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At Columbia University, in NYC, students protest against the university’s passionate and uncritical embrace of AI. And, a math professor talks about what AI and math have in common, if anything.
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Apartheid Israel’s all-encompassing system for surveilling and jailing Palestinians. A conversation with UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. And, the current status of the settler-colonial apartheid state’s most famous prisoner, Marwan Barghouti. The GPM speaks with Barghouti’s lawyer.
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New report: The Canadian financial sector is deeply involved in supporting Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestine, bankrolling unlawful Jewish settlement, apartheid and genocide there, as well as internationally wrongful Israeli acts in Lebanon and the illegally annexed Syrian Golan Heights.
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The GPM speaks about Israel-USA’s war on Iran, and the wider state of the world, with Atif Kubursi, Emeritus Professor of Economics at McMaster University.
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In Ottawa, legislation that would have halted Canadian military support for US-Israeli genocide in Gaza fails. The GPM speaks with Rachel Small, Canada Organizer for World Without War. And, the second part of a conversation about critical education with Canadian academic, Henry Giroux.
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Western powers agree: Israel-USA must be free to commit high crimes with impunity. Those who name its crimes, and call for justice, face condemnation and sanction. Case in point: UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. But the Italian law scholar won’t back down. The GPM speaks with her predecessor, Michael Lynk. And, a red card for Israeli footballers? Nowhere near enough. Human rights groups want top football chiefs to be prosecuted for their support of apartheid Israel, and have taken their case to the International Criminal Court. The GPM speaks with Irish Sport for Palestine.
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In the age of fascist plague, critical pedagogy challenges fascist aesthetics. The GPM speaks with culture critic Henry Giroux about the role universities should be playing in countering authoritarianism. And, antizionism: Canadian rabbi David Mivasair talks about it, and about the power of small, personal acts in challenging US-Israeli genocide in Gaza.
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Donald Trump wants Greenland, and won’t take no for an answer. Will Canada be next? The GPM speaks with Dalhousie University professor Robert Huish. And, speaking out against US-Israeli genocide in Palestine. Watch your back. Zionist campaign against a McMaster University professor thwarted.
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Sustainable development and a stable climate – these are human rights. The GPM speaks with Bonny Ibhawoh, Chair of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development. And, the Chagossian people have a right to return to their ancestral homeland, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Big problem: the UK and US have turned it into a huge military base — launch pad for US wars around the planet. The GPM speaks with author David Vine about the plight and human rights struggle of the Chagossian people.
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Food insecurity in Canada … It’s widespread. And, Eugene Debs: trailblazing American union leader and socialist radical; inspiration for NYC’s new Democratic Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and for Democratic Socialists up, down and across North America.
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The GPM speaks about Israel-USA’s war on Gaza, and the future of the Palestinian people, with American-Palestinian journalist and author, Ramzy Baroud.
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They’re as cold as ICE. As US-backed Israeli forces terrorize Gaza, reducing the long-besieged enclave to rubble, smashing its people to bits, Donald Trump’s masked, plain-clothed, paramilitary militia terrorize black, brown and Latino communities coast to coast. The GPM speaks with antiwar/justice group CODEPINK. And, two dozen Canadian Senators call for a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel. We speak with one of them.
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In brutalized Palestine — an oasis of liberation and hope. The GPM speaks with Mazin Qumsiyeh, founder/director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity & Sustainability. And, fainter hope – that Western leaders will bring depraved Israeli crimes to a halt. Look to Europe, not Israel’s conjoined twin, Israel-USA. Europe is where the Zionist mess began. So says Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.
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Criminal arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant; more charges and warrants in the pipeline. A conversation about the ICC with British barrister Toby Cadman. And, a conversation with Francesca Albanese, about US-Israeli crimes, impunity, and justice
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US-Israeli genocide in Gaza — corporate media whitewash in the US, Canada, UK, France and Germany, where devotion to genocidal, apartheid Israel is absolute. Voices from a media panel at the People’s Tribunal on Gaza.
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Israel is an Apartheid State, four US legal scholars say. The GPM speaks with one of them, Boston University scholar Susan Akram. And, Israeli genocide: denying it while condoning it. American literary critic Saree Makdisi talks about Western intellectual subterfuge, and the erasure of the Palestinian people.
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Israel-USA’s genocidal war on Gaza enters its 21st month. The most influential Western states wring their hands and mouth empty words about peace, while continuing to sell weapons to Israel. And they refuse to name Israel’s crimes. British legal scholar Penny Green talks about this, and about an innovative Israel combat aim: creating a population of disabled people.
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The Gaza genocide goes on, with no end in sight, supported, defended and shielded by powerful Western states. And, a People’s Tribunal releases a Gaza Declaration.
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Israel-USA’s war on Gaza, international law, and a conversation with Michael Lynk
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The rule of law, the end of law, lawyering, and Dimitri Lascaris. Another conversation with Dimitri Lascaris.
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Montreal-based author and guerilla-style political provocateur Yves Engler talks about his recent arrest and subsequent imprisonment in Montreal’s Bordeaux Prison (something police originally tried to block him from doing), and what he’d rather talk about than his five days and four nights of forcible confinement. And, another Canadian’s account of the funeral of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, brutally assassinated by apartheid Israel. Another conversation with Dimitri Lascaris
For an eyewitness account of the February 23 funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, Israel’s low-altitude flyovers (more than one), and the situation currently facing fellow Canadian activist Yves Engler, the GPM turned to Dimitri Lascaris. Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer, social justice advocate, and journalist.
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The Ivory Tower Bans Free Speech. Exiled Students Take Columbia University to Court. The GPM speaks with Catherine Curran-Groome about her court case — Catherine Curran-Groome, Brandon Murphy and Aidan Parisi vs. Columbia University, at the New York State Supreme Court.
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A year after the brutal murder of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, trapped in a bullet-ridden car in the ruins of Gaza City, a Belgian-based foundation hunts down Israeli war criminals in the little girl’s name. And, in the heart of Israeli apartheid darkness, a Palestinian biodiversity group rescues native Palestinian flora and fauna from settler-colonial eco-vandalism.
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Ceasefire in Gaza: respite for those who’ve survived Israel’s genocidal onslaught – perhaps. And homeless, amid the ruins left behind by US bombs and missiles. The GPM speaks with Paula Gaviria Betancur, UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons. And, an intensive care pediatrician tells the UN Security Council about Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health care system.
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Voices & stories from the 23rd session of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, in The Hague.
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Eighty years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the real reasons for America’s hideous assault have been unearthed by a small army of scholars. Among these – a guy named Glenn Alcalay, Associate Professor of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, at City University of New York.
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Canadian rights groups call on the Canada Revenue Agency to suspend the charitable status of Canadian organizations funding Israel’s unlawful occupation and colonization of Palestinian territories, and to carry out audits and criminal investigations of their activities.
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Recently returned from his latest trip to Lebanon, Canadian lawyer, activist and journalist Dimitri Lascaris speaks with the GPM about Israel’s war on its northern neighbor, on Gaza, and the Palestinian people.
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Israel wants to eradicate the Palestinian people, and the UN agency that supports them. The GPM speaks with Chris Gunness about Israel’s persecution of UNRWA — the UN Relief & Works Agency. And, a Canadian Jewish group declares itself anti-Zionist. The GPM speaks with Sid Shniad, founding member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada.
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A conversation about Palestine-Israel with Dutch-Palestinian commentator Mouin Rabbani. The GPM met up with Rabbani in The Hague for an extended discussion about Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the Palestinian people’s depleted, divided and leaderless ‘national liberation movement’, the much-touted ‘Axis of Resistance’, and about what the future holds – for the Palestinian people, Israel and the wider Middle East.
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Almost a million uncommitted US voters want Kamala Harris to stand up for an arms embargo on Israel, and an end to the Gaza genocide. The GPM speaks about this, and more, with CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin. And, why does Germany criminalize pro-Palestine discourse? It’s not about Auschwitz, it’s about NATO. The GPM speaks with Wieland Hoban, Chairman of Germany’s Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East — Jüdische Stimme.
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Israel’s 57-year military occupation of Palestine is unlawful, the World Court rules, and must come to end. Will Israel abide by the ruling? Will countries like Canada enforce it? Washington certainly won’t. The GPM speaks about Canada’s response with Ottawa commentator Peter Larson. And, perpetual occupation of other people’s lands is an activity the US supports, defends and engages in, all around the world. The GPM speaks with United States of War author David Vine.
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Navi Pillay, chair of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, reports to the Human Rights Council in Geneva about high Israeli and Hamas crimes — crimes one Palestinian and a good Israeli friend know too well. Atta Jaber and Jeff Halper describe settler land theft and violence in occupied Hebron. And, ugly crimes recalled, a century later, in German-occupied Belgium.
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European governments try to stop a Palestinian surgeon from talking about Israeli ultra-violence – and fail. No one seeks to stamp out free speech more zealously than the Germans. How to explain the passionate attachment Western powers have for the State of Israel? It’s not what you’d think, says an Anglo-German Jewish activist.
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Dutch students and staff stand up for Gaza at a university gathering, and get a hearing. Free speech in the Netherlands? Just for show, protesters say. Weeks later, peaceful campus encampments are broken up by riot police, called in by university officials. Protesters persevere, the university relents – so it seems. Democracy in the Netherlands? Maybe. The GPM covers pro-Palestine protest at Utrecht University.
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For those who’ve never visited a Palestinian refugee camp, these are not dense tent or tin shacks encampments. They’re more like barrios; densely packed, tightly knit, fully functioning communities. On a very recent trip, the GPM visited one of Palestine’s largest refugee camps – Aida – in the southern West Bank town of Bethlehem.
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In the seven months since Hamas’ daring incursion into southern Israel, the Israeli military has demolished over 300,000 Gazan homes — almost three-quarters of Gaza’s housing stock — killing an estimated 35,000, most of them women and children. Countless thousands of Gazans remain buried under the rubble of their humble homes. Armed with US bombs and missiles, Israel demolishes Palestinian homes in an instant. Palestinian suffering and trauma will endure for generations. What’s its aim? Ethnic cleansing, genocide, and the consolidation of the settler-colonial regime it established in 1948, says Israeli author and activist Jeff Halper. Halper is a founding member of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. He’s also the author of a host of books, including An Israeli in Palestine (2010), War Against the People (2015), and Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism and the Case for One Democratic State (2021).
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Clinging to the walls of a fertile valley beneath the city of Bethlehem, a half dozen kilometers south of Jerusalem, alienated from the holiest of Palestinian towns by walls, barbed wire and a string of mega-colonial settlements, boxed in by settler-only roads and militarized checkpoints, Mazin and Jessie Qumsiyeh and their friends are planting native Palestinian seeds, growing fruits and vegetables, raising chickens, rabbits and fish, and offering up habitat for birds, insects and other wildlife. Rescuing their beloved landscape cruelly scarred by land thieves without true roots.
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Starvation and famine in Gaza. A UN expert speaks out. And, a group of Canadian lawyers demand that the Trudeau government stop supporting Israeli genocide.
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We’ve all heard it before: Eat less meat. People lucky enough to eat, should eat less of everything. Microbe magic! Having fun with microbes. Growing them! And, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Israel’s eternal, undivided capital. For Jewish Israelis, not for indigenous Palestinians.
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The geology of cities — built out of stuff mined from the ground. That’s where all cities will end up, broken down and fossilized. The GPM speaks with a geologist who gazes into the future. Some human-made molecules won’t break down either. Forever chemicals, they’re called, and they’re everywhere. In non-stick cookware, cosmetics and clothing. They last forever, and they’re toxic. On a happier note — the human microbiome. All those bacteria living on us and in us, delivering crucial services. Nothing more amazing than the bacteria in the gut of a pregnant woman, steering healthy fetal development.
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Artificial Intelligence — to translate voices or access your bank account; to select targets to bomb and a few people to kill, along with thousands of others you weren’t targeting. The GPM speaks with the Realities of Algorithmic Warfare Project. Wherever you are in occupied Palestine, Israeli soldiers target everyone and everything, children’s theaters included. Last July, the GPM spoke with Mustafa Sheta, founding director and General Manager of the Jenin Freedom Theater. Today, he sits in an Israeli jail, one of 8000 Palestinian political prisoners.
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The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on its 75th anniversary. If Britain and France had had their way, it would not have been universal. The GPM speaks with Canadian social scientist and human rights scholar Rhoda Howard-Hassmann. Lots of countries deny basic human rights laid down in the Declaration. Israel, for instance, in the occupied Palestinian Territories. A conversation with the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.
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The Canadian military shops for surveillance drones that can kill. The GPM speaks with arms researcher Matt Korda. The Canadian government slaps sanctions on a Russian discussion group. Who’s disinforming whom, University of Manitoba political scientist Radhika Desai asks? And, Canadian activist Dimitri Lascaris calls on real leftists to challenge fake peaceniks on the right.
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The dreadful events of October 7 didn’t happen in a vacuum. As Israel retaliates, reducing little Gaza to rubble, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers work hand in hand, driving Palestinians from their land. Gazing on Israeli super-violence, genocide comes to mind.
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Terrorist atrocities in Israel, Israeli atrocities in return. Seeds sown, reaped, then sown again. Israel-Palestine, Russia-Ukraine, the US vs. Russia and China … What sense to be made?
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Feed your head, Grace Slick cried in the song ‘White Rabbit’. How about feeding the bacteria in your gut? Beer won’t make you smart, or healthy. How about wine, casked, matured and sold at your local hospital? And, recalling the Birmingham Campaign for civil rights, and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, sixty years ago.
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.
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A year after the US Supreme Court banished abortion rights, millions of American women and girls face dire health and emotional health threats. Twenty two years after the Twin Towers’ destruction, we recall the first 9-11 — back in 1973. And, Palestine Panopticon. Israel’s vast carceral system for subjugated Palestinians.
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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.
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Long debunked: the mythology of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Out of the mushroom clouds, nuclearism’s dark expanding circle. And, the world’s latest new weapon: killer robots. No immediate danger.
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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.
On Day Two of the Israeli military’s latest assault on the Palestinian city of Jenin and its refugee camp, I speak with Mustafa Sheta, the General Manager of the Jenin Freedom Theatre.
For those who don’t know a whole lot about global politics and international affairs, Canada is widely seen as a kinder, gentler, more enlightened country than its neighbor to the south, with a young, photogenic leader always talking about human rights, justice and international law. Yves Engler sees things very differently.
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A US Supreme Court ruling throws American wetlands under the bus. In the oven, wheat and corn flour turn into bread and tortillas; spread on farm fields, rock flour reacts with carbon dioxide, turning into carbonates that get stored – forever. And, sharp questions off his tongue and a smartphone in hand, a Canadian activist ambushes politicians.
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Long Covid — a complex ailment driving lots of people down. Moms, babies and bacteria; the relationship starts before you’re born, then you’re colonized. And, Canadian forests – net CO2 source, not sink.
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“War is not healthy for children and other living things.” It isn’t healthy for Planet Earth’s climate system either. The cradle of crop diversity here on Planet Earth – Ethiopia. And, Israel-Palestine – a discreet toponym, six syllables tripping off the tongue.
The connections between America’s permanent war economy, its military-industrial complex and climate system breakdown are the subject of a campaign by US-antiwar group CODEPINK. The GPM talks about militarism and Earth’s rising climate crisis with CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin.
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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!.
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The Earth Chronicles — Trees & Earth. Something I produced back in 1993. Still makes sense.
London’s largest ever public protests for climate and Earth justice have come to a close. An estimated hundred thousand attended the four-day event, organized by Extinction Rebellion and other UK groups, rallying around the theme, “Unite to Survive.”
Dimitri Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer, journalist and activist, based in Montreal and southern Greece. Lascaris is now on his way to Russia, to learn more about the origins of its war with Ukraine through the eyes of Russians themselves. The Green Planet Monitor reached Dimitri Lascaris in Beirut.
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Young Israelis who refuse to serve in the military. And, as climate catastrophe sweeps the planet, in the Swedish city, Goteborg, engineers and students are designing the sort of building where people can live – comfortably — without squandering Earth’s limited resources, or polluting its atmosphere
While fierce criticism of the State of Israel is routinely declared “antisemitic” by Israel’s defenders, no one is more outspoken in their condemnation than Jewish Israelis themselves. Ronnie Barkan is a case in point. Listen to our conversation.
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.
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 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.
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.
A roof over one’s head. A home. Other than food and water, nothing is more essential to human life and health. Conversely, save forced starvation, there’s no better way to eliminate a people than to reduce their homes to rubble. No one knows this better, or carried out the practice more ruthlessly and efficiently, than the State of Israel.
An extended trip to Palestine can be a recipe for despair. How else to respond to the forcible evictions, home demolitions and nighttime arrests routinely reported on social media, or witnessed first hand by the intrepid journalist or political tourist? Despair has an antidote: the realization that what brought down apartheid South Africa will also bring an end to the more advanced and sophisticated Israeli version. More and more people are heeding the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions. David Harel is one of these — albeit in nuanced fashion.
Is justice served by defending someone’s right to a tiny slice of judicial relief, if victory means a vastly larger act of injustice is sustained, perhaps even consolidated, or should a principled attorney walk away from such a mug’s game? For Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, the answer is clear.
Some hoaxes — the Alien Autopsy, Fiji Mermaid, Disappearing Blond Gene and Geostationary Banana Over Texas tales come immediately to mind — declare themselves at the door to all but the most pitifully gullible. Now we’ve got the “Deal of the Century,” a snake oil claim if ever there was one.
Kufr Qaddum is a village of 5000, halfway between the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Qalqilya. Its agricultural lands encompass about 19,000 dunams (acres), 11,000 of which fall within Oslo ‘Area C’ and are therefore under complete Israeli military control. I travelled to to Kufr Qaddum to observe one of their weekly protests, against the closure of their ancient road.
One day feels like a week in Hebron.The quickest way to get to this beautiful but conflicted West Bank town, from Jerusalem, is from West Jerusalem’s cavernous downtown bus station. Read and listen to the story here.
Canadian Rabbi David Mivasair was arrested yesterday (May 3, 2019), along with other Jewish-American, Israeli and Palestinian activists, while helping to repair a road used by Bedouin pastoralists in the hills south of Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Local Zionists tried their darndest to block Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour from speaking at an event, yesterday evening, in Canada’s prairie capital, Winnipeg. Sarsour is an antisemite, they screamed, and denies Israel’s “right to exist”! Winnipeg social justice activists pushed back. On the evening of Friday, April 26, Sorry Not Sorry: Unapologetically Working for Social Justice unfolded without a hitch, exceeding expectations.
It’s a perfect storm: horrific, bone and tissue-pulverizing wounds from high velocity sniper rounds, a health care system crippled by over a decade-long military siege, and multi-drug resistant infections.
Dimitri Lascaris is a Montreal-based lawyer, journalist and human rights activist, recently returned from a week in Venezuela, covering recent events for The Real News Network. I spoke with Dimitri by Skype. Here’s that conversation.
Montreal-based lawyer and activist Dimitri Lascaris was on his way to Gaza on the latest Freedom Flotilla when appendicitis struck. I reached Dimitri by Skype in his Algiers hospital. Listen to our chat.
That Israel is an apartheid state, commits outrageously illegal acts against the Palestinian people, seems to have become a mainstream idea. Listen to this conversation with Israeli scientist David Harel.
Palestinian-Canadian physician and human rights worker Tarek Loubani was shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper in Gaza, yesterday, May 14, while tending to protesters calling for an end to Israel’s siege and the right to return to their lands inside Israel. I reached Loubani this afternoon, in Gaza.
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.
When Michael rows his boat ashore in the old camp fire song, across a Jordan River chilly and wide, he discovers a land of milk and honey. The descendants of shepherds he might have greeted are now the victims of land confiscation, property destruction and assault.
For Palestinian shepherds trapped in the ever-expanding matrix of Israeli military occupation, surrounded by Jewish settlements, army outposts and settler-only roads, life is anything but pastoral.
The longest hunger strike ever organized by Palestinian prisoners languishing in Israeli jails came to an end this past Sunday evening, May 28, both the prisoners and Israel government claiming that they had prevailed.
Nabi Saleh — The name of this little Palestinian village has resonated in my mind for years. Gotta go there, I’ve said to myself, to see how their famed, anti-occupation protests unfold. I never imagined how ferocious peaceful protest could be.
At this week’s annual Jerusalem Day march, Jewish-American and Israeli opponents of Israel’s permanent occupation faced off against ecstatic Zionists at the old city’s Damascus Gate.
As Donald Trump ponders whether or not to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem – endorsing Israel’s claim to the city as its “eternal, undivided capital” – Israel moves heaven and earth to cleanse East Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents.
Issa Amro has been a human rights defender in Israeli-occupied Hebron since the early 2000s. On November 23, he’ll stand before a military court outside Ramallah, charged with “incitement,” organizing illegal activities, being in a “closed military zone” and insulting police.
We use lots of items in our daily lives. We use them and then throw them away, or perhaps recycle them when they wear out or get damaged. Then again, some of us prefer to repair for re-use — at a Repair Cafe.
When Heather Majaury left the Ottawa Valley for university after high school, it was the start of a whole new journey. And it wasn’t just about the usual transitions from being a teenager to a young adult. It was the birth of a whole new sense of identity.
Fair trade — as opposed to Free Trade — puts farmers, workers, communities and the health of the planet ahead of national trade balances and corporate profits. Listen to the voices of fair traders gathered in Winnipeg for their national convention.
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.
Physical abuse, assassination, bribery, the use of human shields, looting … These are among the acts former Israeli soldiers describe to Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence in the course of interviews about their service in the occupied Palestinian territories.
I took off for Hebron on a Sunday morning. Throngs of Israeli soldiers filled the bus station, soldiers on the move, barely more than teenagers, large backpacks and automatic weapons flung over their shoulders, smart phones in their hands.
Imagine an electric-powered fleet of Canada Post vehicles, along with vehicle charging stations at post offices. And postal banking, where loans could be secured for renewable energy installations and home energy retro-fits. Listen up.
I’ve always hung out on the margins, with all the other misfits, freaks and queers; on the edge, the border between femininity and masculinity, between brownness and whiteness, a standpoint that offers me a unique worldview.
Checkpoint 56, in Israeli-occupied Hebron, is a fearsome sight to behold. Flashed before your eyes in a Rorschach test, it could be taken for a high-voltage substation, or an industrial meat grinder.
As the world holds its breath, waiting for Israel to demolish the little village of Susya, in the occupied West Bank, here’s a report to listen to from back in 2012. Today, Susya’s destruction could come at any moment.
It would be difficult to go a day without stainless steel, and that steel would not be stainless without ferrochrome — the end product of chromite mining. In northern Ontario, chromium mining generates controversy.
Mention Rwanda to someone, what comes first to their mind? Bloody genocide, most likely; certainly not swank men’s fashion. Think again.
Human beings are coming up with all sorts of ingenious ways to walk gently on planet Earth.
In the rolling foothills of the Canadian Rockies, where cattle peacefully graze and ranchers retire to handsome chalets, a purple haze hovers. Fracking is being blamed not only for air pollution, but for a litany of health complaints.
Palestine has filed action against Israel at the International Criminal Court — a move Washington and its ally have denounced. Do Israel’s occupation, its settlement enterprise and assault on Gaza violate international law?
The universal point of view from Washington and European capitals is that Israel has the right to defend itself against rockets fired from Gaza. Eric David, an eminent Belgian expert in international law, takes a different position.
The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) runs tours of Palestinian East Jerusalem. Visitors from around the world learn the ins and outs of Israel’s occupation.
On the occasion of Winnipeg’s annual “Negev Gala,” organized by the Canadian chapter of the Jewish National Fund, a couple of dozen local activists (quite a few of them Jewish) gathered in humorous protest.
The “Nakba” began in late November 1947, six months prior to Israel’s declaration of independence. When it was through, some 750,000 Palestinians had fled, and an estimated four hundred villages were demolished.
Diana Daunheimer and her husband Derek were a typical young couple pursuing their dreams — raising kids and growing good food at their Alberta homestead. But in 2008, a nastier crop sprouted around her property.
In the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains – in northern India – a very energetic woman has declared that seeds should also be free. We caught up with Vandana Shiva at her biodiversity farm north just outside Dehradun.
Who coined the phrase “Think globally, act locally” is a matter of dispute. Dinah Ceplis and Zack Gross certainly exemplify the philosophy in action.
Looking back over a 42-year career in the Canadian trade union movement — from a Chrysler assembly line to the national presidency of the Canadian Autoworkers — what strikes Ken Lewenza the most?
Israel’s “Separation Barrier” — some call it the “Apartheid Wall” — is one of those works of human ingenuity that has to be seen to be fully appreciated.
John K. Sampson’s poignant song about Winnipeg captures the cold anonymity of Prairie Canada’s capital on a grey dismal day. But there are as many reasons to love this town as to hate it. The Good Food Club is one.
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Inka Milewski was a marine biologist, not a public health researcher or epidemiologist, when she received a phone call from worried residents of her community. She took up that call. Had no choice. It was something she had to do.
Saskatchewan’s Prairie School for Union Women has been building personal and leadership skills, and solidarity among women workers, for sixteen years.
In need of a hard-hitting enviro news fix? BC-based publication The Watershed Sentinel is your go-to source for cutting edge green news and trenchant analysis — from British Columbia and beyond.
Follow a group of naturalists up New Brunswick’s Nashwaak River, from its mouth, across from the provincial legislature in Saint John, to its headwaters a hundred and fifty kilometers north, near a proposed tungsten-molybdenum mine.
In the summer of 2014, several hundred people gathered at a fracking “Day of Protest” in Kent County, between Moncton and Miramichi — Elsipogtog First Nations territory.
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Universities are engines of higher learning – also of national development and prosperity. No one knows this better than Israel – home to some of the world’s most prestigious universities. Palestinian schools struggle under Israeli occupation.
Weekly peaceful protests in villages across the West Bank are routinely greeted by Israeli teargas, sewage water, concussion grenades, and the occasional burst of live rounds. The village of Bi’lin is one of these.
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Jeff Halper, a native of Hibbing, Minnesota, is the founder of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions.
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According to Mahatma Gandhi, nothing poses more of a threat to an oppressive regime than well organized, non-violent resistance. Mubarak Awad — some call him the Palestinian Gandhi — is a case in point.
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Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian politician and democracy activist. He and I sat down for an interview in August 2012 in his office on the outskirts of Ramallah.
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The largest of Israel’s hundred or so checkpoints, Qualandia — between northern Jerusalem and the road to Ramallah — is a masterpiece in population engineering. Israeli Machsom Watch activists keep an eye on what happens there.
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For more than three decades, the Central Coffee Organization of Northwestern Peru has addressed gender inequity on the farm. Putting a dollar value on women’s work is what has made a difference.
For all the damage they’ve inflicted on their one and only home, many human beings reflect on where they’ve gone wrong, and the major changes they’ll have to embrace in order to survive. Here are a few voices we’ve managed to capture.
A former senior justice official of Earth’s most powerful nation vents his rage at the war machine his country has become.
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Jewish settlers in the Palestinian city of Hebron wear skull caps and carry Glock pistols. They have forcibly expanded their settlements, closed Palestinian shops, and expelled residents.
If there’s any hope for the human species, it draws sustenance from the collective wisdom of Planet Earth’s indigenous people. In their struggle, Earth’s future lies.
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Human beings can’t decide whether to cherish trees or chop them down. This seems to be the take-away message in a tenth transmission we’ve just picked up from a far-off planet in crisis.
Found in a time capsule … A Clayoquot Sound forest activist reflects on civil disobedience and the lesson she learned from a black bear, and sings a revised version of Danny Boy.
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A crowd of Winnipeggers gather to hear one of Israel’s most courageous and incisive journalists — Ha’aretz reporter/columnist Amira Hass.
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A former senior justice official of Earth’s most powerful nation vents his rage at the war machine his country has become.
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I had been pressing Marshall Islands conservationist Ben Chutaro to take me to Mili Atoll, to see the marine/nature conservancy he was setting up — but weather ended up not permitting. We went to Arno instead.
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One night, Mariana dreamed that she was happy to go to work. Her supervisor greeted her and Mariana was delighted to find a comfortable ergonomic chair waiting for her in front of the machine that she operates. Then she woke up.
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Almost a hundred thousand U.S. troops now serve in Afghanistan, but the insurgency continues and expands. GPM contributor Reese Erlich visited with a group of anti-war activists, including an American marine who had fought there.
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In the West African village of Mapaki, education is being used to promote peace, after years of civil war.
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In the 1950s, journalist Tom Patterson became convinced that Shakespeare could help revitalize his hometown of Stratford, Ontario. Today, Suchitoto, El Salvador hopes to do the same, in partnership with Stratford.
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Southern Lebanese farmers are in a bind. On the one hand, Israeli cluster bombs continue to pollute their fields. On the other hand, they’ve been abandoned by Lebanon’s political elite, who prefer to see Lebanon import its food.
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The development of rights for disabled people in industrialized countries is an encouraging trend – a sign of inclusiveness in this age of division and disparity. Imagine what it’s like to be a disabled person in a country like … Bolivia.
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Victoria, B.C. native Kevin Neish set off to Gaza at the end of May on the Mavi Marmara — and almost made it. He recalls Israel’s hijacking and brutalization of the Mavi’s passengers.
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