● 08.21.14

● Links 21/8/2014: Conferences of Linux Foundation, Elephone Emerges

Posted in News Roundup at 4:19 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• While Internet connectivity in the home is now mainstream, gateway security to protect users is not. It’s a gap that startup Itus Networks is aiming to address with a Linux-powered home gateway device called the iGuardian. Before Itus can deliver the iGuardian though, the company needs to raise $125,000 on crowdfunding site Kickstarter in order to build the device. The Kickstarter campaign ends on Sept. 12, and as of Aug. 19, $61,000 has been raised.

Desktop

• With all of that said, how then to deploy NX technology to tablets? Users want to use their own tablets to connect to our GNOME desktops, but we cannot touch the hardware. Users can download the Nomachine/NX client, but do not have the right key pair and there are settings and optimizations that would difficult for them to do on their own. So we can’t touch them, and it’s not secure to email them the settings and keypair. We kicked around some ideas and decided the best approach was to allow users to connect their Apple and Android tablets to City Workstations via USB and then initiate a small amount of software that mounts and then installs the .nxs and .cfg files needed to make the device work as expected. This process is initiated by them via icon, and they accept the dialog alerting that there is no support in the event of problems or failure.

• In the LinuxCon keynote, Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, said that Linux now runs everything, everywhere. He’s right. From supercomputers to stock markets to smartphones, Linux dominates most computing markets the way Germany did Brazil in the 2014 World Cup. But, during the Linux kernel panel, Linux’s founder, Linus Torvalds, admitted that he still regrets that Linux doesn’t rule the desktop.

• Linux may be dominating the world – powering super computers, infrastructure of stock exchanges and sites like Amazon, Facebook, Google, space missions of NASA , air traffic controls or airlines and much more. In consumer space Linux, via Android, controls over 85% of the market and its fast capturing the casual laptop market through Chromebooks. In a nutshell Linux has become omnipresent in today’s world. As Jim Zemlin said during his keynote Linux is one of the greatest shared technologies in the world.

• Acer, which has been rapidly gaining popularity as a portable computing hardware manufacturer, has been placing some heavy bets on Google’s cloud-centric Chrome OS platform. The company has a fleet of portable computers based on Chrome OS, and is taking Chrome OS to the desktop form factor with a new system.

• Acer’s Chromebox CXI system, announced on Thursday, is seen back-mounted in the photo and runs an Intel Celeron 2957U dual-core 1.4GHz processor. It also has a 16GB solid-state drive, and–like other systems based on Chrome OS–offers a fast boot-up time that Acer claims takes only eight seconds.

Kernel Space

• The nonprofit Linux Foundation announced a new Linux Certification Program to help systems administrators show off some credentials and get jobs based upon them. There are two certifications – one for early career admins and one for engineer-level admins.

• It’s a common story: Businesses desperately want Linux savvy employees. Programmers and system administrators who cut their teeth on the gcc and the BASH shell want jobs. But, between them rises the wall of human resources, which wants degrees and certifications. The Linux Foundation introduced an answer at LinuxCon: a new Linux Foundation Certification Program for both early-career and engineer-level systems administrators.

• As LinuxCon 2014 kicks off this week in Chicago, the Linux Foundation has announced that it has won new support from across the technology industry, including several hardware companies.

• The nonprofit organization said on Wednesday that SanDisk, Seagate, and Western Digital have become Linux Foundation members, all three of which are interested in using Linux and open-source software to power storage systems.

• One problem with Linux has been its implementation of system calls. As Andy Lutomirski pointed out recently, it’s very messy. Even identifying which system calls were implemented for which architectures, he said, was very difficult, as was identifying the mapping between a call’s name and its number, and mapping between call argument registers and system call arguments.

• Some user programs like strace and glibc needed to know this sort of information, but their way of gathering it together—although well accomplished—was very messy too.

• Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, talks about Linux a lot. During his keynote at the LinuxCon USA event here, Zemlin noted that it’s often difficult for him to come up with new material for talking about the state of Linux at this point.

• Every year at LinuxCon, Zemlin delivers his State of Linux address, but this time he took a different approach. Zemlin detailed what he actually does and how the Linux Foundation works to advance the state of Linux.

• Fundamentally it’s all about enabling the open source collaboration model for software development.

• “We are seeing a shift now where the majority of code in any product or service is going to be open source,” Zemlin said.

• Zemlin added that open source is the new Pareto Principle for software development, where 80 percent of software code is open source. The nature of collaborative development itself has changed in recent years. For years the software collaboration was achieved mostly through standards organizations.

• The Linux Foundation’s CII Adds Hitachi and NEC to Roster of Companies Working to Identify and Fund Open Source Projects in Need of Assistance

• What is a zombie shuffling desk? What does the d in systemd stand for? Test your knowledge of these Linux trivia questions and watch your fellow Linux community members, including kernel developer and Linux Foundation Fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman, attempt to answer in our annual LinuxCon and CloudOpen Live Linux Trivia video. This year the video opened the conference, playing to the live audience before the morning keynote sessions.

Graphics Stack

• Earlier this month at SIGGRAPH Vancouver we were surprised yet delighted by the news of Khronos developing a next-generation graphics API following OpenGL 4.5. All of the Khronos Group slides about OpenGL 4.5, OpenGL-Next, and their other industry-standard APIs have now been published from their SIGGRAPH track.

• Besides the recent work to support OpenGL Geometry Shaders for Sandy Bridge in Mesa, users of Intel “Sandy Bridge” HD Graphics can also be thankful for the forthcoming Linux 3.17 kernel. Early testing of Linux 3.17 has revealed that for at least some Intel Sandy Bridge hardware are OpenGL performance improvements with the newer kernel code.

• NVIDIA put out version 6.5 of their Compute Unified Device Architecture today and it is a big step ahead, including better development tooling for CUDA Fortran.

• Mesa, an open source implementation of the OpenGL specification and a system for rendering interactive 3D graphics, is now at version 10.2.6.

• Yesterday I shared some benchmarks showing Intel Sandy Bridge HD Graphics performance increasing on Linux 3.17 for this several year old architecture. This came as a surprise but the good news is the performance improvements on this new Linux kernel don’t stop with OpenGL but extend to CPU performance too.

Benchmarks

• Tests I carried out last month with a Haswell-based Apple MacBook Air showed Linux largely smashing OS X 10.9 with the latest open-source graphics driver code on Linux over Apple’s OpenGL driver. Today I’m testing the latest OS X 10.9.4 state against the newest Linux kernel and Intel Mesa driver code on Ubuntu while this time using an older Sandy Bridge era Apple Mac Mini.

Applications

• Yorba is pleased to announce the release of Geary 0.6.2 (All users are adviced to upgrade to this version) and 0.7.1, Yorba’s next-generation mail client for GNOME 3.

• Geary, a lightweight email program designed around conversations and built for the GNOME desktop by the Yorba software group, is now at version 0.7.1.

• Rygel, a home media solution (UPnP AV MediaServer) that allows users to easily share audio, video, and pictures to other devices, is now at version 0.23.3.

• Audacity’s been around for a long time—since mid-2000—and for good reason. It’s a relatively lightweight, open-source, and completely free audio editor that can handle pretty much every task you throw at it. Need to edit together a podcast? No problem. Looking to do some simple noise reduction? Looking to turn your PC into a music computer? Audacity’s got you covered.

• Orca 3.13.90, a free, open source, flexible, and extensible screen reader that provides access to the graphical desktop via speech and refreshable Braille, is now available for download and testing.

Proprietary

Instructionals/Technical

Games

• 4MLinux Game Edition, a special Linux distribution based on Busybox, Dropbear, OpenSSH, and PuTTY, which also happens to feature a large number of games, is now at version 9.1 Beta.

• The 4MLinux distributions are among the smallest ones in the world, but that doesn’t mean the developers can’t add a ton of interesting games into the mix.

• This SparkyLinux game edition builds in access to a large collection of popular games compiled for the Linux platform. It brings the latest game fare via the Steam and Desura platforms. It provides handy access from a quick launch bar to a dozen plus emulators to let you run top-line games from leading gaming boxes and platforms.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• Version 1.11 of the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) has been released and it represents a huge milestone for those depending upon the library as part of their desktop.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The KDE Community has announced the latest major updates to KDE Applications delivering primarily improvements and bugfixes. Plasma Workspaces and the KDE Development Platform are frozen and receiving only long term support; those teams are focused on the transition to Plasma 5 and Frameworks 5. This 4.14 release is dedicated to long time KDE contributor Volker Lanz who passed away last April. The full announcement has more information and details.

• We start the next in our little test series of different icon sets. Please, again, participate in our little game and help us to learn more about the usability of icon design.

• The KDE Applications stack has been updated for KDE 4.,14 while the Plasma Workspaces and Development Platform are transitioning to Plasma 5 and Frameworks 5.

• Almost a year has passed since the last release of the Wacom Tablet KCM. A lot has happened on my side but I finally found the time to to some hacking on the code again.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• WebKitGTK+, a version of the WebKit open source web engine that uses GTK+ as its user-facing frontend, has reached version 2.5.2.

• Cheese, a Photobooth-inspired GNOME application for taking pictures and videos from a webcam that also includes graphical effects based on the gstreamer backend, has reached version 3.14 Beta 1.

• I’ve recently been hard at work on a new and updated version of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines, and am pleased to announce that this will be ready for the upcoming 3.14 release.

Distributions

• HandyLinux is a newer operating system and its developers have tried to provide a clear and familiar desktop interface. It might feel like it has a Windows 8 vibe, which is probably an effect of the theme used, but the OS is actually quite interesting.

Arch Family

• The Linux desktop community has reached a sad state. Ubuntu 14.04 was a disappointing release and Fedora is taking way too long between releases. Hell, OpenSUSE is an overall disaster. It is hard to recommend any Linux-based operating system beyond Mint. Even the popular KDE plasma environment and its associated programs are in a transition phase, moving from 4.x to 5.x. As exciting as KDE 5 may be, it is still not ready for prime-time; it is recommended to stay with 4 for now.

Red Hat Family

Fedora

• For those curious about what’s going on with “Fedora.Next” in revolutionizing the Fedora Linux distribution, Matthew Miller — Fedora’s new Project Leader — is presenting at LinuxCon Chicago today covering the ongoing working for the Red Hat sponsored distribution.

• Matthew Miller’s presentation is entitled “How Linux Distros Became Boring (and Fedora’s Plan to Put Boring Where It Belongs).” It doesn’t look like I’ll make it over to LinuxCon Chicago due to the weather over here in Indiana today, but fortunately for all those outside of Chicago, you can already find Matthew’s slides online.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Canonical has announced that quite a few OpenJDK 7 vulnerabilities have been found and corrected in its Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system.

• That news is being augmented today with a joint announcement from VMware and Canonical that Canonical’s open source operating system, Ubuntu, is now certified on vCloud Air. This is important since Ubuntu is the most popular operating system in the cloud. It is estimated that 70% of public cloud workloads run on top of Ubuntu. A tested and optimized Ubuntu image sitting on top of vCloud Air is a non-negotiable requirement for many enterprises.

• Canonical closed a few Oxide vulnerabilities that have been found in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system.

• Canonical’s specific involvement with the Khronos Group isn’t listed and we haven’t seen Canonical names closely associated with any major specs out of the different working groups to date. However, Oliver Ries, the Head of Engineering Product Strategy at Canonical, wrote into Phoronix that they joined the group for pushing their display server agenda with trying to work towards an underlying driver standard for Mir/Wayland. Oli noted in his email, “Canonical has joined Khronos in order to help establish the necessary driver standard that is required for Mir (and Wayland) to succeed. We have specifically contributed to the current standard proposal/draft.”

• When Canonical decided that Ubuntu would no longer sport the extremely comfortable GNOME 2 desktop and, instead, switch to the newly conceived Unity environment… I jumped ship faster than a screen door on battleship. (Okay, I know that doesn’t really work there. But I just watched “Back to the Future 2” and can’t seem to think of a single other metaphor. Heh. That Biff. He kills me.) Suffice to say that I jumped ship “really, really fast.”

Devices/Embedded

• Flashing pins are spinning tens of feet into the air on a pitch dark stage. It’s a juggling performance. All of the pins are perfectly synchronized to flash different colors in time to the music. It’s part of the magic of theater and a special night out with friends to enjoy a distraction from daily life. Part of the magic—and why it’s called magic—is that the audience doesn’t know how these secrets are made backstage.

• Instead of commercializing the product and with the intention of contributing to the community, Sanjeev posted a blog explaining how his ‘Smart Cap’ can be built by anyone using opensource hardware such as a Rasberry Pi computer, an Arduino board and Android software.

• We can hear this heartbeat by listening to what the environment tells us through sensors and testing. I proposed that we build low cost sensors using open source hardware and software. In recent years there has been quite a disruption in computing ability as a result of the prevalence of smartphones. Increasingly small and powerful components and processors have created an opportunities that we would have never thought possible. One of the results of that is the single-board Raspberry Pi computer. Originally, the Raspberry Pi was created to enable students to learn hardware and software development. For the Okavango Wilderness Project, we are using them to take environmental readings and send those to us for inclusion into the Into The Okavango website. Jer will cover this more in his expedition post. We are using them to measure water temperature, pH, conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and specific gravity.

• So I built three prototype units to take readings and send them to the website using simple text messaging on a local cellular network. We deployed the three prototypes near base camp, with the plan to build a network of these for the 2015 expedition. The field-testing and deployment was not without issues, which lead me to do some programming out in the delta. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first time Linux and Python coding was used out here. Once this network is deployed, local baYei people and volunteers from Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation will maintain and repair them (which Gregg will cover more in his post).

• Stealth.com has launched four rugged mini-PCs based on 3rd Gen. Intel Core CPUs, featuring four gigabit ports, Ubuntu, and optional PCI and PCIe expansion.

Phones

Android

• Photos and specs of the forthcoming Moto 360 smartwatch from Motorola appeared briefly on a Best Buy Web page this week, sparking increased chatter about the device.

• Concerns about price — the watch was listed at US$250 on the page — tempered the usual gasps of delight from geeks. Amazon lists a Samsung Galaxy Gear for $150, a Gear Live for $180, a Gear 2 Neo for $200, a Pebble Steel for $230, and an LG G Black Titan for $233.

• Gizchina yesterday received leaked images from what they call “a high level employee at Elephone”. The images are of Elephone’s newest device the P1000 which is remarkably similar to the OnePlus One. Now it is no secret that companies within China quickly copied and cloned the OnePlus one on other devices but (if the images and specs) are true than this will be the most all-round and highest-spec clone to become available.

• Elephone, most known for their every expanding range of Mediatek phones and as being one of the first manufacturers in China to offer an Android 4.4 Kitkat update, are preparing a 2014 Flagship killer of their own.

• MapmyIndia released an Android-based IVI and navigation system called the IceNav 701 with a dual-core processor, a 6.2-inch WVGA touchscreen, and NaviMap.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

• I have children. My children go to school. The schools that my children go to teach ICT. To do so, they need computers. At two of those schools, there’s currently a drive to fund a bunch of iPads. Currently, said schools use a mix of desktop and laptop computers, and each has access to a bunch of interesting software tools that we parents can also get to play around with remotely in some cases. Granted, when one of my children comes home and asks if we can get a copy of said program for home it gets a bit awkward, not least when I check the prices, but there’s something useful, I think, about continuing to develop and teach keyboard and mouse skills.

Free Software/Open Source

• We use a lot of open source software within Untappd daily, from MongoDB to jQuery. It’s what powers software evolution, and without it, we would have a hard time developing solutions effectively and efficiently. With every library that we develop for use on Untappd, we try to open source it, including our PHP Library For Amazon CloudSearch, UntappdPHP, and MemcacheJS. We hope that other developers can use these libraries to save some time and help them focus on building great projects. Any library we use, we try to think about how to build it with “openness” in mind, for re-usability by all.

• Regardless of the reason, this isn’t about you. Not really. For open source to succeed, much of the planning has to be about those who will use the software. As I wrote in 2005, if you “want lots of people to contribute (bug fixes, extensions, etc.,” then you need to “write good documentation, use an accessible programming language … [and] have a modular framework.”

Events

• Ken had mentioned this in a email a few months back, I believe, but I’d put it on a back burner, where it fell off and landed hidden behind the stove. If Larry Cafiero, better known as the free software and CrunchBang guy, hadn’t made mention of the fact on Google+ the other day, I probably wouldn’t’ve remembered until it was way too late.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Mozilla is in the process of adding the ability to “cast” videos from Firefox to Chromecast devices, and you can try it now if you have the right hardware.

• As announced in a post on Google+ post by Mozilla developer Lucas Rocha, “Chromecast support is now enabled in Firefox for Android’s Nightly build.”

Funding

• Alfresco, an open source, enterprise content management startup, is today announcing a new round of funding of $45 million — a Series D round that is more than twice as big as all of its previous rounds put together.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GNU community members and collaborators have discovered threatening details about a five-country government surveillance program codenamed HACIENDA. The good news? Those same hackers have already worked out a free software countermeasure to thwart the program.

• According to Heise newspaper, the intelligence agencies of the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, have used HACIENDA to map every server in twenty-seven countries, employing a technique known as port scanning. The agencies have shared this map and use it to plan intrusions into the servers. Disturbingly, the HACIENDA system actually hijacks civilian computers to do some of its dirty work, allowing it to leach computing resources and cover its tracks.

Project Releases

• G’MIC (GREYC’s Magic for Image Computing) is a framework for image processing that comes with a large number of pre-defined image filters and effects (almost 400, with an extra 300 testing filters). There are several interfaces for G’MIC: a command line tool, a web service, a Qt based interface for real-time webcam manipulation, a library and a GIMP plugin.

Public Services/Government

• Last year, the NHS said open source would be a key feature of the new approach to healthcare IT. It hopes embracing open source will both cut the upfront costs of implementing new IT systems and take advantage of using the best brains from different areas of healthcare to develop collaborative solutions.

• Meyer said the Spine switchover team has “picked up the gauntlet around open-source software”.

• The HSCIC and BJSS have collaborated to build the core services of Spine 2, such as electronic prescriptions and care records, “in a series of iterative developments”.

• Lessons learnt from NPfIT suggest that a one-size-fits-all approach for EPRs has its limitations, as every trust made the case, rightly or wrongly, that it was somehow different. This is why we believe that open source provides another way of delivering those clinical benefits; trusts can take ownership of the code and develop it alongside clinicians to their requirements.

• But open source is not for everyone. Each healthcare provider has varying degrees of IT maturity; some may be close to becoming paperless or have systems in place that just need to be built on, some may decide that a new approach is right for their organisation.

• For our trust, the timing and opportunity of open source just came together and made it the logical choice. Open source fits with our culture and our approach, clinicians liked the IMS Maxims software, and it was particularly affordable for us, giving us the ability to manage change from our current system – it lets us control our own IT requirements.

Licensing

• With the upcoming Qt 5.4 release, LGPLv3 is now an optional license alongside the existing LGPLv2.1 license and the commercial combination for Qt Enterprise.

Openness/Sharing

• Ten years have passed since the launch of the big, talkative, landmark show called Massive Change, which went on a tour that eventually took it from Vancouver to Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario, then on to Chicago. Organized by designer Bruce Mau and the Institute Without Boundaries, a Toronto work-study design program, the exhibition and the accompanying book showcased gadgets, systems and ideas that promised to heal some of contemporary humankind’s most urgent maladies – slums, starvation, economic under-performance and much else.

Open Data

• Such is promise of “open data”—the massive troves of public information our governments now post to the net. The hope is that, if governments share enough of this data with the world at large, hackers and entrepreneurs will find a way of putting it to good use. But although so much of this government data is now available, the revolution hasn’t exactly happened.

Open Hardware

• Open source software has been around for years, and for obvious reasons — all it takes is a PC to churn out code. And developers can make anything — operating systems, networking systems, administration systems, databases.

• Though Local Motors was the first car company to produce an open source vehicle, Founder Jay Rogers says it is not an open source car company. It’s a hardware company.

• Traditional car companies have long product cycles, intricate assembly processes, and high production and distribution costs. Local Motors’ approach is instead akin to a software or microelectronics company that’s iterative, fast and lower cost.

Programming

• Programming the Web, Pt. III The most revolutionary aspect of all the changes that have taken place in web development over the last two decades has been in the web browser.

• Typically we think of web browsers as driving innovation on the web by providing new features. Indeed this is the major source of new features on the web.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

• If the controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs) tells us something indisputable, it is this: GMO food products from corporations like Monsanto are suspected to endanger health. On the other hand, an individual’s right to genetically modify and even synthesize entire organisms as part of his dietary or medical regimen could someday be a human right.

• The suspicion that agri-giant companies do harm by designing crops is legitimate, even if evidence of harmful GMOs is scant to absent. Based on their own priorities and actions, we should have no doubt that self-interested corporations disregard the rights and wellbeing of local producers and consumers. This makes agri-giants producing GMOs harmful and untrustworthy, regardless of whether individual GMO products are actually harmful.

• Did you know that your Heinz ketchup, which the company claims is ‘all natural,’ is really full of toxic, genetically modified ingredients? It’s bursting with GM corn, which contains at least 5 things that really shouldn’t be in a food condiment.

• Governments do not dictate major policy, major multinational corporations do. We’ve seen this time and time again, and one of the best examples out there is Monsanto. This time, the United States government wants to force GMO seeds on El Salvadorian farmers.

Security

• The fight against cybercrime continues with the news that a London police force is getting outside help to become a bit more security savvy.

• The City of London police is teaming up with Russian cybersecurity specialist Kaspersky Lab, in an effort to help educate both the police, and businesses around the UK, on dealing with the growing menace of cybercrime.

• Someone just like me had the ability to push up whatever they wanted to the DNS server. This is usually fine: only the Authoritative DNS server for a site is allowed to replicate changes. It did mean, however, that anyone that was looking at this particular DNS server would be directed to something they were hosting themselves. I’m guessing it was a Phishing attempt as I did not actually go to their site to check.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• ASIO boss David Irvine has tried to explain how and why Australians join foreign armies, and allay concerns about the Coalition’s proposed anti-terrorism laws. But given its murky past, ASIO’s reassurances should be taken with a grain of salt, writes freelance journalist Andrea Glioti

• “According to our soldiers’ information, the Ukrainian forces are using chemical ammunition on DPR territory.”

• “Once a shell bursts, a gas affecting sense organs is emitted. We have this information.”

• In early June, Southeastern Ukrainian freedom fighters said Kiev forces attacked Semyonovka near Slaviansk with an unknown chemical weapon.

• sraeli airstrikes killed three senior commanders of the armed wing of Hamas early Thursday in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah, Israeli and Palestinian officials said, the most significant blow to the group’s leadership since Israel’s operation in Gaza began more than six weeks ago.

• Foreign forces’ drone strike killed three Taliban commanders, two alleged Pakistani insurgents and wounded five others in eastern Kunar province, Afghan officials said on Wednesday.

• The UK right wing government wished to recall passports and citizenship for any UK citizen who went to fight for the Islamic State (IS) militants in the Middle East. One of the first of many letters of this nature to be sent was to a Mr. Mohamed Sakr, who had been stripped of his citizenship after arriving at the estate owned by his family in London in 2010.

• Besides human spotters on the ground, the main U.S. intelligence assets in Iraq include armed surveillance drones fitted with cameras, radar and communications eavesdropping gear. Jet fighters also carry camera pods under their wings. The intelligence-gathering effort includes the most high-tech ground-based and space-based communications eavesdropping equipment. Drones and camera-equipped jets were the first surveillers to return to Iraq after 2011. The Air Force had pulled its 21 Predator drones from Iraq that year, redeploying them to Kuwait for patrols over the Middle East.

• What have we accomplished in Iraq? And isn’t it time we left them alone?

• We have been at war with Iraq for 24 years, starting with Operations Desert Shield and Storm in 1990. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait that year, the propaganda machine began agitating for a U.S. attack on Iraq. We all remember the appearance before Congress of a young Kuwaiti woman claiming that the Iraqis were ripping Kuwaiti babies from incubators. The woman turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., and the story was false, but it was enough to turn U.S. opposition in favor of an attack.

• This month, yet another U.S. president — the fifth in a row — began bombing Iraq. He is also placing U.S. troops on the ground despite promising not to do so.

• The second Iraq war in 2003 cost the U.S. some two trillion dollars. According to estimates, more than one million deaths have occurred as a result of that war. Millions of tons of U.S. bombs have fallen in Iraq almost steadily since 1991.

• What have we accomplished? Where are we now, 24 years later? We are back where we started, at war in Iraq!

• American journalist James Wright Foley was allegedly brutally murdered on video by terrorists of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (ISIS). The development would at first appear to portray a terrorist organization openly declaring itself an enemy of the West, but in reality, it is the latest attempt by the West itself to cover up the true genesis of the current region-wide catastrophe of its own creation now unfolding in the Middle East.

• As early as 2007, the stage was being set for the regional genocide now unfolding from Syria and Lebanon along the Mediterranean to northern Iraq. The “sudden” appearance of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq, otherwise known as ISIS, betrays years of its rise and the central part it played in Western-backed violence seeking to overthrow the government of Syria starting in 2011 amid the cover of the so-called “Arab Spring.”

• Many reports speak of airstrikes in the Libyan capital Tripoli as being launched by an unknown party against Islamist militia from Mistrata on Monday August 18. Actually there should be no mystery ab

• Even though CIA-linked General Haftar claims his bombing of Misrata militia in Tripoli was a joint effort with the international community there seems little attention let alone analysis in the media of what is happening in Libya

• On Monday, Libyan air force units loyal to General Kahlifa Haftar struck positions of the Misrata militia in Tripoli. The militia has been in a prolonged battle at and near the Tripoli international airport with allies of Haftar, the Zintan brigades. The battle has moved closer to the center of Tripoli now as unidentified militia have fired Grad rockets into two upscale districts killing three people according to local residents. The area is home to many foreign brand outlets including Marks and Spencer, and Nike and fancy cafes.

• At a town hall Tuesday with Raytheon Missile Systems employees, Arizona’s senior senator said the cut would have been to “probably the best and most-proven missile system ever.” McCain also spoke in support of a modernization program for the Tomahawk that would make the weapon threat-relevant through about 2040.

• David Barron now sits on the bench of the First Circuit Court of Appeals despite having given President Barack Obama the legal justification for killing an American citizen overseas without a trial.

• Not so, however, if the killing had come at the hands of the military or the CIA. In that case, the soldier or the CIA agent would be immune from criminal prosecution and civil suit, so long as they claimed that the killing took place as part of a “national-security” operation. Once their lawyers cited those two magical words, every judge in the land, both state and federal, would immediately slam down the gavel and declare “Case dismissed.”

• The investigation uncovered incontrovertible, if unsurprising, proof of involvement in the operation by the Mob (in this case, the Chicago Outfit) by Texas oil interests, Saudi financiers, and, of course, the CIA.

• But unearthing new evidence about the CIA’s role in the drug trade for the past 50 years no longer provides much grist for the gossip mill. Time marches on. Gary Webb was right. Everybody knows it.

Transparency Reporting

• The drone campaign in Pakistan, which is conducted by the CIA, remains an official secret. In June 2012, Obama declassified the campaigns in Yemen and Somalia – but details of the attacks remain shrouded in mystery. The US has declined to release even the most basic details about the strikes, such as when or where they take place. As a result we also rarely know who or what they hit. But a growing number of voices have been calling for transparency.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• 10,000 people are expected to attend the musicians’ “Harvest the Hope” concert.

Finance

• Hewlett-Packard Co posted a surprise increase in quarterly revenue after sales from its personal computer division climbed 12 percent, but a flat to declining performance from its other units underscored the company’s uphill battle to revive growth.

• HP sales rose a mere 1 percent to $27.6 billion in its fiscal third quarter from $27.2 billion a year earlier. Wall Street analysts had forecast a modest drop in revenue to $27.01 billion.

• Every time Apple releases a new iPhone there’s a dramatic spike in the number of Google searches for the phrase “iPhone slow”. Does this give credence to the conspiracy theory that Apple intentionally slows down iPhones to encourage you to buy a new one?

• (1) Use the pound anyway

• Even if the Westminster government does not agree to share the pound, Scotland could use it anyway, without a say in monetary policy Ecuador and Panama, for example, have adopted the US dollar

• (And, I should add, Tasmania uses the Australian dollar … There, that should get me in trouble for today … )

• (2) Join the euro

• It would not be an immediate option

• (3) Launch a Scottish currency

• Without its own borrowing history, an independent Scotland might find the currency quickly loses value when traded and markets could demand a higher interest rate on its debt

• Welcome to globalization. Wasn’t it supposed to make up all richer?

• Despite the economic recovery, more than 46 million Americans — or 1 in 7 — used a food pantry last year. And a surprisingly high number of those seeking help were households with military members, according to a new survey by Feeding America, which is a network of U.S. food banks.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has long been the leading advocate in condemning the prominence of “he said/she said” journalism in the mainstream media. This kind of journalism is driven by a complete distortion of what it means to be an “objective” journalist. Bad journalists seem to think that if someone is making a claim, you present that claim, then you present an opposing claim, and you’re done. They think this is objective because they’re not “picking sides.” But what if one side is batshit crazy and the other is actually making legitimate claims? Shouldn’t the job of true journalists be to ferret out the truth and reveal the crazy arguments as crazy? Rosen’s latest calls out the NY Times for falling into the bogus “he said/she said” trap yet again. This time it’s on an article about plagiarism and copyright infringement charges being leveled from one biographer of Ronald Reagan against another. We wrote about this story as well, and we looked at the arguments of both sides, and then noted that author Craig Shirley’s arguments made no sense at all, as he was trying to claim ownership of facts (something you can’t do). Furthermore, his claims of plagiarism were undermined by the very fact that he admitted that competing biographer Rick Perlstein’s quotes were different. Shirley claimed that “difference” in the quotes showed that Perlstein was trying to cover up the plagiarism, but… that makes no sense.

• If the weight of the evidence allows you to make a judgment, but instead you go with “he said, she said,” you’re behaving recklessly even as you tell yourself you’re doing the cautious thing.

• It’s my job to notice when a piece of standard brand pressthink “flips” around and no longer works as intended. I have one.

• For a very long time, the logic behind “he said, she said” journalism, and “get both sides,” as well as, “I’m sorry, but we’ll have to leave it there” was that operating this way would reduce risk to a news publisher’s reputation. (See my 2009 post.) When you have both sides speaking in your account, you’re protecting yourself against charges of favoring one or the other. By not “choosing” a side — by not deciding who’s right — you’re safer.

Censorship

• According to multiple military sources, a notice has been circulated to units within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps warning staff that they are prohibited from reading stories published by The Intercept on the grounds that they may contain classified information. The ban appears to apply to all employees—including those with top-secret security clearance—and is aimed at preventing classified information from being viewed on unclassified computer networks, even if it is freely available on the internet. Similar military-wide bans have been directed against news outlets in the past after leaks of classified information.

• Google has removed a total of 12 BBC News stories from some search results since controversial EU “right to be forgotten” laws came into force in May.

• The stories range from coverage of a court case on bomb-making in Ireland 13 years ago to a dispute over a lost dog.

• Google notified the BBC of each of the removals, but it did not disclose who had made the removal requests.

• The stories will no longer appear in the results of certain search terms.

• The New York Times will comply with an order from the Afghan attorney general’s office ordering correspondent Matthew Rosenberg to leave the country after he published an article stating that high-ranking officials were discussing the formation of an interim government, a spokesperson told POLITICO.

• “Instead of seeking out the beheading video of James Foley, seek out his work, he died in the service of telling stories from dark places,” said a fellow journalist. “Share this instead,” said another, citing this article that he wrote for the Global Post in the month prior to his capture. Others called for people to watch a talk he gave at Medill University, or a BBC interview, both filmed in 2011.

• It says in a statement “We would like to remind the public that viewing, downloading or disseminating extremist material within the UK may constitute an offence under Terrorism legislation.”

• The events of Ferguson, Missouri are still unfolding, and as they do the Internet seems to get more dark. Then there was Robin Williams’s death, and amongst the outpouring of love, there was of course a couple of rotten apples who scared Williams’s daughter off social media altogether by tweeting a fake picture of Williams’s corpse.

• After the clampdown by Twitter and YouTube on Islamic State (Isis) propaganda, the social media war has spread to open-source social network Diaspora – where the content is impossible to remove.

• As Mike recently mentioned, there is a heated debate throughout the internet and the country over whether or not social media and content sharing sites like Facebook and YouTube should be actively taking down videos of American journalist James Foley being beheaded by ISIS/ISIL. The issue, which I’ve chosen to write about here before, is even more important and serious than perhaps it appears on the face for most people. Mathew Ingram’s post dealt with many good aspects of the debate, some of which we’ll discuss, but I think he leaves out a large part of the equation. More on that in a moment.

Privacy

• The federal government has been left red-faced following revelations that law-enforcement agencies have been accessing Australians’ web browsing histories without a warrant.

• Access to phone and internet data held by telecommunications companies has been the subject of much debate recently, as the government seeks to extend the power of intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to fight terrorism and crime. It has proposed telcos retain customers’ metadata for up to two years for investigation.

• The broad definition of a ‘network’ in new national security legislation could give Australia’s top spy agency access to just about every computer on the internet, according to legal experts.

• Reset the Net has a privacy pack that is designed to slow the NSA…

• Federal watchdog of Canada’s top-secret electronic spy agency gives Communications Security Establishment a clean report card with some recommendations for improvement.

• If the knowledge that the NSA collects and stores indefinitely all of your email, cell, online transactions—as well as tracking your whereabouts at any given moment—does the thought of 18 year-old voyeuristic NSA employees leering at pictures of your daughter, and finding their amusement in shared intimacies meant only for the eyes of friends cause you outrage?

• Please note that this is not intended to be — nor should it be — considered as legal advice. This is my humble opinion based on the current state of the law and technology today.

• The anonymous browser is making a push for mainstream acceptability. But to hit the mainstream scale, it may need help

• Today I did an inter­view on RT on the sub­ject. Intriguingly, it appears this inform­a­tion was part of the cache of doc­u­ments an alleged mole in the BND sold to his US spymasters.

Civil Rights

• 19 Beheaded in 17 Days; 8 for Nonviolent Offenses

• I wish I had retained more from my college Latin American politics class. The banana republics, juntas, civil wars and CIA interventions have all faded, but there’s one concept that stuck in my head and it has been haunting me ever since – the four key components necessary to make a healthy democracy.

• We’ve been covering some of the more troubling details of police militarization across the US, and specifically what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri over the past couple of weeks. However, we knew fairly little about the actual military equipment being used there. And we know that sometimes scary looking military equipment isn’t necessarily so scary when put to use. So it’s interesting to read a former Marine’s analysis of the military equipment being used in Ferguson, which more or less confirms that it not only looks scary but absolutely is scary. Much of the discussion is about how all those “non-lethal” “riot control” weaponry is actually quite dangerous and potentially lethal.

• The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department released cell phone footage Wednesday of the police shooting of Kajieme Powell, a 25-year-old black man killed on Tuesday in St. Louis, according to St. Louis Public Radio.

• A convenience store owner called 911 on Tuesday when he suspected Powell stole drinks and donuts from his shop, according to a recording of the call. Another woman called to report Powell was acting erratically and had a knife in his pocket.

• Two officers in a police SUV responded to the calls, the cell phone video shows. When the officers got out of their vehicle, Powell walked in their direction, yelling and telling them to shoot him already.

• St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said Tuesday that both of the officers opened fire on Powell when he came within a three or four feet of them holding a knife “in an overhand grip.”

• But the newly released cell phone footage undermines the statement, showing Powell approaching the cops, but not coming as close as was reported, with his hands at his side. The officers began shooting within 15 seconds of their arrival, hitting Powell with a barrage of bullets.

• A menagerie of armed state and federal agents have filtered in and out of Ferguson, Missouri for more than a week as unrest has grown there, and now even a private military company is joining the mix. Asymmetric Solutions, a PMC that claims to be “capable of deploying highly qualified former special operations personnel” to “anywhere on the globe in a moments notice” will be providing a security detail to an unnamed individual visiting Ferguson.

• “We need automatic transparency, rigorous external oversight, and a statutory framework that explicitly prohibits abuses . . . When the government knows everything about its citizens, we become subjects,” Crockford told Truthout.

• “But the future is ours if we claim it, if we reject fear and embrace our own power. If we want our children to have anonymity in a crowd, privacy at home, and the possibility for freedom in their world, we must make it so.”

• Police assaulted peaceful, nonviolent protesters, arrested Antonio French, an alderman in nearby St. Louis, and tear-gassed Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal.

• Shame on those in government and media, those who trample others underfoot and then claim more of the same is the way to our “greater good”. May the Great Spirit who dwells above and within us all convict you of shame, which seems to be of the only two arrows in your quivers: shame and fear.

• Reporters Without Borders condemns the closures of Mogadishu-based Radio Shabelle and Sky FM and arrests of 19 journalists and employees on 15 August, and the continuing detention and reported torture of the directors of the two radio stations and their owner.

• The civilized Western World has always shown double standard of human rights in the modern era of open diplomacy, economic development and maintenance of fundamental rights of various peoples. But, it is regrettable that major powers like the US and some European countries have continuously been acting upon duplicity regarding human rights violations. In this regard, their silence over the massacre of the Rohingya Muslim community at the hands of the Rakhine extremist Buddhists in Burma (present Myanmar), perpetual bloodshed of Kashmiris in the Indian occupied Kashmir and unending genocide of several Palestinians in Gaza might be cited as example. In these cases, US-led Western World which was overtly or covertly supporting the state terrorism of Myanmar’s military junta, Indian and Israeli regimes was strongly condemned by the Islamic Word’s intellectuals. In wake of Muslim tragedy, it was also exposed that world’s apex body, the UNO has also been following double standard of human rights, and has become instrument of America and its allies at the cost of the Muslim World.

• Hair-brained, if not totally moronic, theories emerged. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, was the culprit. while others thought the military-industrial complex hatched the plan. The mob (pick one) paid a trigger man, while the CIA was viewed as the guilty party. The Soviets were thought capable of killing our president. Even Cuban exiles were targeted with unfounded accusations. In the end, a discontented Oswald, alone or in concert with others, eventually became the fall guy. Or was he a patsy? In any event, nobody came up with a specific reason for why the president had to be killed.

• A collaboration between governments and organized crime is nothing new, of course, with corruption being a characteristic of their operations in whichever field of criminality they pursue. Pay offs and backhanders, considerations and favors have all played their part in sealing a relationship between criminals and government officials, with some government agencies seeking to use the mafia in order to further their goals. The CIA asking the mafia to knock off Castro might seem a bit wild-eyed and optimistic, but it was hardly unthinkable.

• This autobiography was written eight years ago, and then self published overseas and secured. The reason for this subterfuge was the autobiography contained my dealings with ASIO and covert agencies in the UK and the United States of America while working in China.

• Since these events took place I have been gagged by ASIO “Dire consequences would befall me should I ever speak of these events.” I had organised for my autobiography to be released after my death so as my family would finally know the reason why our lives were irrevocability devastated by the aforementioned covert agencies.

• The CIA’s objection to releasing the report seems strange because in 2012 Attorney General Eric Holder announced that there would be no prosecution of CIA interrogators. The CIA’s fear must be that whatever conduct the report blames them for is so terrible that it could ignite another round of intelligence “reforms” like those of the 1970s Church Committee which obstructed intelligence-gathering for many years.

• “If a 19-year-old had hacked into the Senate computers the way this was done, that person would be sitting in jail right now.”

• Although they were CIA computers, Wyden said the agency had stipulated they contained Senate Intelligence Committee files. CIA staffers launched the search to discover if the committee had obtained an internal CIA study while investigating a now-defunct detention and interrogation program for terrorism suspects. The Senate report is pending.

• First, CIA officials broke into computers that were being used by the committee — a clear constitutional violation — and then, using false information, tried to have committee staffers prosecuted. CIA Director John Brennan apologized for spying on the senators’ activities. President Obama, in a news conference on Aug. 1, said the Intelligence Committee was free to issue its report, “the declassified version that will be released at the pleasure of the Senate committee.”

• But Brennan’s apology must not have been sincere, and the committee, to its displeasure, learned that the CIA has “redacted” — read: censored — key elements of the report. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the committee, said she couldn’t release the report because the CIA had attempted to redact key details that “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.”

• He asks: “Did any CIA agent get indicted for torturing people? No.

• “Did any CIA agent get indicted for destroying the videotapes that showed the torture? No.

• “Did any CIA agent get indicted for murdering prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq? No.”

• But in Sri Lanka there were no torture committed against the terrorists. There were no torture of the terrorists for the simple reason that in the war against terrorism in Sri Lanka the Armed Forces knew where exactly the terrorists were and there was no necessity to interrogate terrorists taken as prisoners under tortured to get information with regard to; movements of terrorists or where they were hiding. There were also Tamil civilians who gave information of meeting sites of terrorists to enable the Sri Lanka Air Force use precision bombing.

• Beginning in the 1990s, and accelerating after September 11, the CIA flew terrorism suspects to secret police custody in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Libya. Many of them were tortured. Starting in 2002, the CIA began operating secret prisons all over the world: Thailand, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Afghanistan, Djibouti, briefly Guantanamo Bay.

• There, the agency subjected detainees to torturous “enhanced interrogation techniques,” in a program designed and implemented by two contractor psychologists named James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) authorized a great deal of this brutality—but the CIA made false factual representations to OLC in order to obtain that authorization, and tortured detainees in ways that were never authorized. Two CIA detainees, Manadel al-Jamadi and Gul Rahman, died as a result.

• Once again, the CIA is concealing information that Americans have a right to know, and once again President Obama should ensure its release.

• The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is set to release a landmark report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program. But Obama allowed the CIA to oversee redactions, and it predictably went to town with the black marker. According to committee Chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the redactions “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.”

• The Electronic Frontier Foundation will honor former U.N. Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue, U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, and artist Trevor Paglen during its annual EFF Pioneer Awards in San Francisco. The award ceremony will be held the evening of October 2 at the Lodge at the Regency Center in San Francisco. Keynote speakers will be Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos, better known as the Yes Men, who are known for their elaborate parodies and impersonations to fight government and corporate malfeasance

• WikiLeaks documents prove that the United States has known for quite some time (years) that the fictitious pseudo-state of Qatar bankrolls Hamas as part of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Ikhwan. While Iran is the world’s major facilitator of terror, Qatar is their bank. The US Administration knows this well.

• At an Aug. 14 news conference in Washington, D.C. press freedom organizations rallied to support New York Times reporter and author James Risen, who faces prosecution for refusing to disclose his sources. In advance of the press event, held at the National Press Club, organizers presented a petition to the U.S. Justice Department with more than 100,000 signatures, demanding that the federal government stop its six-year prosecution of Risen.

• President Obama entered office vowing to run a transparent government. But instead he has clamped down on leaks, prosecuted whistleblowers and threatened truth-telling journalists with jail if they don’t reveal sources, as Marcy Wheeler recounts.

• The Great Horn of Africa Famine started at the beginning of 2011 and lasted about 2 years. 250,000 dead in Somalia from starvation equals 10,000 dying a month, 300 or more dying a day on average. And this just in Somalia where there was aid being distributed. Next door in the Ogaden, with a population of almost as many as in Somalia the same famine was raging and no aid what so ever was being allowed.

• The use of CCTV for handing out traffic fines is something that has raised concerns from a number of sources, for example Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who accused councils of “bending the law as a means of filling their coffers with taxpayers’ cash.” The Surveillance Camera Commissioner (SCC) also published guidance on this practice, stating that cameras should only be used “when other means of enforcement are not practical”.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• For all of its history, the Internet has enjoyed the fruits of an openness principle: the idea that anyone can reach any site online and that information and data should be freely exchangeable. Applications such as YouTube and Skype have been introduced without the need to seek permission of any Internet service provider or government. Nearly 3 billion users enjoy myriad mobile apps and other Internet-based services thanks to the open standards, common interfaces, and rich connectivity that permissionless innovation has delivered.

• Earlier this year, we shared our own comments to the FCC on the issue of net neutrality and keeping the internet open. The key, as we noted, is that if this issue is left to the FCC (as appears to be the case), it should use Title II reclassification in combination with forbearance to narrowly tailor rules for broadband access providers that maintain an open internet. As with so many things related to net neutrality, this gets a bit down in the weeds, and is a bit wonkish, but it’s important to understand. Even the EFF — a longtime critic of Title II reclassification — changed its position in light of other factors, but made sure to emphasize forbearance as a key part of this. Forbearance, in short, is effectively a statement from the FCC that it’s using certain rules, but has committed to not enforcing parts of what it’s allowed to do under those rules.

• In the ongoing fallout Comcast is facing due to the high-pressure sales tactics of their non-sales employees, the company has consistently indicated that these employees are not behaving in a manner consistent with the company’s wishes. The common thread in most of these stories consists of customer service duties being handled by customer retention reps as often as not and complaints or attempts to cancel service being met with sales pitches instead of service. Comcast has specifically indicated that these examples are outside of the way they train employees to conduct their business.

Intellectual Monopolies

• As rights holders have made clear time and time again, your digital purchases are never truly yours. If someone decides to shut down a service, it’s likely your purchases will vanish into the ether along with the service itself. If you want to resell your mp3s or ebooks, you’re facing any number of unsettled legal questions and various industries pushing the assertion that your money was exchanged for a limited use license, rather than the acquisition of a product.

Copyrights

• We received an email from Thomson Reuters last evening, informing us that unless we write back to them in 14 days denying them the use of our articles, they will take the lack of refusal, as an indication of consent to use them. What’s more, they will presume that we have given them the “right to use, incorporate and distribute the Content in its Services to its subscribers and to permit such subscribers to use and redistribute the Content.”

• Kim Dotcom’s battle to regain control over millions in seized assets has received another setback. Today the Court of Appeal overturned a ruling by the High Court by extending the restraining orders against the entrepreneur’s property until at least April 2015.

• In a world where people are always pushing the idea of “intellectual property” over just about everything, is it really any surprise when people assume all sorts of property-like rights in things that clearly shouldn’t have any such thing? In a slightly bizarre lawsuit over the control of a Facebook fan page for the TV series The Game, the creator of the page, Stacey Mattocks, argued that BET effectively appropriated the approximately 6.78 million “likes” the fan page got. The details of exactly how this happened aren’t worth getting into, but suffice it to say it was a contract negotiation gone wrong, as BET sought to bring the fan page under its official control. All that matters here is that among the other charges in the lawsuit, Mattocks claims that BET got Facebook to transfer those likes to its official page, which she alleged is a form of unlawful conversion.

• In the wake of a controversial move by Wikipedia to distribute a monkey ‘selfie’ for free, against the wishes of the photographer whose camera was used, the US has issued new guidance that says animals, ghosts and gods are all banned from owning copyright

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