Maoist rebels in India are fighting the state.

I don't think I'd want to live in the polity that the Naxalites would set up, but what these villagers experience today could well be worse. India's government is in general allowing big corporations to run roughshod over people that live in the lands they want to take or pollute.

80% of Japanese want to scrap some of the country's nuclear power plants.

I guess that's why the government, which is pro-nuclear, is provoking foreign conflict by denying the facts about women forced into prostitution during World War II: to manipulate people through their patriotism and distract them from the threat to them.

The US is moving back to the dark unregulated days of a century ago.

The Chinese government scathingly reports on US human rights violations.

I reject a few of the items. The mass shootings in the US were not carried out by the state, and the number of people affected were not very many. The thousands of other violent crimes were not carried out by the state either, and if weak gun control paved the way for them, paving the way for crimes is not the same thing as committing them. Racist statements are nasty but banning them is censorship.

Nonetheless, the bulk of the report's rebukes are valid. US criticisms of China's human rights record are generally valid too.

The point is not which state is worse. The point is that Americans and Chinese deserve better.

Banksters' pay is going up this year.

We are not doing enough to make banking boring again.