The Tories have proposed a bill to privatize the NHS in substance.

They have made the horrible and inadequate US medical system (horrible and inadequate if you're not wealthy) as their model. But in one respect, they have chosen to go further, by removing the requirement that the NHS provide emergency care to everyone.

Given the Tory attitude towards refugees, I suppose that soon they won't get treatment even for broken bones, as part of the "hostile environment".

*Abstinence-based recovery nearly killed me — the Tories’ ‘war on drugs’ won’t work.*

Egypt has released Patrick Zaki on bail. He still faces years in prison for publishing his experience confronting the prejudice against Egyptian Christians.

Someone commented "Thank God" about his release. I find that particularly ironic, given that religion is the cause of his problems.

It is now possible to predict a person's physical appearance fairly reliably from per DNA sequence.

Since our current knowledge of the significance of genes is imperfect, some people will not actually resemble the prediction. This may cause the wrong people to be questioned. At least it will be possible to prove, with their DNA, that they are not the suspect.

Other possible problems are not caused by inaccuracy of prediction. However, I don't think we should call it "racial profiling" when the state suspects people in racial group R because it is known that the culprit was in group R. If a witness says, "He was black" or "He was white", we would not call it "racial profiling" if that led to questioning blacks, or to questioning whites.

Real racial profiling is when cops jump to the conclusion that they should search for a certain group, not based on knowledge, but rather based on assuming that people in group R are likely to be criminals.

Republicans attack the basic idea of having the law apply equally to everyone — and thereby the basic idea of public health rules that people are requires to obey to keep the public safe.