Assad continues prosecuting nonviolent dissenters as "terrorists".

If only the US were an example of something better.

The Supreme Court made it much easier for states to disenfranchise minority group voters.

The Supreme Court not only denied the existence of racism, but the existence of callous Republican by-hook-or-by-crook voter suppression efforts.

That's the Republican strategy for holding power: by turning US elections into a sham.

The main witness in the murder of Stephen Lawrence suffered a many-year campaign by UK thugs to smear him and frame him.

A former Bush forces soldier in "intelligence" committed suicide because he could not bear to think of the suffering of the widows and orphans he had made.

His guilt makes rational sense (I won't claim to understand it emotionally, since I have never had an occasion to feel that way), but I think if he had thought more calmly he could have found a better response. For instance, he could have published the details of the atrocities he felt guilty for, before committing suicide. Then his death would have helped to make the world better. It's even possible that the awareness that he was doing something to compensate for his past wrongs might have assuaged his guilt enough for him to face continuing to live, perhaps in Ecuador.

The sad general point is that so many soldiers sign up for the US military based on the myth that they are going to "serve their country". Many naive teenagers have never heard anyone question this.

If the idea of serving their country were 100% false, it would fade away; but occasionally it is true, and that real complexity keeps the simplistic myth alive. Young people who are indoctrinated in it are easy to manipulate into thinking that's what it's going to be like for them, and when they find out the truth they are caught and their lives are more or less ruined.

Bills in Congress would declassify the decisions of the FISA court; legislators don't like being kept so much in the dark.