02.23.14
Posted in News Roundup at 3:48 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Just a few months ago, the developers behind Nuclear Dawn, InterWave Studio, announced that a Linux version of the game was incoming. As a follow up to the announcement a beta was made available for the game on Linux. But right after that everything went silent for the development house.
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Valve’s digital game distribution service now hosts 333 games for Linux, compared to 60 games last February. (Strangely, Steam’s store page claims that 541 games are now available, but when you search the entire catalog it shows only 333 titles. We’ve asked Valve for clarification. UPDATE: Valve confirmed that 541 are available for Linux. The 333 count appears to be a glitch.)
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There is an “ask me anything” going on in reddit-land right now with the folks from the current Humble Bundle, I decided to ask the question a lot of people have been wondering.
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I think it harms their reputation with Linux fans to have a game completely missing for the sake of what sounds like their egos.
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The Legacy of Mirimotha is an open world, fantasy role playing game. At the beginning of the game, the player is provided with eight unique races in which they can customize their appearance and profession. The professions are: trader, thief, fighter, or a mixture of all three. The player has the choice of changing these options at any point during the game.
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Linux gaming used to be a wasteland. The only options were simple open source games and the handful of commercial ports that could still be obtained. By comparison, the present day seems like a jungle some times, with more and more options emerging, and it can feel like a full time job keeping up on developments.
Today, we’ll take a brief look at the various options available to you, and what benefits and drawbacks you can run into. This isn’t meant to be completely exhaustive, but rather a good introduction, if you are new to Linux or to the concept of Linux gaming in general. As such, we’ll be covering four primary sources.
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:45 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:44 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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As we all know that JBoss AS has been renamed to WildFly. A lots of new features has been added and lots of has been upgraded. Finally WildFly 8.0.0 Final has been released on Feb 11.2014. WildFly Project Lead Jason Greene announced the same.
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The latest Wine development release is now available for offering the best support for running your Windows games and other applications on Linux.
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Cantata, a Qt-based music player for MPD (Music Player Daemon), has reached version 1.3.0 just yesterday, and a fix for compiling it in KDE, 1.3.0.1, was put out a few moments ago. This release comes with 87 fixes and improvements. Some major changes and new features include:
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Posted in TechBytes Video at 3:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Direct download as Ogg
Summary: Dr. Richard Stallman, the Free Software Foundation’s founder, talks about the RMS account at Identi.ca and more
Worth noting: After our last interview release (about Diaspora) someone created an RMS account at JoinDiaspora, echoing what already exists in Ideni.ca and Stallman.org
Made entirely using Free/libre software, heavily compressed for performance on the Web at quality’s expense
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:19 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The demise of due process, justice for the accused, rule of law, etc.
War on Dissent
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The recent anti-NSA, anti-surveillance protests were the latest manifestation of a burgeoning movement for freedom from mass surveillance and the liberation of information.
It is this new resistance movement, comprised of myriad individuals and organizations, which is perhaps the greatest measure of the legacy of Aaron Swartz.
By the time of his death a little more than a year ago, Aaron Swartz had already achieved more in his 26 years than most activists achieve in a lifetime. He was a technological innovator, contributing his computer expertise to develop open platforms such as RSS, Creative Commons, and Reddit, while working to liberate information from closed databases like JSTOR (the online digital library of scholarly and scientific research).
However, he also took the fight into the public arena, articulating a language of freedom and social responsibility, tirelessly working to raise public consciousness of the all-encompassing, draconian system of control erected around us all.
Ukraine
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The Ukraine Parliament voted Saturday afternoon to impeach President Viktor Yanukovych, capping a day of extraordinary events in the nation’s capital here.
Lawmakers also voted to hold elections on May 25, and after the vote began singing the national anthem.
Parliament also approved the immediate release of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, after more than two years in prison. After leaving a prison hospital in Kharkiv, Tymoshenko flew to Kiev where she visited Hrushevskoho Street, the site of deadly clashes between police and protesters in January, where she laid flowers at the site in which a protester was slain.
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Qatar
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Zahir Belounis captained his Qatari team to the top of the league, but became a victim of modern-day slavery in Qatar when his club refused to pay his outstanding salary and then refused to sign an exit visa allowing him to leave the country.
Bosnia
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Exactly 30 years after the Olympic flame was lit in Sarajevo in 1984, the city was in again in flames. In recent weeks, protesters have stormed government buildings in an explosion of anger over their social situation, rampant poverty, moribund economy, and the stagnant social and political life. When the flame was lit back in 1984 I was seven and lived just across from the Olympic stadium. We could not sleep for two weeks, the flame was that powerful. But, we were at the same time very happy: it was a flame of prosperity, peace and endless possibilities.
Back then Sarajevo was projecting an image of what the European Union wanted its members to become: prosperous, diverse and secular with functioning industries, social equality, enviable social mobility and consistent growth. The European Union, as we now know, has failed to live up to that ambition.
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UK ‘Terrorism’
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The English judiciary continues to show its habit of subservience to the government on security matters. In August 2013, David Miranda, who was carrying a hard disk with files from Edward Snowden for his partner who worked for the Guardian newspaper, was detained and questioned for nine hours at Heathrow airport. He sought judicial review of his detention, and the authorities set up a justification under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Schedule 7 entitles them to question anyone for the purpose of ascertaining whether he is “a person who … is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism” as defined in section 40(1)(b) of the statute.
But patently that was not the purpose of his detention. There was no question of Miranda’s being involved in terrorism—no question at all. The purpose of the detention and questioning related entirely to the Snowden material he was carrying.
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Three high court judges have dismissed a challenge that David Miranda, the partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was unlawfully detained under counter-terrorism powers for nine hours at Heathrow last August.
The judges accepted that Miranda’s detention and the seizure of computer material was “an indirect interference with press freedom” but said this was justified by legitimate and “very pressing” interests of national security.
Drone Assassinations
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Human Rights Watch has revealed as many as 12 civilians were killed in December when a U.S. drone targeted vehicles that were part of a wedding procession going toward the groom’s village outside the central Yemeni city of Rad’a. According to HRW, “some, if not all those killed and wounded were civilians” and not members of the armed group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as U.S. and Yemeni government offi
cials initially claimed. The report concluded that the attack killed 12 men, between the ages of 20 and 65, and wounded 15 others. It cites accounts from survivors, relatives of the dead, local officials and news media reports. We speak to Human Rights Watch researcher Letta Tayler, who wrote the report, “A Wedding That Became a Funeral: US Drone Attack on Marriage Procession in Yemen,” and Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of the TheIntercept.org, a new digital magazine published by First Look Media. He is the producer and writer of the documentary film, “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield,” which is nominated for an Academy Award.
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Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill did not expect to take secret assassinations to Hollywood. Years of reporting on night raids and targeted killings in remote corners of Afghanistan, Yemen, and other fronts in the global war on terror became the film Dirty Wars, directed by Richard Rowley, which is up for an Academy Award for Best Documentary March 2. Scahill’s recent work has examined the overlap between the U.S.’ broad surveillance efforts and its checkered human rights record in the fight against terrorism. Scahill spoke to MSNBC about the film, what the drone program has done to America’s security, and how to repair our relationships abroad.
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On January 31, I made the following argument before a Court in the town of DeWitt where I was charged with Disorderly Conduct for protesting the MQ9 Reaper drones flown from Hancock Base over Afghanistan.. I argue that the War on Terror is illegal under International Law and drone attacks in particular violate both Human Rights Law and Humanitarian Law. Furthermore, by virtue of the Constitution of the United States, we are committed to abide by those laws and under the Bill of Rights, it is our privlege to uphold those laws.
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Terrorism (ter-ror-ism; see also terror) n. 1. When a foreign organization kills an American for political reasons.Justice (jus-tice) n. 1. When the United States Government uses a drone to kill an American for political reasons.If an ordinary American was plotting to kill an American, you could end up in jail on a whole range of charges including — depending on the situation — terrorism. However, if the president’s doing the killing, it’s all nice and — let’s put those quote marks around it — “legal.” How do we know? We’re assured that the Justice Department tells him so. And that’s justice enough in post-Constitutional America.
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The International Criminal Court has been urged to investigate possible war crimes committed by NATO member states for their role in aiding the U.S. drone war in Pakistan.
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Journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald posted a disturbing report at their new site The Intercept about the NSA’s secret role in the U.S. assassination program. It’s a fascinating read, and I recommend you read it in its entirety, but I wanted to explore a very specific passage in the report—an interview with a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA.
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When operators were assigned to “Sky Raper,” he adds, it meant that “somebody was going to die. It was always set to the most high-priority missions.”
So here we have a bunch of joystick jockeys not only responsible for killing nameless, faceless brown people thousands of miles away, but as if that wasn’t enough of a violation, they decided to sprinkle a dash of rape culture onto their acts of horrific violence.
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Mufti cited the example of the NSA leaks and the discussion in the US about journalist Glenn Greenwald’s ethical responsibility. He said “Journalists are not just citizens, they have the responsibility to uphold democracy.”
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The CIA would be prohibited from using unmanned drones to carry out strikes abroad, under legislation introduced by Rep. Michael Burgess. The Texas Republican’s bill would vest that authority solely in the Department of Defense.
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If life-altering mistakes don’t warrant accountability, maybe that’s because nothing can
Torture
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Nearly a decade has passed since disturbing images first surfaced of Iraqi prisoners who were abused by their American military guards and interrogators at Baghdad’s now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison.
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Officials in Lithuania have decided to investigate whether the Baltic nation participated in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) secret rendition program of harboring terrorism suspects at “black site” prisons.
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A military judge held a secret war court session Saturday on defense lawyers’ efforts to uncover evidence of what the CIA did to the alleged USS Cole bomber across years in the agency’s clandestine overseas prison network.
Both the public and the alleged terrorist were excluded from the 111-minute hearing in the case that seeks the execution of Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri as mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, terror attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors off Aden, Yemen.
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Posted in News Roundup at 3:12 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: News from the past couple of days, focusing on privacy, surveillance, and abuses of power
Ombudsman (Ireland)
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Two weeks ago, the Sunday Times in Ireland broke a story claiming that the offices of the scrutiny body that monitors the Irish police force had been bugged. It has remained the main story in Ireland ever since. There are some elements of the story which appear undeniable. Sources close to this increasingly complex Dublin scandal are persuaded that there was a surveillance operation. Even government insiders are speculating privately about who may have been behind it, despite the justice minister publicly questioning whether it existed at all.
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Verizon/Phones
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Last year’s revelations over the U.S. tapping of phone and internet data gave telecoms firms pause for thought over whether they should sell their “big data” for gain, but the commercial potential could prove irresistible.
Although figures are scarce, analysts think selling data on mobile users’ locations, movements, and web browsing habits may grow into a multi billion-dollar market for the business.
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Russia
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Eteri Tutberidze said reporters bugged the locker room at Lipnitskaia’s practice rink in Moscow with listening devices after the 15-year-old left the Winter Games to train for the ladies individual competition. The coach also accused the media of stalking Lipnitskaia’s family in her hometown of Nizhny Bardym, a village in the Ural Mountains with a population of just 300.
Germany
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The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has stepped up its surveillance of senior German government officials since being ordered by Barack Obama to halt its spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bild am Sonntag paper reported on Sunday.
Revelations last year about mass U.S. surveillance in Germany, in particular of Merkel’s mobile phone, shocked Germans and sparked the most serious dispute between the transatlantic allies in a decade.
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The United States National Security Agency (NSA) has stepped up its surveillance of senior German government officials since being ordered by Barack Obama to halt its spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel, the German Bild am Sonntag paper reported on Sunday.
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Far from giving up on its habit, the US National Security Agency is reportedly still wiretapping some 320 prominent German economists and politicians. Although President Barack Obama has allegedly delivered on his promise to leave German Chancellor Angela Merkel alone, America’s omnipresent spy agency is still keeping tabs on hundreds of her compatriots, the crème de la crème of the German political and economic world, including Federal Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière. This is according to the Bild am Sonntag.
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Still upset over the U.S. spying on her phone, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced this week that her country would consider establishing new data networks based in Europe that could shield individuals’ private communications from National Security Agency (NSA) prying.
UK
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On December 3rd last year the editor of the Guardian newspaper, Alan Rusbridger, was questioned by the House of Commons select committee on home affairs. Its chairman, Keith Vaz, perhaps hoping to start Rusbridger off on an easy one, asked if he loved his country. It was an odd, and oddly un-British, question, and Rusbridger, frequently described as unflappable, admitted to surprise before declaring that, yes, he and his journalists saw themselves as patriots.
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The Queen and Prince Charles are using their little-known power of veto over new laws more than was previously thought, according to Whitehall documents.
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The extent of the Queen and Prince Charles’s secretive power of veto over new laws has been exposed after Downing Street lost its battle to keep information about its application secret.
Whitehall papers prepared by Cabinet Office lawyers show that overall at least 39 bills have been subject to the most senior royals’ little-known power to consent to or block new laws. They also reveal the power has been used to torpedo proposed legislation relating to decisions about the country going to war.
Apple
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Did U.S. government spies create the security hole that Apple patched last week?
PRISM Dropbox
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Dropbox has updated its privacy policy to address privacy concerns about the National Security Agency’s requests for user data.
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Dropbox, a cloud storage app the government recommends for federal teleworkers, has revised its privacy policy to address concerns about other federal workers spying on users’ data.
The new policy, which goes into effect March 24, acknowledges that Dropbox might share user data with outsiders to comply with the law, “if we determine that such disclosure is reasonably necessary.” An email to users immediately adds that the company will follow its own Government Request Principles, guidance that obliquely antagonizes the National Security Agency and includes fighting requests for bulk data.
PRISM WhatsApp
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The company warns users need to be aware that when they send messages, the recipient’s device may not be secure. But it says it does not store any chat history and that messages are wiped off its system after delivery.
Lawsuits
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In an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner just before his presentation, Fein said he would also comment on events since the book’s 2009 publication, events that illustrate how “violations of the constitution have become so chronic that they numb the public and even elected officials to the danger we encounter as we move toward what I call ‘one branch tyranny’ – secret government, [with] everything subordinated to a risk-free existence and absolute executive power.”
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Of the many questions that still surround the National Security Agency’s vast global spying operations, one seems especially pertinent: Do they actually work? That is, have they helped to prevent terrorist attacks against Americans?
In the case of the NSA’s phone-data program – in which the agency vacuums up information about essentially every call made by Americans – it’s getting harder and harder for the government to answer yes. The latest evidence comes from a report last week by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal agency established on the recommendation of the Sept. 11 Commission to balance the right to liberty against the need to prevent terrorism.
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Following news reports that a foreign ally of a U.S. intelligence agency may have spied on a BigLaw firm, the American Bar Association has asked the director of the National Security Agency and its general counsel for an explanation of how it deals with attorney-client privilege.
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On Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2014, the individual Government Defendants, Barack H. Obama, Eric H. Holder, Keith B. Alexander, Roger Vinson, the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Security Agency (NSA), in our initial lawsuit over the NSA spying on the American people – the one that produced a great victory last December when Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that President Obama and the NSA had egregiously violated the Fourth Amendment and the U.S. Constitution – presented me and the other plaintiffs with the gift that may keep on giving. In response to a court order issued about 10 days earlier, wherein Judge Leon testily told the Obama Justice Department lawyers to get the show on the road and finally file an answer to the complaint as they were in default for not having responded timely, President Obama’s lawyers stonewalled the judge in the answer they later filed on the day reserved for love, not obstruction of justice.
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An attorney suing the federal government over the National Security Agency’s spy programs says the Obama administration is delaying and obstructing the court, and a default judgment against the individual defendants would be an appropriate remedy.
The case was brought by attorney Larry Klayman in U.S. District Court in Washington over the NSA’s PRISM spy program that gathers details about the telephone calls and contacts of innocent Americans.
Wikileaks
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Another document, from July 2011, details discussions between NSA offices as to whether WikiLeaks might be designated a “malicious foreign actor” for reasons of surveillance (the language in the document is “targeting with no defeats”). Such a designation would simply broaden the scope of activities available to the agency. “No defeats are needed when querying against a known foreign malicious actor.” The response from the agency’s general counsel on the subject of WikiLeaks’ status is tentative – “Let us get back to you.”
Amazon
Breakup
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The NSA has become too big and too powerful. What was supposed to be a single agency with a dual mission — protecting the security of U.S. communications and eavesdropping on the communications of our enemies — has become unbalanced in the post-Cold War, all-terrorism-all-the-time era.
Putting the U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s cyberwar wing, in the same location and under the same commander, expanded the NSA’s power. The result is an agency that prioritizes intelligence gathering over security, and that’s increasingly putting us all at risk. It’s time we thought about breaking up the National Security Agency.
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Edward Snowden
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People marched through Naples Saturday in support NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Constitution and the 4th Amendment. At the same time, they were protesting a former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. speaking in Naples, for his comments against Snowden. We heard from both sides about why they feel so strongly.
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Following former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosure of widespread spying by the U.S. government, there has been a massive push to develop privacy-centric software and hardware. During the 2014 RSA Conference, which begins on Monday in San Francisco, data security and privacy solutions will be demonstrated at a frantic time in the industry.
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02.21.14
Posted in News Roundup at 4:00 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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Posted in News Roundup at 10:54 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Domestic and foreign abuses of power; examples from recent weeks for police and from the past 24 hours for the army/secret agencies
Police
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Neighbors say Mary Musselman has been feeding backyard animals as long as they can remember.
“She fed the squirrels, the birds, strays and that was in the community. She’s just always been that kind of soul,” says neighbor Patty Palmer.
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For absolutely no reason other than “because they could”, cops in Pinal County, Arizona executed a suspect who was standing there, not near any of the officers, with his hands in the air, offering no threat whatsoever. Without trial, judge, or jury, they simply assassinated the man, as his family looked on in horror. Warning: There is some graphic violence in the video below.
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Stacey Feigel’s husband, Sheldon, is facing multiple felony counts related to an alleged scam involving filing fraudulently for adverse possession on abandoned homes. While arriving in court for a hearing, Stacey collapsed from a “cardiac event” (according to the coroner) and died. Attorney Mark Coleman suggested stress from the raid and arrest could have led to her death.
Panic
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I’ve never seen a real study, but my guess is that it’s a reflection of fear and desperation. It’s a very frightened country. The United States is an unusually frightened country. And in such circumstances, people concoct either for escape or maybe out of relief, fears that terrible things happen.
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Foreign Policy
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The U.S. may be forced to withdraw troops completely from Afghanistan by the end of the year. That’s bad news if you’re the CIA and your lethal drone flights over neighboring Pakistan rely on the close proximity of Afghan airstrips.
Not surprisingly, the defense industry has already produced a solution: a new jet-powered drone that can range 1,800 miles from the nearest base.
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As Spencer Ackerman, National security reporter, said “it’s just so little transparency and so much opacity when it comes to Drones, belonged to CIA; if it were military then you could at least get the insight as how it works and debate about whether it should run this way”. With his comment on Drones dilemma, CIA is not required to give any information on any drone operations. They do not officially discuss drone programme, as Spencer Ackerman mentioned.
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Kareem Khan’s son and brother died in a US drone strike. His lawsuit has made waves in Pakistan and overseas, and he was recently detained for nine days.
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A year ago, 8-year-old Nabeela ventured outside while her 68-year-old grandmother picked vegetables in their family garden. Moments later, the grandmother was blasted to pieces by two U.S. drone missiles. Nabeela and other nearby grandchildren were injured when the exploding missile lodged shrapnel in their bodies.
No one is alleging the grandmother did anything wrong. Her fatal “mistake” was living in North Waziristan, a region in Pakistan pummeled by U.S. drone strikes (Amnesty International, Nov. 13).
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A U.S. military drone strike in Yemen in December may have killed up to a dozen civilians on their way to a wedding and injured others, including the bride, a human rights group says. U.S. officials say only members of al-Qaida were killed, but they have refused to make public the details of two U.S. investigations into the incident.
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Last week I wrote about the news that the Obama administration is considering whether to assassinate another American citizen in a drone strike. The Associated Press reported the target is an American citizen and member of al-Qaeda, “and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.”
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The story told by the report is one of disputed identity. Anonymous US officials have said all of the twelve men killed were militants traveling with Shawqi Ali Ahmad al-Badani, allegedly a member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the primary target of the strike. Officials say al-Badani was wounded, and escaped. Relatives of the dead say they didn’t know him.
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Lithuanian prosecutors said on Thursday they have opened an investigation into claims that a Saudi terror suspect was held in an alleged secret CIA jail in the Baltic state, reports LETA/AFP.
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Sitcom and sadism mix uncomfortably in Luc Besson’s “3 Days to Kill,” starring Kevin Costner as a CIA hitman and absentee father.
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As the world’s biggest online retailer, Amazon wants a benevolent image to encourage trust from customers. Obtaining vast quantities of their personal information has been central to the firm’s business model. But Amazon is diversifying — and a few months ago the company signed a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency to provide “cloud computing” services.
Amazon now has the means, motive and opportunity to provide huge amounts of customer information to its new business partner. An official statement from Amazon headquarters last fall declared: “We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.”
The Central Intelligence Agency has plenty of money to throw around. Thanks to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, we know that the CIA’s annual budget is $14.7 billion; the NSA’s is $10.8 billion.
The founder and CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is bullish on the company’s prospects for building on its initial contract with the CIA. As you might expect from a gung-ho capitalist with about $25 billion in personal wealth, Bezos figures he’s just getting started.
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