● 11.20.15

● Links 20/11/2015: DockerCon EU, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2

Posted in News Roundup at 7:02 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Find everything you need to master open source software and operating systems

Desktop

• There has been no shortage of stories over the few weeks speculating on the potential end of the Chrome OS. Google vigorously denied those rumors, but now there’s renewed talk of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) creating a new version of Android for desktop computing.

• Of course, we’ve already seen a spate of Android-based laptops. Most have come and gone quickly over the past few years, although HP’s Slatebook is still around.

Server

• Open source cloud computing company Mirantis promises a “quick onramp” for OpenStack through Fuel, a cloud deployment and management tool that has now become an official part of the OpenStack big tent.

• Docker this week announced new security enhancements at DockerCon EU in Barcelona, Spain, including hardware signing of container images — an industry first — through a partnership with Yubico. Docker Content Trust offers hardware signing through support for Yubico’s YubiKey. The YubiKey 4 lets Docker users digitally sign code during initial development and through subsequent updates, ensuring the integrity of Dockerized apps throughout the application pipeline, Yubico sai

• Splice Machine has announced the 2.0 version of its RDBMS, which it bills as “the first hybrid in-memory RDBMS powered by Hadoop and Spark.” Apache Spark has rocketed to success as an in-memory data processing framework that is now widely used with Hadoop, and it’s also becoming a hub around which other data-processing tools work.

• Docker Inc. founder Solomon Hykes explains how Docker container virtualization has become one of the hottest technologies on the planet.

• It’s common knowledge that high-performance computing (HPC) generates a lot of heat. At HPC datacenters, a lot of time and energy is spent figuring out how to cool these powerful computers. Not only does this have a significant environmental impact, Qarnot sees this as wasted energy (and wasted opportunity). As a solution, they’ve designed a “digital heater” that they call a Q.rad.

• Redmond has built Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) which it calls a “a cross-platform modular operating system for data centre networking built on Linux.” and “our foray into building our own software for running network devices like switches.”

Audiocasts/Shows

Kernel Space

• Microchip has announced the MOST Linux Driver, which supports the company’s MOST network interface controllers, is now incorporated into the staging section of the Linux Mainline Kernel 4.3 operating system. The Linux Driver is designed to allow designers to use the MOST specification for high-bandwidth applications such as automotive infotainment and shorten time-to-market while curbing costs.

• The NMI (non-masking interrupt) system in Linux has been a notorious patchwork for a long time, and Andy Lutomirski recently decided to try to clean it up. NMIs occur when something’s wrong with the hardware underlying a running system. Typically in those cases, the NMI attempts to preserve user data and get the system into as orderly a state as possible, before an inevitable crash.

• An unheard of independent developer has proclaimed designing a new, fast, and unbreakable encryption algorithm. While he admits to not being a mathematician or cryptoanalyst, he’s wanting to get this encryption algorithm in the mainline Linux kernel and distributions.

Graphics Stack

• Nvidia has published a new Linux driver that brings a few fixes and support for X.Org xserver ABI 20 (xorg-server 1.18). It’s not a major update, but it has been pushed already to a few repositories.

• Jonas Ådahl announced the formation this morning of the Wayland-Protocols Git repository that will march to its own beat, separate of Wayland/Weston releases.

• The Wayland-Protocols Git repository will decouple the Wayland protocol development from the implementation in Weston and run by its own release schedule. This will allow developers more flexibility in adding/changing the Wayland protocol and now not enforcing that the new protocol be implemented immediately by Weston.

Applications

• One day after the announcement of the Wireshark 2.0 open-source network protocol analyzer software, the developers behind the Nmap free and cross-platform network scanner utility are proud to inform us all about the release of Nmap 7.00.

• Intel quietly released the XenGT 2015-Q3 release at the end of October as the newest quarterly update to their mediated graphics passthrough solution for virtualization customers.

• Intel has been working on Xen GT for a whole now as a mediated pass-through solution for Intel graphics hardware in the Linux virtualization space. Xen GT works with the Xen hypervisor as implied by the name while with this 2015′Q3 release the KVMGT code is part of this unified code repository.

• Just a few moments ago, the developers of the powerful and open-source Pitivi video editor software uploaded a new Beta version of the upcoming Pitivi 1.0 build, which is getting closer to reality.

Proprietary

• SoftMaker is putting its new Office package to the test, with a free beta version of SoftMaker Office 2016 for Linux. Available from Wednesday 18th November 2015, SoftMaker Office 2016 is the powerful office suite that works seamlessly with all Microsoft Office file formats.

• A few minutes ago, the developers behind the cross-platform and free Vivaldi web browser had the great pleasure of informing Softpedia about the release of a new snapshot build for all supported operating systems, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

• The Opera web browser continues to move forward at an unrelenting pace, and its developers have just announced a number of features that will arrive with the 35.x branch. It’s going to be a great release and users can already download and test it.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

Games

• Probably one of the stupidest games I’ve ever heard of looks to be adding a Linux version, I give you: Gabe Newell Simulator.

• It’s a shame, but it certainly looks like Mad Max isn’t actually coming out for SteamOS & Linux. We covered it initially thanks to being told about the press release, but nothing since then. The developers have been utterly silent on it, which is quite annoying. It’s one thing to announce something and publicly state it’s no longer happening, but to be totally silent on it is just weird.

• Yes, it’s that time of the week again, when we want to delight our readers with yet another blog post from the “Watch” series of articles, and this time is going to be a lot of fun because it involves Ubuntu Phone devices and an old-school FPS game loved by millions of players around the globe.

• I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but Road Redemption has finally released their promised Linux version (Early Access). The problem isn’t only how long this took with it being years over-due after being promised for Linux in 2013, but how bad it is right now. Something fishy is going on, as it says “Trial version” in the corner.

Desktop Environments/WMs

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• The KDE Community just announced the release of KDE Plasma 5.5 Beta, which brings a ton of new features and significant changes.

• Over the years, one thing that has been always guaranteed about the free software and open source software community is that periodically there will be some unholy row or the other, mostly over issues allegedly to do with sexism and inequality.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Hello all,

• Tarballs are due on 2015-11-23 before 23:59 UTC for the GNOME 3.19.2 unstable release, which will be delivered on Wednesday. Modules which were proposed for inclusion should try to follow the unstable schedule so everyone can test them. Please make sure that your tarballs will be uploaded before Monday 23:59 UTC: tarballs uploaded later than that will probably be too late to get in 3.19.2. If you are not able to make a tarball before this deadline or if you think you’ll be late, please send a mail to the release team and we’ll find someone to roll the tarball for you!

Distributions

New Releases

• The Solus operating system is approaching a stable release once more, and it looks like we might be able to boot that elusive 1.0 version before Christmas.

• Steven Shiau, the creator of the GParted Live and Clonezilla Live projects, has had the pleasure of announcing the release of a new testing version for his Clonezilla Live GNU/Linux distribution.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

• We have a newcomer in the Mageia ecosystem: the young French company SIVEO has taken over the development of the open source server-related solutions of the former Mandriva, and they decided to base all their products on Mageia. Giving back to the community, they are now employing a long-time Mageia contributor and maintainer of the KDE stack, Nicolas Lécureuil (neoclust), to work on packaging their free software products in Mageia. The following is a joint press release by SIVEO and Mageia.org.

Red Hat Family

• Are your Red Hat Enterprise Linux programmers chomping at the bit for the latest and greatest development tools? Then, Red Hat Software Collections 2.1 and Red Hat Developer Toolset 4 are just what they want.

• Global marketing leader at the open source software vendor details the customer, data, technology and functional pillars that prop up her corporat marketing function

• Red Hat Inc., the leader in open source solutions, has had the great pleasure of announcing the release of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.2 operating system for desktops, servers, and cloud.

• As I read Jim Whitehurst’s The Open Organization, as well as articles about initiatives involving educators and students in open source projects and communities, I imagined what the future might look like in primary, secondary, and higher education around the world.

• Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) should head towards $85.06 per share according to 17 Analysts in consensus. However, if the road gets shaky, the stock may fall short to $72 per share. The higher price estimate target is at $92 according to the Analysts.

• Bangalore: Wipro today announced the launch of its Managed Service Offerings for Verification, Validation and Performance Tuning of Telco clouds. This will be available globally to Network Equipment Providers and Communication Service Providers who are embarking on their SDN/NFV enabled cloud transformation journey.

Fedora

• oday in Linux news, OpenSource.com has some gift ideas for the Open Source enthusiast. The Register said today that Debian founder, Ian Murdock accepted a position at Docker. InsiderMonkey posted their list of five “beginner friendly Linux distributions” and I bet you can guess most of them. Scott Gilbertson said Fedora 23 is “workin’ it like Monday morning” and Jack Germain wrote that Ubuntu Studio is a “treasure trove for creative types.”

• Like its predecessor, this Fedora comes in three base configurations – Workstation, Server and Cloud. The former is the desktop release and the primary basis for my testing, though I also tested out the Server release this time around.

Debian Family

• Debian daddy Ian Murdock has joined Linux container shop Docker.

• Murdock, who founded Debian in 1993 and led the project for three years during its birth, has taken up position as a member of Docker’s technical staff.

• Details of Murdock’s role or responsibilities were not available at time of writing.

• Docker, though, has a huge interest in perfecting the deployment of Linux applications in its container technology for cloud and micro services. Murdock was, until October, vice president for platform for Salesforce’s marketing cloud. He’d been with the as-a-service provider for four years. He joined Salesforce through the cloud firm’s $2.5bn acquisition of ExactTarget in 2013. ExactTarget was renamed Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

• Ubuntu will soon work on phones and desktops, so people are asking whether the desktop will have the same restrictions. The answer is not as straightforward as you might think, and the Ubuntu developers are still analyzing how much access will be granted to users.

• A new OTA update for Ubuntu Touch has been released, and users should start receiving it right about now.

• If you’re reading our website often, you might have noticed that the Ubuntu Touch OTA-8 software update has been officially announced and that we’ve written a lengthy article about its new features and bugfixes.

• If you want a desktop that’s reliable, solid, but also pushing things forward—which is to say, if you want the experience Unity has been providing for the last three or even four releases—you will likely want to get the 16.04 LTS release coming next April. It will probably be the last Unity 7 release. But if you want to live on the edge, Unity 8 will be, if not the default, at least only a login screen away come this time next year.

• In the meantime, enjoy your quiet days of Ubuntu 15.10. The days of such calm releases are limited.

• I’ve previously written about Canonical’s obnoxious IP policy and how Mark Shuttleworth admits it’s deliberately vague. After spending some time discussing specific examples with Canonical, I’ve been explicitly told that while Canonical will gladly give me a cost-free trademark license permitting me to redistribute unmodified Ubuntu binaries, they will not tell me what “Any redistribution of modified versions of Ubuntu must be approved, certified or provided by Canonical if you are going to associate it with the Trademarks. Otherwise you must remove and replace the Trademarks and will need to recompile the source code to create your own binaries” actually means.

• The winning Indiegogo campaign for an Intel “Cherry Trail” based, USB 3.1-enabled “MagicStick” stick-PC has added Snappy Ubuntu Core to its preloaded OSes.

• MagicStick is a new PC-on-a-stick device that promises to be the most powerful launched until now, and it’s in the middle of a very successful Indiegogo campaign. To top it all off, MagicStick will also provide the users with the option of loading it with Ubuntu Core.

• On November 19, Canonical, through Jamie Strandboge, informs Ubuntu Snappy users that, as of today, the Snappy Ubuntu Core 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) images no longer use the click compatibility hooks for AppArmor (“Application Armor”).

Flavours and Variants

• Today the Bodhi project announced an unscheduled bug fix release primarily to address a usability issue as well as bring a few other updates to users. Fedora 21 is fast approaching its end of life and Clement Lefebvre announced some Mint 17.3 betas. Elsewhere, Red Hat released an update to their developer toolkit Software Collections and Bruce Byfield said we should go to “task-based” desktops.

• I’m Sean Davis (bluesabre in the FOSS world). I am the current Xubuntu Technical Lead, an Xfce core developer, and I’m a web developer during the day. I’ve been an Ubuntu/Xubuntu user since 2005.

• Canonical’s Zoltán Balogh has had the great pleasure of announcing the general availability of the new Ubuntu SDK IDE (Integrated Development Environment) packages for supported Ubuntu Linux operating systems.

• Today the Bodhi team and I are releasing an unscheduled bug fix release in version number 3.1.1. The 3.1.0 release we released back in August had an issue where users were not always prompted automatically for wireless passwords when connecting to encrypted networks. This lead to enough confusion / user frustration that we feel it warrants an updated install image now as opposed to waiting for our scheduled 3.2.0 release early 2016.

Devices/Embedded

• Silicon Labs unveiled reference designs for home automation and lighting networks, based on its ZigBee SoC and middleware plus a Raspberry Pi-based gateway.

• Silicon Labs, which bills itself as the ZigBee market share leader, has integrated its ZigBee “Golden Unit” Home Automation (HA 1.2) software stack, “EM358x” ZigBee mesh networking SoC, and various ZigBee sensor and lighting technologies in several reference designs for home automation. The Dimmable Light Switch, Connected Lighting, Door/Window Contact Sensor reference designs work with a WiFi and Ethernet ready ZigBee Gateway Reference Design that runs Linux on a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B SBC.

• In San Francisco, Parrot unveiled a smaller, faster, longer lasting version of its Linux-based Bebop drone, helping to solidify its dominance in the mid-range consumer market. One of the key new features is an emergency cutoff that instantly kills the quadrotor motors when a blade hits an obstacle. The increasing focus on safety was also demonstrated this week when 3DR (Solo) and DJI (Phantom) announced similar new technology to make it easier for their customers to avoid restricted airspace (see farther below).

• No operating system support was listed on the SOM6330 product page, but Linux is the go-to OS for the SoloX, OpenEmbed notified us about the module directly, and the OpenEmbed modules listed above all run Linux. Other SoloX based COMs include the Efus A9X from F&S Elektronik Systeme.

• The Arduino platform’s simplicity, open architecture and ease of use helped make it the most popular embedded development tool within the Maker community. In this article, we will look at the new Linino framework, which makes it possible to seamlessly integrate Linux into the Arduino platform as well as some of the boards, protocols and development tools that can support advanced functionality, such as real-time control of multiple functions, IoT applications and integration of cloud-based services.

• Geekbuying is launching a small computer with an octa-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, Gigabit Ethernet and support for 4K video playback. It’s called the Geekbox… and it’s being positioned as much more than just another media streamer.

• The Geekbox comes with Android and Ubuntu dual-boot software preloaded and there’s an option to install Rockchip’s Light Biz OS version of Android.

• And you can also open up the Geekbox case, remove the system-on-a-module that houses most of the tiny computer’s guts, and use it for other projects.

• Today we will introduce you, guys, to a new open-source and open-world hardware device, a TV box called GeekBox, which is capable of booting the Ubuntu Linux and Android operating systems.

• Geekbuying has this week unveiled a new mini PC they have created in the form of the GeekBox which has been designed to dual boot both Ubuntu and Android operating systems from one small device.

• Internet association CZ.NIC launched the campaign for its Turris Omnia router not too long ago. In less than 24 hours, the team reached their $100,000 goal, and pledges are still rising. Currently, the project has amassed $191,098 from 916 backers and still has 55 days of crowdfunding to go.

Phones

Android

• It’s hard to see GNU/Linux systems taking major share even in Europe where it is most popular but in small cheap computers, Android/Linux is king in Europe as in much of the world. Most of the countries in Europe are making 10% or more of their page-views from Android/Linux devices. I’m sure there is some of that share coming from folks who don’t use desktop/notebook PCs. Just the fact that many young folks have their Android/Linux smartphone bolted to their hips precludes them from needing a classical PC to get what they need, connectivity in a connected world. Many of them care nothing for a keyboard because they have flexible thumbs and sharp eyes…

Free Software/Open Source

• Take the time to weigh your options, and answer some basic questions. Which device is easiest for me to access in the kitchen? How is the system I store them on backed up? What features are a dealbreaker? Whatever you decide, here are a few open source software solutions to recipe management you might want to consider.

• What does it mean when an organization that saw software as an asset worth protecting commits to open source? Or one that viewed software as the ends rather than the means and had tens of billions of dollars worth of evidence supporting this conclusion? The short answer is that it means that open source is being viewed more rationally and dispassionately than we’ve seen since the first days of the SHARE user group.

• The interoperability assessment was done on a mesh network consisting of several Ekinops 360 Reconfigurable Optical Add-Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) nodes. To perform this live demonstration, 100 Gbps second wavelength routes were created via the Onos controller and automatically routed within the mesh network.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

• Review Wileyfox is the first new British phone brand in over a decade, and it’s hoping to cash in on the Shenzhen economic miracle.

• Not so long ago, cheap Android phones were synonymous with “Landfill”. There was usually something lacking. But rapid advances in component manufacturing and packaging have seen companies enter the market offering extraordinary value for money. The upstarts offer near high spec devices for a fraction of the cost of a top brand flagship, benefiting from huge economies of scale gained by selling into India and China, and some novel (for hardware) low or zero margin business models. These are dubbed “flagship killers” or “super midrange” devices. So if Chinese startups can do it, why can’t we?

SaaS/Big Data

• Cloudera, which provides a complete data management and analytics platform built on Apache Hadoop and related open source technologies, has announced the availability of Cloudera Enterprise 5.5.

CMS

• At this point, I started making WordPress websites—taking a theme and customizing it to create a branded site for companies. I definitely felt empowered. WordPress is open source, and I am grateful for this, as it has become the very core of many successful businesses across the globe. It is the core of what I do every day, whether writing, consulting, or developing a website.

Healthcare

Pseudo-/Semi-Open Source (Openwashing)

• Netflix has released Spinnaker, an open-source tool for testing and rolling out software updates in the cloud.

• The Apache 2.0-licensed code provides continuous delivery of applications, including managing and monitoring their deployment. Netflix said Spinnaker will replace its Asgard project.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• GuixSD is not like your parents’ distro. Instead of fiddling with configuration files all around, or running commands that do so as a side effect, the system administrator declares what the system will be like. This takes the form of an operating-system declaration, which specifies all the details: file systems, user accounts, locale, timezone, system services, etc.

Public Services/Government

• The government of Bulgaria has proposed to start a repository for open source software. The government also wants to make it mandatory to use the web based code revision and code management system for all future government software development projects.

• A free software advocate has created an editable version of the UK government’s Open Document Format manuals, the “ODF Guidance”. Making the texts available on the Github software development repository facilitates others to edit, update and translate the texts, explains Paolo Dongilli, uploaded the documents to Github on 28 October.

Openness/Sharing

• Of all the beverages out there, one stands out among the rest. Tea.

Open Hardware

• Most able-bodied people don’t really understand exactly how expensive it is to be disabled in a world built for people who are not. I have heard several people, after reading an article about e-NABLE, comment about how shocked that they are at the cost of traditional prostheses. I would imagine that the same sticker shock would apply to those who have never had to purchase a wheelchair. On the low end, wheelchairs still cost several hundred dollars, but they can reach costs up into the thousands. And electric powered chairs are even more expensive, with prices often doubling the cost of their manual counterparts. That is hard for most people to afford in a developed country like the United States, but would be nearly impossible for a poor person in developing countries.

Programming

• The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its three national labs have reached an agreement with NVIDIA’s PGI® software to create an open source Fortran compiler designed for integration with the widely used LLVM compiler infrastructure.

• LLVM (formerly Low Level Virtual Machine), a collection of reusable compiler and tool chain technologies with a modular design, facilitates support for a wide variety of programming languages and processor architectures. The Fortran front-end module created through this project will be derived from NVIDIA’s PGI Fortran compiler.

Leftovers

• In the digital era, computer bugs can affect our lives, the economy of a nation and even the well-functioning of society in general. As the internet of things gradually invades all aspects of our environment, the importance of identifying and preventing computer bugs grows exponentially.

Security

• Moen added that in sharp contrast, when the servers of the Debian GNU/Linux project were broken into in 2007, developer Wichert Akkerman posted what he (Moen) described as “an excellent report” about what had happened. Moen added that when the servers of the Apache web server were compromised, the Apache Foundation did not hold back on detailing what had taken place.

• And when the Debian project released a version of OpenSSL with a serious vulnerability unwittingly created by one of its own developers, it made no bones about it and made a full public confession.

• Last week has seen an explosion of e-commerce sites infected with the Linux.Encoder.1 ransomware. For those not familiar with the term, ransomware is a particularly vicious type of malware that aims to extort money from the owners of compromised systems.

• In the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris on Friday, there have been renewed calls to find some way to allow the government to read encrypted communications. And on the surface, it sounds simple and obvious — why wouldn’t we want the government to be able to monitor terrorists? But the reality is that it’s a very bad idea, not only because it won’t work, but because it will hurt Internet security more broadly.

• Of course, at this point, we don’t even know if the Paris attackers used encryption. There’s speculation they did, because reports suggest that no intelligence agency has found any traffic by them. But right now it’s just that: speculation.

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• In its effort to vet one of the leading GOP presidential candidates, Dr. Ben Carson, the New York Times didn’t properly vet its primary source in this vetting, former CIA officer Duane Clarridge—an indicted liar and overseer of Contra death squads in Central America.

• Before it was determined that a bomb caused the crash, Associated Press‘s Jim Heintz (11/7/15) wrote a speculative piece that began, “No matter what caused the fatal crash of a Russian airliner in Egypt, the answer will almost certainly hit Russia hard—but not President Vladimir Putin.” Whether it was terrorism or mechanical failure, Heintz wrote, “Either answer could challenge Russia’s new self-confidence—but could also be used by Putin to advance his aims and reinforce his power.”

• Needless to say, we’re not seeing a lot of coverage of how France’s François Hollande could use the Paris attacks “to advance his aims and reinforce his power.”

• While US outlets were circumspect to the point of being unintelligible in drawing a connection between France’s war against ISIS in Syria/Iraq and the Paris attacks, AP had no trouble making it clear that Russia had been targeted not because of its values or symbols but because of its military attacks against a violent adversary: “A faction of the militant Islamic State group claimed it had downed the airliner in retaliation for Russia launching airstrikes on IS positions in Syria a month earlier.”

• The debates continue over whether last week’s ISIS terror bombing in Beirut was undercovered by the media or just unappreciated by an uninterested public — even though, as Jim Naureckas pointed out on Tuesday, US news outlets overwhelmingly skewed their coverage toward the next day’s mass killings in Paris, in quantity, placement and level of sympathy for the victims, not just in number of Facebook shares. (As of this morning, the New York Times had run 130 stories mentioning Paris and terror attacks since November 13, versus 20 mentioning Beirut — with much of the Paris coverage being front-page news, while Beirut was mostly relegated to brief mentions deep within the paper—often in articles that were primarily about the Paris violence.)

• Dina Jaber: “I’m Sure If You Were To Hear What They Have Been Through, You Wouldn’t Think That They Were A Threat To You”

Transparency Reporting

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• I just watched a recording of Westminster yesterday where Tory Minister Amber Rudd announced the government was rapidly dropping the subsidy for solar energy down to zero. Yet the government has just agreed to pay to the nuclear industry a subsidy that will dwarf, in real terms, all the subsidies ever given to the coal and renewable industries combined, and what is more will be paid to the Chinese and the French. I am lost for words.

• Nor am I in any way pleased to be proved instantly correct, that Western governments view terrorist incidents like that in Paris primarily as a means to enhance their power and social control.

• The Kochs have been complaining about a “lack of civility in politics” as they seek to boost their public image–but one of their top operatives helped propel perhaps the most egregious case of race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years.

• The Center for Media and Democracy, a national watchdog group exposing corporate influence on democracy, has submitted evidence to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman showing how Exxon Mobil has promoted climate change denial through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). CMD believes this information is relevant to the landmark investigation into whether Exxon Mobil deceived its shareholders and the public about the impact that burning fossil fuels has on climate change.

• The Koch network’s secret bank, “Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce,” spent big during the 2014 midterm elections, including doubling its investment in voter data collection efforts and secretly backing U.S. Senate candidates associated with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

• As environment and energy ministers prepare to meet in Paris for the COP 21 climate change talks, CEO takes a look at how the revolving door ensures that the EU institutions remain close to Big Energy.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

• Fisher’s piece notes a fact of human nature: “People start with a narrative they feel is true, and then look for evidence to support that narrative.” To find evidence to support that claim, Fisher need look no further than the mirror.

Censorship

• …we need to raise an additional $100,000 above our regular Project Censored budget in the next three months.

Privacy

• All of this is no surprise, as just a couple of months ago the intelligence community’s top lawyer flat-out admitted that he and his friends planned to wait for the next terrorist attack to push their agenda.

• It’s no surprise that Friday’s Paris attacks are already being used to push for both more and continued surveillance here in the U.S.

• FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday speaking before a House subcommittee, making the case for expanding the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) which compelled telecom companies, Internet providers and some VoIP services to make their networks easier for law enforcement to access. Wheeler would like Congress to consider expanding the scope of the law to include devices such as gaming platforms, which now have capabilities that go beyond mere gaming.

• Carnegie Mellon University this week denied reports it was paid by the FBI to help identify criminal suspects on the Dark Web.

Civil Rights

• During the 1930s and early 1940s, the United States resisted accepting large numbers of Jewish refugees escaping the Nazi terror sweeping Europe, in large part because of fearmongering by a small but vocal crowd.

• They claimed that the refugees were communist or anarchist infiltrators intent on spreading revolution; that refugees were part of a global Jewish-capitalist conspiracy to take control of the United States from the inside; that the refugees were either Nazis in disguise or under the influence of Nazi agents sent to commit acts of sabotage; and that Jewish refugees were out to steal American jobs.

• Many rejected Jews simply because they weren’t Christian.

• David Cameron relies on the complicity of mainstream media and the gullibility and disinterest of the British public to get away with an extraordinary switch. Two years ago he was strongly urging military action in Syria against the forces of President Assad. Now he urges military action against the enemies of President Assad. That includes against groups and individuals who were initially armed and financed by western intelligence agencies, and are still being financed by our Saudi “allies”.

• Today the French National Assembly adopted the bill on the state of emergency. This text was adopted in great urgency in an unprecedented one-upmanship autoritarian atmosphere. La Quadrature du Net expresses its concerns about several measures found in the bill, especially regarding police searches of electronic devices, Internet censorship and freedom of association. Rather than enganging in any thorough consideration of the causes that led to the killings and of the way to solve this complex situation, the entire French political class betrays itself by responding to this unprecedented attack on our liberties with a broad restriction of our civil liberties.

• But each such demand raises two issues: one of practicality, and one of principle. That is: would the proposal actually help, and does the proposal conflict with the supposed principles, and way of life, we are presumably seeking to defend.

• In terms of practice: just doing “something” does not mean you are doing the right thing. It may make no difference, or it may make things worse. In terms of dealing with terrorism, one false move can cause problems for a generation. The history of dealing with the terrorist problems in Northern Ireland is packed with examples of things being “done” which just caused greater difficulties later on.

• The 2016 election will be the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act. Joining us now to discuss the significance of that is Ari Berman. He’s a senior contributing writer for The Nation magazine and an investigative fellow at the Nation Institute. He’s author of, most recently, Give Us the Ballot: the Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Welcome to CounterSpin, Ari Berman.

• One of the most illiberal and misconceived measures adopted by the Ministry of Justice – perhaps by any government department in recent years – was the criminal courts charge.

• The people of Scotland thus have multiple citizenships. They are citizens of Scotland, and of two over-arching bodies, of the United Kingdom and of the European Union. Both UK and EU citizenship are very real, with EU citizenship in particular conferring a wide range of individual rights to the citizen enshrined in numerous international treaties. This dual citizenship is reflected on your passport. On both the cover and the inside page, it says European Union above United Kingdom.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

• This Kat, who has received a considerable volume of correspondence relating to Anne Frank’s Diary, has been frustrated that the volume of incoming correspondence and matters arising from recent blogposts on other subjects has distracted him from pursuing a spot of research on the copyright aspects of this intriguing, historically significant and sensitive topic.

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