The fall of Sangin demonstrates the futility of NATO's trying to hold it.

Once the Taliban started to resurge, the US and NATO never had a plausible plan for defeating the Taliban, since the Afghan government has never generated enough loyalty to do so. The only question is how long to prop it up.

Israel is considering a Putin-style law to restrict human-rights NGOs that receive support from European governments. The President of Israel was called a traitor for meeting with the New Israel Fund.

The UN is moving towards authorizing Libya's new unified government to invite Western help to fight PISSI.

An intervention in support of Libyan ground troops has a reasonable chance of success.

ARM and IBM have teamed up to make devices that monitor and surveil their users.

The US and various states are prohibiting poor people from spending public assistance on various expensive habits that they can't afford anyway.

The motive might be to fool the public into believing that welfare recipients really have money for luxury foods such as lobster, on ocean cruises, or even on tattoos.

If you can barely afford food at all, you will do without those things anyway.