How the US and the west is transitioning to Fascism.

William I. Robinson has written an editorial for Al Jazeera that details how the US is on the verge of fascism he is not using the term fascism lightly either. It pulls together a lot of threads explaining why things are as they currently are but one especially good point it makes is an explanation of why Obama is doing what he's doing.

Tory Justice Minister says Tough on Crime doesn't work.

While its likely the UK will follow the US's path of a prison industrial complex the current Justice Minister, whose remit over prisons does not cover who actually gets charged or arrested, thats the Home Secretary's remit, Ken Clarke has suggested that prisons are expensive and pointless and reform should be more of a goal. Clarke is very much to the left of the Conservative party and during New Labour's height in the late 90s it was suggested he might defect so its not especially surprising hes saying this stuff (although of course New Labour was dead keen on building prisons and letting private companies run them) but it also makes it questionable how much support he'll get from the rest of the party which is generally more in favour of being tough on criminals, lock em up and so on.

Still its vaguely hopeful I suppose.

If its good enough to publicise attempts to destabilise Iran...

... its good enough to announce someone's forthcoming state sanctioned murder I would make a joke about middleschoolers being forced to read twitter logs for English class in 20 years but the way education cuts are going its probably optimistic to expect them to be able to read.