Society & Culture

Articles

Algorithmic Warfare

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.


A Cup Half Full or Half Empty?

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.


To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Sleeping and dreaming — essential and mysterious. An old Tanzanian friend speaks about torrential rains and village celebrations. And, in the Dutch city of Delft, a big university digs deep for the heat beneath: geothermal energy.



Gaza’s Children – A Single Cloth

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), its leaders and armed militants are alien to Gaza and its people. They’ve parachuted in from some other place and are hiding out in the Gaza population — criminally and cynically — using ordinary, innocent Gazans as human shields. Such is the wisdom of the highest authorities. Ilan Pappe sees things differently. “They’re an organic part of the population,” the Israeli-British historian told the GPM. In his groundbreaking 2006 work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappe described the origin of Gaza’s people, driven from their lands in the 1948 Nakba. Listen to our conversation.


Canada Stands On Guard

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.



Punishing the Amalekites

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.


Risky Moves

Risky moves: A Canadian political scientist attends a sanctioned forum in Russia — and asks Vladimir Putin a question. An Italian climate researcher refuses to return to work fast, from the other side of the planet. Slow travel releases less carbon, he tells his bosses. The GPM interviews Radhika Desai and Gianluca Grimalda.


Everybody Crying Mercy

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?


Mayhem in Palestine-Israel

The GPM speaks with Michael Lynk about the unfolding situation in Gaza and Israel. Lynk is Associate Professor of law at Western University, in London, Ontario, specializing in labour, human rights, disability, constitutional and administrative law. Between 2016 and 2022, Lynk served as ‘UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967’.


Old Nazis & International Law

A small Canadian lake records humanity’s impact on Planet Earth. On the floor of Canada’s House of Commons, an old Nazi veteran gets a standing ovation. And, when official enemies are to blame, Canada calls for justice. For a beloved ally, Canada calls for justice to be suspended.


Henrietta Lacks’ Immortal Cells

One of medical science’s greatest paradoxes: The cancer cells that killed Henrietta Lacks revolutionized medicine — medical care her own family couldn’t afford. Narrow profit margins for Canadian uranium companies operating in Niger. Big health risks for Nigerien miners.


Gut Microbes & Hospital Wine

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.


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.



The First 9-11

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.


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.