Salafi Arabia's execution of a Shi'ite leader of peaceful protests has aroused threats of violence from Iran.

I hope that we won't let issues of international rivalries bury the really issue here: a repressive regime has murdered a nonviolent dissident. Iran has done likewise. We don't have to choose a side between them. We can demand they both respect dissent.

Russian censorship almost killed a series of detective stories for children.

Michael McFeat, expat working at a mine in Kyrgyzstan, faces years in prison for defaming a local food delicacy.

It is impossible to defame Kyrgyzstan's human rights record, which is worse even than Thailand's.

Even "free" countries in Europe are not free of the practice of criminalizing insults.

The state sensibly deported him rather than imprisoning him, but that doesn't reduce the injustice of having a law that prohibits such statements.

An anti-state militia has occupied a building at a wildlife refuge in Oregon as a protest.

Setting fire to your grass, with the aim of burning only your grass, may be good or bad, but it is not ethically comparable to setting fire to a building.

On the other hand, occupying a government building with guns is not ethically comparable to a peaceful sit-in.

The 2016 presidential election gives the US a chance to defeat the vicious cycle of plutocracy.

We need to stop being nice to plutocrats. They are trying to impoverish everyone else. They deserve to be crushed.