
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.
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.
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.
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.