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William Blum, renowned author and critic of US foreign policy, dead at 85

Chris Agee and Louis Wolf
CovertAction Magazine
Sun, 09 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC
William Blum

William Blum (1933 – 2018)
William Blum died in Virginia early this morning on December 9, 2018. He was surrounded by friends and family after falling in his Washington D.C. apartment and sustaining serious wounds 65 days ago. He was 85 years old.

Bill was born March 6, 1933 at Beth Moses Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y. and became an American author, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy. He worked in a computer-related position at the United States Department of State in the mid-1960s. Initially an anti-communist with dreams of becoming a foreign service officer, he became disillusioned by the Vietnam War.

Blum left the State Department in 1967 and became a founder and editor of the Washington Free Press, the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital. In 1969, he wrote and published an exposé of the CIA in which were revealed the names and addresses of more than 200 CIA employees. He worked as freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South America. In 1972-1973 Blum worked as a journalist in Chile where he reported on the Allende government's "socialist experiment." Its overthrow in a CIA designed coup instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing in various corners of the world.
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Video

John Stossel: Google crosses that creepy line

John Stossel
Trib Live
Fri, 07 Dec 2018 08:03 UTC
John Stossel
© SCREENSHOT/YOUTUBE
John Stossel
This morning, Google told me that it would not allow my YouTube video Socialism Leads to Violence to be viewed by young people. It violates "community guidelines," said the company in a computer-generated email. Anti-capitalist bias? Or just an algorithm shielding children from disturbing violence in Venezuela? I don't know.

But a new documentary, The Creepy Line, argues that companies like Google and Facebook lean left and have power they shouldn't have. The title "Creepy Line" refers to a comment by former Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who said when it comes to issues like privacy, Google policy "is to get right up to the creepy line but not cross it."

But, the documentary argues that Google crosses that creepy line every day. Google's power comes from its dominant search engine.

"It is a company that has an agenda," the writer of The Creepy Line, Peter Schweizer, says in my latest video. "Their ability to manipulate the algorithm is something that they've demonstrated," says Schweizer, and last election Google put positive stories about Hillary Clinton higher in Google searches. But that doesn't prove Google bias. It could be because the media lean left, and "unbiased" algorithms rely on links to popular media.

"But, they're not using unbiased algorithms to do things like search for unacceptable content," says psychologist Jordan Peterson in the documentary. "They're built specifically to filter out whatever's bad."

Comment: See the trailer:


The 80 minute documentary can be accessed at the website "The Creepy Line," via Amazon and ITunes.

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Arrow Up

Russia overtakes China in Bloomberg's top emerging economies list


RT
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:59 UTC
Russia horse racing
© Sputnik / Vitaliy Timkiv / File
Horse race in Krasnodar, Russia
Despite years of EU and US sanctions, Russia has secured second place in the Bloomberg rating of emerging economies, behind Malaysia and just ahead of China.

The business news agency ranked 20 developing nations in its scorecard that includes metrics ranging from growth prospects to the state of the current account, sovereign credit ratings and stock and bond valuations. Russia gained 2.36 points on these criteria, while the only country topping it is Malaysia with 2.55. The Asian country has held on to the top spot on the list since the last ratings were published in June thanks to its current-account surplus, relatively stable economic growth outlook and valuations, according to Bloomberg.

Comment: More from Bloomberg:
Turkey has tumbled to bottom of the emerging-market pile, according to a Bloomberg analysis.

Ranked fifth out of 21 nations in a similar study six months ago, the country has slumped on a scorecard that includes metrics ranging from growth prospects to the state of the current account, sovereign credit ratings and stock and bond valuations.

Meanwhile Asia's economies, which have stronger buffers against headwinds like Federal Reserve policy tightening, outshone the rest, with Malaysia holding on to the No. 1 spot.

Key Insights
  • Turkey's economy is forecast to grow 0.8 percent in 2019, down from an estimated 3.5 percent this year, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. Inflation reached 25.2 percent in October, the highest level since 2003, eroding real yields
  • Malaysia remained at the top of the list, thanks to its current-account surplus, relatively stable economic growth outlook and valuations. Data last week showed inflation came in at 0.6 percent in October from a year earlier, compared with its 10-year government bond yield of about 4.17 percent
  • Four of the top six economies on the scorecard are from Asia, including China, the Philippines and Thailand. China and Thailand are drawing support from current-account surpluses, relatively strong growth and benign inflation. The Philippines' current-account deficit and high inflation rates are partly offset by growth of more than 6 percent
  • "A closer attention is now paid to economic growth outlooks of each emerging economy amid successive rate hikes," said Tsutomu Soma, general manager of the investment trust and fixed-income department at SBI Securities Co. in Tokyo. "Investors are also deciphering how each country is impacted by the U.S.-China trade frictions. They will continue to be more selective with their investments given such circumstances."


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Bomb

Millions of Iraqis destitute 1yr after victory over ISIS


RT
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:13 UTC
mosul destruction iraq
© Reuters / Ari Jalal
Destroyed buildings from previous clashes are seen in Mosul, Iraq, January 10, 2018.
Millions of Iraqis are still struggling to rebuild their lives one year after Baghdad declared victory against Islamic State, a Norwegian NGO has warned, stressing that many Iraqis feel "abandoned" by the international community.


Comment: Compare that with Syrians, who view the Russians as saviors. That's because Russia is actively involved in fixing Syria. The U.S. just destroys countries, then leaves them to rot.


More than 1.8 million Iraqis are currently displaced and an astonishing 8 million require some form of humanitarian aid, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said in a statement. It followed the first anniversary of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's announcement that Iraq had achieved final victory over Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).

Regrettably, the international community seems less interested in the fate of Iraq now that IS has been pushed out of the country, Tom Peyre-Costa, NRC's Iraq Media coordinator, told RT.

"It is essential that the international community invests as much in the reconstruction and stabilization of the country as they did in the fight against Islamic State," Peyre-Costa said. "It's unacceptable to think that millions can be spent on bombs but not on humanitarian aid and reconstruction."

He added that many of the displaced Iraqis that he's spoken with say they feel "abandoned" by the world. While IS may have lost its foothold in Iraq, the work to restore the war-torn lives of millions of Iraqis is "far from being done," Peyre-Costa noted.

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Airplane

Syrian media retract previous reports of air strike on Damascus Airport


Sputnik
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 15:55 UTC
Damascus International Airport
© Igor Bubi
Damascus International Airport
Syrian state media outlets including broadcaster Al-Ikhbariya and the SANA news agency issued a report on Sunday claiming that Syrian air defences had repelled an attack near the Damascus international Airport, however, later in the day, quoting local sources, they took back the story, asserting that a strike did not happen.

A source at the Damascus International airport told local media that there had been no attack and that air traffic is operating under normal routine, contrary to earlier reports claiming that a missile strike had been repelled.
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Sheriff

Video shows NYPD ripping infant from his mother's arms during social services fracas

Ashley Southall
New York Times
Sun, 09 Dec 2018 15:40 UTC
NYPD arrest
© Nyashia Ferguson
Police officers arresting a woman in Brooklyn while she was holding her 1-year-old son. A video of the encounter was posted to Facebook.
A video that shows police officers trying to remove a woman's 1-year-old son from her grasp as they arrested her in a Brooklyn food stamp office ignited a fury on social media and prompted calls on Sunday for an explanation from the police.

A Facebook user who uploaded the video said the police had been called on Friday after the woman, identified by the police as Jazmine Headley, 23, sat on the floor of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program office in Boerum Hill because there were no available chairs.

After a verbal dispute with a security guard, someone called the police, according to Nyashia Ferguson, who posted the video.

It begins with Ms. Headley lying on the floor, cradling her son and yelling, "They're hurting my son! They're hurting my son!"

A female sergeant and three police officers, two of whom appear to be women, surround Ms. Headley and attempt to pull the child away. Then one officer, her back facing the camera, repeatedly yanks the child in an apparent attempt to separate him from his mother.
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Bizarro Earth

UK has more prisoners serving life sentences than France, Germany and Italy combined

Richard Hartley-Parkinson
Metro
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 07:01 UTC
UK jail
The UK has the highest number of prisoners serving life sentences in Europe, according to a report.

Analysis of 2016 data found UK jails were holding 8,554 inmates serving life - more than France, Germany and Italy combined.

Between them, Turkey and the UK accounted for two-thirds of the life-sentenced prison population in Europe, the study added.

The findings, based on analysis of Council of Europe data, are detailed in a report published by the Prison Reform Trust.

The PRT's latest Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile includes a section on indeterminate sentences, by Professor Dirk van Zyl Smit and Dr Catherine Appleton from the University of Nottingham.

It said: 'The UK's use of indeterminate sentences is plainly out of kilter with the majority of international comparators.'

Comment: And yet the UK still sees fit to release child murderers and serial rapists back onto the streets: Child killer who impaled 3 children on spikes to be released from jail, deemed 'no longer a risk'

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Eye 1

Russia's 'deadliest maniac' gets second life sentence for murdering 56 more women


RT
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 14:30 UTC
Mikhail Popkov
© AFP / Anton Klimov
A former cop, dubbed Russia's deadliest maniac, was sentenced to life after a court found him guilty of 56 more murders which he confessed to. He is already serving a life sentence for killing 22 women he deemed "loose."

Popkov, nicknamed 'the Werewolf,' has been given a second life imprisonment by a court in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, Russian media reported. During the long-running hearing, in which 322 court files were brought to the judges' attention, prosecutors said Popkov - a former police officer in Angarsk, the city he terrorized - had a "pathological attraction to killing people."
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Propaganda

WikiLeaks skewers Guardian writer for zany theory that RT is, wait for it... reporting news


RT
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 13:55 UTC
RT studio
© AFP / Yuri Kadobnov
A Guardian writer failed to impress WikiLeaks after furnishing damning evidence that RT has run stories on Julian Assange, Nigel Farage, and even Russia's special forces. Do you know what this means? Neither do we.

After decrying a short RT video about Russia's special forces, Carole Cadwalladr shared a major revelation with her 220,000 Twitter followers on Sunday: RT covers news stories and current events.

"You know who else RT boosts? Julian Assange & Seamus Milne. But given the reaction yesterday I thought I'd put that in a separate tweet. I'm somehow to blame for pointing out facts. Huge apologies but Milne's support for Putin has made him a Russian propaganda tool," she wrote, misspelling the name of fellow Guardian contributor and communications director for Jeremy Corbyn, Seumas Milne.
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People 2

A surfeit of empathy and an absence of compassion in the gender dysphoria discussion

Samuel Veissière
Quillette
Sun, 09 Dec 2018 00:01 UTC
male-female symbol trans
As a parent of an ROGD teen, it has been so disheartening to see so few mainstream sources publishing balanced views on this topic. We have glowing "protransition" pieces in the left-wing press, and (often) angry, and even anti-trans pieces in the right-wing or religious press. These articles are just what we need to open up a more balance, less hate filled dialogue. More, please.
~comment from parent, Psychology Today.
I am an anthropologist and professor of Psychiatry at McGill University. I have published and been mentioned in the media widely on the study of cultural evolution, social media addiction, new internet subcultures, social dimensions of cognition and mental health, and the impact of recent cultural shifts in gender norms on the wellbeing of young people.

As an essayist and popular science commentator, I have written extensively on the evolutionary basis of contemporary issues, from tribalism in politics to cultural paranoia in the wake of #MeToo and nocebo effects in the medicalization of everyday problems. So far, I've managed to avoid scandal and outrage almost entirely by offering nuanced, non-partisan pieces that explicitly warn against the risks of Us vs. Them thinking. I felt moderately successful in eliciting meaningful, rational dialogues-until I touched the third rail of transgender identity.

Comment: A balanced and fair piece from a concerned individual suffering the backlash against science. Despite this, this will no doubt be used as further evidence by activists of the authors 'transphobia'. In the current climate, the call for nuance and caution is met with accusations of bigotry.

See also:

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