Arts & Culture

Articles

Birmingham Sunday Remembered

In the annals of racist terrorism, few acts were more cowardly than the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Sixty years ago — on Sunday, September 15, 1963 — nineteen sticks of dynamite blew out a hole two-meters wide in the eighty year-old church’s back wall, and a half meter-deep hole in its basement. Four young girls were killed. The GPM spoke with Paul Kix, author of the book You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live – Ten Weeks in Birmingham That Changed America.


Wanted Man

Kids aren’t the only ones rebelling against extinction. In Ottawa, a sixty-year-old gets arrested for sitting down on a highway. Forget politicians — citizens’ assemblies are the way to go. And, channeling Johnny Cash for adoring fans in France and Germany.


Green Planet Monitor Podcast

Artificial Intelligence: existential threat to humanity, or just to basic civil rights? Personal DNA testing – you never know what you’ll find. And, Forever Chemicals in the blood of pregnant mums and their babies.


Green Planet Monitor Podcast

After years of study, a scientific panel proposes a formal definition of the Anthropocene, naming the spot where humanity’s fingerprints are best observed in the rock record. A Canadian geologist relishes the moment. And, a First Nations elder reflects on the lake of her dreams and memories.


Green Planet Monitor Podcast

Nothing woolly-headed or Utopian about it: A universal, guaranteed basic income. A hundred years later, memories of war that do not fade. And, one of humanity’s great revolutions – the 1950s Great Acceleration has transformed Earth’s surface completely, hurtling our planet into an uncertain future.


Green Planet Monitor Podcast

Humanity’s impact on Planet Earth has a name: the Anthropocene. The start of Earth’s human age can be pinpointed in ice and biological cores, and the bottom sediments of bays and lakes — including a small lake in southern Ontario. But human beings have no control. And now we stand at catastrophe’s door.


Green Planet Monitor Podcast

Turning tall cane stalks into small, supple reeds for woodwind instruments. Decarbonizing construction; tons of carbon are embodied in buildings; there’s plenty of ways to decarbonize them. And, the Palestinian village of Jubbet al-Dibh. Last week, the Israeli military bulldozed its elementary school!.


I Know Who I Am

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.


Robert Fisk in Winnipeg

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.


The A-Word

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.



A Tree Grows in Palestine

Tourists come to Al-Walaja from around the world to enjoy the lovely surrounding landscape. A huge olive tree, reputedly over 5000 years-old, is a big draw. For political tourists, Israel’s imposing “security barrier,” soon to enclose little Al-Walaja in a cage, is a must-see.



Music Reeds

The seductive voice of a clarinet. The wild wail of a tenor sax. The whimsical tones of a bassoon or oboe. Each of these sounds is produced by blowing air over a thin reed sliced from a cane stalk. Most cane reed is produced in the Var region of southern France.



A Village Called Battir

Standing on the edge of little Battir, I feasted my eyes on an astonishing sight: an amphitheater of ancient stone terraces covered in a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, herbs and trees — including olive trees over a thousand years old.



Global Palestine

Israel plays a host of key roles in today’s troubled world: Jewish homeland. Bastion of peace and democracy in the troubled Middle East. Clever “start-up nation” the world can turn to for smart solutions. Israeli-American activist Jeff Halper pinpoints a darker niche.