01.11.15

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• ‘Linux Advocates’ Throws in the Towel

  Under Schmitz, the site was nothing if not eccentric. Although it lost its “mainstream” appeal (as much as a site focusing on FOSS can be said to be mainstream), it seemed to have gained a following of readers who appreciated Schmitz’s often confrontational style.

• Desktop

  • Nope. Munich Never Happened. – Deny, Deny, and Deny Some More

    Businesses can and do run GNU/Linux on their clients, especially if they are thin clients, they use web-applications or a GNU/Linux application will do the jobs businesses need done.

• Kernel Space

  • Graphics Stack

    • X.Org Is Formally Invited To Become An SPI Project

      Following last month’s failed vote due to not having a quorum, SPI on Thursday voted to officially invite the X.Org Foundation to become an SPI associated project. X.Org would live under the SPI umbrella and let the organization take care of its managerial tasks so the X.Org Foundation board and members could focus more on the actual development.

    • The GTX 970/980 Maxwell GPUs Light Up With Nouveau On Linux 3.19

      This weekend I got around to trying out the GeForce GTX 970 and GTX 980 “Maxwell” graphics cards with the Linux 3.19 kernel now that there’s initial support for these new GPUs via the open-source Nouveau DRM driver.

• Applications

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • Install MongoDB on a CentOS VPS

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Firefox KDE Wallet for KF5

      I have a good news for Firefox and Plasma 5 users: I ported KDE Wallet password integration extension to KDE Frameworks 5!

      It seems to me that this plugin is unmaintained because both the released version and the SVN one do not support Firefox 33 or newer. So, as first step I took Guillermo’s code and bumped the Firefox version.

    • KDE Version Of Linux Mint 17.1 Released

      In late November was when the MATE and Cinnamon editions of Linux Mint 17.1 were released while today finally marks the official availability of the KDE spin of Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca.

    • Using Krita for ARC comics

      First off we want to thank all the work put in by developers to maintain Krita, and the community that helps to fund and push Krita. At the risk of sounding really cliché, you all help to make our dreams, and many others’dreams, come true!

    • Curses! … I mean, Cursors!

      In the upcoming release of Plasma we’ve done some work on the humble cursor; we’ve added a few missing states, and there will also be a brand new “snow” version, along with minor tweaks to the existing Breeze cursors. But me being lazy and the merge window having closed, there are a great many more cursors which haven’t made it into this release, so I’m putting them here for everyone to use and redistribute.

    • Foursquare checkins via KDE tools

      This post was inspired by another article written by Damián Nohales. During his GSoC work at the GNOME project in the previous year he integrated the Foursquare service into this environment so users can make checkins from their laptop or PC.

    • KDE Frameworks 5.1 & Plasma 2.1 – First Impressions

      Today I took the plunge into the next-generation KDE desktop, performing a dirty upgrade from Kubuntu 14.04 to 14.10 before installing the plasma-5-desktop package; and this is my first impression of KF5.x and Plasma 5. This is also a bit of a primer, because when Plasma 5.2 enters the stage I’m interested to see the comparison and do a second write-up, using my experience in both 5.1 and 4.x as points-of-reference.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • FreeBSD Finishes Switching Over To GNOME 3.x

      FreeBSD GNOME developers have had various GNOME 3.x components in the FreeBSD Ports repository for months, and with GNOME 2.x now being decommissioned by this BSD operating system, the GNOME3 X11 desktop has replaced GNOME2 on the DVD install media script.

• Distributions

  • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

    • Crowdfunding campaign for OpenMandriva

      Recently, OpenMandriva Association has launched a campaign to fund the development of the beautiful OpenMandriva Lx.

  • Arch Family

    • Manjaro Linux – Works For Me!

      Enter Manjaro Linux. This was one of the last distros I’d tried during my hopping days that I really thought had some potential. Based on Arch, which has a lot going for it to begin with, and with extremely well written and maintained documentation and helpful forums, Manjaro is an attractive option, maybe even for the Linux neophyte. I liken it to what Mint does for Ubuntu, in that it polishes things up nicely, adds some useful software out of the box, and makes the installation a breeze. Arch itself can be a scary install requiring lots of reading and step by step, piece by piece building of your system. Manjaro does most of the dirty work for you, especially if you know which desktop you want from the get-go. I knew I wanted KDE, so I grabbed that and was off to the races.

  Leftovers

  • Science

    • Hard landing scutters intended reusable rocket

      The Falcon rocket landed too heavily on the barge and broke apart, according to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, while the unmanned Dragon cargo capsule went into orbit.

      [...]

      “Rocket made it to drone spaceport ship but landed hard,” he wrote on Twitter, adding “no cigar this time,” so that the 14-story rocket could be reused unscathed for future launches.

      [...]

      NASA has generally had to rely on Russia’s Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts to the ISS since retiring its aging shuttle fleet in 2011.

      Last month, the agency successfully tests a version of its next-generation, long-distance Orion spaceship on a short flight.

      On board ISS is a crew of three Russians, two Americans and an Italian.

    • ‘Close, But No Cigar’: SpaceX Rocket Lifts Off and Lands With a Crash

      SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket that successfully put a Dragon cargo capsule in orbit on Saturday, but its unprecedented attempt to land the uncrewed rocket’s first stage at sea ended with a crash.

  • Security

    • NSA chief: Sony hack a ‘red line’ for US [Ed: misleading]

      It was critical for the U.S. to publicly denounce North Korea’s role the cyberattack on Sony, National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Michael Rogers said Thursday.

    • NSA official feels access to more data is the way to go

    • Pope Philippines visit ‘security nightmare’

      As the Philippines prepares for the visit of Pope Francis on January 15, efforts have been stepped up to prevent a repeat of the security breaches during previous papal visits. An estimated 37,000 police and military personnel are being deployed to secure Francis, in what the top military commander Gregorio Catapang Jr described as “the biggest security nightmare” of the government.

  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

    • France’s most wanted woman, Hayat Boumeddiene ‘on the run’ in Syria: Reports

      The mugshot provided by the police shows a sleepy-eyed young woman, her face and brown hair showing, whom they had questioned in 2010 about Coulibaly.

      She is suspected of being Coulibaly`s accomplice in the murder of a policewoman in southern Paris on Thursday, during a massive manhunt for two brothers who a day earlier massacred 12 people at the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

      Police also suspect she might have been involved in Coulibaly`s supermarket hostage-taking, though she was not identified among the dead or wounded.

    • George Zimmerman Arrested, Allegedly Threw Wine Bottle at Girlfriend

      Florida authorities say George Zimmerman, whose acquittal of murdering an unarmed black teen sparked a national debate on race and self-defense laws, has been arrested for allegedly throwing a wine bottle at his girlfriend.

      The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office says the 31-year-old Zimmerman was arrested for aggravated assault in Lake Mary about 10 p.m. Friday and is being held at the John E. Polk Correctional Facility.

      Zimmerman was released on a $5,000 bond Saturday afternoon. At a court appearance earlier Saturday, he was ordered to avoid contact with the woman, who was not identified.

    • The Day CIA Failed to Un-beard Castro in His Own Den

      But, as art imitates life from a bygone era, the plan to kill the North Korean leader harkens back to the days in the late 1960s and 1970s when scores of attempts were made by U.S. intelligence services to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, including by hired Sicilian Mafia hitmen.

      The hilarious plots included an attempt to smuggle poisoned cigars into Castro’s household and also plant soluble thallium sulphate inside Castro’s shoes so that his beard will fall off and make him “the laughing stock of the socialist world.”

    • President Obama’s New Policy on Cuba Could Be a Good Start

      In 1992 Miami Herald commentator Andrés Oppenheimer won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Castro’s Final Hour, thus giving “new meaning to the words final and hour,” as the late filmmaker and writer Saul Landau would wryly remark many years later. Fidel Castro would survive 11 U.S. presidents, at least eight [PDF] CIA plots to assassinate him, and a few premature obituaries, and live to see world’s most powerful country finally give in and recognize — in principle, at least — Cuba’s right to national self-determination.

    • When the United States Government Broke Relations with Cuba

      From December 1959, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked on numerous projects to assassinate Fidel Castro, even before Eisenhower approved a military invasion. By early February 1960, the United States government had given the CIA the green light to organize an invasion force to be trained in Guatemala and Nicaragua, then ruled by two brutal right-wing dictatorships. Meanwhile, counterrevolutionaries inside the island received training and resources such as incendiary bombs from the CIA to stage terrorist attacks in Havana and other urban areas while fast boats and airplanes engaged in constant sabotage of economic and coastal facilities from bases in south Florida. The Cuban authorities continuously denounced the incursions, the plots and the policy of violence and harassment.

    • Conservative Hypocrisy on the Cuban Embargo

      We are witnessing classic conservative hypocrisy with their predictable opposition to the lifting of the 54-year-old U.S. embargo against Cuba. That includes many Latin American conservatives who have come to view the U.S. government as their “papasito” and who are now lamenting that the U.S. government might no longer be intervening on their behalf in Cuba.

    • Former Commander of Army Special Operations Moves to CIA

      A former commander of Army Special Operations and the officer who led the first Green Berets on the ground in Afghanistan has joined the CIA.

      Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland Jr. is the new associate director for military affairs at the nation’s top intelligence agency, the CIA announced in a statement from Director John Brennan.

    • America needs to blow up its entire intelligence infrastructure and rebuild from scratch

      We have the Windows 95 of intelligence. We need Linux.

    • US Drones, Pakistani Warplanes Kill Dozens in Tribal Areas

      The ones killed in the US strike were reportedly ethnic Uzbeks, while the ones killed in the Pakistani campaign were apparently local tribesmen. As usual, no names were provided for the slain.

      This is standard operating procedure for both Pakistan and the US in strikes in the area, as they offer little more than a vague assurance of suspicion in their killings, and never follow through except on the rare occasions when they managed to kill someone they’ve heard of.

    • The Year in Drones

      In October, the US celebrated (if that is the word) its 400th drone strike on Pakistan.

    • Drone Rules in Afghanistan Go Unchanged, And Other Reasons the War Isn’t Really Over

      Though many Americans may not have realized it, December 28th marked what the U.S. government called the official end of the war in Afghanistan. That war has been the longest in U.S. history – but despite the new announcement that the formal conflict is over, America’s war there is far from finished. In fact, the Obama administration still considers the Afghan theater an area of active hostilities, according to an email from a senior administration official – and therefore exempts it from the stricter drone and targeted killing guidelines the president announced at a major speech at the National Defense University in 2013.

    • ‘Good Kill’ Trailer: Ethan Hawke Controls Drones In New War Drama [WATCH]

    • Ethan Hawke Pilots Drones in Andrew Niccol’s First ‘Good Kill’ Trailer

      Early this year, the time travel thriller Predestination with Ethan Hawke hits theaters, but it looks like we might get a double dose of the Boyhood star because the drone pilot drama Good Kill just released an international trailer. Hit or miss sci-fi director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, In Time) is at the helm of this film that follows Hawke as a fighter pilot who has adapted with technology and become a drone pilot. However, the task of piloting a drone for 12 hours a day and carrying out targeted kills from thousands of miles away just doesn’t feel right for the Air Force veteran. It looks like we might get some provocative political commentary on drones, not unlike what Niccol delivered with Lord of War before.

    • Pentagon Doesn’t Know How Many People It’s Killed in the ISIS War

      The American military may have launched hundreds of airstrikes on Iraq and Syria. But it’s not so sure who was on the receiving end of those bombs.

    • U.S. drone strikes continue in several countries in 2014

      The Bureau of Investigative Journalism claims that 2,379 people were killed by the strikes. The Bureau also says that only 12 percent of the victims actually identified have been linked to any militant organizations. The victims are routinely described as suspected militants.

      In October of last year Rafiq ur Rehman, a school teacher and his two young children testified before the US Congress about the death of his 67 year old mother as she gathered okra in her garden a year earlier when she was killed by a drone strike. Only five members of Congress bothered to show up.

    • Wrapping the world in war

      President Obama promised to end our ‘forever war,’ but he could leave office having wrapped the entire world in war.

      The Obama administration has adopted the view that the United States should use deadly force against its enemies wherever they are. That’s the terrifying and all-encompassing characteristic of America’s war. If enemies of the United States go to Pakistan, or Morocco, or the Philippines, the war can follow them.

    • US drone war: 2014 in numbers

      While there have been more strikes in the past six years, the casualty rate has been lower under Obama than under his predecessor. The CIA killed eight people, on average, per strike during the Bush years. Under Obama, it is less than six. The civilian casualty rate is lower too – more than three civilians were reported killed per strike during the past presidency. Under Obama, less than one.

    • Shrinking targets: Drone hits declined by 32%, says report

      The number of drone strikes carried out in Pakistan by the United States dropped by more than 32 per cent in 2014 as compared with the previous year, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies’ (PIPS) Pakistan Security Report 2014. A total of 21 strikes were reported last year, killing an estimated 144 and wounding 29 over a period of six months.

    • New book eyes drone impact

      Cohn said many people don’t realize that attacks authorized by President Obama have “killed more people with drones than died on 9/11,” and that only “a tiny percentage” were al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders.

    • Opinion: Shine a light on U.S. policy of drone warfare

      An estimated 3,500 people – hundreds of them children – have been killed by drones. While some of those killed were undoubtedly violent terrorists, fewer than 50 (2 percent) were confirmed to be high-level targets, according to a study undertaken by Stanford Law School and New York School of Law. There are numerous allegations, some confirmed by reliable news sources, of entire wedding parties and extended families killed by U.S. drones.

      Also troubling is the blowback these strikes create. They may in fact produce more terrorists, more angry young people who see their families and their countries torn apart by U.S. violence. We can’t help but wonder if U.S. policy may contribute to destabilization and recruitment of terrorists.

    • Will the US Drone War End?

      With the formal conclusion of US-led hostilities in Afghanistan, new attention has been focused on the role the US will play as trainers and advisers to the Afghan National Security Forces. Specifically, what the US counterterror (CT) mission against terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban will look like. President Obama has already increased the residual force for 2015 adding 1,000 extra troops to the previously stated 9,800. Interestingly, commentators have been examining how the US will continue its CT campaign, which relies heavily on controversial drone strikes against known terrorist actors and their positions.

    • Drone Guidelines to Protect Civilians Do Not Apply to Afghanistan: White House Official

      Despite the December 28th “official” end of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, a new Rolling Stone article provides more proof that armed combat is nowhere near over: the Obama administration still considers the country to be an “area of active hostilities” and therefore does not impose more stringent standards aimed at limiting civilian deaths in drone strikes.

      At issue are the Presidential Policy Guidelines (pdf), passed in May 2013 in response to widespread concerns about the killing and wounding of non-combatants by U.S. drone strikes. The new guidelines impose the requirement that “before lethal action may be taken,” U.S. forces are required to attain “near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed.” It is impossible to verify the impact of this reform on civilian deaths and injuries, because U.S. drone attacks are shrouded in near total secrecy.

  • Finance

    • David Cohen, architect of sanctions on Iran and Russia, picked as CIA deputy director

      A top official in the Treasury Department will become the next deputy director of the CIA, the White House announced Friday.

    • Sanctions guru tapped for CIA job

    • Obama picks sanctions enforcer for No. 2 at CIA

      Treasury Department official David Cohen will be the new deputy director of the CIA, President Obama announced on Friday.

      Obama appointed David Cohen to be the spy agency’s second in command, after having overseen sanctions regimes on Russia and Iran.

    • US Under Secretary for Terrorism to Become CIA Deputy Director: White House

    • David Cohen, Expert on Financial Intelligence, Named Deputy Head of CIA

      President Barack Obama has chosen David Cohen, a top Treasury official specializing in terrorism and financial intelligence, to be deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the White House said on Friday.

    • New deputy CIA director shows importance of finance

      David S. Cohen has been the Obama administration’s point man on economic sanctions for three years, serving as undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. His move to a top intelligence post underscores how how important the government’s financial tools have been in combating terrorism since 2001.

  • Privacy

    • NSA can’t crack common encryption software, top hacker concludes

      Publicly available encryption programmes are so tough that they can’t be cracked by the experts at the US National Security Agency (NSA), an authoritative expert has told one of the world’s top hacker jamborees.

      The assurance, delivered by Jacob Applebaum during this month’s Chaos Communication Congress (CCC) in Hamburg, Germany, ends months of speculation that the NSA may have found a backdoor into such privacysoftware.

    • FBI fingering Norks for Sony hack: The TRUTH – by the NSA’s spyboss

      The bureau has been strangely silent on how it came to finger the Nork government for the comprehensive ransacking of the Hollywood movie studio. So silent, in fact, seasoned computer security experts refused to believe the claims until they see more evidence.

    • NSA reform facing hard sell following Paris terror attacks

      After a reform bill was narrowly blocked on the Senate floor late last year, civil libertarians hoped that an upcoming deadline to reauthorize some of the spy agency’s controversial powers would give them another opportunity to force changes.

    • Anti-NSA Snooping Bill Filed in Minnesota

      If you’re planning on spying on someone in the Land of a Thousand Lakes, a local legislator has something to say about that: not gonna happen.

    • Minnesota Bill Would Ban NSA Activity Called the “Biggest Threat Since the Civil War”

    • Minnesota Law Would Make It Illegal For The NSA To Snoop On Citizens In The Gopher State

      A Minnesota lawmaker introduced a bill this week that would effectively make National Security Agency (NSA) spying illegal in the Gopher State, Sputnik News is reporting.

      Republican Senator Branden Petersen introduced SF 33, which forbids evidence caught by illegal NSA surveillance inadmissible in court.

    • Quoted: Edward Snowden on what the ‘S’ in NSA should really stand for

    • Edward Snowden Says The NSA Is Trying To Control The Internet

    • Snowden: NSA spends more resources cyber attacking other nations than defending America

    • Snowden: U.S. policies diminish cyberattack defenses

    • NSA spends more tax dollars on hacking than on defense: Snowden

    • NSA Chief Pushes Bill Granting New Powers

      For years privacy advocates have been pushing against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which eliminates all privacy protections on the sharing of private information so long as it is done for “cybersecurity purposes.”

    • CISPA: The Awful Anti-Privacy Law That Won’t Prevent Another Sony Hack

      CISPA is back. You might remember the bill as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act—or perhaps as “the worst privacy disaster our country has ever faced.” Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger reintroduced the bill to the House Intelligence Committee on Friday under the auspices of preventing another Sony hack.

      Silly Dutch. (The congressman is @Call_Me_Dutch on Twitter, so I’m calling him Dutch.) Why so silly? Well, in order to comprehend what Dutch is doing you have to understand what CISPA is supposed to accomplish. Hint: It has nothing to do with preventing another Sony attack.

    • Paris Has US Govt Agencies Clamoring for More Funding

      This week’s high-profile attack in Paris, France has US government agencies salivating at the opportunity to capitalize on this new round of fear to secure major additional funding.

    • The NSA and the art of the Friday news dump

      It is a Friday afternoon as I write this, and about an hour ago, the Director of National Intelligence published a report to its Tumblr page evaluating the over-classification of government documents. The intelligence community has a habit of dropping recently declassified documents on Friday afternoons, the motive for which we will leave as an exercise for the reader.

    • Charlie Hebdo Murders Do Not Justify NSA Domestic Spying

      The Review Group was prescient: Now the NSA-enablers in the Senate are trying to use the Charlie Hebdo tragedy to scare Americans into foregoing their constitutional right to be free from pervasive government surveillance.

    • The Charlie Hebdo attack was a strike against free speech. So why is the response more surveillance?

      As politicians drape themselves in the flag of free speech and freedom of the press in response to the tragic murder of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, they’ve also quickly moved to stifle the same rights they claim to love. Government officials on both sides of the Atlantic are now renewing their efforts to stop NSA reform as they support free speech-chilling surveillance laws that will affect millions of citizens that have never been accused of terrorism.

    • NSA chief: Sony hack a ‘red line’ for US

      It was critical for the U.S. to publicly denounce North Korea’s role the cyberattack on Sony, National Security Agency (NSA) Director Adm. Michael Rogers said Thursday.

      “Sony is important to me because the entire world is watching how we as a nation are going to respond to this,” Rogers said at a cybersecurity conference at the Fordham University School of Law, Time reported. “If we don’t name names here, it will only encourage others to decide, ‘Well this must not be a red line for the United States.’ ”

    • Paris shootings: Police stopped watching Said and Cherif Kouachi

      Said and Cherif Kouachi’s faces were unknown to the French public before Wednesday’s terrorist attack in Paris.

      But to the French police, they were very well known indeed – and it must have been with despair that the authorities realised that the men they had once watched so closely had been allowed to drop off their radar, slip away, and plot their attacks.

    • French monitored Kouachi brothers but lost interest, despite red flags

      French security agencies stopped monitoring the brothers who attacked the staff of Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine months before they carried out the attack, despite a previous tip-off from American intelligence agencies that one of them had likely trained with al Qaeda in Yemen, a French news magazine reported Saturday.

    • Surveillance drones along U.S.-Canadian border not helping security, says audit

      U.S. Customs and Border Protection flies nine of the aircraft. Most are based on the U.S. border with Mexico, but they also conduct surveillance along the Canadian border, from a base in North Dakota.

    • Nix those border drones (or at least prove they work)

      Experience tells us to expect two hard-and-fast outcomes from federal spending initiatives.

      The first is that costs will be more than expected, and, often, far more. Wild-eyed optimism, not realism, often is the driving force behind new spending programs.

    • Assange and Snowden Are Not to Blame for Paris Bloodbath

      In today’s Daily Mail, “Sir” Max “I have always loved Israel” Hastings claimed that me and Mr. Snowden are responsible for the bloodbath in Paris: “Traitors.. Assange and Snowden have damaged the security of each and every one of us, by alerting the jihadis and Al Qaeda, our mortal enemies, to the scale and reach of electronic eavesdropping”. That a state security vampire like Hastings has pounced on the still warm corpses strewn about Paris is as grotesque as it is predictable.

    • “Citizenfour” sweeps Cinema Eye Honors

    • CITIZENFOUR Takes Four At 8th Cinema Eye Honors For Docs

    • ‘Citizenfour’ Wins Four Awards at Cinema Eye Honors

    • ‘CitizenFour’ about Edward Snowden is a must-see

    • Edward Snowden Documentary Citizenfour Opens at Frida, 25-Page Interview is Online

    • ‘Citizenfour’ Sweeps Cinema Eye Honors Documentary Awards

    • HBO to Premiere Acclaimed Edward Snowden Documentary CITIZENFOUR, 2/23

      The acclaimed documentary CITIZENFOUR, one of the most talked-about films of 2014, will debut MONDAY, FEB. 23 (9:00-11:00 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO, it was announced today by Sheila Nevins, president, HBO Documentary Films.

    • NSA, Snowden documentary wins director new PSIFF award

      The Palm Springs International Film Festival had to create an award for Laura Poitras, bestowing her Friday with the Filmmakers Who Make a Difference Award for “Citizenfour” — a documentary that captures whistleblower Edward Snowden’s NSA surveillance leak unfolding in real time.

  • Civil Rights

    • If David Petraeus is actually charged, all of DC will finally find out how incredibly unjust the Espionage Act is

      In a surprising development, the New York Times reported late Friday that the FBI and Justice Department have recommended felony charges against ex-CIA director David Petraeus for leaking classified information to his former biographer and mistress Paula Broadwell. While the Times does not specify, the most likely law prosecutors would charge Petraeus under is the same as Edward Snowden and many other leakers: the 1917 Espionage Act.

    • The Murder Of A Man I Knew And The Guardian’s Quest Against Ecuador

      Recently I came across a report in The Guardian about the murder of José Tendetza, a Shuar indigenous leader, in a remote region of the Ecuadorian Amazon near the Peruvian border. The Guardian gave the impression that Ecuador’s left-wing government had turned murderous in an obsession with exploiting mineral wealth; the death of the indigenous leader was all but explicitly blamed on President Rafael Correa.

    • Why Is the FBI Still Targeting Petraeus?

      By all outward appearances, David Petraeus appears to be mounting a comeback. The former general landed a job at powerhouse private-equity firm KKR, has academic perches at Harvard and the University of Southern California and, according to White House sources, was even asked by the President Barack Obama’s administration for advice on the fight against Islamic State. Yet it turns out that the extramarital affair that forced him to resign as director of the Central Intelligence Agency is still hanging over him.

    • Petraeus case: ‘Charges recommended’ for ex-CIA boss

      US prosecutors have recommended bringing charges against ex-CIA director David Petraeus for providing classified information to a former mistress, the New York Times reports.

    • Investigation launched into CIA torture report’s censored content

      An in-depth investigation into vital unanswered questions raised by the US Senate’s startling report on CIA torture and rendition has been launched in the UK.

    • Support the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s new project investigating the CIA torture report

      Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit that counts Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and John Perry Barlow among its board members (and me) is launching our first crowd-funding campaign of 2015—in support of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s new reporting project on the Senate’s recently-released report on CIA torture.

    • The CIA Torture report: Where are the missing detainees? The Bureau launches new investigation

      The Bureau is today launching a new investigation in partnership with The Rendition Project to investigate some of the crucial unanswered questions raised as a result of the US Senate’s shocking report on CIA torture.

    • How the US Senate came to publish a damning report about CIA actions in secret prisons

      This followed the 2007 revelation that the CIA had destroyed videotapes showing detainees held under its secret rendition programme being subjected to the interrogation technique known as waterboarding.

    • One Arrested After Protests At The CIA And Home Of Dick Cheney [VIDEO]

      Left-wing activist group Code Pink held protests at the CIA and former Vice President Dick Cheney’s house Saturday morning — complete with giant paper mache heads, drone replicas and people getting arrested.

    • Demonstrators call for CIA torture accountability

      Demonstrators took to the homes of senior U.S. officials Saturday before protesting in front of CIA headquarters to call for accountability in the agency’s interrogation program.

    • Two protesters arrested outside Dick Cheney’s home

    • Police Charge 2 Protesters with Trespassing at Dick Cheney’s Home

      Police charged two men with trespassing at the home of former Vice President Dick Cheney Saturday morning, at his home in McLean, according to Fairfax County Police.

    • Two anti-torture protesters arrested at Dick Cheney’s house

    • 2 anti-torture protesters arrested at Cheney property

    • 2 anti-torture protesters arrested at Cheney home

    • Anti-torture protesters arrested in front of Dick Cheney’s home

    • Anti-torture activists protest on Dick Cheney’s front porch, two arrested

    • Demonstrators mark 14th anniversary of opening of Guantanamo prison with torture protest on Dick Cheney’s lawn

    • CIA Torture: the Nature of the Beast

      And the folks who carried out the torture? Were they relaxed? We can’t imagine what these people were thinking when they brutalized helpless victims. Did they enjoy themselves? It’s unlikely we shall ever know what goes on in the minds of the CIA’s depraved sadists. Perhaps we should be thankful for that.

    • Torturers’ travels: Internal investigation into CIA interrogation

      “If I am someone implicated in the torture report, I am thinking twice about travelling to Europe any time soon.”

    • How the CIA Torture Report Became a Surprise Best-seller

      The report itself was made public in early December, but only via an unwieldy and low-res PDF. Melville House, based in Dumbo, moved quickly into action, line-editing the document, formatting it, and getting it printed and in stores by December 30. The motivation for that mad dash was twofold: to publish the public document before competitors, and to help prevent the report from fading in the public eye. Melville House, which largely specializes in literary fiction and political nonfiction, was successful on both counts. The initial print run of 50,000 copies was shipped, and the publisher has moved on to a second printing.

    • Defense in CIA leak case issues subpoena for NYT reporter

      The Justice Department earlier dropped its demand that Risen divulge his source, though prosecutors have continued to seek his testimony.

  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Copyrights

      • Chilling Effects DMCA Archive Censors Itself

        The much-praised Chilling Effects DMCA archive has taken an unprecedented step by censoring its own website. Facing criticism from copyright holders, the organization decided to wipe its presence from all popular search engines. A telling example of how pressure from rightsholders causes a chilling effect on free speech.