India's Supreme Court has ruled that discrimination based on gender identity is unconstitutional.

Japan has defeated Sea Shepherd by means of a law that classifies Sea Shepherd's obstruction activity as "terrorism", combined with actions by Australia, New Zealand and the US to stop Sea Shepherd from operating.

Sea Shepherd does not engage in violence; it gets in the way of whaling ships. The idea that an inconvenient nonviolent protest is "terrorism" is twisted, but then, so is everything about Japanese hunts for whale meat that people mostly won't even buy.

Republican heating denialists that opposed a special aid law after Hurricane Sandy now ask for a similar aid law for Hurricane Harvey.

Hurricane Harvey is an example of a general problem; the US government should address the whole of the problem. Democrats should refuse to vote for a special aid package limited to Hurricane Harvey.

They should demand instead a law that will provide this aid in the case of Hurricane Harvey and future hurricanes without requiring cuts in other spending. The law should recognize that global heating will cause more and larger floods, and include strong flood risk criteria, both for construction of new government infrastructure and for flood insurance to private buildings.

The troll has placed financial sanctions on Venezuela, designed to make the food shortage worse.

The food shortage is mainly due to mistaken economic policies of the Venezuelan state, but now that the troll owns it, Venezuelans will start blaming the right-wing opposition too.

Venezuela needs a progressive opposition that doesn't aim to return the country to control by foreign businesses and whichever local elites they can corrupt.

Naomi Klein: plutocratist politicians are already planning how to use Hurricane Harvey as an opportunity for dooH niboR. We had better not be squeamish about organizing to stop them.