Covid-19 has unmasked what the Republican Party stands for.

This statement in the article includes an erroneous presupposition.

Similarly, Trumpism adapts the traditional Republican attachment to individual freedom and mutates it into a darker, Darwinian belief that the strong individual can and should do whatever they like, and to hell with the "suckers and losers" who might suffer as a result.

The latter is what the Republican Party has really stood for since decades ago, but it tried to disguise that stand until recently.

Julian Assange's extradition hearing demonstrated that the US and UK governments will break any rule and tell any lie to get Assange.

The article recounts how his supporters' computers were stolen, as well as how his basic rights as a person accused were violated.

This follows a legal campaign in which procedures and laws were trashed again and again, and which demonstrated that the Swedish state was only using the original charges against Assange as an excuse, and had no interest in seriously investigating them.

If Assange is thinking of suicide, I do not think that represents any sort of mental derangement on his part. Under Assange's circumstances, suicide would be a rational act, an act of courage, avoiding a fate worse than death.

A few days ago I said that no one ever really deserves to die. If you are facing a fate worse than death, what you really deserve is to avoid it and live. But if that is impossible, I still hope that you avoid it.

*Portland: [thugs] targeted medics [at Black Lives Matter protests] with teargas and projectiles, report finds.*

Thugs also kept ambulances away from the injured people at the protest. This is what Israeli soldiers do to injured Palestinians, and on a number of occasions has resulted in their death.

The city thugs were bad, and the federal thugs were even worse. They should all be prosecuted.

Amnesty International reports that over 220 activists for human, environmental, and land rights have been murdered in Colombia this year.

The government is right-wing, thus allied to the paramilitaries, who are surely responsible for most of the murdering.

Some people who have "recovered" from Covid-19 experience crippling "brain fog".