Australia's laws give mining companies great license to destroy ancient sites with their mines. One might think they were designed to do that.

I am not persuaded by the "sacred site" argument, because no religion deserves special deference from people who are not its adherents. Every church is someone's "sacred site", but that should not protect all churches from eminent domain and demolition. (For the same reason, I do not call priests "father".) What we owe to other people's religions, in general, is to respect people's right to practice their religions.

What is special about these sites is not that someone's religion calls them "sacred," but that they are irreplaceable relics from humanity's past. That applies to some churches and other religious buildings and objects, too. Typically those are already protected, except that sometimes fanatical religion attacks them.

*Immigrant rights groups urge New York senators to block Iris Lan’s nomination to serve as a federal judge in the southern district.*

I hope they can do so, but Republicans have already disregarded that traditional Senate practice.

*Meet the doomers: why some young US voters have given up hope on climate.*

I agree with their estimation of our future. But they are wrong to give up the fight because of the situation.

They are right that avoiding disaster calls for big national efforts which current governments refuse to do. (I call them "planet roasters" because of that refusal.) And it is too late to fully avoid the disaster.

But it is not too late to avoid part of the disaster. If 20% of species go extinct, instead of 50%, that will be a great conservation achievement. If heating kills 8 billion people in this century rather that 11 billion, that will mean saving 3 billion human lives.

Whatever we achieve in preservation of democracy and human rights will also make a lasting difference, if civilization survives.

Fortunately, some of the young people are not giving up.

Whatever universities do by 2030, or by 2050, will not make a big difference directly. But pressuring universities into rapid action can lead to broader actions that are bigger.

*I'm 18 and can already see my Alaska community changed forever by climate change.*

In 2018, China threatened to imprison Australian journalist Matthew Carney, and his wife, and their teenage daughter — separately — for a fabricated visa crime, for offending China with his reporting on repression.

Carney kept silent about this until now for the safety of other Australian journalists.

Both the US and China have imprisoned whole families, often separating children and teenagers from their parents. I don't know which country does this more often. There are not very many foreign journalists in China but there are millions of Uighurs.

Another similarity is that both countries do this as part of a campaign to attack truth.

But the US does not do this to foreign journalists. It is trying to imprison Julian Assange, which is evil, but it is not trying to imprison his mate and their children.