There's a fantasy about Canada’s role in the Vietnam War: that from the beginning, Canada was the conscience of America, taking a stand against conflict, welcoming war resisters, and opening the doors for refugees. But historian John Boyko picks apart that fantasy, showing how divisive the war was in Canada, in his book 'The Devil's Trick.'

Nine years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, cinema's most enduring symbol of the perils of nuclear proliferation first crawled out of Tokyo Bay. We discuss how the original GODZILLA (1954) channeled the mood of its time. PLUS: how the media talks about the congressional wrangling over the reconciliation bill.

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. To hear weekly bonus episodes, subscribe to the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus/

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In Western media’s latest anti-China crusade, unsubstantiated allegations of a Chinese disinformation campaign—which the reports themselves admit have had little engagement on social media, and nonexistent impact offline—supposedly represent a very serious threat to the US.

FAIR (3/9/17, 11/29/17, 4/9/20) has repeatedly pointed out how governments like to decry “fake news” or “disinformation” to discredit sources of unfavorable information, or to use those nebulous accusations as a cynical pretext to outright censor perspectives they dislike. Corporate media reports of “bots” or fake social media accounts alleged to be from foreign governments (like Russia) that Washington dislikes are oftentimes themselves fake news (FAIR.org, 4/5/18).

‘Explosion of activity’

Here are a few of the latest reports:

• “Pro-China Social Media Campaign Hits New Countries, Blames US for Covid” (Reuters, 9/8/21)
• “Experts See ‘Explosion of Activity’ by Pro-China Group to Mobilise Protests and Exploit Divisions in US” (Independent, 9/9/21)
• “Pro-China Online Network Used Fake Accounts to Urge Asian Americans to Attend Protests, Researchers Say” (Wall Street Journal, 9/8/21)
• “Pro-China Misinformation Operation Attempting to Exploit US Covid Divisions, Report Says” (CNN, 9/8/21)

The CNN story (9/8/21) described a “new report” from cybersecurity firm Mandiant and “experts at Google,” claiming that a

pro-Chinese government online influence operation is targeting Americans in an effort to exploit divisions over the Covid-19 pandemic and “physically mobilize protestors in the US in response.”

CNN made it sound as if this supposed operation has a truly impressive scope and outreach:

The operation, which initially attempted to discredit pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, has expanded into a “global campaign that’s operating in seven languages, on at least 30 social media platforms and across 40+ website & forums,” experts at Mandiant and Google say, noting parallels to the Russian disinformation campaign around the 2016 presidential election.

Reuters (9/8/21) likewise reported:

A misinformation campaign on social media in support of Chinese government interests has expanded to new languages and platforms, and it even tried to get people to show up to protests in the United States…. This expansion suggests Chinese interests have made a deeper commitment to the sort of international propaganda techniques Russia has used for several years, experts said.

The Independent (9/9/21) depicted a sinister internet army of Chinese propagandists trying to deceive Americans and impact US politics:

Experts are seeing an “explosion of activity” by a pro-China group to mobilize physical protests in the US and spread disinformation, according to a report…. The campaign has now reportedly expanded its mission and spread from Twitter, Facebook and Google to “thousands of handles on dozens of sites around the world.”

The Wall Street Journal (9/8/21) propagated perhaps the most sensationalist innuendo:

A network of fake social-media accounts linked to the Chinese government has attempted to draw Americans out to real-world protests against anti-Asian-American racism and popular but unsubstantiated allegations that China engineered the virus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic, according to US security firms.

Assuming Beijing’s role

Some questions should spring to mind when reading these innuendo-filled reports of a supposed Chinese disinformation campaign. Perhaps the most important one: Is there evidence the Chinese government is behind this? As one reads further into these reports, one quickly discovers there is no such evidence. The source of the report, Mandiant, doesn’t even attribute responsibility for this supposed Chinese disinformation to the Chinese government.

Reuters ironically implied that this supposed disinformation campaign, because it echoed claims made by Chinese state media, might be evidence the Chinese government is behind this. It cited evidence-free claims from Chinese media, such as the charge that the Covid-19 pandemic might have originated from the US’s Fort Detrick:

Many of the posts echo claims in state-controlled Chinese media, and they are consistent with other government propaganda efforts. The researchers do not have proof of involvement by a specific arm or ally of Beijing. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

This argument is especially funny coming from Reuters, as the Grayzone (2/20/21) exposed them and the BBC as participants in a covert information warfare campaign aimed at “countering Russia” by effecting “attitudinal change,” in an effort to “weaken the Russian state’s influence.”

There is no evidence the pandemic originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, either, so by Reuters’s own logic, Americans spouting baseless speculations on social media that the pandemic originated from the Wuhan lab would count as a US disinformation campaign, since it’s being promoted by the US government and media (FAIR.org, 6/28/21; MintPress News, 9/15/21; 9/29/21).

Speculation as evidence

The Journal reported speculation from the vice president of analysis at Mandiant, John Hultquist—”In addition to aligning with China’s strategic interests, the campaign appears to involve ‘significant resources, based on the growing scale of this operation,’ Mr. Hultquist said”—even as it noted that the report itself doesn’t offer proof the Chinese government is behind it, when Beijing denied responsibility. Such reports are tantamount to accusing the Chinese government of lying without any proof.

CNN implied that anonymous US officials believing something constitutes evidence:

US officials believe the operation is linked to the Chinese government and have been monitoring its evolution, according to one source familiar with the situation.

The cable channel even cited previous evidence-free allegations from US officials, laundered by Western media outlets like the New York Times (7/24/20), BBC (8/8/20), Reuters (8/9/20) and Fox (10/13/20), that China was trying to meddle in the 2020 election. The fact that, according to US intelligence agencies (Business Insider, 3/16/21), China did not in fact intervene in the election seemed to be offered by CNN as evidence that it could have if it wanted to:

During the 2020 election, US officials were watching to see if the operation might be used to spread disinformation, but ultimately assessed that the Chinese government avoided doing so because it did not want to provoke a response, the source added.

FAIR (7/3/20) has repeatedly pointed out that anonymous officials are notoriously unreliable sources who often lie or make unproven claims, with the most recent example making headlines being the evidence-free “Havana Syndrome” (FAIR.org, 12/16/20). Ironically, one could argue that the CNN report provided more evidence that CNN was operating as a US government propaganda agent—because it plainly gives credence to evidence-free statements from anonymous US officials—than it offered for the supposed disinformation campaign being linked to the Chinese government.

Little impact online or IRL

Yet another question one could ask is whether this alleged disinformation campaign had any significant impact on US politics offline. But when one reads these reports, one quickly discovers that not only did it have little effect on real life, it had almost no online engagement. Why are Western media spreading sensationalist innuendo when their own source, Mandiant, admits the program it claims to have uncovered had virtually no effect online or offline? CNN noted that the Mandiant report acknowledged

while this attempt did not appear to achieve any success, we believe it is critical that observers continue to monitor for such attempts in case greater degrees of organic engagement are later realized by the network.

Reuters acknowledged comical statements from Mandiant and Google staff:

So far, the accounts on the main US platforms and major networks elsewhere, such as Russia-based VKontakte, have gained little interaction with authentic users, the researchers said.

“A lot of it is tweeting into the void,” said John Hultquist, vice president of intelligence analysis at FireEye… “It’s almost like they are being paid by volume,” instead of engagement, said Shane Huntley, director of the threat analysis group at Google.

Discrediting anti-racist protests

Reports and headlines imply that Asian-Americans have been attending multiple anti-racism protests because of this disinformation campaign. Reuters claimed that this “misinformation campaign on social media in support of the Chinese government” tried to “get people to show up to protests in the United States.”

However, when one reads the actual Mandiant report, it cites only one instance of this supposed incitement to attend a protest on April 24 this year in New York City, and it wasn’t even successful at that. Yet reports managed to turn the only example in the Mandiant report into several in their audience’s imagination by implying there were others cited, as they reported: “In one example, the network encouraged Asian Americans to show up to a protest on April 24 in New York City,” the Journal reported, while CNN had:

In April, for example, experts saw thousands of fake accounts calling on Asian-Americans to protest racial injustice in the US, and “disinformation about the virus’ origins.”

Reports like these can potentially serve to discredit all anti-racist protests by Asian Americans as merely being duped by “Chinese propaganda.”

FAIR (4/5/18) has previously reported how corporate media have been spreading evidence-free claims of “Russian bots” on social media like Twitter trying to “sow discord” or “exploit tensions,” even as their own primary source for those claims acknowledged they were “overdone.” A lot of these stories were described as “total bullshit” in a report interviewing the primary source for those claims, Hamilton 68, because not all bots are in Russia (many are based in the US), and journalists might just be confusing people genuinely passionate about promoting Russia with fake accounts. Twitter is already clogged with bots, which makes it extremely difficult to tell which accounts are inauthentic, let alone whether they’re under the command of the Russian government.

The eerily familiar evidence-free narrative about this supposed Chinese disinformation campaign might lead the most cynical people to conclude these almost formulaic reports will be used as a pretext for American social media companies like Twitter to ban accounts on behalf of the US government that echo claims made by the Chinese government and media, regardless of whether they’re fake or not. Journalists and FAIR contributors like Alan MacLeod and Ben Norton have reported how giant American social media companies like Twitter and Reddit already have executives from Western governments, and how these companies have already acted to censor foreign perspectives that challenge narratives and disinformation from the US government under the pretext of combating foreign disinformation.

The post Chinese ‘Disinformation’ and US Propaganda appeared first on FAIR.

What news topic do you want to hear the Useful Idiots dissect? It could be something we’ve never talked about, or a longer look at something we have. Doesn’t need to be top story news either, we can make Wilson dig for info.

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Saul Dubow responds to listener questions on Victorian Britain’s bitter conflict with two southern African republics 

 

What triggered the Boer War? Why did it take Britain so long to bring its enormous resources to bear? And how did the war puncture the people of Britain’s confidence in the power of their armed forces? Professor Saul Dubow answers your questions on the bitter imperial conflict.

 

 

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Josiah Zayner wants to teach you genetic engineering. For two reasons: 1. He thinks it’d be awesome. And 2: It would hurt Big Pharma.

“Gene therapies can cure and treat diseases,” he explains. “We can engineer animals and plants to make fuels and food and crazy stuff. The applications are limitless. We just need people working on it. And the only reason people aren't is because there's that knowledge gap.”

But the knowledge gap is something that can be fixed, right? All we have to do is educate people. And that’s the mission of Odin, Josiah’s company that helps you become a scientist without huge grants and a PhD.

And if regular people learn how to make this stuff for themselves, we can stop relying on pharma companies.

“The drug market is so messed up. These companies are only trying to make drugs that make money,” he laments.

“We literally have a cure for a disease that is not being provided to people because drug companies think they can't get the price they deserve for it. How fucked up is that?”

Josiah’s latest venture, which got him heavily censored on the internet, was engineering a Covid vaccine.

“We found that those who had the vaccine were protected. And it was pretty crazy because I was like, wow, that's amazing data, right? Why isn't everybody jumping on this?”

He and his team created a DNA (easier and cheaper than mRNA) vaccine and proved its effectiveness. This was in the summer of 2020. But it wasn’t the big drug companies’ vaccine. So they suppressed him. And only now, over a year later, are other countries finally starting to use it. About time, right?

It’s one of our most interesting interviews with a curious experimenter who wants to teach us all to be scientists. It’s worth a listen.

Plus, new Russiagate docs, Trump’s toad penis, and throwing shit at politicians.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer known as the father of histories, dubbed by his detractors as the father of lies. Herodotus (c484 to 425 BC or later) was raised in Halicarnassus in modern Turkey when it was part of the Persian empire and, in the years after the Persian Wars, set about an inquiry into the deep background to those wars. He also aimed to preserve what he called the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and non-Greeks, seeking out the best evidence for past events and presenting the range of evidence for readers to assess. Plutarch was to criticise Herodotus for using this to promote the least flattering accounts of his fellow Greeks, hence the 'father of lies', but the depth and breadth of his Histories have secured his reputation from his lifetime down to the present day.

With

Tom Harrison Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews

Esther Eidinow Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol

And

Paul Cartledge A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Marissa Moorman (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, African Cultural Studies) on Angolan social history and media studies. We discuss the evolving trajectory of her scholarship, research in southern Africa and Portugal, and her latest book, Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1931–2002. The interview features a musical interlude (courtesy of Paulo Flores). It closes with insights on Moorman’s public-facing work with Africa Is A Country and provides a sneak peak into her current book project.

Just created a standalone Git repository for my tmr.el library: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/tmr.el.

This has been part of my dotemacs for several months now and I thought it was right to turn it into its own package. No ELPA package is planned for the foreseeable future.

Excerpt from its documentation:

This package provides a single command for setting a timer: tmr.

The command prompts for a unit of time, which is represented as a string that consists of a number and, optionally, a single character suffix which specifies the unit of time.

Valid formats:

Input	Meaning
5	5 minutes
5m	5 minutes
5s	5 seconds
5h	5 hours

If tmr is called with an optional prefix argument (C-u), it also asks for a description which accompanies the given timer. Preconfigured candidates are specified in the user option tmr-descriptions-list, though any arbitrary input is acceptable at the minibuffer prompt.

When the timer is set, a message is sent to the echo area recording the current time and the point in the future when the timer elapses. Echo area messages can be reviewed with the view-echo-area-messages which is bound to C-h e by default.

Once the timer runs its course, it produces a desktop notification and plays an alarm sound. The notification’s message is practically the same as that which is sent to the echo area. The sound file for the alarm is defined in tmr-sound-file, while the urgency of the notification can be set through the tmr-notification-urgency option.

The tmr-cancel command cancels the last tmr. Note that for the time being it has no notion of multiple timers—just the last one.

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As with every piece of Elisp I produce for my private needs, this is all done for recreational and/or educational purposes. Though I believe tmr.el can be used by others as well, provided they are willing to install it manually.

The initial release notwithstanding, there are a couple of user-facing improvements to be made:

1. Make the tmr-cancel command prompt with completion for a timer object when more than one is present.
2. Create a tmr-list command which lists all tmr objects (yes, I know about list-timers, but I want something more specific).

Kenyan-born comedian Njambi McGrath goes on a challenging journey of self-discovery, as she traces the roots of her upbringing and the British influences that shaped her life. In this episode, Njambi explores the history of British colonisation of her home country and how it directly impacted her father's life, and subsequently her own. Njambi shares the story of meeting her husband, starting a family and moving to the UK and becoming the talk of the town. Produced by Julia Sutherland A Dabster production for BBC Radio 4

Democracy Now! 2021-09-29 Wednesday

• Headlines for September 29, 2021
• "Hold the Line!": Can Progressives Force Passage of $3.5T Package to Expand the Social Safety Net?
• Yanis Varoufakis on Angela Merkel's Legacy, European Politics & the "Sordid Arms Race" on the Seas

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This August, Israeli consular officials in the southeast U.S. arranged meetings with a dean at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to discuss a graduate student teaching a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to two UNC professors with knowledge of the meetings, who asked for anonymity for fear of retribution, the Israeli official accused the Ph.D. student of antisemitism and said she was unfit to teach the course.

The intervention by an Israeli government official, Consul General to the Southeastern United States Anat Sultan-Dadon, followed a pressure campaign by right-wing pro-Israel websites and an advocacy group to remove the graduate student, Kylie Broderick, from teaching the history department course called “The Conflict over Israel/Palestine.” The websites and pro-Israel advocacy group pointed to postings Broderick had made on Twitter that criticized Israel and Zionism and, without evidence, cited the postings as evidence of antisemitism.

In addition to the intervention by the Israeli government, the school faced pressure from a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the two UNC professors told The Intercept. The professors said Rep. Kathy Manning, D-N.C., also met with the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences to exert pressure over Broderick’s course.

“It is not a new phenomenon where outside parties have tried to stifle academic freedom on this subject,” Broderick said. “But these people have never seen me teach, never seen my past evaluations which have said that I treat students fairly, and thus have no right to dictate what I say inside the classroom.”

Israel-Palestine has become one of the most politicized areas of academia, with periodic firings of professors, prosecutions of students, and even the maintenance of public blacklists helping impose an atmosphere of fear and self-censorship over the topic. Even by that standard, the intervention of Israeli government officials directly with an American university over the teaching of a course represents a troubling new threat to academic freedom.

“I think that a representative of a foreign government attempting to police an academic class is, in the first place, ridiculous, and an obvious overreaction to what is essentially an issue that started on Twitter,” Broderick said. “I also think it is strange that the Israeli consulate general was granted an audience. If this was a class on Hungary or Australia, would the university have permitted the attempted interference of a foreign government? The fact that this meeting happened at all is clearly a threat to academic freedom.”

“The fact that this meeting happened at all is clearly a threat to academic freedom.”

The controversy started over several tweets sent by Broderick that were highly critical of Israel and U.S. foreign policy, including support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. Broderick rejected accusations leveled by Israeli consular officials that her criticisms of Israel on social media constituted antisemitism. “A critique of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism does not constitute bigotry any more than a critique of Iran, which calls itself an Islamic Republic, constitutes an Islamophobic attack,” Broderick said. ”States are not religions, nor are states a people.”

Broderick had expected scrutiny of some of her teaching, as Israel is always a hot-button issue in the United States. What she did not was the degree to which the smear campaign against her would balloon, up to and including interventions from officials of two governments.

In a statement to The Intercept, Sultan-Dadon confirmed the meeting with the dean of UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences about Broderick. Though Sultan-Dadon declined to comment on the specifics of the discussion, she doubled down on her view that Broderick was antisemitic and unfit to teach a course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Regarding the matter of the course ‘The Conflict over Israel/Palestine’ at UNC Chapel Hill taught by PhD student Ms. Broderick, I do have significant concerns regarding public statements that have been made by Ms. Broderick on this subject matter, some of which are not only heavily biased, but fall clearly under what is defined as antisemitic by the IHRA working definition of antisemitism,” Sultan-Dadon said, referring to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s heavily contested definition of antisemitism.

The consul general went on: “I think it should be of concern to anyone who stands against antisemitism, and for academic freedom, that an individual who has not only made public antisemitic statements in reference to Israel and the Israeli Palestinian conflict, but also publicly stated that she does not believe there are two sides to this conflict and does not want to teach her students both sides, is the selected teacher for a course on ‘The Conflict over Israel/Palestine.’”

Manning’s congressional office did not respond to a request for comment on the meetings with UNC officials. Manning’s website is short on foreign policy positions but says that support for Israel is a key issue for the U.S. House member.

The dean’s office and UNC declined to comment on the meeting with officials. However, UNC officials appear to be holding firm despite the heavy outside pressure over Broderick’s teaching of the course. An email from the chancellor’s office this August, circulated online by pro-Israel groups, indicated that the course would go forward as planned, and Broderick has since begun teaching without controversy or complaints from students.

The controversy over Broderick’s teaching of the course began this summer, after the pro-Israel website Algemeiner did a story focused on a series of tweets Broderick had made that were highly critical of Israel or deemed by the author, Peter Reitzes, to have been “crass.”

The issue snowballed from there as other activist news websites picked up the issue and began spreading it in their networks — even reaching mainstream news. In August, a local ABC affiliate broadcasted an investigative story by journalist Jonah Kaplan. Kaplan quoted students saying that Broderick’s tweets criticizing Israel were reminiscent of the rhetoric that fomented the Holocaust, describing them as a “new mutation of what anti-Semitism is today.” Another student told Kaplan, regarding Broderick’s tweets, “Just replace Zionist with Jew and it’s pretty obvious it’s anti-Semitic.”

Similar campaigns, accusing critics of Israel of antisemitism despite a lack of direct evidence, have long become commonplace in U.S. academia.

“In a weird way, what is interesting about Broderick’s case is that in all likelihood she is going to be fine, and that is a massive change from what would have happened even a decade ago.”

“Academic courses all over the U.S. have been taught for a long time with a massive bias in favor of Israel, and if people in a classroom or faculty are pro-Israel, they should be allowed to make that argument. But what all this outside pressure on academics is trying to do is prevent the same from happening from the Palestinian perspective,” said Jonathan Brown, a professor of Islamic civilization at Georgetown University. “There are fundamental questions at stake here about academic freedom and whether academics are expected to teach according to donor or even foreign government preferences.”

In many ways, however, the discourse over the conflict is changing, with polls showing growing sympathy for the Palestinian cause and openness to criticism of Israeli government policy among Americans, including among liberal, progressive, and Jewish organizations that also prioritize the fight against domestic antisemitism. The intense pushback, even against graduate students critical of Israel teaching courses on the subject with the Israeli government itself directly involved, is seen by some as a way of trying to maintain a slanted status quo that is now going out of favor.

“When I was in college 20 years ago, if someone said something critical of Israel in class, you could hear a pin drop. It was frightening. Things are very different now,” said Brown. “In a weird way, what is interesting about Broderick’s case is that in all likelihood she is going to be fine, and that is a massive change from what would have happened even a decade ago.”

Correction: September 28, 2021, 2:08 p.m. ET
Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story misstated North Carolina Rep. Kathy Manning’s political party. She is a Democrat.

The post Israeli Diplomat Pressured UNC to Remove Teacher Who Criticized Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

During the early Cold War, the US security establishment was desperate to contain the rise of communism in Indonesia. When President John F. Kennedy took a different tact, it triggered an ideological showdown with the CIA.

Matthew Stevens tackles listener questions on the history of the Welsh regions during the Middle Ages

 

Matthew Stevens tackles listener questions and popular search queries on the history of Wales and the Welsh regions during the Middle Ages, from the Norman invasion and Edward I’s conquest to the Welsh roots of the Tudor dynasty.

 

 

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Kristen Ghodsee joins Long Reads to discuss the lost world and "progressive spirit" of Bulgarian Communism. Kristen is professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of several books, including Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence. Long Reads is a Jacobin podcast looking in-depth at political topics and thinkers, both contemporary and historical, with the magazine’s longform writers. Hosted by Features Editor Daniel Finn.

You can read Kristen's essay "The Youngest Partisan," about the Bulgarian militant Elena Lagadinova, here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/12/elena-lagadinova-bulgaria-partisan-amazon-gender-equality

Produced by Conor Gillies, music by Knxwledge.

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The index, the bit at the back of a book you mostly only turn to for reference, has a bit of a dowdy reputation – and it’s an unfair one. Dennis Duncan discusses the index’s surprising history – one that has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from office and proved a battleground for snarky academic rivalries. 

 

(Ad) Dennis Duncan is the author of Index, A Brief History of the (Allen Lane, 2021). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Index-History-Dennis-Duncan/dp/0241374235/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-hexpod

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Since leaving prison in 2017, former intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been busy. She ran unsuccessfully for senate in her home state of Maryland, became a Twitch streamer, and was jailed for contempt after refusing to testify in a US government case against Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange. Manning joins Ryan Grim and Intercept reporter Ken Klippenstein to talk about prison, prospects for whistleblowers in the Biden era, and what she’s been up to since her release.

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The Python programming language comes with its own built-in Integrated Development Environment (IDE) called IDLE. The name, IDLE, supposedly came from the actor, Eric Idle, who was a part of the Monty Python troupe, which is what Python itself is named after.

IDLE comes with Python on Windows and some Linux variants. You may need to install IDLE separately on your particular flavor of Linux or on Mac if you plan to use the Python that came with the operating system. You should check out the Python website for full instructions on how to do so as each operating system is different.

Here are some of the reasons that Integrated Development Environments are useful:

• They provide syntax highlighting which helps prevent coding errors
• Autocomplete of variable names and built-in names
• Breakpoints and debugging.

On that last point, breakpoints tell the debugger where to pause execution. Debugging is the process of going through your code step-by-step to figure out how it works or to fix an issue with your code.

IDLE itself has other attributes that are useful, such as access to Python documentation, easy access to the source code via the Class Browser, and much more. However, IDLE is not the only way to code in Python. There are many useful IDEs out there. You can also use a text editor if you prefer. Notepad, SublimeText, Vim, etc., are examples of text editors. Text editors do not have all the features that a full-fledged IDE has, but tend to have the advantage of being simpler to use.

Here is a shortlist of IDEs that you can use to program in Python:

• PyCharm
• Wing Python IDE
• VS Code (also called Visual Studio Code)
• Spyder
• Eclipse with PyDev

PyCharm and WingIDE both have free and paid versions of their programs. The paid versions have many more features, but if you are just starting out, their free offerings are quite nice. VS Code and Spyder are free. VS Code can also be used for coding in many other languages. Note that to use VS Code effectively with Python, you will need to install a Python extension. You can also use the PyDev plugin for Eclipse to program in Python.

Other popular editors for Python include SublimeText, vim, emacs, and even Notepad++. These editors may not be 100% up-to-date on the syntax of the language, but you can use them for multiple programming languages.

But let’s back up a bit and talk about Python’s basic console, also known as the REPL, which stands for Read Evaluate Print Loop.

What About the REPL?

REPL or READ, EVAL, PRINT, LOOP is basically Python’s interpreter. Python allows you to type code into an interpreter which will run your code live and let you learn about the language. You can access the interpreter, or REPL, by running Python in your terminal (if you are on Mac or Linux) or command console (if you are on Windows).

On Windows, you can go to the Start menu and search for cmd or “Command Prompt” to open the console or terminal:

Once you have the terminal open you can try typing python. You should see something like this:

If this doesn’t work and you get an “Unrecognized Command” or some other error, then Python may not be installed or configured correctly. On Windows, you may need to add Python to your system’s path or you can just type out the full path to Python in your command console. For example, if you installed Python in C:\Python\Python38, then you can run it using cmd.exe like you did above, but instead of typing python, you would type C:\Python\Python38\python.

If you need to get help in the REPL, you can type help():

You can type live Python code into the REPL and it will be immediately evaluated, which means the code will run as soon as you press enter.

Here’s how you would print out “Hello World” and add some numbers in the REPL:

Python comes with its own code editor called IDLE. Let’s learn about that next!

Getting Started with IDLE

IDLE is a good place to start learning Python. Once you have it installed, you can start it up and the initial screen will look like this:

This is a REPL. You can enter code here and it will be evaluated as soon as you press the Return or Enter key.

If you want to actually write a full program, then you will need to open up the editor view by going to File –> New.

You should now have the following dialog on your screen:

You can enter your code here and save it.

Running Your Code

Let’s write a small bit of code in our code editor and then run it. Enter the following code and then save the file by going to File –> Save.

print('Hello World')

To run this code in IDLE, go to the Run menu and choose the first option labeled Run Module:

When you do this, IDLE will switch to the Shell and show you the output of your program, if there is any:

You can also use the Run menu’s Check Module option to check your code for syntax errors.

Accessing Help / Documentation

Sometimes you need help. Fortunately IDLE has some built-in help about itself and the Python language, too! You can access help about IDLE by going to the Help menu and choosing IDLE Help:

If you’d rather look up how something works in the Python language, then go to the Help menu and choose Python Docs or press F1 on your keyboard:

This will show you Python’s official documentation. Depending on your O/S this may load local help files, or start a browser to show the official on-line help documents.

Restarting the Shell

Let’s go back to the Shell screen of IDLE rather than the editor. It has several other functions that are worth going over. The first is that you can restart the shell.

Restarting the shell is useful when you need to start over with a clean slate but don’t want to close and reopen the program. To restart the shell, go to the Shell menu and choose Restart Shell:

If you haven’t restarted the shell before, then your screen will look like this:

This tells you that your shell has restarted.

Module Browser

IDLE comes with a handy tool called the Module Browser. This tool can be found in the File menu.

When you open it, you will see the following:

Modules in Python are code that the Python core development team has created for you. You can use the Module Browser to browse the source code of Python itself.

Try entering the following into the dialog above: os. Then press OK.

You should now see the following:

This allows you to browse the source code for os.py. You can double-click anything in the Module Browser and it will jump to the beginning of where that code is defined in IDLE’s code editor.

Path Browser

Another useful tool that you can use in IDLE is the Path Browser. The Path Browser allows you to see where Python is installed and also what paths Python uses to import modules from. You will learn more about importing and modules later on in this book.

You can open it by going to File and then Path Browser:

The Path Browser is a good way to diagnose issues with importing modules. It can show you that you might not have Python configured correctly. Or it might show you that you have installed a 3rd party module in the wrong location.

Getting Started with PyCharm Community Edition

PyCharm is a commercial Python IDE from a company called JetBrains. They have a professional version, which costs money, and a community edition, which is free. PyCharm is one of the most popular choices for creating and editing Python programs.

PyCharm Professional has tons of features and is a great debugger. However, if you are a beginner, you may find all the functionality in this software to be a bit overwhelming.

To get a copy of PyCharm Community Edition, you can go to the following website:

https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/

The Community Edition does not have all the features that PyCharm Professional has. But that is okay when you are new to Python. If you would like to try PyCharm, go ahead and download and install the software.

When you run PyCharm it may ask you to import settings. You can ignore that or import settings if you have used PyCharm previously and already have some.

Next, you will probably need to accept their privacy policy / EULA. Depending on the operating system, you may also get asked what theme to apply. The default is Darkula on Windows.

At this point you should see the following Welcome banner:

PyCharm prefers that you work in a project rather than opening a simple file. Projects are typically collections of related files or scripts. You can set up a new project here or open a pre-existing one.

Once you have gone through that process, your screen should look like this:

Creating a Python Script

To create a new Python script in PyCharm, you can go to File and choose New. Then pick Python File from the choices presented:

Give the file a name, such as hello.py. Now PyCharm should look like this:

Running Code in PyCharm

Let’s add some code to your file:

print('Hello PyCharm')

To run your code, go to the Run menu and choose Run. PyCharm might ask you to set up a debug configuration before running it. You can save the defaults and continue.

You should now see the following at the bottom of PyCharm:

PyCharm Features

PyCharm has tons of features. In fact, it has so many that you could write an entire book on them. For the purposes of this book, you should know that PyCharm will give you suggestions about your code based on PEP8, which is Python’s code style guide. You will learn more about that in the next chapter. It will also highlight many other things about your code.

You can usually hover over any code that looks weird to you and a tooltip will appear that will explain the issue or warning.

The debugger that ships with PyCharm is useful for figuring out why your code doesn’t work. You can use it to walk through your code line-by-line.

PyCharm’s documentation is quite good, so if you get stuck, check their documentation.

Getting Started with Wing Personal

Wingware’s Python IDE is written in Python and PyQt. It is my personal favorite IDE for Python. You can get it in Professional (paid), Personal (free) or 101 (really stripped-down version, but also free). Their website explains the differences between the 3 versions.

You can get Wingware here:

https://wingware.com/

After you have downloaded and installed the software, go ahead and run it. You will need to accept the License Agreement to load up the IDE.

Once it is fully loaded, you will see something like this:

Running Code in Wingware

Let’s create some code in Wing. You can open a new file by going to the File menu and choosing New:

Now enter the following code:

print('Hello Wingware')

Save the code to disk by going to File and then Save.

To run this code, you can go to the Debug menu, press F5 or click the green “play” button in the toolbar. You will see a debug message dialog:

Hit OK and the code will run. You will see the output in the Debug I/O tab if there is any.

Note that Wing does not require you to create a project to run a single Python file. You can create projects if you want to though.

Wing Features

Wing has an incredible debugger. However, you cannot use it to its full extent in the free versions of the software. But there is a Source Assistant tab in the Personal edition that is very useful. It will show you information about the functions / modules that you have loaded as you use them. This makes learning new modules much easier.

Wing will also show you various issues with your code while you type, although PyCharm seems to do more in this area than Wing does.

Both products have plugins and you can write your own for both IDEs as well.

Getting Started with Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code, or VS Code for short, is a general-purpose programming editor. Unlike PyCharm and WingIDE, it is designed to work with lots of languages. PyCharm and WingIDE will let you write in other languages too, but their primary focus is on Python.

VS Code is made by Microsoft and it is free. You can download it here:

https://code.visualstudio.com/

Once you have it downloaded and installed, you will need to install support for Python from the VS Code marketplace.

If you open up VS Code, the screen will look something like this:

Under Customize you can see there is an option for installing Python. If that isn’t there, you can click on the Extensions button that is on the left and search for Python there:

Go ahead and install the Python extension so that VS Code will recognize Python correctly.

Running Code in VS Code

Open a folder in the File Explorer tab and then you can right-click in there to create a new file. Alternatively, you can go to the File menu and choose New File and do it that way.

Once that is done, you can enter the following code and save it:

print('Hello VS Code')

Then right-click anywhere in the editor and select the Run Python File in Terminal selection. This will cause your code to run and you will see the following:

Note: I didn’t have the PSReadline module installed when I ran this code which is why you see the error in the console above.

VS Code Features

VS Code can run all kinds of different languages. However, for the purposes of Python, Microsoft has a team of Python developers that are constantly improving this IDE and adding new features. There are tons of extensions that you can install to enhance the editor’s functionality.

One of the coolest extensions that you can install is Live Share, which lets you do real-time collaboration between developers. It basically shares your coding session with others. Since this IDE is the newest of the bunch and its feature set is changing a lot, you will need to research it on your own time.

Wrapping Up

There are lots of Python code editors to choose from. IDLE is nice in that it comes with Python and is written in Python, so you can actually learn a lot just by looking at its source code. PyCharm and VS Code are very popular right now. Wing IDE used to be more popular than it is today, but I think it is still really great. All of these tools are good, but you should give them a try to see which one works the best for you.

Related Reading

Want to learn more Python basics? Then check out the following tutorials:

• Python 101: An Intro to Working with JSON

• Python 101 – Creating Multiple Processes

• Python 101 – Debugging Your Code with pdb

The post An Intro to Python Editors appeared first on Mouse Vs Python.

During the first Gulf War, there was a transformation to an era of constant new news. The face of this change was CNN reporter and Useful Idiots Hero Charles Jaco.

Viewers went from checking the news once or twice a day to constantly staying plugged in, anchors got famous, and the whole thing became a spectacle. Jaco’s response?

“What the devil is going on?”

Jaco, who’s the star of the weekly UI segment "Jaco of the Week,” discussed the negative impacts of unending news.

“We should've put up slides that said, ‘Look, this is being brought live. The first draft of history is always wrong. Take this with a grain of salt and we'll try to sort this out.’” With the need to always have fresh news, time for fact-checking went out the window. And since the early 90s, trust in media has plummeted. Jaco says that’s why.

We also discuss the shift from focusing on in-the-field reporters to idolizing talking heads in the studio:

“One of the things that really annoys me now is that you've got these platforms that can give you 24-hour news, but on the three major channels, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, it's degenerated into just talking heads rather than using the expertise of the reporters in the field.

It's irritating as hell to those of us who did it for so long.”

It’s a fun interview with our charming and funny UI hero. And check back on Monday for the extended interview where Charles discusses teabaggers, conspiracy theories, and the impending US civil war (sense a trend?)

Plus, we find out just how much Dems and Republicans suck as Biden lets Haitian migrants get whipped and McConnell plans to let the government default. Ugh.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.

Subscribe now

In 2008, many of Barack Obama’s supporters hoped he would bring the global war on terror to a close. Instead, he expanded it – and his successors have done nothing to change course. By Samuel Moyn. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

To every age dogged with pollution, accidents and congestion, the transport solution for the next generation seems obvious – but the same problems keep coming back. By Tom Standage. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom. By Alice Bell. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/longreadpod

Neil Faulkner reveals how the Anglo-Arab Wars of 1870-1920 helped give rise to the first modern jihad

 

Neil Faulkner, author of Empire and Jihad, describes how Britain’s entanglements in the Middle East and north Africa in the decades leading up to the First World War helped trigger a radical Islamic insurgency.

 

(Ad) Neil Faulkner is the author of Empire and Jihad: The Anglo-Arab Wars of 1870-1920 (Yale, 2021). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Empire-Jihad-Anglo-Arab-Wars-1870-1920/dp/0300227493/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-hexpod

 

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Tucker Carlson reigns as the most-watched personality on cable news. How did he get that way? How important is he really? And what does he actually believe? To answer these questions, he enlist the help of Tucker scholar and returning guest Alex Shephard, who guides us through Carlson's trajectory from a Tom Wolfe-ish magazine scribe to a Jon Stewart punching-bag to the living embodiment of the GOP's hard-right turn.

"How Tucker Carlson Lost It" by Alex Shephard - https://newrepublic.com/article/163567/tucker-carlson-profile-lost-mind

Michael and Us is a podcast about political cinema and our crumbling world hosted by Will Sloan and Luke Savage. To hear weekly bonus episodes, subscribe to the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/michaelandus/

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Democracy Now! 2021-09-22 Wednesday

• Headlines for September 22, 2021
• Cuban Diplomat on U.S. Blockade, Havana's Homegrown Vaccines & Biden's Hypocrisy on Human Rights
• "Life Has Become Unlivable in Honduras": How Corruption & Drug Trade Fueled Migration to U.S.

Download this show

Democracy Now! 2021-09-23 Thursday

• Headlines for September 23, 2021
• Raj Patel: Climate, Conflict and Capitalism Drive Global Hunger. COVID Made It Worse
• The Globalized, Corporate-Led Food System Is Failing Us: Boycott Grows of U.N. Food Summit
• United States of War: How AUKUS Nuclear Submarine Deal Could Inflame Tension, Provoke War with China

Download this show

Ben Norton speaks with journalist Brian Mier of independent news website Brasil Wire about the fascistic Jair Bolsonaro government in Brazil, the far-right's attacks on democracy, and the rumors of plans for a military coup to prevent popular leftist former president Lula da Silva from returning to power in the 2022 elections.

VIDEO: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BiVixfNIfSs

Check out Brasil Wire: https://brasilwire.com

Follow Brian on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianMteleSUR

“The charade of statesmanship played out by George W. Bush and his enabler, Condoleezza Rice, as they wander the Middle East is a fitting end to seven years of misrule, stripped of power and transformed from monsters into buffoons.

One half expects to see him stand up at the next president's inauguration and screech ‘I’m melting! I’m melting!’ as he sinks into a puddle of slime.”

This was penned by friend-of-show and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges back in 2008. And at the time, it seemed to reflect the opinion of George W. Bush among Leftists and Liberals.

But now, he’s back. Liberals who used to condemn him now love him! He hangs out with Obama, he gives speeches denouncing Trump, he paints! Now that’s a thoughtful and cultured war criminal with whom we’d like to grab a Sauvignon blanc.

In addition to blasting the grotesque rehabilitation of Dubya, Hedges shares his experience of 9/11 which he witnessed in New York City where he happened to be for a meeting with his then-employer The New York Times. He recalls those who jumped from the buildings who were edited out because “that mass suicide just didn't fit the narrative that both the media and the ruling elites were propelling.” When we asked him if 9/11 surprised him after years of serving and reporting in the Middle East, watching US bombs fall on cities, he responded,

“That is how we communicate with the rest of the world. Huge explosions and death above a city skyline. That's how we have communicated for decades. And the hijackers learned to communicate back to us in the language we taught them. So when I saw the devastation, it was familiar.

That was of course lost on most of the public who drank deep from that very dark elixir of nationalism.”

Plus, the new Useful Idiots Wigged Moose Party announces a plan to ride in an armored pangolin and shoot Covid pellets at the Pharma companies refusing to share the vaccine. Maybe you have to see it to get it.

It’s all this, and more (including a #JacoOfTheWeek), on this week’s episode of Useful Idiots. Check it out.

And don’t forget to subscribe to hear the rest of the interview with Chris Hedges, which drops Monday.

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Guests: Jan Matti Dollbaum, Morvan Lallouet, and Ben Noble on Navalny: Putin's Nemesis, Russia's Future? published by Hurst Publishers.

The post Unpacking Alexey Navalny appeared first on SRB Podcast.