Texas governor Abbott calls Mexican drug mobs "terrorists" while adopting gun laws that help them get lots of guns.

After Hurricane Ian wiped out Cuba's electric system and destroyed some buildings, Cubans protested, and the state responded with repression.

Cuban repression is wrong, now as it was in the past, but I don't think the Cuban state is responsible for the weakness of its power grid. US sanctions, increased by the wrecker, are responsible for that.

Criticism of The Woman King for presenting a sanitized and false picture of Dahomey, and hiding the fact that its main business was capturing Africans and selling them as slaves.

The first article I read about that movie mentioned that it was about Dahomey, and I immediately wondered how it treated this basic fact. This article shows the answer.

There may be much to appreciate in The Woman King, but this is an important flaw. In general, I'd always prefer if "based on a true story" were more true and less "based on."

* Guatemala cracks down on protesters in the streets and in the halls of congress—where lawmakers are pushing a bill that would justify the use of deadly force.*

Just Stop Oil has returned to protesting by blocking streets in London, and now demands subsidy for public transport as well as quick reductions in oil extraction.