs, and help save the planet, says Nobel Joseph Stiglitz
Serbia's prime minister accused Europe's chief security and rights watchdog of lying on Monday after it alleged his government tried to smother online criticism of its handling of devastating floods last month.
Google has had one demand every seven seconds to suppress information about people’s pasts, it was revealed on Sunday.
The rush of censorship requests follows the internet giant’s move to provide forms allowing people to ask that certain information about them be hidden when their name is searched online.
The figures indicate that large amounts of material could disappear from public reach as a direct result of an EU court decision that search engines must enforce a “right to be forgotten”.
Egypt’s internationally renowned satirist, Bassem Youssef, has announced the end of his popular television show, citing pressure from the authorities.
I’ve avoided talking about this story until it progressed further. Historically Google has had many take-down requests, many to do with “piracy” and there’s also court order’s for ISP blocks on domains – we already have an increasing trend towards censorship. But is some censorship good? Whilst the copyright take-down’s and ISP blocks are mostly useless, with the recent ruling involving Google removing search results for you and me, requires further examination.
Bold initiatives characterize India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, who famously lives in a 27-story building in Mumbai, a city where most people languish in slums. Last month, his company, Reliance Industries Ltd., sought to prevent circulation of a new book which claims that Reliance successfully pressured the previous Indian government to double the price of natural gas. Amazon received a cease and desist notice, as did even an individual who had merely forwarded an e-mail invitation to the book’s launch. And Thursday, Ambani moved to buy a whole swath of the Indian media: Bloomberg News reports that Reliance, which has already invested $11 billion in a high-speed cellular network, will now spend $678 million for majority stakes in two major media companies, Network18 Media & Investments Ltd. and TV18 Broadcast Ltd.
Since the surprise Arab uprisings of 2011, the Saudi government has worked assiduously to ensure it has all the tools of censorship it needs to control dissent. These tools--a combination of special courts, laws, and regulatory authorities--are starting to fire on all cylinders. The result has been a string of arrests and prosecutions in recent months of independent and dissident voices.
The first step came in January 2011 with new regulations for online media that could be used to restrict coverage, including applying the kingdom's already highly repressive press law to online media. Shortly after, the Ministry of Culture and Information began blocking local news websites that failed to register, according to The Wall Street Journal.
At a meeting with journalists last week, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. was questioned about the prolonged quest to compel James Risen, a reporter for The Times, to testify in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former Central Intelligence Agency official. Prosecutors say Mr. Sterling was a source for restricted information in Mr. Risen’s 2006 book on the C.I.A. “As long as I’m attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail,” Mr. Holder said.
But as documents released by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden revealed last year, the hijacking of our civil liberties has continued, albeit surreptitiously and sleazily by functionaries at NSA. Snowden’s revelations showed the agency had been secretly harvesting millions of emails and instant-messaging contact lists of everyday Americans. Judges have challenged the practice’s constitutionality with one calling it “almost Orwellian.” - See more at: http://www.vindy.com/news/2014/jun/02/dont-let-us-freedoms-tumble-in-balancing/#sthash.V2lRraKK.dpuf
On Sep. 1, 2013, U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed that in 2012 the NSA had spied on the email of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, in the latter case during his presidential campaign.
Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, wanted by US authorities and currently living in Russia, said in a TV interview Sunday that he has applied for asylum in Brazil.
"I would love to live in Brazil," Snowden told Brazil's Globo TV.
Snowden's temporary asylum in Russia expires in August. Washington has revoked his US passport, so his travel options are limited.
Average citizens are subject to ever-expanding surveillance and data collection by the government-corporate complex.
Halfway across the ornate sitting room, Julian Assange stands with his back to the door, drinking a bottle of beer. It is early on a summer evening, June 22, 2013, and the Embassy of Ecuador in London is hosting a small party to acknowledge the one-year anniversary of his arrival in need of asylum. While Assange stands chatting calmly about the future of his anti-secrecy enterprise, Wikileaks, few people in the room know that he is worried. Sarah Harrison, his principal researcher and confidant, is only hours away from slipping out of Hong Kong with Edward Snowden, who, at that moment, is fast becoming the most hunted man in the world.
Close friends and supporters of Assange mill around the room, helping themselves to the buffet and arguing about software and the state of the world - in that order. Assange himself, with his longish white hair and black jeans, looks slightly out of place in the scene, bordered as it is by stiff-legged, gilt-painted settees. After a year, however, he's completely at home here, laughing and joking with the security guys, lawyers, and hacker guests, talking thoughtfully about the escalating struggle for control of electronic information.
Facebook just announced a new feature to its app, which will let it listen to our conversations and surroundings through our own phones’ microphone. Talk about a Big Brother move.
A new email service being developed by a group from MIT and European research center CERN promises to bring secure, encrypted email to the masses and keep sensitive information away from prying eyes.
“We guarantee only the sender and receiver can read the messages,” said Andy Yen, a co-founder of ProtonMail. “We have zero access to user data.”
This will be the occasion for us to brief colleague ministers on the most recent developments here in The Bahamas with regard to the recent allegations of the recording of Bahamian mobile phone calls by the United States.
Nearly one year on from the first revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, it is still business as usual. The NSA continues to scoop up all the data it wants, while the technology companies which have co-operated with it all along continue to try and convince the public that they are doing what they can to curtail such activity.
Canada's next privacy Commissioner is a federal Justice Department lawyer who counsels the government agencies that impact privacy in Canada the most—agencies such as the NSA's Five Eyes cyber surveillance partner Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which operates an extensive, secretive metadata collection program that the country's citizens know very little about.
In an interview last week with NBC's Brian Williams, NSA secret-leaker Edward Snowden set himself a low bar and claimed success: His leaks, he said, have gotten us talking about these important issues. Mission accomplished? Let's think about that...
Ben Wizner, attorney for NSA leaker Edward Snowden, got into it with Up host Steve Kornacki Sunday morning over whether Snowden had sacrificed his moral authority as a whistleblower by fleeing the United States (and eventually ending up in Russia) rather than accepting the legal consequences of leaking classified information. To this Wizner posed: “Do you think people who used the Underground Railroad should have stayed and faced the consequences of the Fugitive Slave Act?”
“So you’re likening them?” Kornacki asked. “That’s quite a comparison.”
The late 1960’s and early 1970’s was the heyday of legal privacy as we came to know it in the 20th century. From the Supreme Court first came the family planning cases that made contraception legal in 1965, and which continued up to abortion rights and most recently the decriminalization of sodomy law almost always used against same sex relationships. Next came a decision that required law enforcement to obtain a warrant for tapping a phone line for content and the subsequent Congressional action to instantiate that decision; those laws are the foundation for the current Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Consumer protection privacy laws were continuing apace with rules that required companies that kept “scores” on individual’s credit to allow the individual access and the right to correct the record in the event of misidentifications or mistake. Another flavor of this era is the law that produced one of our better known sectoral laws, FERPA, or the one that protects education records. Often overlooked is the plainly named Privacy Act of 1974.
USA Freedom Act hides behind 'fog of legalese' to give NSA more spying power
Want real surveillance reform? Well, we almost had it. The USA Freedom Act started off with a roar before being slightly weakened (compromised is the word being used) by the House Security and Judiciary Committees. Still, it had wide ranging support across the floor. It was a sufficient start to a bill set to curtail the surveillance programs in the United States considerably and the civil liberties community in Congress rallied behind it.
Early this week, the FBI announced that five Chinese hackers had been indicted for spying on American companies. That's right, economic espionage.
Major websites such as Reddit, Imgur and DuckDuckGo are to take part in the June 5 "Reset The Net" anti-NSA spying online campaign.
The Reset the Net campaign aims to encourage direct action, urging visitors to install privacy and encryption tools
Edward SnowdenEdward Snowden. (Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)In the past several months, we have been provided with instructive lessons on the nature of state power and the forces that drive state policy. And on a closely related matter: the subtle, differentiated concept of transparency.
Oliver Stone will write and direct a film about Edward Snowden, one of two high-profile films in the works about the National Security Agency leaker.
Acclaimed director Oliver Stone, who has made iconic films like "Wall Street" and "Platoon," will be directing a film based on the story of Edward Snowden that will be adapted from a book written by Luke Harding, a journalist at British newspaper, The Guardian.
Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone will be adapting the story of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden for the big screen.
Former intelligence service provider Edward Snowden, currently residing in Russia and sought after by the US authorities, said in an interview that he has applied for asylum in Brazil.
Agence France-Presse cited Snowden as stating in an interview given to Brazilian TV channel Globo that if Brazil gives him asylum, then he would gladly accept the offer and would very much like to live in Brazil. However, the foreign ministry of Brazil has said that it has not yet received any formal asylum appeal from Snowden.
The Brazilian foreign ministry Monday denied that US intelligence contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden has formally requested Brazil for asylum.
In an interview aired by local TV station Globo Sunday evening, Snowden, whose temporary asylum in Russia expires in August, said that he had requested asylum from Brazilian government, and he would be happy to live in Brazil if the government approves his request, Xinhua reported.
When journalist Glenn Greenwald spoke via Skype to the Socialism 2013 conference in Chicago last June, it was just three weeks after he had begun reporting on the leaks provided by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden that revealed the massive scope of government surveillance.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is expected to announce on Tuesday a deal with DEF CON to hold the final round of DARPA’s two-year Cyber Grand Challenge at the organization’s 2016 Las Vegas conference.
Every year, the government makes thousands of requests for court-ordered electronic surveillance, often without a warrant. The vast majority of these legal proceedings are sealed indefinitely from public view, even after the investigations are over. The secrecy surrounding these matters is the subject of a page-one article in The Wall Street Journal.
In one of the most significant press freedom cases in decades, the Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from James Risen of The New York Times. Risen is refusing to testify in the trial of an ex-CIA analyst accused of being his confidential source. He has vowed to continue his fight and face imprisonment rather than reveal his source’s identity. Tune in to Democracy Now! on Tuesday when we get reaction to the latest developments from Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
NBC News didn't broadcast the full interview with former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, but only aired a quarter of it Russia Today reported. Unaired excerpts now online show that the network neglected to air critical statements about the 9/11 attacks,
The four-hour interview of Snowden by journalist Brian Williams was condensed into a 60-minute programme by NBC.
In one of the portions, Snowden questioned the US intelligence agencies' inability to stop the 11 September, 2001 attacks in New York, despite having massive amount of surveillance.
A Downtown attorney filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the president, the heads of the FBI and NSA, and others alleging the government is illegally monitoring his Internet communications, including email.
Recently e-commerce giant Amazon unveiled a microphone-enabled barcode reader, the Amazon Dash, giving a helping hand to add items to your shopping list. The device was given away free of charge to a select number of Amazon's Prime Fresh loyalty program users, who can now order their groceries either vocally or through a quick scan of a product's container (for example a milk bottle). Just say it and get it delivered to your home. "Never forget an item again -- Dash remembers so you don't have to," says AmazonFresh's website.
AFTER more than a week with no answers from Americans or “hard facts” over spying claims, Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell said he plans to raise concerns over allegations at a regional meeting this week.
Sunde was also involved in numerous tech startups in recent years, including the short messaging service Heml.is (“secret” in Swedish) - reportedly a NSA-proof service – for which he raised more than $150,000 through a crowd-funding campaign.
A civil liberties coalition wants to nullify the NSA, one lightbulb at a time.
The United States National Security Agency (NSA) has refused to confirm or deny if it has been eavesdropping on Barbadian cellphone calls.
Agency spokesperson Vanee Vines would say neither “yes” nor “no” to questions from the DAILY NATION on if it had been doing so.
Mr. Green, why not try making art that calls into question, rather than exploits, our growing lack of privacy?
For the first time, the founder of an encrypted email startup that was supposed to insure privacy for all reveals how the FBI and the US legal system made sure we don't have the right to much privacy in the first place
As that indicates, this is an extremely thoughtful and wide-ranging paper that draws together a number of big issues -- surveillance, privacy, governance, geopolitics etc. It's an important contribution to the debate initiated by the release of NSA and GCHQ documents by Edward Snowden, and anyone interested in what the longer-term implications of those revelations will be really ought to read it.
On June 1, NBC's Meet the Press unveiled new polling numbers about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. They weren't very revealing. What was more instructive was how the show presented its debate over Snowden's actions.
The main participants in the discussion were right-wing Crossfire host Newt Gingrich and hawkish former Democratic Rep. Jane Harman.
Indigeneity is an unusual way to think about International Relations (IR). Most studies of world politics ignore Indigenous perspectives, which are rarely treated as relevant to thinking about the international (Shaw 2008; Beier 2009). Yet Indigenous peoples are engaging in world politics with a dynamism and creativity that defies the silences of our discipline (Morgan 2011). In Latin America, Indigenous politics has gained international legitimacy, influencing policy for over two decades (Cott 2008; Madrid 2012). Now, Indigenous political movements are focused on resisting extractive projects on autonomous territory from the Arctic to the Amazon (Banerjee 2012; Sawyer and Gómez 2012). Resistance has led to large mobilized protests, invoked international law, and enabled alternative mechanisms of authority. In response, governments have been busy criminalizing Indigenous claims to consultation that challenge extractive models of development. Indigenous opposition to extractivism ultimately promotes self-determination rights, questioning the states’ authority over land by placing its sovereignty into historical context. In that sense, Indigeneity is a valuable approach to understanding world politics as much as it is a critical concept to move beyond state-centrism in the study of IR.
Subcomandante Marcos, the spokesman for the Zapatistas (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, or EZLN), has announced that his rebel persona no longer exists. He had gone from being a “spokesman to a distraction,” he said last week. His persona, he said, fed an easy and cheap media narrative. It turned a social revolution into a cartoon for the mass media. It allowed the commercial press and the outside world to ignore traditional community leaders and indigenous commanders and wrap a movement around a fictitious personality. His persona, he said, trivialized a movement. And so this persona is no more.
“The entire system, but above all its media, plays the game of creating celebrities who it later destroys if they don’t yield to its designs,” Marcos declared.
Coming through passport control is an ordeal, I am followed on the street and hassled by security services. Not all citizens enjoy the same rights
What is Firedoglake? How does it work? How does the site make money? Are there any other websites you could write for? What do you think you plan to do next?
Sometimes describing what I do at Firedoglake to family, friends and people I encounter after speaking at events is a bit perplexing to people. This is not a more prominent news media organization like New York Times, Rolling Stone or Huffington Post. But I have found not being more prominent uniquely positions Firedoglake to pursue specific projects.
A reporter who has been ordered to testify at the trial of a former CIA officer accused of disclosing classified information lost his bid Monday to get the Supreme Court to clarify whether journalists have a right to protect their confidential sources.
The case had been closely watched as possibly setting an important precedent about the First Amendment, news reporters and confidential sources. Instead, Risen will now face a decision about officially naming his source for a book he wrote about Iran or refusing to answer questions under a Justice Department subpoena. (The source’s name has been widely reported as part of an official legal action.)
Last Thursday, the Justices met behind closed doors to consider accepting Risen’s case for the Court’s next term, which starts in October 2014.
As the world focuses on the World Cup, which opens in Brazil in less than a fortnight, many Brazilians are wrestling with painful discoveries about the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. The BBC has found evidence that the UK actively collaborated with the generals - and trained them in sophisticated interrogation techniques.
As the World Cup nears, the Brazilian press has reported that the American company Academi, formerly Blackwater, carried out training of Brazilian military personnel and federal police in April.
The training is a facet of the military cooperation agreement between Brazil and the United States signed in 2010 during the second term of the Lula de Silva administration in preparation for containing terrorist acts during this year’s World Cup. Academi is a private security company based in the United States, and has used mercenary soldiers in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Bill Gertz reported this week on a memo outlining Obama’s plan to use the military against citizens – a memo from 2010. Remember how the blogs and many of us out here were ringing the alarm bells on Obama’s stance that he could use the military and drones against American citizens? Remember how we were marginalized and called crazy for it? Turns out, ‘crazy’ is relative.
The ICE undercover operation played out in the first decade of the 2000s (roughly 2004 until sometime in 2008) and involved the use of US government front companies to sell aircraft to suspected Latin American drug-trafficking organizations.
In an effort to increase job opportunities for Saudi Arabian citizens, the Saudi government is detaining and deporting thousands of undocumented foreign migrant workers. Part of the deportation process includes detaining large populations in what has been described as “appalling” conditions. These detention centers have had reports of guard brutality, overcrowding, lack of food, and poor hygiene. Furthermore, most of these migrant workers are Somali, and are deported back to one of the most unstable, dangerous areas in the world.
So there's every reason to believe that YouTube is, indeed, bullying the independents into accepting a deal that dramatically undervalues the investment indies make in new emerging artists. Unlike the lack of support songwriters had when PRS experienced the same tactic, the indies can surely count on songwriters to support them in standing up to the bully. But when will the competition commissions around the world do something about it? It's not only artists that will be worse off if the indies give in – so will music fans all over the world.
Peter Sunde, The Pirate Bay co-founder was arrested in Southern Sweden. TPB co-founder was wanted by Interpol and apprehended in a police raid. Peter did not serve prison time for his role in Pirate Bay operations. TorrentFreak noted that he was arrested exactly eight years after police conducted the raid.
Peter was wanted by Interpol for more than two years and he was arrested in a place near Malmö, Sweden. Interpol had been looking after his role in The Pirate Bay case.
Peter Sunde was arrested today in a police raid in southern Sweden. The Pirate Bay co-founder was wanted by Interpol as he had yet to serve prison time for his involvement with the site. Sunde's arrest comes exactly eight years after the police raided the Pirate Bay servers, which marked the start of the criminal prosecution against the site's founders.