Gentrification eventually hurts even the gentry, when it crushes the interesting spirit that attracted the gentry to the city. It is happening now to some cities famous for their music.

San Francisco used to be a great city for artists of all kinds, but I don't think many artists can afford to live there now.

The preference of gentry to live in cities, rather than in the suburbs they preferred 60 years ago, has made city housing scarce. The shortage makes thousands homeless and drives millions into poverty. So US cities need lots more housing space. It needs to be dense and accessible to mass transit.

Turkey has arrested the local director of Amnesty International as well as other participants in a workshop.

The workshop was about "digital security and information management", and those arrested included foreigners who had come to teach those subjects.

I used to visit Turkey to speak, and even mentioned the freedom of speech issue of prosecuting people for describing the genocide of the Armenians, as well as the mirror-image injustice in France of prosecuting people for denying that genocide.

However, because of the mass arrests that followed the coup attempt, I consider Turkey too dangerous. I urge everyone to stay away from Turkey unless there is an urgent humanitarian reason to go there. And spread the word!

For instance, if you are talking with a travel agent about a vacation, and the agent suggests Turkey, inform the agent that you consider the state repression too dangerous.

London's gay pride march has been dumbed down into a commercially sponsored parade in which the message of equal rights has been overshadowed by vague commercial feelgoodism.

The Dutch bank ABM Amro announced it will no longer lend money to tobacco companies.

Protesters at the G20 meeting in Hamburg encounter a "dystopian nightmare" of crushing security.

G20 meetings are now a useless exercise. In some areas (global heating) that may be a change for the worse; in others (business-supremacy treaties) it has to be an improvement.