These days, that includes me. While I’m happy I have enough skills to usually fix a bug that made it past the developers at Mint or Fedora, I’d just as soon not have to deal with it. I have work to be done. And when I’m not working, I want to be wasting time with my friends on Facebook, not getting aggravated with my computer.
To be sure, Linux has changed with the times. In recent years you can pretty much be sure that when you install a major Linux distro on a laptop, Wi-Fi will work out of the box. Also, most of the time all you have to do is plug a new printer into a USB port and, presto!, it’s already up and running. But there are still way too many little niggling problems that need to get fixed – stuff that should have been fixed long ago.
Maybe if Ken keeps complaining enough…
What is more, whenever a new version of Ubuntu (the flavour of Linux I use) comes out, I can upgrade for free. I don’t need to worry about ongoing license costs, because there are none. I will always have the most up to date version of the operating system and will never be in the position that the creators stop supporting my PC. Sorry Windows XP users, but it is true.
As far as Linux is concerned, there wasn’t any learning curve for Jaimee and she told me so. When I was explaining the difference between Windows, Linux and Mac, she brushed the explanation off and summarized it quaintly.
“It’s not a big deal,” she told me. “You see an icon, you click an icon and stuff happens.” I smiled and thought inwardly, “Stuff happens indeed.” You may have heard or read me say the exact same thing. Now you know that I stole it from a brilliant 15 year old girl.
Representative from the Valencia Linux School district have announced that they have managed to save €36 million ($48.3 million) by using a Linux distribution instead of proprietary software.
The Linux 3.16 kernel could be released as soon as today with its development having calmed down but if you've refrained from reading up on this new kernel, here's the rundown on the new features and capabilities of this 2014 late-summer kernel debut.
In complementing the Nouveau vs. NVIDIA OpenGL benchmark results published earlier this week on Phoronix, here are the power consumption and performance-per-Watt metrics.
Due to the current Nouveau re-clocking situation, the results aren't a huge surprise, thus this quick, one page-page write-up. The proprietary NVIDIA driver led over Nouveau on all of the tested graphics cards in power efficiency.
Mesa 10.2.5 has been released. Mesa 10.2.5 is a bug fix release fixing bugs since the 10.2.4 release, (see below for a list of changes).
The VideoLAN team released version 2.1.5 of their VLC player a while ago. The development of this versatile multimedia player has slowed down quite a bit as the team seems to have more focus on improving the OSX and Android versions (the previous release for Linux was almost half a year ago) so I was not really in a hurry to provide new packages.
Email remains the killer information and communications technology. Email volume shows no sign of diminishing, despite the increasing popularity of collaborative messaging tools.
Messages are exchanged between hosts using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol with software programs called mail transfer agents, and delivered to a mail store by programs called mail delivery agents, frequently referred to as email clients.
The Wine development release 1.7.23 is now available.
Steam for Linux has been released a years and half ago and now it has accumulated more than 600 games, which should make Linux a very successful platform.
Two months ago I wrote about Steam having 500+ Linux games while now to start off August they have crossed the 600 game threshold.
With the start of a new month comes updates to Steam's hardware/software survey by those running this multi-platform gaming software.
Compared to last month's results, Steam Linux usage dipped slightly to 1.11% from 1.20% the month prior. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit lost some ground though Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS rolled out in this time to reflect the shift, while Linux Mint 17 Qiana gained a little bit.
Valve has released a new update for the development version of its Debian-based SteamOS operating system, bringing updates for some of the packages and a very important fix for the compositor.
In one week the Randa Meetings 2014 will start and this is possible because of you. You supported us (and can still support us Wink and thanks to you we will be able to improve your beloved KDE software even more. So it's time to give you something new. Here is another interview with one of the persons who will be participating in this year's meetings (and participated since the start in 2009). And watch out for some other interviews to come in the next days and weeks.
A lot has changed in the last few months in Ekos, KStars advanced astrophotraphy tool. The powerful builtin sequence queue is more robust now and can support in-sequence autofocusing, autoguiding limits with dither support, and autopark functionality. The astrometry.net based alignment module has been improved to support the online astrometry solver using Web Services, thereby eliminating the need for an offline astrometry solver that requires gigabytes of star indexes in order to solve.
Over the last years I noticed that I was copying too much code to create simple GStreamer based playback applications. After talking to other people at GUADEC this year it was clear that this wasn’t only a problem on my side but a general problem. So here it is, a convenience API for creating GStreamer based playback applications: GstPlayer.
Newbies are often deterred from trying out Linux (or other open source operating systems) because of the amount of time and effort they may need to spend in customizing the OS to work on their hardware after a fresh installation. The same goes for old users planning to switch hardware. It is often difficult to figure out if a new model will work in harmony with Linux. Distroshare is trying to solve this problem.
Welcome From The Chief Editor
Templates: Google Docs Best "Hidden" Feature Inkscape Tutorial: Holiday Wallpaper PCLinuxOS Recipe Corner ms_meme's Nook: Oh, Look At Me Now Extend LibreOffice Capabilities With Extensions Cool Add-ins For LibreOffice & OpenOffice Programming With Gtkdialog, Part Five More Templates: LibreOffice Plus! LibreOffice Macros PCLinuxOS Puzzled Partitions Game Zone: Tank Riders PCLinuxOS Family Member Spotlight: Ramchu Inkscape Tutorial: Tracing A Logo Screenshot Showcase
This week X.Org Server 1.16 was promoted for Arch Linux with a number of end-user changes as a result.
With X.Org Server 1.16 officially landing now for Arch Linux, X now runs without root privileges in combination with systemd-logind, but there's some stipulations such as right now launching X through a log-in manager will not lead to a rootless X environment, etc.
This all started Friday, I’m an Ubuntu user, it works out of the box, well most of the time it does. However just recently with updates small things just don’t seem to work properly. So I had a chat with one of our consultants and CentOS 7 came up. I love CentOS as a server, its basically Red-Hat after all, so there is great support, stability and it just works (once you get the NIC working) I’d never even considered CentOS as a Desktop.
Canonical has stopped promoting Ubuntu Touch images for a while (except for the unstable channel), due to some chroot issues, that were causing the environment to be unstable.
Way back before the Motorola Moto G wasn't even released yet, the company devised a plan to get ahead of its competitors. Upon release of the Moto G, the phone was equipped with the Android 4.3 Jelly Bean but the OS was quickly amped up to the Android 4.4 Kitkat.
I wish to encourage modern android app developers to use open source OS Linux and latest Android SDK for better Android app development so development would be cost-effective as well as quick to reach as early as possible to the market. Therefore, I have given good hints in this post for newbie as well as seasoned Android developers.
Google I/O started off on high note and ended making a lot of Nexus users happy. Pure Android lovers who bragged about their Nexus device got even more bragging rights. Android L with a brand new design and a lot of under-the-hood changes has given Android the revamp it needed. The release is one more step towards fighting off the fragmentation problem that has been plaguing Android for years. Also with L, Android might finally manage to overthrow iOS in areas that Apple has been constantly dominating. Besides this being a "fix what's weak" release for Google, the conference had another less-noticed gem that might bring more users to the search giant: Android One.
I’ve just released a new version of my Open Source GLSL development tool: Synthclipse 0.9.0. Maybe somone on this board find it useful.
The Development branch of Google Chrome, a browser built on the Blink layout engine that aims to be minimalistic and versatile at the same time, is now at version 38.0.2107.3 for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
The GPLGPU is now available, a GPLv3-licensed Verilog design for a 2D/3D graphics engine.
Shawn Frayne and Alex Hornstein, two young inventors based in the Philippines, are taking their passion for clean free energy and developing a way to make it accessible and cheap for everyone. These guys are working tirelessly to provide a product that could be used by practically anyone to make homemade solar panels.
The Taliban went on an offensive against polio immunization in 2012 after it became clear the CIA used a fake hepatitis vaccination campaign to gather intelligence on Osama bin Laden.
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Internet-connected cameras, USB sticks and even a web browser promising anonymity have serious security flaws, according to researchers preparing to lay bare the dangers of online life at conferences in Las Vegas this week
Cyber security researchers from across the world will gather for the Black Hat and Def Con conferences, aiming to expose vulnerabilities in devices and software that people trust in order to fix the problems and try to make companies more careful when designing technology.
Israel withdrew most of its ground troops from the Gaza Strip on Sunday in an apparent winding down of the nearly monthlong operation against Hamas that has left more than 1,800 Palestinians and 60 Israelis dead.
The world is not so blessed that it can afford to waste the lives of the 1.8 million Palestinians who live there
SUPERMARKET giant Sainsbury's were forced to close several stores after pro-Palestine demonstrations were held in response to the retailer stocking Israeli goods.
Why do people who self-identify as “Jewish Americans” not subject the “American” part of that identity to the same high standards?
Several sources in the intelligence community confirm to 'Der Spiegel' that Israel listened to US Secretary of State's unencrypted calls.
"Sustainable security for Israel cannot be achieved simply by permanent blockade, aeriel bombardment and periodic ground incursion. Instead, it requires acknowledging the legitimate claims of Palestinians to statehood, and sustained efforts to secure a viable Palestine alongside a secure Israel.
Gaza is a suicide bomb. It is rigged by its leaders to explode.
This is not a metaphor. It is a war crime. It makes the calculus of proportionality in the use of armed force by the Israeli Defence Forces complex and uncertain.
The Hamas use of suicide bombings is well-developed. A decade ago, it involved the leadership preparing vulnerable Arab individuals to end their lives by blowing up Jews in Israeli cities. The use of Hamas towns and local populations in their entirety as huge suicide bombs to kill Israeli soldiers drawn into them by repeated Hamas provocations is an innovation.
Remember one other fact: about half of Gaza’s people are under the age of 18. No one fights in Gaza without maiming, killing, displacing or traumatising legions of children. This not a campaign waged in empty desert, mountain or plain – forget Iraq or Afghanistan – but a battle fought in narrow alleyways crowded with infants and families.
An Israeli air strike has killed at least 10 people and wounded about 30 others in a UN-run school in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses and medics said, as dozens died in renewed Israeli shelling of the enclave.
The Israeli military declined immediate comment on the attack, the second to hit a UN school in less than a week.
The death toll in Rafah has risen to more than 100 in 24 hours since the Israeli military unleashed its fury on the town after announcing that one of its soldiers, Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, had been captured and two others killed in an ambush in which a suicide bomber was used. Last night, Israel's military declared that the missing 23-year-old had been killed in battle on Friday.
British drones have killed €hundreds of Taliban fighters in secret SAS attacks, reveals the Sunday People.
Since 2008 RAF Reapers have been armed with smart weapons like Hellfire anti-tank missiles and 500lb bombs. They can fly unseen and unheard for 18 hours a day at altitudes of 30,000ft, transmitting real-time video of suspects to their controllers.
Why Pakistan must declassify wars in order to stop them
It was 2004 when a bird like object turned into a missile mid-air and killed Nek Muhammad, who was a tribesman leading a tribal revolution with allies in the government and the Taliban. The drone strike was one of the first where CIA had agreed to kill him and Pakistan government allowed them to enter the air space of Pakistan to hunt down the American enemies on the soil.
Let me begin with whether robots can kill, since whether we should or should not kill another person is ultimately a moral question. Unmanned and remotely operated Predator drones (Telerobots as they are sometimes referred to) have, in the last five years, killed more than 2,400 people. However, since Predator drones are robots programmed and remotely controlled by human soldiers, it would be more accurate to say they are the proximate not the ultimate cause of death. Given this, moral accountability and the bestowal of praise or blame continues to remain with the human soldier-pilot. Recently, however, the UN hosted a debate between two robotics experts on the efficacy and necessity of "killer robots." In a report on the debate, the BBC described the latter as "fully autonomous weapons that can select and engage targets without any human intervention." Although such robots do not presently exist the authors assure us that "advances in technology are bringing them closer to reality."
The documents, which were obtained by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that the weapons used by Israel against Gaza contain British-made components.
British government’s Business Innovation and Skills Department (BIS) to review all UK export licenses for arms sales to the Jewish state.
US Congress okays $225m fresh aid to strengthen Israel's anti-missile defence system
Hamas have said an Israeli soldier with links to the UK may have been killed in a strike on his captors by the Israeli military, Hamas has said.
The US Mission in Pakistan started requiring the display of US flags along with its logo so that illiterate Pakistanis became aware of the origin of assistance
Jones, 30, and Australian Christopher Havard were killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in November. They were not the primary targets of the attack, but were described as "collateral damage". Australian media have quoted anonymous intelligence officials as saying Jones, also known as Muslim bin John and Abu Suhaib al-Australi, and Havard were "foot soldiers" for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Another US-led assassination drone strike in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost Province has reportedly left at least three people dead.
Libya's new parliament elected earlier this year held an emergency meeting to discuss Libya's deteriorating security situation in the eastern city of Tobruk. Handover of power to the new parliament was scheduled to happen August 4 in Benghazi.
W.’s fear of being unmanned led to America actually being unmanned. We’re in a crouch now. His rebellion against and competition with Bush senior led directly to President Obama struggling at a news conference Friday on the subject of torture. After 9/11, Obama noted, people were afraid. “We tortured some folks,” he said. “We did some things that were contrary to our values.”
And yet the president stood by his C.I.A. director, John Brennan, a cheerleader for torture during the Bush years, who continues to do things that are contrary to our values.
Obama defended the C.I.A. director even though Brennan blatantly lied to the Senate when he denied that the C.I.A. had hacked into Senate Intelligence Committee computers while staffers were on agency property investigating torture in the W. era. And now the administration, protecting a favorite of the president, is heavily censoring the torture report under the pretense of national security.
The Bushes did not want to be put on the couch, but the thin-skinned Obama jumped on the couch at his news conference, defensively whining about Republicans, Putin, Israel and Hamas and explaining academically and anemically how he’s trying to do the right thing but it’s all beyond his control.
Class is over, professor. Send in the president.
Scotland Yard holds an astonishing 260 crates of documents on police corruption in one corner of London alone – and very few of the rogue detectives have ever been successfully prosecuted.
A review led by one of Britain's most senior police officers has unearthed a mammoth amount of intelligence spawned by Operation Tiberius, a secret police report written in 2002 that concluded there was "endemic corruption" inside the Metropolitan Police.
The file found organised crime networks in north-east London were able to infiltrate the Met "at will" to frustrate the criminal justice system.
The huge number of crates, revealed in a letter by Craig Mackey, the Met's deputy commissioner, indicates the scale of criminality inside Scotland Yard's north-east London units, which appears to have gone almost unchallenged since Tiberius was compiled 12 years ago.
Research suggests that only a tiny number of the scores of then-serving and former police officers named as corrupt by Tiberius have been convicted.
At least 32 people died in three CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, making this the bloodiest month since July 2012.
Q: What are the overarching goals of the Freedom of the Press Foundation?
A: This first got started about a year and a half ago. The original inspiration for it was actually the Wikileaks financial blockade. Back in 2010 when Wikileaks started publishing all this classified information-State Department cables and war logs from Afghanistan and Iraq-the payment processors, Visa and MasterCard and PayPal, all cut them off, even though they were fully protected by the First Amendment and they were doing exactly what other media organizations do all the time.
If you want to uncover some of the secrets inside the CIA, you basically need to already know what they are when you put in your request for records, according to TechDirt.
This interesting Catch-22 stems from a request under the Freedom of Information Act from Michael Morisy of the website MuckRock, who had asked for emails related to technical issues the agency was having with its online FOIA website.
The NYPD said Sunday that the man who shot a video of a fatal police chokehold had been arrested on a gun charge.
A police spokesman says 22-year-old Ramsey Orta was arrested Saturday night on Staten Island on a charge of criminal possession of a firearm.
At least 72 corporate funders have cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the wake of the scandal over its pushing "Stand Your Ground" bills and restrictive voter ID laws that make it harder for Americans to vote. Newly obtained documents indicate, however, that certain long-term ALEC funders such as Koch and the tobacco industry remain committed to ALEC as a tool to advance their legislative agendas.
"Soft censorship," including actions such as quiet dismissals, punitive tax laws, denied radio frequencies and abuse of privacy legislation, is arguably the most worrisome type. It creeps and grows in small increments and therefore often goes unnoticed until it has become institutionalized, at which point it is difficult to reverse. Over the past four years, Hungary has seen dozens of small, and not so small, encroachments on the right to free expression. Taken en masse, certain developments in Hungary indicate a clear trajectory towards authoritarian regulation of the media, and the situation is becoming increasingly dire.
Dinanath Batra, dubbed "the book police" and "the Ban Man" by local media, is a self-appointed censor with wide influence. When he sends a legal notice to publishing houses informing them that their authors have injured Hindus' feelings, they listen. Fearing long court battles and violent protests by Hindu activists, they have withdrawn and pulped titles or asked authors to rewrite.
"The first casualty when war comes," U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson reportedly declared in 1918, “is truth.”
Johnson was an isolationist who opposed U.S. entry into the First World War, and his concern over the fate of truth in that conflict was justified.
The US atomic destruction of 140,000 people at Hiroshima and 70,000 at Nagasaki was never “necessary” because Japan was already smashed, no land invasion was needed and Japan was suing for peace. The official myth that “the bombs saved lives” by hurrying Japan’s surrender can no longer be believed except by those who love to be fooled. The long-standing fiction has been destroyed by the historical record kept in US, Soviet, Japanese and British archives — now mostly declassified — and detailed by Ward Wilson in his book “Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad has called for the Internet to be censored to preserve “public morality”, in what the opposition suggested on Saturday was an attempt to silence government critics.
Still, the very idea of censorship or gag orders by a foreign government is a disturbing one, not only for journalists but for all who value the free flow of information. It’s heartening to hear that The Times has not submitted any articles for review, and I hope that that will remain the case as this situation develops.
The Israeli military told The New York Times on Friday to withhold publishing additional information about an Israeli soldier reportedly captured by Palestinian militants until it is first reviewed by a censor.
WHEN a doctor asks her patient a question, is the doctor engaged in free speech protected by the Constitution? If you think the answer is obvious, think again. According to a recent decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, everything a doctor says to a patient is “treatment,” not speech, and the government has broad authority to prohibit doctors from asking questions on particular topics without any First Amendment scrutiny at all.
Following reports the Bahamas are under total NSA surveillance, Nimrod Kamer went to the Caribbean state to investigate for RT how its people cope without any privacy and why local authorities refuse to lift a finger to restore it.
The concept of privacy changed once it went online. What was once a sacred tomb of personal information has been twisted and altered by the digital age, like so many analog and now antiquated concepts before it.
The Courage Foundation dedicated to supporting former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIS) employee and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden has forwarded a letter to the Russian embassy to the U.S. to extend his asylum in Russia.
What happened? You guessed it: everyone’s favorite hero/villain/demon/saint, Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum in Russia exactly one year ago. This week, the tech industry threw its weight behind a bill that proposes “sweeping curbs on NSA surveillance” and “would represent the most significant reform of government surveillance authorities since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act 13 years ago.” And it could actually pass — again, thanks to Snowden.
Glenn Greenwald has refused to go to Germany as a witness for their investigation into NSA spying. He has released a full statement where he says that Germany is conducting an illusion of investigation to keep the German public satisfied.
Google knows what you're looking for. Facebook knows what you like. Sharing is the norm, and secrecy is out. But what is the psychological and cultural fallout from the end of privacy?
Students in the UK can now get graduate degrees in cyber-spying approved by the masters of the craft at the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters, the British counterpart of the US National Security Agency. Students at the University of Oxford and five other universities can get masters in cyber-security signed off by the best eavesdroppers in the country, the BBC reported.
And in December, Der Spiegel reported that a leaked internal NSA catalogue described a tool called DeityBounce that attacked the BIOS of Dell Inc servers.
Google has rolled out the beta version of an anonymising proxy service, called uProxy. But Google is allegedly a partner to the NSA in PRISM project. There are other anonymiser browsers like Tor.
But then while the NSA is trying to take it down, U.S. agencies are funding it.
Germany and Brazil want a U.N. Resolution for internet privacy. European and Latin American countries are thinking of joining the effort.
Russia and Germany have switched to typewriters to type out important documents, to avoid electronic snooping.
On Aug. 6 bill SB-828 (4th Amendment Protection Act) will move to keep California from co-opting with the National Security Agency and its massive surveillance programs, many of which will end up in California if this bill is not passed.
In the first half of this year, Twitter’s seen a 46% increase in user data requests from 2013: the majority of these have come from the US (1,257), followed by Japan (192) and Saudi Arabia (189). Due to the large increase in user data requests, Twitter’s talking to the Department of Justice (DOJ) in an effort to have more transparency about what user data the Federal Government wants when it makes requests about Twitter users.
Digital security is more important than it's ever been. Hacks and other digital attacks are on the rise, and to no one's surprise the NSA is snooping as much as ever.
AT&T has partnered the NSA since 1985. US court records in the class action suit Hepting Vs. NSA are revealing. (Details at https://www.eff.org/cases/hepting). Page 102 of a “top secret” slide presentation of the NSA shows AT&T as one of the “80 major global corporations” supporting its missions. Page 103 shows the NSA has a ‘Special Source Operation’ which has a list of three major corporates giving it access to various kinds of telecommunication facilities.
So where does this leave the average user? Does one give up certain privacies for the greater good, or is what someone does online entirely their own business, even if it’s illegal? Only time will tell, but hopefully if Google is watching they'll continue to help put men like Skillern away.
She “unhesitatingly agreed” to work with them and travel clandestinely to Cuba as soon as possible. The following March, she went there via Spain and Czechoslovakia. The Pentagon report does not state the obvious: while there, she must have received specialized training in intelligence tradecraft.
The Sarkozy case raises important questions about the issue of technology and lawyer-client confidentiality.
While some of us are comfortable with the fact that we can eat breakfast without having to tell our 429 Facebook friends about it, a few users apparently think it is an emergency if Facebook goes down for 30 minutes and prevents them from sharing pictures of the soggy cereal and milk they had for breakfast.
That is what happened on Friday when Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram experienced a brief outage affecting millions of users around the world and prompting them to take to Twitter to complain. One user, Sgt. Burton Brink of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, posted the following tweet.
Here’s how bad things are between Washington and New Delhi these days: It’s news that Kerry even made the trip. Why this reluctant partnership might be best left to wither.
A pan-ideological group of senators this week unveiled the most high-profile bill yet for reforming the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. The proposal does not go far enough for many civil liberties advocates. But that’s fine: The bill represents a careful, politically achievable balance, advancing several worthwhile reforms without seeking to dismantle the nation’s intelligence capabilities. Just as important, it would insist on the public release of much more information about U.S. intelligence collection, and it would provide a clear timeline for renewed debate on a range of NSA and FBI activities so the country would be able to take another crack at the issue if the bill’s balance proves unsatisfactory.
It's funny how strong-arming governments, theoretically able to bypass the red-tape that makes republics and democracies so slow-moving, just can't produce that kind of nimble posture when walking back their attempts to thought-control the internet. Time and again, we find examples of governments taking Orwellian measures against their own people on internet sites and social media networks, finding them to be far less useful than they'd thought, and then merely inching away from those attempts rather than outright reversing them. Ukraine recently served as an example of this, when they attempted to track and creep-out protesters via text messages and police action, before then walking back the text message portion and then finally succumbing to regime-changing revolution.
Heads of Both the CIA and NSA Have Been Caught Lying To Congress and the American People, They Are Not Prosecuted for Perjury and They Keep Their Jobs
The Senate Intelligence Committee's top Republican on Sunday defended CIA Director John Brennan for not knowing the extent of the agency's spying on Senate computers as revealed in a recent internal watchdog report.
Nothing puts the exclamation mark on the culture of impunity that President Barack Obama’s administration has enabled like the war on whistleblowers. As whistleblowers sit in prison or are effectively living in exile because they dared to call attention to crimes, misconduct or abuses of power, some of the very same officials implicated walk freely and live with the comfort of knowing the United States government will never seek to hold them accountable.
In the realm of human rights advocacy, few organizations enjoy the influence commanded by Human Rights Watch (HRW).
With outposts and contacts all over world, the New York-based NGO enjoys a reputation for assiduously chronicling human rights abuses and leveraging its political clout to hold abusers to account. HRW experts routinely testify before Congress, and HRW scholars enjoy access to a range of media outlets – from the New York Times on down to Foreign Policy In Focus.
Just as a Senate report condemning the waterboarding of a couple of the most dangerous GITMO terrorists is due to be released, Democrats are calling for the head of the CIA director.
With midterm elections looming, the timing is significant since in the Senate report Democrats are condemning the Bush administration and CIA operatives for "torturing" top terrorists in order to gain critical information about terrorist activities.
A controversial investigation began right after the CIA released a report on Thursday that gravely contradicted John Brennan’s public statements. It seems that the CIA illegally hacked several computers of the Senate and when the CIA declared that they were in possession of a document from one of those computers, John Brennan, CIA Director, came under serious scrutiny.
Torture is illegal. Laws were broken. Obama said his administration won’t pursue criminal charges. But if Boehner’s attorneys aren’t too busy with that frivolous lawsuit, there’s some actual lawlessness to look into.
So the nation’s top spy organization, the CIA, has been spying not just on terrorists but on the U.S. Senate, and now even admits it.
Really?
And a president of the United States who condemned this sort of thing before he entered the Oval Office apparently now condones this behavior by his silence, while putting roadblock after roadblock in front of an increasingly and justifiably irritated Congress wanting to get to the bottom of the matter.
Really?
After repeated and vehement denials from CIA Director John Brennan that his employees had ever hacked into U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee computers to find the contents of a coming and reportedly quite damning report on the agency’s behavior following 9-11 — specifically regarding the detention and alleged torture of terror suspects — the CIA now concedes, though its inspector general, that such deliberate infiltration did in fact happen. Brennan has apologized, specifically to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the committee, after initially responding to her and other senators’ allegations that “nothing could be further from the truth ... that’s just beyond the scope of reason.”
I voted for Barack Obama twice and would do so again, given his election opponents, but man, he can annoy the hell out of me.
This time, it’s his statement Friday that after Sept. 11, the CIA “tortured some folks.” Here’s the story in The Guardian.
Let’s dispense with the small detail first: That statement is a 10 on the no-shit-ometer. Is there anybody who didn’t already believe this? We’re a long way from “breaking news” alerts from your favorite news websites.
I have a bigger problem. It’s Obama’s use of the word “folks.” It’s a colloquial word. It’s relaxed. It’s informal. Example: “My folks have a cabin in Tennessee.” Or “I’m eating barbecue this afternoon with my folks to celebrate my dad’s birthday.”
The release of a highly anticipated Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's interrogation tactics has been delayed due to "significant redactions" made by the Obama Administration, the committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Fenistein (D-Calif.) announced on Friday.
Speaking with guest-host Monica Crowley on the Fox’s Hannity, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, called President Barack Obama a “disgrace” and “despicable” for admitting that America tortured detainees following the attack on 9/11.
Last night, the Hannity show “analyzed” President Obama’s comments characterizing the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program under the Bush/Cheney administration as “torture.” So whom did Fox call on for some of its typically “fair and balanced” commentary? Why, none other than Dick Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney. There were no pesky challenges from substitute host Monica Crowley, either.
The government stands accused of seeking to conceal Britain's role in extraordinary rendition, ahead of the release of a declassified intelligence report that exposes the use of torture at US secret prisons around the world.
The Senate report on the CIA's interrogation programme, due to be released in days, will confirm that the US tortured terrorist suspects after 9/11. In advance of the release, Barack Obama admitted on Friday: "We tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values."
At the same time, a panel of federal judges has upheld a new policy allowing guards at the US "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to search the groin areas of suspects meeting with their lawyers.
What the CIA’s entry to twitter confirms is the increasing acceptability of soft power as an instrument of diplomacy and international relations. As an Agency that evokes keen global interest as an instrument of US foreign relations, allowing a peep into its unclassified content via social media is a clear indication of its intention to increase its soft power quotient. It is merely following a growing global trend broadly referred to as Digital Diplomacy.
A forthcoming Senate report on the controversial interrogation techniques employed by the CIA in the wake of September 11 is expected to clearly label those techniques torture and conclude that they did not yield much in the way of actionable intelligence.
Republicans on the Senate intelligence committee will soon release a minority report asserting that the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques helped bring down Osama bin Laden and other terrorists, the panel’s top Republican said on Sunday.
“Information gleaned from these interrogations was in fact used to interrupt and disrupt terrorist plots, including some information that took down Bin Laden,” the Georgia senator Saxby Chambliss said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
The Senate intelligence committee reports will come five years after it authorised an investigation into the use of possible torture by the CIA after the September 11 attacks.
No one new called for Brennan's resignation, as Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and other lawmakers have in the past few days. President Obama said Friday that he has "full confidence" in Brennan. But the CIA director continues to be under fire from some and defended by others.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said Sunday he doesn’t think the CIA spied on the Senate.
Rogers said it’s clear that someone at the CIA “overstepped their bounds,” but he also defended the agency during an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."
White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer defended CIA Director John Brennan, calling him a man of “great integrity” amid calls for the intelligence chief to step down after the agency admitted to spying on Senate staffers.
Sen. Angus King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that Central Intelligence Agency personnel committed acts of torture in the wake of 9/11 and called it “unjustifiable.”
King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, said he has voted to declassify a report by the Senate intelligence panel detailing the incidents of alleged torture.
After much brouhaha, post an internal inquiry, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has finally acknowledged that some of its employees had "improperly accessed" computers that were in use by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
Reuters managed to lay its hands on an "unclassified summary of the inspector general's report" and the document reveals that the inspector general (IG) discovered that two lawyers, five employees and three IT staff had accessed sensitive information pertaining to the Senate's investigation via their computers in an improper manner.
A controversial investigation began right after the CIA released a report on Thursday that gravely contradicted John Brennan’s public statements. It seems that the CIA illegally hacked several computers of the Senate and when the CIA declared that they were in possession of a document from one of those computers, John Brennan, CIA Director, came under serious scrutiny.
Comcast is a monopoly. The question is, how much of a monopoly is Comcast, and how much of a monopoly will it be after it absorbs Time-Warner Cable (TWC)?
To help quantify market influence, economists use the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), a metric that is calculated by adding the squares of the market shares of every firm in an industry. HHI produces a number between 0 (for a perfectly competitive industry) and 10,000 (for an industry with just one firm).