Phosphorus has been used against civilian targets in Lebanon since 1982. www.washingtonpost.com/archive/poli... DIME munitions (dispersing tiny tungsten cubes) against Gaza since December 2008. www.amnesty.org/en/wp-conten...

Hussam Abu Safiya, physician to children & director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza, imprisoned 500 days without charge. Having managed to visit him in prison, Dr. Guy Shalev, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, reports on his condition. www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

A huge drain on the world's poor: our international financial system - conceived and imposed by wealthy investors, multinational companies, and their hired lobbyists, lawyers, politicians. aeon.co/essays/to-fu...

Wealth of 157 UK billionaires now equals £670bn, 22% of GDP. Return on wealth (dividends and capital gains) is taxed at lower rates than wages. Extreme concentration of wealth facilitates political power, corruption, economic control. Wither democracy.

Mercury coming your way. Get ready for higher pollution as Trump Administration is rolling back restraints. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/14/c...

A very big El Niño event is coming. The big one of 1877-78 killed 3-4% of the world's population at the time.

Where Europe, China, & others could collaborate: in the creation of competitive ecological impact rewards designed to promote the development & uptake of green technologies in lower-income countries. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/MWEwk_xIUe...

Nicholas Kristof www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/o... Why such treatment of detainees? Could it be to ensure that resistance to the occupation employs means (e.g. taking hostages for exchange) that can be condemned as terrorist? What would you do if you had a family member suffering such torture?

From www.democracynow.org/2026/5/11/he...

Trump’s 71% humanitarian aid cut will cost 9.4 million lives by 2030, incl. 2.5m children under 5. Yet, Trump is supporting the UAE which invested in his family's crypto company &, in Sudan, is arming a militia committing mass murder & mass rape. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/09/o... Nicholas Kristof

Leaving our progeny grassland in lieu of the mighty Amazon rain forest. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/06/c...

What our lithium consumption is doing in the Dem Rep of the Congo. fpif.org/lithium-mini...

This is a mistake. www.politico.eu/article/eu-f... Keep the penalties in place &, if you must, pay the companies a subsidy. This is better for the company & also for the environment because it preserves the incentive to keep methane emissions low.

When the US was years behind in paying its UN dues in the late 1990s, Ted Turner spent over $1bn of his own money to support the UN & to push the US to pay up. He died today. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Tur...

While atmospheric CO2 is reaching a new record of 431 ppm, a new mechanism trapping significant amounts of solar heat energy is getting recognized: microplastics in the air. www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Documenting cruelty in Gaza www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/w...

Why indeed? www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2...

Dr Safiya devoted his life to providing medical care to children. He's been languishing in an Israeli prison for years without so much as being charged with any crime. Let these physicians go! (Or charge them in a proper court of law.) www.commondreams.org/news/rights-...

While the US is making efforts to shut down corrupt services provided by others, it often offers competing such services. Gold laundering is an example. Another is hiding of wealth for evading creditors & taxes. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/w...

Two dear visitors joining me at Trumbull College: Sachin Chaturvedi, Yale Global Justice Fellow 2009-10, now Vice Chancellor of Nalanda University in Bihar (founded centuries before Oxford); & Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox, Connecticut State Senator representing parts of Bridgeport, Monroe, & ... Trumbull.

WORLD MALARIA DAY Effective drugs (ACTs, Tafenoquine, ...) are patented & unaffordable to the poor. Int'l health aid is being drastically cut. Result: malaria is rampant, developing new drug-resistant strains, & killing 1700 human beings daily, mostly children. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK215...

Our emissions are causing a catastrophic food crisis in Somalia. Our response it to cut humanitarian support by 75%. www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/...

24 April 2013. 13 years ago today, the collapse of the very evidently structurally unsound 8-story Rana Plaza Building in Savar Upazila, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, killed 1134 underpaid garment workers producing textiles for export, including 851 women. cleanclothes.org/campaigns/pa...

Not sure this helps establish oneself as the most moral military in the world. www.commondreams.org/news/idf-loo...

Some refreshingly good news from the fossil fuel front. www.ft.com/content/eeaa...

Israel & Lebanon agreed to a 10-day ceasefire that started midnight April 16 local time. But Israel still hunted down Lebanese woman journalist Amal Khalil - "bombed and left to die" in southern Lebanon. Leave none to tell the story ... www.dropsitenews.com/p/lebanon-jo...

Shadow Docket. How SCOTUS abandoned its role as "exemplar of public reason" (Rawls). www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u... NYT analysis fails to connect this to the corruption scandals of Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, & Neil Gorsuch. With decisions bought, reasons are harder to provide.

88 US corporations collectively made $105,000,000,000 in profits in 2025, paid $0 in taxes on this income, and received $4.7 billion in tax rebates. See the list here: itep.org/88-profitabl...

How do we allow tuberculosis to kill 3370 human beings every day while accepting the risk of new drug-resistant strains developing? @danbanik @GlobalDevPod globaldevpod.substack.com/p/tb-power-a...

While a similar Bill is stalled in Minnesota - www.house.mn.gov/sessiondaily... - in Hawaii Senate Bill 2471 has advanced out of Committee. legiscan.com/HI/bill/SB24... Both bills would withdraw from corporations and trusts the right to make political donations.

10th-grader Ben Kurian interviewed me, among others, for a short film on the right to health ... which went on to win C-SPAN's 2026 national StudentCam documentary competition. www.benkurian.com/a-right-to-h... His lovely dad assisted by driving him around the country for the interviews.

The US-Israeli bombing of Iran: a heavy emphasis on schools and hospitals (documented by the New York Times). www.nytimes.com/interactive/... Intimidation: "submit! We are not constrained by international law or morality."

The awful effects of Trump's new biofuel mandates. insideclimatenews.org/news/3103202...

Good-bye to India: interview on geopolitics.... www.outlookindia.com/internationa...

Princess Diana tried to end their use: Landmines Now being dropped in Iran. Our tax dollars at work.

How did the 175+ primary school girls in Minab get blown up in a double tap strike? Palantir Alex Karp www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...

Supported by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), condoned by the West: murdering ten-thousands of civilians at El Fasher. “The silence sent a signal to the killers. For the RSF and UAE, it offered consent for what would follow.” www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

And it's very obvious now from trading data that this actually happened: some people got advance notice of Trump's statement and cashed in to the tune of at least hundreds of millions of dollars. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/treason-in...

Trump statement causes huge market move at 7:04am EST. Those with advance knowledge profit handsomely.

Chinese firm Carbonology claims that - from air, water, and renewable energy - it can synthesize fuel for sale at competitive prices. www.scmp.com/economy/chin...

The Peace & Justice Project on Gaza: www.facebook.com/reel/1546616...

Israeli prosecution drops charges of rape against five soldiers who were filmed doing it. www.commondreams.org/news/idf-dro...

Finally some justice for the people whom US contractors tortured at the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. www.commondreams.org/news/abu-ghr...

Australia subsidizes fossil fuel use by >$30,000 per minute. www.theguardian.com/environment/... For the whole world, this subsidy flow is $1.33 million per minute (IMF study). What good this financial flow could do!!

Monitoring political donations affecting the coming midterm elections in the US. politicalintegrity.us/p/following-...

Reprisal bombing in Lebanon dropsitenews.com/p/lebanon-he... and chemical warfare in Tehran billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-dark-and...

Iran's Kurds would do well to read up on the fate of Syria's Kurds as summarized in BBC reporting six weeks ago. What happens when their usefulness to the US expires? www.bbc.com/news/article...

Friday night, @tpogge.bsky.social, @jonasjaegermeyr.bsky.social, and moderator Max Gruenig joined us for Global Shocks and the Future of Food System Resilience, a conversation that connected analytical, scientific, and policy perspectives on shared global challenges! PC: Matthew Gilbertson