Georgia thugs killed protester Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, who had participated for more than a year in a nonviolent encampment protest that aims to block construction of a large thug training facility in a forest that had been slated to become a park. The thugs say they killed him after he shot a thug, but you can't trust what thugs say about such things. They present no evidence that he shot at all. But they have systematically begun to charge protestors with "terrorism".

*Republican legislators introduce new laws to crack down on drag shows.*

The article says that most of these bills go much further than what you would think that means: they "define a drag performer as someone performing while using dress, makeup and mannerisms associated with a gender other than the one assigned to [per] at birth." This means that _any_ performance by a trans person would be banned. Even a talk about any subject could be a "performance".

This is typical of the dishonesty of right-wing extremists, whose repressive laws are often described as prohibiting something very specific but create the opportunity to prohibit a lot more. Consider critical race theory — a field of research for historians, some of whom promote teaching methods that face criticism in academia. Republicans have passed laws that purport to prohibit teaching critical race theory in primary and secondary school, which never happens, but actually prohibit nearly any teaching about systemic racism.

Lula has fired 80 high officials of the Brazilian army, including its commander, for aiding the attack on the government or shielding the attackers.

The commander was appointed by Bolsonaro shortly before the latter's term ended. It is entirely plausible that Bolsonaro did this to support the insurrection, and entirely plausible that he prepared and organized the insurrection.

Erdoğan is using the issue of bringing Sweden and Finland into NATO to attack freedom of expression in those countries.

I disapprove of burning books, as a general matter, but if there are millions of copies of a book then burning one that you own is no great loss. Perhaps it should be a crime to intentionally destroy a rare book — if you don't want it, you must sell it to someone who does or give it to a museum.

It is outrageous to demand that some religion's "sacred" book receive a higher legal status that any other book — such as, for instance, my own book, Free Software, Free Society . I think the moral ideas in that book are wise, but you have the right to buy a copy and burn it if you think the opposite.

The Turkish government argues that burning a Qur'an was a hate crime. This shows that the concept of "hate crimes" as it is understood in some European countries is a threat to human rights.

Direct air capture of CO2 could actually increase the level of greenhouse gas emissions, if renewable generation is insufficient and fossil fuels are still used to generate the electricity to run the capture.

If someday there is excess renewable energy capacity to power capture machines, then they could actually reduce the CO2 concentration, it seems to me.

However, the article's main point is valid: this method is worse than useless for the next few years, and it is probably a PR scheme meant to let out the pressure to reduce emissions.