07.19.14

Contents

• GNU/Linux
  • Distributions
  • Devices/Embedded
• Free Software/Open Source
• Leftovers

GNU/Linux

• MicroXwin Creators Have A PC That Runs Debian & Android Together

  For right now they have ported this unified Linux distribution to an MK808 mini-PC stick. At VolksPC.org isn’t too much more information right now, but the page explains, “Many desktop distributions such as Debian are already available for ARM and x86. But Debian ARM does not support YouTube playback and because of a lack of drivers, HD video playback is just not possible. Android, on the other hand, does this very well and also has many applications not available on Debian. So we created a unified distribution that allows both Android and Debian LXDE/XFCE applications to run simultaneously at native speeds. On ARM, our distribution is based on a modified ARMHF Debian Wheezy rootfs.”

• VolksPC mini PC run Android and Debian Linux simultaneously

  Tiny, low-powered PCs with ARM-based processors like the MK802 or Tronsmart Vega S89 usually ship with Android software that lets you stream videos, play games, or surf the web on a TV. But many of these little devices can also run other Linux-based operating systems such as Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora.

• Server

  • Docker networking: How Linux containers will change your network

    Docker is making Linux containers a lightweight alternative to hypervisors; network engineers must be prepared. Find out what you need to know about Docker networking.

  • Docker for HPC: Multiple Information Layers for Cluster Management

• Kernel Space

  • The Tour Of Linus Torvalds’ Home Office

  • This is what Linus Torvalds’ office looks like

  • Linux Foundation SysAdmin Konstantin Ryabitsev, an SELinux Expert

    I was working at McGill University InfoSec at the time, and was also active with Fedora Project — which is how my name showed up on the list of candidates. The Linux Foundation was looking for a systems administrator with a strong background in IT security — who would also be a good fit for a decentralized team of passionate open-source advocates. I’m extremely glad I was a good fit for the position, as I can’t imagine receiving as much satisfaction from any other job.

  • KernelASan: Bringing Address Sanitizer To The Linux Kernel

    Work being done by Samsung and other Linux stakeholders is bringing the Address Sanitizer capabilities found in GCC as being useful for detecting potential memory issues within the Linux kernel.

  • Faults in Linux 2.6

    Six researchers (including Julia Lawall of the Coccinelle project) have just released a paper [PDF] (abstract) that looks at the faults in the 2.6 kernel.

  • Stable kernel updates

  • Graphics Stack

    • More Intel DRM Improvements Aimed For Linux 3.17

      With the Linux 3.16 kernel just being a few weeks away from its debut, Intel’s Open-Source Technology Center has out another batch of changes being queued up for drm-next to enter with Linux 3.17.

    • VA-API Adds Support For VP8 Video Encoding

      Intel developers have added support for VP8 video encoding to the open-source Video Acceleration API.

• Applications

  • Adminer—Better Than Awesome!

  • Monitoring Software Zabbix 2.2.5 Is Now Available for Download

    Zabbix, an enterprise-class open-source distributed monitoring solution released under the GPL (free of charge for both commercial and non-commercial use), has finally reached version 2.2.5.

    The Zabbix monitoring solution has been separated into multiple branches, and this is the most advanced one that you can find. The developers actually maintain numerous other stable versions as well, but if you want the most features, this is what you need to get.

  • nmon: A monitor for everything

  • colorwrapper: Quite obviously, the author had me in mind

  • quvi: Build your own video downloader

  • bb: Not so much a game, and not so much an application

  • Easy Video Editing with OpenShot on Linux

  • Instructionals/Technical

    • How to Operate Linux Spycams With Motion

    • EasyEngine – An Auto Installer Script For Managing WordPress-Nginx Websites On Ubuntu, Debian

    • How to install CyanogenMod on unsupported devices

    • Oh No! I Committed to master! What do I do?

    • Miscellaneous Friday quickies: The Plop boot manager; what is it and why would you need it?

    • How to use Deepin 2014 Guest account

    • How to install CyanogenMod on unsupported devices

    • How to access SoundCloud from the command line in Linux

    • Two factor authentication with Yubikey for harddisk encryption with LUKS

    • How to Install and Use SVN with apache dav_svn on Ubuntu 14.04

    • How to set up a highly available Apache cluster using Heartbeat

    • Installing LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB, PHP/PhpMyAdmin) in RHEL/CentOS 7.0

    • How To Install Nuvola 2.4.2 On Ubuntu, Debian And Derivative Systems

    • How To Install Tor Browser 3.6.2 On Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 And Derivatives

    • How To Make Your Kubuntu 14.04 Or Linux Mint 17 KDE System Look Like KDE Plasma 5

    • How To : Install NVIDIA 331.89 (Stable) Graphics Drivers in Ubuntu/Linux Mint Systems

    • How To : Install/Upgrade to Linux Kernel 3.15.5 in Ubuntu/Linux Mint Systems

  • Games

    • Android Games with in-app purchase won’t be called free in EU

      At the end of last year, the European Commission told Google and Apple to address issues around in-app purchases (IAP) – particularly as they mislead unsupervised kids into unwittingly racking up huge bills for their parents to pay.

    • Vote For GOG To Make Galaxy Open Source

      A forum goer of GOG and occasional GamingOnLinux commenter of the name shmerl has been campaigning for this to happen, starting a wishlist item and a forum thread on GOG for users to vote and comment on the matter.

    • SteamOS Update 123 Fixes Multiple Reboots, The Compositor

      Valve pushed down the SteamOS update 123 to their Alchemist Beta channel this week.

      Besides pulling in updated upstream packages from the Debian 7.6 base, there’s a fix for situations where applying updates would require multiple reboots. Additionally, the SteamOS Compositor has been fixed for addressing corruption on the first time a overlay or notification is rendered to the screen. Most of the package updates in alchemist_beta 123 involve security fixes and/or minor upstream package updates.

    • Epic Games Helps Blender By Becoming A Sponsor

    • Open Source FPS/RTS Hybrid Unvanquished Alpha 29 Released

• Desktop Environments/WMs

  • The first Chromebook with a Core i3 processor is here

  • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

    • Geogebra Tool Support in Kig

      Previously we had just one class to handle Geogebra files- KigFilterGeogebra class which inherited from both KigFilter and QAbstractXMLReceiver class. The problem that created was that if we extended the class to read tools, a lot of complicacy was introduced in the functions. Then we separated the QAbstractXMLReceiver part of the KigFlterGeogebra class and moved it to a new class – GeogebraTransformer class which reads the transformed XML file and generates the object-tree of the document. Both The GogebraFilter and the GeogebraToolFilter classes use an instance of this Transformer class to get the object-tree. This way the code duplicacy issue was solved and also simplified the Filter classes.

    • Barcelona Plasma and KDE Frameworks 5.0 Release party

      Barcelona Free Software Users & Hackers are having a Barcelona Free Software Users & Hackers mañana, see you there!

    • Changing Font and Icon Size from settings

    • Konversation goes Frameworks 5

      The Konversation team has started porting the application to Frameworks 5 earlier this month, getting things to build and run on top of KDE’s next-generation libraries.

    • KDecoration2 – The road ahead

      Yesterday I blogged about why Breeze is not the default window decoration in KWin 5.0. The blog post touched a little bit the problems with our decoration API. In short: it’s QWidget based and that doesn’t fit our needs any more. It uses a QWidget as an X11 window. At the same time KWin intercepts the rendering and also input handling, redirects it and forwards it. So why use a QWidget at all? Also using a QWidget is quite a memory waste in the Qt5 world. The QWindow behind the QWidget uses a QXcbShmImage with the same size as the window. As explained in yesterdays blog post the window has the size of the managed window plus the decoration. So for a maximized window we hold an image of the size of the complete window while we just need the titlebar strip. We can do better

    • New scripts to help to port to KF5

      As I continue to work to kdepim* KF5, I need more scripts.

    • KDE Ships July Updates and Second Beta of Applications and Platform 4.14

      This week KDE released updates for its Applications and Development Platform, the third and last in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.13 series. This release also includes an updated Plasma Workspaces 4.11.11. Both releases contain only bugfixes and translation updates, providing a safe and pleasant update for everyone. Beneath these releases KDE announced the second beta of the 4.14 versions of Applications and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing. Your assistance is requested!

    • KDE Applications and Platform 4.14 Beta 2 Officially Released

      The KDE Project developers have just released a second beta of Applications and Platform 4.14, getting this last version a little closer to the final build.

    • Amazon launches Kindle Unlimited subscription service

      In today’s open source roundup: Amazon launches a Netflix for ebooks subscription service. Plus: A KDE skeptic likes the Plasma 5 desktop, and what’s the best Linux distro for game development?

    • SFLPhone-KDE 1.4.0 released!

      Savoir-faire Linux is proud to announce the immediate availability of SFLPhone 1.4.0. This release finally enables video by default. We have refactored the video implementation to be much more robust against a variety of conditions and made the configuration more flexible. It is also now possible to stream a variety of file types and even share your screen. Other interesting features include support for the JACK audio system used by audio industry professionals and hobbyists. Thanks to improvements in audio buffering, latency and resampling, audio quality is noticeably better. The KDE client now has much better Akonadi support. It can now act as a KAddressBook replacement for most phone related scenarios. There will probably be one final KDE4 release before officially making the switch to KF5. The SFLPhone-KDE logic backend, libqtsflphone, has been compatible with Qt5 for over a year, some of the UI dialogs have yet to be ported. As for SFLPhone in general, we plan to merge work that has been done in parallel for a while now to make the daemon more modular, easier to build, more secure and more portable to other operating systems.

    • Plasma Active on QT5/KF5

      Hello, this is my fourth report for my GSoC. This week I have ported the Panel for Plasma Active. The UI of the Active Panel has not changed much. As you can notice some of the Plasmoids are missing because they have not been ported yet (like the Homescreen Plasmoid), but there is no missing functionality from the Panel. Also the notification icons are invisible while they are inactive, as this is the expected behavior.

  • GNOME Desktop/GTK

    • GUADEC 2014 registration is now open!

    • GUADEC Venue

    • GNOME Magnification: User Feedback Questionairre

      In accessibility problem is sometimes (not always, of course) is something the affected user cannot contribute to the solution for themselves. When that happens in a meritoracy this can essentially mean, those users are not in a position to allow them to be able to get their needs heard, unless their views are actively sought, of course.

• Distributions

  • CRUX 3.1 Distro Is for Linux Aficionados

    CRUX, a lightweight and optimized Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users, which is reflected in a straightforward tar.gz-based package system, is now at version 3.1.

    It’s been more than a year since the release of CRUX 3.0 and nothing too spectacular has happened in the meantime. The developers have upgraded a number of packages and other components, but the rest is pretty much the same…

  • 6 Excellent Lightweight Linux Distros for x86 and ARM

    Presenting a nice assortment of lightweight yet fully-functional Linux distros for all occasions. All of these are full distros that do not depend on cloud services; four for x86 and two, count ‘em, two for ARM hardware.

  • New Releases

    • OpenELEC 4.2 Beta 1 Is Now Based on XBMC “Gotham” 13.2 Beta 1 and Linux Kernel 3.15

      The OpenELEC developers have managed to quickly release a new version of their Linux distribution based on the XBMC Gotham 13.2 Beta 1, which is only a week old. This multimedia hub is used on its own, but it can also be implemented in an operating system.

      The distribution is based on the latest XBMC version, which means that its developers are constantly implementing all the bleeding edge features and changes from that software.

  • Arch Family

    • Manjaro 0.8.10 Netbook Edition Is a Light and Powerful OS

  • Slackware Family

    • Slackware is 21 Years Old

      On July 16 1993, Patrick Volkerding announced the availability of Slackware 1.00 on comp.os.linux usenet and since then, Slackware has become one of the oldest Linux distribution that are still actively maintained up to now.

    • Slackware’s 21st, Post-Open Source, and Six Lightweights

      Today in Linux news is a belated Happy Birthday to the oldest living Linux distribution. Matt Asay says we’re living in a “post-open source world.” Jack Wallen says KDE Plasma 5 is “fast but not furious” and Carla Schroder shares a list of six lightweight distros.

  • Red Hat Family

    • Red Hat updates new storage acquisition’s capabilities

      Two months ago Red Hat Inc. bought a company called Inktank, which makes the Ceph Enterprise open source object and block storage software for public and private clouds.

    • Fedora

      • One year, two months with Fedora this time around

        I looked back in the archives and found out that I’ve been running Fedora on this particular laptop (HP Pavilion g6-2210us) for a year and two months.

        Since this el-cheapo, about-$400 AMD laptop is NOT a top-of-the-line Intel-running Thinkpad, it hasn’t gotten anywhere near the same level of love from the Linux kernel and driver developers.

      • Ask Fedora – Getting started and helping out.

        Since we deployed Ask Fedora, we’ve seen a healthy rise in its usage. Unfortunately, I haven’t statistics to show for this. I still need to figure out how I can get some. In this post, I’ll introduce Ask Fedora for the benefit of those still unaware of it and then write a little about how you can help us help yourself and our users via this Q&A forum.

  • Debian Family

    • Looking for help to package Perl6, moar and others for Debian

      Let’s face reality: I cannot find the time to properly maintain Perl6 related packages for Debian. Given the recent surge of popularity of rakudo, it would be a shame to let these packages rot.

    • Derivatives

      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) Has Reached End-of-Life! Upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04!

        • MiniUPnPc Vulnerability Closed in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

        • Could we See a Linux Tablet Brought to Life with Ubuntu Touch?

          Yes, some may argue that Android is molded from Linux Kernel, but the ability to be able to run bash scripts purely in a Linux environment that is not adulterated and polluted with non-Linux features is truly a tech Shangri-La for hardcore Linux lovers.

          This helplessness in getting our wish fulfilled for a Linux tablet has many of us desperately digging for a solution that could satiate our thirst for Linux.

        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon – The ultimate Windows 7 replacement

            Today I am going to be reviewing Linux Mint 17 with the Cinnamon desktop environment which is the best that Linux Mint has to offer.

• Devices/Embedded

  • Raspberry Pi 3D full-body scanner interview

    “In the last five to six years I began working with 3D printers and CNC machines. I started to build stuff, such as furniture and gadgets, and my first Raspberry Pi project was the Pi Snap Box. It’s the size of a mini-PC and is a box you put on the wall with one button on it. If you press the button, it takes three photos. It posts the first photo to a Facebook account for whoever the box belongs to. So for example, if you hang it up in a hairdresser’s salon and get your hair done all nicely, people could then see the good results on the hairdresser’s Facebook page.

  • New Raspberry Pi Adds More USB Ports, Still Just $35

  • $25 MIPS SBC extends Arduino with WiFi and OpenWRT

    The Arbor Linux Shield combines a V-Solution COM running Linux on an Atheros AR9331 with a baseboard that can act as a Linux SBC or as an Arduino shield.

  • Six Clicks: More Linux single-board computers

    DIY and gadget fans alike love the Raspberry Pi. Now, they’ll have more to love with the new Raspberry Pi B+.

  • Raspberry Pi Model B+: The Price is Right at $35

  • Phones

    • OSCON 2014 – The Art of Tizen UI Theme Technology in Various Profiles

      Tizen, the follow on Operating System (OS) from MeeGo, is aimed at various profiles, not only mobile, just like MeeGo was. With that in mind a User Interface (UI) must be scalable and themeable to support these diverse profiles. Daniel Juyung Seo, who is a software engineer from Samsung, will be presenting at OSCON at 11:30am 23rd July a session entitled “The Art of Tizen UI Theme Technology in Various Profiles”. There will also be a stand at OSCON with demonstrations about the Tizen SDK.

    • Ballnux

      • Samsung will fight for talent from this trendy NYC base

        New York’s Meatpacking District will soon be the home to a major new Samsung office in the city. Morris Adjmi’s new office block at 837 Washington St. was reportedly the subject of a bidding war between Facebook, Google, Samsung, and Ferrari, but the Korean technology giant won out. The building sits opposite the High Line and just around the corner from startup incubator Betaworks. The 837 Washington building will play “a central role in developing, attracting, and retaining some of the best talent in New York City,” Samsung tells The Wall Street Journal.

      • [Pictures] Samsung Z (SM-Z910F) Tizen in Gold

        The Tizen Samsung Z (SM-910F) Smartphone did make an appearance at the recent Tizen Developer Summit Russia 2014, and eager Russian developers were able to get their hands on some Tizen Smartphone goodness.

    • Android

      • BlackBerry Explains How It is Different from Blackphone

        Blackphone has finally started shipping to consumers who have pre-ordered the device. For those of you who haven’t already heard the name Blackphone, it is a device born out of the partnership between Geeksphone, a Spanish manufacturer, and Silent Circle, a security company. Blackphone runs a special version of Android dubbed PrivatOS. Its manufacturers claim that it is ideal of IT employees, public figures, executives and anyone who does not want to compromise on their privacy and security. However, in reality, the device is primarily aimed at consumers who may not require high-end security.

      • CyanogenMod working on Google Now competitor?

        Over the past 24 hours early reports have emerged suggesting CyanogenMod (CM) are working on a rival application to Google Now. The so-called ‘CM Home’ looks very similar to Now adopting what appears to be an assortment of card-based information panels which read various snippets of information such as local weather, time, things-to-do and so on.

Free Software/Open Source

• Google Released LiquidFun 1.1, Open-source 2D Physics Engine

  Google announced 1.1 release of LiquidFun, an open-source 2D physics engine including fluid simulation. The engine opens new possibilities to both game developers and UI designers, says Google. LiquidFun now officially supports iOS in addition to Android, Linux, and OS X.

• Open Source Vs. Open Enough

  So what does this mean for the networking world? Open Daylight (run by the Linux Foundation) enables organizations to download an “open source networking platform” to run their networks. This is the Hydrogen release, which comes in basic, virtualization, and service provider editions. I’m sure there have been a lot of downloads to test the software and to play with it in an IT sandbox, but I have not heard of anyone using it in production (but would be happy to talk to anyone who is).

• Events

  • 18 interviews with speakers of upcoming OSCON 2014

  • Linux Security Summit 2014 Schedule Published

• Web Browsers

  • As the Web Grows, Do Browser Makers Wield Too Much Power?

    Do you ever take a step back and look at how central the web is to your life? For some people, it’s an always connected, ever present adjunct to their actual consciousness. Futurists like Ray Kurzweil even predict that we will eventually effectively merge with the web and other technology tools, giving us almost superhuman abilities to instantly access information.

  • Chrome

    • Chromecast Now Lets Users Move Android Content to Their TVs

      Android smartphones and tablets are great devices for many tasks, but sometimes you just wish you had a bigger screen to see the videos and other content that you are viewing. Now you can do just that, using Google’s $35 Chromecast dongle, which has just been upgraded to push Android content from your small devices to your television screen.

  • Mozilla

    • Mozilla Reveals Far Reaching Global Push for Firefox OS

      Firefox OS has “unlocked the mobile ecosystem” and is quickly expanding across a broad range of devices and product categories in Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific, according to a new post from Mozilla. There are those who have questioned whether Firefox OS is finding an enthusiastic audience, but many people questioned Android when it first arrived, too.

• SaaS/Big Data

  • Mirantis and Oracle Partner on OpenStack

    The deal could be worth tens of millions of dollars as Oracle digs deeper into the cloud.

  • Mirantis Delivers Mirantis OpenStack Integration With Oracle Linux and Oracle VM

  • Mirantis OpenStack Adds Oracle Linux and Oracle VM Integration

• Databases

  • PhpMyAdmin 4.2.6 Finally Fixes Multi Column Sorting

    PhpMyAdmin, the popular tool written in PHP and intended to handle the administration of MySQL databases, is now at version 4.2.6.

  • Bi-Directional Replication for PostgreSQL announced by 2ndQuadrant

    Low overhead, low maintenance technology for geographically distributed databases supports up to 48 nodes

• Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

  • Musing: Microsoft to offer its software on Linux – A theoretical consideration.

    BREAKING NEWS: MICROSOFT RELEASES ITS OFFICE SUITE FOR LINUX

    Take a few seconds to consider how you would feel, then maybe be kind enough to hear my view.

    So it’s great? Microsoft’s flagship product now available to those who in the past had only LO, Abiword etc to chose from. Now you can run natively on your Linux box that which Windows users have been for years.

    Bad idea? Yes completely, here’s why. Let me just add before someone mentions it, yes I know Microsoft produces code for the Kernel. Have I an issue? No, because in that respect it is as part of a team of developers who all have various quality checks and testing – kernel devs don’t mindlessly accept all code and say “cheers mate” as they paste it in with a text editor. The process I’d suggest is more complex and even if Microsoft wanted to (which I’m sure it wouldn’t) there’s little chance of anything “naughty” going on there. So for me, Microsoft contributions are welcomed, if with a little surprise at myself saying that.

• Funding

  • PredictionIO raises $2.5m to bolster open source machine learning platform

  • PredictionIO Gets $2.5M for Open Source Machine Learning

    PredictionIO has quietly raised $2.5 million in funding to make machine learning accessible to developers. Dubbing itself “the MySQL of prediction,” the company’s Open Source Machine Learning Server is already empowering hundreds of applications and more than 4,000 developers.

• FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

  • coreutils-8.23 released [stable]

  • GCC Code Gets Updated For Go 1.3 Language

    Released the middle of last month was Google’s Go 1.3 programming language. Updated Go 1.3 code is now landing within the GNU Compiler Collection.

    Go 1.3 offers many changes and improvements throughout, Godoc static analysis support, GC supports Native Client execution sandbox on 32-bit/64-bit x86 architectures, and experimental support for new operating systems. Those unfamiliar with last month’s release of Go 1.3 can read more via the release notes. There’s also other commentary about the Go 1.3 language update via the Go Blog.

• Public Services/Government

  • Kerala Legislature moves to open source software; LibreOffice

    The Kerala Legislative Assembly (Niyamsabha) has shifted to free and open software, following the expiry of support period to Windows XP.

    It has also started producing all its documentation, both digital and printed materials, using the free and open source office suite LibreOffice from yesterday (July 17, 2014).

• Licensing

  • FOSS & the IRS: Now We’re Talking

    We’ve been watching with great interest this week as the travails of FOSS organizations with the US Internal Revenue Service have become a hot topic. When our client, Jim Nelson of Yorba, discussed blogging about the IRS rejection of Yorba’s application for 501c3 status with us, we hoped but did not expect that the situation, to which we had discreetly called community and company attention for years, would finally receive some. We’re very glad that’s now happening. Unfortunately, it’s really too late. Because of the long delays in determination imposed by the IRS in its increasingly anti-FOSS positioning, neither the full consequences of the IRS’s present position nor the state of our legal technology in response can be seen from the materials currently under discussion.

• Openness/Sharing

  • WFMU Building Open Source “Audience Engine” Web CMS For Radio Stations

    New Jersey’s WFMU.FM is a legendary freeform non-commercial radio station that embodies community from its supportive listeners to its wide-ranging programming. WFMU recently embarked on a new community adventure with their decision to develop an open source version of their currently proprietary CMS (content management system). The new CMS is called Audience Engine and its designed not only to manage content and build community, but to support fundraising.

  • Open Data

    • In Praise of Open Postcodes

• Standards/Consortia

  • Google’s Nest and Samsung partner on ‘new’ home automation standard

Leftovers

• Health/Nutrition

  • Feds Want to Conscript FedEx to Block Your Cheap Medicine

    Why should law enforcement agencies do their own footwork when they can simply threaten others into doing it for them? Specifically, why should the United States government trouble itself with enforcing its silly rules against you and I purchasing our medicine over the Internet when it can hold package delivery services liable for delivering our orders from point A to point B. It’s deputization, the hard way, and cargo delivery giant FedEx is on the receiving end as Uncle Sam looks to conscript assistance for its prohibition efforts.

• Security

  • Friday’s security updates

• Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

  • Jim Martin: U.S. should look at itself, too

  • The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union by Serhii Plokhy, review: ‘fascinating and readable’

    Some Russian officials blame the United States for everything. Earlier this year Vladimir Putin, stung by online criticism of his policies, said the whole internet was an ongoing CIA project. His underlings see US money behind any criticism they face from Russian non-government organisations, and as the driver behind revolutions that reduced their influence in Ukraine and Georgia.

  • Interesting tidbits from the latest dump of Clinton administration documents

  • New York Times story prompted Clinton to question CIA’s info on bin Laden, according to newly released memo

    When a New York Times article cast doubt on the accusation Usama bin Laden had a hand in the 1998 bombings of African embassies, President Clinton questioned his own CIA, according to a note he scrawled to his national security adviser.

  • President Clinton Questioned CIA’s Case on bin Laden

  • Documents Reveal Talk On Iraq and Bin Laden

    President Bill Clinton’s advisers carefully considered how to explain the president’s military action against Iraq in 1998 as the House was debating his impeachment, according to records from the Clinton White House that were released Friday.

  • Clinton doc dump: Abortion, Osama bin Laden, Sonia Sotomayor

  • Clinton papers: New details on bin Laden, Haiti, SCOTUS

    The latest batch shows Clinton asked his national security aides whether the CIA overstated bin Laden’s role in the August 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Clinton made the query after reading a The New York Times story.

  • 15 Militants Are Reported Killed in U.S. Drone Strike in Pakistan

    Fifteen militants were killed early Saturday morning when an American drone struck a compound in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, according to local residents and a security official. It was the fourth known drone strike in the region since Pakistan launched a military operation there last month.

  • US Drone Strike Kills 11 in North Waziristan

    This is the second major US drone strike in three days, after a Wednesday strike killed 20 people, mostly ethnic Uzbeks, who Pakistan claimed were likely members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

  • 11 Militants Killed in US Drone Strike in North Waziristan

    According to sources, the attack took place at around 3 a.m. when an unmanned aircraft targeted a compound with eight missiles in Dattakhel area of the tribal region, killing all the 11people inside.

  • US man arrested with ammunition in Pakistan

    A United States citizen was briefly arrested at Islamabad airport on Friday for attempting to board a plane carrying ammunition, Pakistan officials said, in the second such case since May.

  • Gun-carrying US major held, freed on bail

    A US Army major was stopped from boarding a flight on the charge of having a magazine loaded with 15 bullets at Benazir Bhutto Islamabad International Airport (BBIIAP) on Friday.

  • Russia-backed separatists shot down MH17 plane: Barack Obama

  • America builds case against rebels

    The United States has begun building a case linking pro-Russian separatists to the shocking downing of the Malaysia Airlines jet in Ukraine.

  • Experts: Ukraine airliner disaster has implications for U.S. security

    Use of surface-to-air missiles by extra-military personnel to shoot down civilian aircraft may be an emerging threat to the United States, a terrorism expert said.

  • Somalia’s Got a New Commando Squad

    CIA and U.S. Special Forces helping train Somali army

  • Conspiracy theories continue to find resonance everywhere

    But that was before information was everywhere and people couldn’t just tap a phone and get the real dope. Really? Then get this: today, the percentage of Americans who believe in a deep JFK assassination conspiracy is not lower, but higher, at 62%.

  • Is This The Summer That America Unravels?

    Japan is becoming similarly frustrated with the U.S. It is rearming like crazy to confront an aggressive China. Both Asian powers apparently assume that Obama won’t guarantee the security of the Japanese as America had in the past.

  • Obama’s ratings tumble in Germany, Russia in wake of NSA spying, Ukraine crisis

  • Other commercial airliners shot down

  • Here’s the last time Russia shot down a passenger plane

  • The U.S. once shot down a commercial airliner too

    Five years after the Soviets shot down Korean Air Flight 007, the US Navy created an international incident of its own. On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes destroyed an Iranian Airbus A300 that was on its way from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. Nearly 300 people — most of whom were Iranian and on their way to Mecca — were killed in the crash, including 66 children.

  • Facts Needed on Malaysian Plane Shoot-Down

    As usual, the mainstream U.S. media is rushing to judgment over the crash of a Malaysian airliner in war-torn eastern Ukraine, but the history of U.S. government’s deceptions might be reason to pause and let a careful investigation uncover the facts, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

  • Obama Warns Russia, Ukrainian Separatists Over Downed Airliner

    President Barack Obama delivered an unmistakable warning to Russia and Moscow-backed Ukrainian separatists on Thursday not to tamper with the crash site of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet apparently shot down over rebel-controlled territory.

  • Obama and Fast-Moving Global Crises

  • Israel Says It Invaded Gaza Over Tunnels Like These

    Gazans have been building tunnels to the Sinai desert for years for smuggling. In this war, they dug out new tunnels to send fighters into Israel. That’s what the Israelis are trying to destroy.

  • Hamas is destroying Gaza

    Hamas seized control of Gaza seven years ago. Its reign has been disastrous. Unemployment and poverty are around 40 percent. The government is bankrupt. Israel’s control of Gaza’s borders has played a huge role in that. But Hamas has done everything possible to tighten Israel’s grip and delegitimize Palestinian resistance.

  • 9 of a family buried as Gaza toll tops 300

    Nine members of a single family, including four children, were buried in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, killed by an Israeli artillery shell that hit their home Friday night, as artillery and small arms fire echoed nearby from clashes between Hamas militants and Israeli forces, reports The New York Times.

  • Death toll of Israel’s Gaza onslaught rises to 321

  • Gaza Live: French Foreign Minister calls for urgent truce as toll tops 300

  • ‘We are not a military building, we are not a strategic building. We are a hospital’

    “Evacuate,” said the voice at the other end the line. It was 8.50pm, just over 90 minutes before Israel would confirm it had launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip. The hospital was at risk.

  • Gaza’s El-Wafa hospital ‘vanished’ as strikes continue

    The Israeli military destroys el-Wafa hospital in the Gaza Strip, Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Miller hears, as he witnesses another strike on a 4-storey block elsewhere in Gaza.

  • Gaza Live: Death toll in 12 days now at 312, say medics

  • Ukraine: MH17 tragedy shows need for peace, not warmongering

  • The MH17 tragedy shows need for peace, not war mongering

    Yet many Western governments, with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott joining in, are exploiting this tragedy and using it to escalate rhetoric and tensions with Russia, raising the prospect of the war expanding.

• Finance

  • Monogamous no more

    Latin America’s ties with China are far more recent than those with Russia. They are also much more important (see chart). Chinese trade with the region has grown more than 20-fold in this century; China has become a big investor and lender. There are some tensions. Brazil frets that China imports only raw materials while undercutting its often-uncompetitive manufacturers in third markets. Chinese mining and oil firms are slowly adapting to social and environmental concerns.

  • European Parliament allows Lithuania to adopt euro

    “This is good news for Lithuania, Baltic states and the stability of Europe,” said parliamentary rapporteur Werner Langen [official profile] who praised Lithuania’s improving economy which meets all criteria for euro eligibility. Lithuania joins fellow Baltic States Latvia (2014) and Estonia (2011) in adopting the euro.

• PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

  • David Alexander Bullock on Detroit Water, Ralph Nader on Export-Import Bank

• Censorship

  • Australia’s proposed spy law perceived as Governmental Mismanagement

    Buzzing through the social media sphere yesterday was the story about how a proposed new bill would see potential whistleblowers facing up to 10 years in prison for leaks.

  • NBC reverses; Mohyeldin to return to Gaza to cover ‘Palestinian side of story’

  • Questions of bias swirl after NBC removes, reinstates a Gaza reporter

    It’s not clear why NBC’s talented foreign correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin, who witnessed the killing of four Palestinian cousins in Gaza on Wednesday, was removed from his post later that day, then reinstated tonight.

  • Glenn Greenwald: Why Did NBC Pull Veteran Reporter After He Witnessed Israeli Killing of Gaza Kids?

    NBC is facing questions over its decision to pull veteran news correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin out of Gaza just after he personally witnessed the Israeli military’s killing of four Palestinian boys on a Gaza beach. Mohyeldin was kicking a soccer ball around with the boys just minutes before they died. He is a longtime reporter in the region. In his coverage, he reports on the Gaza conflict in the context of the Israeli occupation, sparking criticism from some supporters of the Israeli offensive. Back in 2008 and 2009, when he worked for Al Jazeera, Mohyeldin and his colleague Sherine Tadros were the only foreign journalists on the ground in Gaza as Israel killed 1,400 people in what it called “Operation Cast Lead.” We speak to Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, who has revealed that the decision to pull Mohyeldin from Gaza and remove him from reporting on the situation came from NBC executive David Verdi. Greenwald also comments on the broader picture of the coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict in the U.S. media.

• Privacy

  • Peter MacKay’s Privacy Deficit Turned These Lives Upside Down

    Recently we’ve seen a number of disturbing stories come to light that underline just how important this campaign is. It can sometimes be difficult for everyday Canadians to see privacy as an issue that impacts their everyday lives — when in fact the human consequences of privacy breaches can be immense.

  • Police Play NSA: Warrantless Data Collection the New Normal? Don’t Cops Have Better Things to Do?!

  • Survey: 83 percent of Americans favor police warrants to search cell phones

    Eighty-three percent of Americans believe police should obtain a warrant before searching the contents of a suspect’s cell phone, according to the results of a recent survey.

  • Drip Drip, Drip.

    It seems then that latest ‘emergency’ national security legislation, the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers or DRIP (If people are actually spending time putting these acronyms together they should probably stop now…), lives up to and exceeds its namesake. Yes it’s annoying, and like the slow passage of water erodes what it is passing through. With DRIP it is both trust and our liberties.

  • Ohio senators support NSA reform

    Measures to significantly reform the National Security Agency have the support of Ohio’s senators.

    Both Sens. Sherrod Brown (D) and Rob Portman (R) said they favor reform of the spy agency, which has been criticized for collecting information on millions of Americans.

  • Senate defense spending bill slashes IT by half-billion, uplifts cyber

    The Senate Appropriations Committee passed a defense spending bill Thursday that would cut defense IT funding by a half-billion dollars and reduce President Obama’s military budget requests by $1.4 billion overall.

  • Diplomacy essential to address cascading crises

    America’s brand is especially important, especially now. And yet it’s taken a self-inflicted hit in at least two key areas — surveillance and drones — according to a new Pew Research Center report released this week.

  • EFF Gives Court More Detail on Government’s Destruction of Evidence

    EFF has filed the final brief in its dispute with the government over evidence preservation in Jewel v. NSA, one of our ongoing lawsuits against mass surveillance. As the brief explains, the government has admitted to destroying years of evidence of its mass spying, and this destruction continues today. In fact, at an emergency hearing in June, the government claimed that it was incapable of complying with a court order to preserve evidence relating to the mass interception of Internet communications it is conducting under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.

  • US needs to restore trust following NSA revelations, tech groups say

  • Privilege and power

    Why stop at spying and the NSA? This particular sentence fits just about any situation. Any question will do. For instance, why does the United States spend more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined? Answer: See above.

  • Debating the Efficacy of NSA Surveillance Oversight

    The question of whether the oversight of the federal government’s surveillance activities is effective came to a head on Capitol Hill on Friday as former National Security Agency general counsel Stewart Baker and representatives of technology industry and civil liberties interests butted heads.

    Read more: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/legaltimes/id=1202663815775/Debating-the-Efficacy-of-NSA-Surveillance-Oversight#ixzz37v3f4wEE

  • Do you encrypt your email? Edward Snowden says you should: opinion

    In his latest interview with the Guardian, Edward Snowden says that professionals with obligations of confidentiality, such as doctors, lawyers, accountants and journalists, should take the extra step to keep their communications safe.

  • Snowden Urges Cloud Providers to Adopt Zero Knowledge System to Protect Customers from NSA

  • What Apple has in common with Britain’s top spy agency

    Apple’s new futuristic $5 billion headquarters, now under construction in Cupertino, California, bears a serious resemblance to the headquarters of Britain’s top spy agency, GCHQ.

  • Snowden: Facebook is allowing the government to see your messages

    In a lengthy interview with the Guardian, NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden spoke with editor Alan Rusbridger about his extraordinary rise to infamy. Currently in exile in Russia, he talked about how he disseminated documents about the activities of the NSA to numerous countries: “Once you start splitting them over jurisdictions and things like that it becomes much more difficult to subvert their intentions. Nobody could stop it”. He remains defiant. He may be an outlaw but “it’s been vindicating to see the reaction from lawmakers, judges, public bodies around the world, civil liberties activists who have said it’s true that we have a right to at least know the broad outlines of what our government’s doing in our name and what it’s doing against us”.

  • Edward Snowden: Google shouldn’t be trusted without ‘verifying what their activities are’

    Speaking in a video interview with Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, Snowden said that while Google can’t “task a drone to drop a bomb on your house”, some form of protection should be in place for those who interact with the company.

  • NSA and the FBI spy on Muslim-American leaders

  • Spying on American Muslims—again

  • Sikh Coalition Files FOIA Request for NSA and FBI ‘Raghead’ Emails

  • Religious Group Demands NSA Documents in Ethnic-Slur Probe

  • Sikh-Americans seek official documents on use of ethnic slurs

  • Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans

  • Why Germany feels dissed

    But the U.S. also needs to learn a larger lesson: Alliances, even long-standing ones, need careful tending. They can’t be taken for granted.

  • Edward Snowden interview – the edited transcript

  • The Guardian view on Edward Snowden’s challenges for society

  • Ten Selections From The Guardian’s Exhaustive Edward Snowden Interview

  • I, spy: Edward Snowden in exile

    He doesn’t drink, he’s reading Dostoevsky and, no, he doesn’t wear a disguise. A year after blowing the whistle on the NSA, America’s most wanted talks frankly about his life as a hero-pariah – and why the world remains ‘more dangerous than Orwell imagined’.

  • Snowden: Dropbox is an NSA surveillance target, use Spideroak instead

  • Snowden calls on businesses to encrypt data, shun Dropbox

  • Snowden: Don’t use Dropbox, it hates privacy

  • Snowden says Dropbox is ‘hostile to privacy’

  • DropBox ‘hostile to privacy,’ argues Snowden, urges switch to SpiderOak

  • Dropbox is ‘hostile to privacy’, Snowden claims

  • Edward Snowden: Dropbox is ‘hostile to privacy’

    Dropbox is a very popular cloud storage service, but NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is no fan. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Snowden called Dropbox a “targeted, wannabe PRISM partner” that is “very hostile to privacy.”

    Snowden also isn’t happy about Dropbox’s decision in April to add former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to its Board of Directors. Snowden called Rice “probably the most anti-privacy official you can imagine.”

  • More people than ever oppose the NSA practices Edward Snowden revealed. Why should he spend his life in prison?

    The justice system would never allow Snowden to present a real defense at trial. That’s just one reason to give him amnesty

  • Edward Snowden Could Live With Life in Gitmo — But Can We?

  • Snowden may end up in Guantanamo Bay… and he “can live with that”

  • Op-Ed: Why a government program could be labeling you as a terrorist

    An 85-year-old photographer in California is claiming in a lawsuit against the Obama Administration that he was falsely targeted by the FBI after taking pictures of the Rainbow Swash, a piece of artwork on a 140-foot tall storage tank in Boston. To the average person, the idea that the FBI or any federal agency would so carelessly classify people as exhibiting ‘suspicious behavior’ is probably pretty crazy. But to anyone who knows the history of the Suspicious Activity Reporting program, it’s just another example of the Orwellian nature of United States counter-terrorism efforts.

  • The Worst Trolls On The Internet Are The Government Trolls

    According to newly revealed documents, British spy agency GCHQ is manipulating online discussions, infiltrating the computers of specific targets, purposely destroying reputations, altering the results of online polls, and using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for propaganda and espionage purposes. If people don’t start getting outraged about this now, the governments of the western world are going to see it as a green light to do even more. Eventually, it might get so bad that we won’t be able to trust much of anything that we see on the Internet.

  • Is the NSA Spying on Siberian Schoolchildren?

    Russian media outlets reported this week that education officials had asked teachers in the central region of Kirov to avoid using Gmail or any foreign-based cloud service at school. They also told students not to use foreign search engines on school computers.

• Civil Rights

  • US Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis

    As tens of thousands of children cross the U.S. border fleeing violence in their native Central American home countries, we look at the historical roots of the crisis. The United States has a long and sadly bloody history of destabilizing democratic governments in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — the very countries that are now the sources of this latest migration wave. This week saw the first planeload of children deported to Honduras since President Obama vowed to speed up the removal of more than 57,000 youth who have fled to the United States from Central America in recent months. The group of 38 deportees included 21 children between the ages of 18 months and 15 years, along with 17 female family members. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the experience of Cordova and others should demonstrate to Central Americans that “they will not be welcomed to this country with open arms.”

  • UK Foreign Office Reverses Course On CIA Rendition Files ‘Lost’ To Water Damage: Papers Have Now ‘Dried Out’

    No one’s immune from careless document handling, not when a government’s in charge! The ongoing war of words over the Internal Revenue Service’s lackluster data retention continues, with the agency claiming emails relevant to a House investigation all simply vanished during a series of coincidental computer crashes. That these should have been backed up to hard copy (as IRS policy dictates) and backed up further by servers elsewhere has been the topic of conversation for a few weeks now, but all the posturing in the world isn’t going to bring these emails back.

  • Lost US extraordinary rendition files have ‘dried out’, Foreign Office says

    The Foreign Office was accused of a cover-up after ministers admitted there were ”limited records” of flights landing and taking off on Diego Garcia in 2002, adding they understood they were ”incomplete due to water damage”.

  • Inspector general probing US ‘Cuban Twitter’ plan

    ZunZuneo’s organizers wanted the social network to grow slowly to avoid detection by the Cuban government. They hoped the network would reach critical mass so that dissidents could organize “smart mobs” — mass gatherings called at a moment’s notice — that could trigger political demonstrations, or “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.” At its peak, ZunZuneo drew in more than 68,000 Cubans, according to USAID, before it mysteriously disappeared in 2012.

  • Man’s death after apparent chokehold by NYPD officer to be probed

    Eric Garner, 43, had just broken up a fight in the borough’s Tompkinsville neighborhood when he was approached by several police officers, said two witnesses in telephone interviews with The Times. Police said the officers approached Garner on Thursday afternoon to question him about the possible sale of illegal cigarettes.

  • Supreme Court is marching in lockstep with the police state

    The military can arrest and detain American citizens. In refusing to hear Hedges v. Obama (2014), a legal challenge to the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), the Supreme Court affirmed that the president and the U.S. military can arrest and indefinitely detain individuals, including American citizens.