Australia is considering requiring Google and Facebook to pay for showing links to news articles.

To restrict linking in general would destroy the Web, but making big surveillance capitalism companies pay would do no harm. If it pushes one of those companies out of Australia, good for Australia!

However, the plan should not be discriminatory. It should apply to any large company which does a suitable sort of business, regardless of what country it comes from.

Please stop referring to works of journalism as "content", because that term disparages whatever works you apply it to. Their importance to society comes from not being a commodity.

The jailing of Navalny inspired massive protests against Putin.

It looks like Navalny' judgment was correct: returning to Russia and facing jail struck a blow against Putin.

Republican congresscritters who threatened the lives of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives now defy the Capitol Police and the rules of the House by bringing guns into the chamber.

In 2020, right-wing extremists adopted the tactic of breaking safety rules to menace people, and made themselves look powerful by showing no one could stop them. In effect, their message is, "Join our mob and intimidate people with us!" Backing off to avoid an immediate conflict is a bad option when they point to this as proof of their power. Congress needs to impose on them rules they can't get away with breaking.

Asking the International Criminal Court to investigate Bolsonaro for damaging the Amazon forest.

John Dean: *Insurrectionist Senators are Co-Conspirators and Should Not Sit in Judgment of Trump.*

One of them threatens that Republicans will impeach past Democratic presidents even if they didn't launch a mob to attack the Capitol, if and when Republicans ever take control of Congress.

This is a silly distraction. If Republicans have a majority in the house and 2/3 of the Senate, retroactive impeachment of past presidents (supposing the Constitution permits it — recall that the wrecker's second impeachment occurred while he was still president) would be the least of our worries.

However, it is not just any old distraction. The purpose of maneuvers like these is to suck all ideas of right and wrong, of rights and duties, out of life. With them gone, evil and good look the same, and the only distinction that can be seen is that between the powerful and the weak. They want this because they serve the powerful and they want nothing to impede them from trampling the weak.