A Florida thug has been convicted for killing a man who was sitting by his disabled truck, waiting for assistance.

The driver had a gun, and was waiting right next to the truck to make sure his drum kit was not stolen. But it was the thug who started the violence — without identifying himself as a thug.

Senior Amnesty Figure Arrested in Indonesia for Singing Famous Protest Song.

The protest song is a parody of the Indonesian army's official song, written and widely sung in the 90s to oppose Suharto's military dictatorship. That gave way to a democracy of sorts. Prohibiting this song is almost an endorsement of military rule. I've been told that the military has been slowly taking more power at the expense of civil society.

This illustrates the danger of criminalizing "hate speech". That practice often starts out well-meant, intended to put an end to intimidation and bigotry. But it is such a handy tool for repression that it always tempts the powerful to use it for that.

Defining "populism" as organizing to fight a minority accused of having taken power, a study found that populists often motivate marginalized and exploited people to get involved in politics.

Some populists attack political freedoms, but this is not unique to them. In the UK, the Tories and New Labour were hardly populists, but they have attacked political freedoms. In France, Macron has done it.

Leftist populists often do achieve something against the problem: they reduce economic inequality.

Right-wing populists will not oppose the real powerful minority, the plutocrats, so they need to falsely accuse and scapegoat other minorities. This makes them dishonest and unjust. Despite that, they may achieve some changes for the better -- but it would have been possible to do the same thing without the dishonesty and unjustice.

Reportedly the US government has dropped a specific surveillance program that got info on all long-distance phone calls in the US.

Does this mean the US government no longer tracks all those phone calls? It could be so -- but it could also be the case that some other surveillance agency gets more-or-less the same data, described differently, from a different place in a different way. Or perhaps surveillance agencies now have a list of 50 million Americans, including all known or suspected journalists, and track all their calls rather than all of everybody's calls.

Given these agencies' history of hoodwinking the FISA court, we could hardly trust their good will.

Gaza will soon face hunger as US cuts in food aid hit home.