Australia is rushing to make new policies for ex-convicts who are foreigners that it is impossible to legally deport. But they seem to be based on confusion of purpose.

The imprisonment policy that the court rejected was used ex-convicts who would be deported if that were allowable. However, they have been mixed with policies that seem to be directed at a possible threat to the community posed by the convict.

Each of those two purposes calls for its own response; mixing them up is a mistake.

For making sure the state can find the ex-convict in case deporting per ever becomes an option, keeping track of per movements is justified and should be sufficient.

As for protecting the community from a possible threat posed by the ex-convict, whatever Australia does with Australian ex-convicts is presumably adequate (or Australia should change that policy). So it should be adequate for non-Australian criminals too.

I presume that Australia makes these decisions for specific ex-convicts based on what crime each committed. For instance, if the crime was bank robbery or embezzling, there is probably no need to care whether the criminal goes near a school.

If Australian courts accept a certain restriction for a certain category ex-convicts when they are Australians, I expect it will accept the same restriction for the same category of foreign ex-convicts.

Israel has published a video showing a fortified tunnel under al-Shifa hospital which it asserts was made by HAMAS.

If this is true, as it may be, HAMAS may have violated the rules of war by building that tunnel. Using the tunnel for fighting would surely have violated them.

That would not however imply open season on patients and doctors in al-Shifa for the Israeli army.

Even leftist Jews, who advocate an end to the occupation of Palestine, feel in danger from the surge of antisemitism that is stimulated by present condemnation of Israel's occupation policies and war crimes.

It takes some moral maturity to separate (1) Israel's treatment of Palestinians from (2) Jews as such from (3) Israel's existence as a haven for them. It's the same moral maturity that we need in order to separate (1) HAMAS from (2) Palestinians.

We all need to develop and activate this maturity, now more than ever.

Surveillance advertising's data collection makes people vulnerable fraud.

Doctorow says we should ban surveillance advertising. I say we should ban the surveillance, period. Regardless of what the surveiller's motivation is, collecting personal data in a database harms people.

For instance, suppose the data is not used for advertising but is used to set what you pay for medical insurance. If the data collected from a fitbit includes _where you are_ -- and it can hardly fail to do so -- that is a grave attack on your privacy.

Ohio Republicans plan to increase subsidize the "crisis pregnancy centers" that use trickery to lead women away from getting abortions.

They use trickery to fool women into consulting them, rather than consulting a real abortion clinic as those women set out to do. And once that first trickery gives them an opportunity, they use trickery to convince women not to get abortions.

Then they use trickery to deny their use of trickery.

I call the proposal a "subsidy" because it seems to go beyond making private donations to those disinformationists deductable.

The article says that several states subsidize this disinformation -- all of them Republican-controlled, I presume. The Republican slogan should be Disinformation Я Us.