Shit doesn’t just happen. Stock market crashes, multi-vehicle pileups, the collapse of tall buildings, wildfires, viral pandemics … None of these phenomena have a single, simple explanation. Rather, they all result from a multitude of events, factors and situations — proximal, distal and invariably complex. Thomas Homer-Dixon is a complexity theorist. Listen to our conversation.
As Covid-19 sweeps around the planet, news has focused on places where death tolls have been high: Italy, Mexico, Brazil, the US and — of course — China, where the pandemic began. Early predictions about the potential for outbreaks in Africa have yet to materialize. Whether swift lock downs or non-reporting is the reason is unclear. I spoke with GPM correspondent Josephat Mwanzi, in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam.
No newsroom is too small to evade the vigilant and exacting gaze of staunchly pro-Israel “Honest” Reporting Canada. The PEI Guardian, based in Charlottetown, received a furious, hateful blast after publishing a letter about Covid-19 in occupied Palestine. Listen to what Israeli human rights NGO B’Tselem has to say on the matter.
As Covid-19 sweeps across the planet, few scenarios are as frightening as an outbreak of the virus in Israeli-occupied Gaza. Four Israelis are refusing to let this happen, and are helping Gazans fend it off. They’ve launched a solidarity campaign to help Gazans out in this most grave crisis — and are calling for an end to Israel’s siege.
Hungry for news on the state of the Covid-19 pandemic in Israeli-occupied/colonized Palestine, I reached out by Skype to Rania Muhareb, a researcher with Ramallah-based Al-Haq, one of Palestine’s most prominent and respected human rights organizations. Rania spoke with me from her home in East Jerusalem.
As the Covid-19 pandemic sweeps around the planet, attention has been focused on the fate of the most vulnerable communities: those consigned to crowded urban slums, refugee camps and conflict zones across the Global South. No one more vulnerable to the highly infectious virus than the people of Gaza, under comprehensive Israeli blockade and siege for thirteen years.
In today’s edition of the Green Blues Show — Iran: Is the Islamic Republic as evil and aggressive as its detractors say? And, via-a-vis the Land of Israel, uttering the A-word. Breaking the taboo.
Late last January, after over a year of teasing talk and suggestive leaks, US President Donald Trump finally announced his so-called “Deal of the Century,” ostensibly aimed at resolving what is commonly referred to as the Israel-Palestine “conflict.”Predictably, Trump’s deal has been widely referred to in the mainstream media as a “peace plan.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Drug-resistant bacteria are one of humanity’s great emerging threats. Microbes resistant to most or all antibiotics – superbugs, they’re called – just laugh at whatever we throw at them. In the search for new antibiotics, a group of researchers at McMaster University have turned over an interesting stone — cannabis.
Commemorating the life and work of Frank Plummer, a Canadian pioneer in HIV-AIDS research. And, Donald Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ lands with a thump.
I met Vivien Sansour for the first time back in 2016, in her home town of Beit Jala, on the southern edge of Bethlehem, in Israeli-occupied Palestine. An anthropologist by training, Vivien has turned to the promotion of food and the cultural sovereignty tied to growing one’s own and saving the seeds, as her life’s work.
In this edition of the Green Blues Show: conserving seeds, long-lost legumes and cultural memory. And in the fight against drug-resistant bacteria, a very popular herb has the right stuff – cannabis.
In a hyper-polarized world where everyone disagrees about everything and even the most straightforward affairs seem uncertain, an eminently erudite, well-traveled and literate critic is liable to draw a large crowd. Robert Fisk, dean of Middle East journalism, is one such man.
Earth’s oceans are warming at a remarkable rate. Over ninety percent of the atmospheric heat humans have generated in the course of the past decades has been absorbed by Earth’s oceans. The consequences for oceans and atmosphere have been dire, and promise to play out over centuries, regardless of what we do.
As Earth’s atmosphere warms, so do its oceans – at an accelerating rate. Lebanon’s illustrious cedars have long been under threat. Now they’re being restored. And, alternative strategies for feeding ourselves, on a planet that has only so much to give.
The cedar is Lebanon’s national symbol. But Lebanon’s renowned cedar forests are not what they used to be. Today, all that remains of Lebanon’s cedar forests are a dozen fragmented islands, threatened by livestock grazing and climate change. The key to restoring them is their genetic diversity.
Planet Earth is covered in water. Ninety-seven percent is in earth’s oceans. Most of the rest is frozen solid — locked up in sea ice and terrestrial ice sheets, glaciers and permafrost. Earth’s cryosphere plays a huge role in regulating climate. As our planet warms, its cryosphere is slowly melting, triggering positive feedbacks that make earth scientists worry.
Climate change is a human rights issue. Nowhere is this clearer than in Israeli-occupied/colonized Palestine, where land and natural resources required for climate adaptation are controlled by Israel, and systematically denied to Palestinians. Of all these resources, none are more vital than water.
Long before the ‘intractable conflict’ between Israeli Jews and Palestinians gets resolved, climate change will have thrown everything up for grabs — literally. It already has.
That awful A-word, preceded by the adjective ‘Israeli’. Israel boosters scream ‘antisemitism’ when they hear or read the phrase. Mainstream media avoid it like the plague. The international legal community has no difficulty likening Israel’s system of governance in the colonized West Bank to the South African prototype. Listen to my conversation with Professor Dugard.
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[…] Toxic pollution is not just an urban problem, as the purple haze hovering over Alberta’s lovely Lochend district suggests. Past GPM stories have focused