IN THE NEWS
It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medicine, than to prevent them by regimen.
States Sue to Block Trump’s ‘Anti-Science’ Vaccine Policy
February 26, 2026
Scientists have long warned that a warming world is likely to hasten the spread of infectious diseases, making vaccination even more critical to safeguard public health.
And though most scientists hail vaccines as one of public health’s greatest achievements, they have provoked fear, distrust and contentious resistance since Edward Jenner invented the first vaccine, to prevent smallpox, in the late 1700s.
... full articleHope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
The Planet-Sized Hole in Trump’s State of the Union Address
February 26, 2026
Although climate change received no attention during the president’s speech, Americans must continue to find new ways of making progress against the ongoing environmental crisis.
As wildfire smoke and intensified storms wreak apocalyptic levels of devastation across the country, the climate crisis received no attention in the State of the Union Address delivered by President Trump on February 24.
What did get mentioned? Oil and gas.
... full articleThe main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one’s narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one’s desires and fears.
US to offer passport services to citizens in illegal West Bank settlements
February 25, 2026
The US will provide on-site consular services in two Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank for the first time, breaking with previous policy, in a move that has been criticised by Palestinian officials as “a clear violation of international law”.
In a post on X, the US embassy in Jerusalem said that as part of an initiative to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence, it would provide Americans with routine passport services in the West Bank settlement of Efrat on Friday “for one day only”.
... full articleDiplomacy matters. Burden-sharing matters. Follow-through matters. And yes, sustaining the peace is harder, more complex and often costlier than winning the war itself. No matter the surge of momentary machismo — as gratifying as it may be for some — it’s short-sighted and wrong to simply go it alone.
Between Dams and Flow Reserves: Rucalhue, the Biobío, and a New Geopolitics of Rivers in Chile
February 2, 2026
Rucalhue Dam is a 90 MW hydro project on the middle Biobío River in Chile, now under construction despite years of community resistance, serious concerns about Indigenous and river rights, and the growing influence of Chinese and US strategic interests over Latin America’s energy and minerals. Around this conflict, new tools and proposals like reservas de caudal (environmental flow reserves), rights‑of‑river declarations, and a river protection law are emerging from places like Chile’s Queuco, a tributary of the Bíobio River; Puelo and Futaleufú Rivers in Patagonia, offering a very different vision of how rivers should be governed.
... full article