There were large rallies for climate defense on Saturday in many cities around the world,

Australia spends $500 million per year holding refugees prisoner on Nauru.

Millions for cruelty, but not one cent for kindness.

Proposing the legal right to decide who is allowed to monitor your brain.

A UK official concerned with bigotry among cops proposes to monitor their digital communications, I have mixed opinions about this proposal.

There are situations in which it is acceptable for the state to open a person's letters, but I think they call for a court order based on specific reasons to open that person?'s letters.

On the one hand, it is legitimate to monitor cops systematically in ways that would be unjust to apply to people in general. It is very important to fire cops that engage in bigotry, because they are likely to be thugs.

On the other hand, doing this to cops might encourage the state to do it to others.

Wall Street took the idea of "natural capital" literally: the New York Stock Exchange now offers to list a special type of corporation which represents the benefits that flow from some natural ecosystem, as a private good.

Blackrock is not altruistic. If it buys land, it will not dedicate that land to a good purpose. At least, not once there is something more profitable to do with it.

I suspect this will promote the privatization of state lands so that their "ecosystem services" can be owned by big companies. Next thing you know, the lands might be bought up by a "private equity" asset stripper that will remove the water, the vegetation, or whatever is profitable to sell off.

Meanwhile, they will resell the land minus its "ecosystem services" for other uses. If you live in a house on that land, you may find that the previous owner -- Blackrock? -- signed away your right to object to the asset stripping or whatever else the owner of the "natural capital" decides to do there. That's what happens if someone else owns oil or fracking rights under your house.