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  • Zines From Gaza

    Zines From Gaza
    Jul 18 2026
    In Gaza today, rendered largely uninhabitable after a thousand days of joint US-Israeli genocide, young women and men are writing poetry — and publishing it. Inside Nazi Germany’s ghettos and concentration camps — Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, Auschwitz, Sobibor, Dachau, Buchenwald — Jewish poets wrote poetry too. Inside Israel-USA’s concentration camp on the Mediterranean, poets are organizing themselves. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription Coastal Lines Press is a new Gaza poetry collective, currently consisting of 38 writers. Facilitated by a global network of illustrators and distributors, they aim “to turn words into life-saving supplies for their families.” “Like vessels at sea,” Coastal Lines says at their website, Gaza zines “travel from coast to coast, drawing lines of human connection and solidarity.” Coastal Lines is also a fund-raising venture. Donations can be forwarded to each of the collective’s writers. Follow the QR codes and crowdfunding links at the Coastal Lines website. The GPM spoke with two of Coastal Lines’ poets, and will be speaking with more in the weeks to come. Noor Abu Mariam (Noor Arif) is a business administration student, social media coordinator with the Gaza Great Minds School, and a prolific writer. She has written for The Palestine Chronicle, Impulse, and We Are Not Numbers. The GPM connected with Noor in Gaza. We’ll feature our full conversation next week. Noor Abu Mariam For now, listen to Noor read two of her poems, sent to us by WhatsApp — ‘Waiting for the Butterfly’, and ‘Grief Came to Me Like a Monster’. Listen to Noor’s poems in today’s GPM podcast. Click on the play button on the top of this story, or go here. Listen to them here: The GPM also reached out to Lama Alharazin, speaking to us from the ruined apartment where she lives in Gaza City. Lama is 24 years-old. She received an English Literature and Translation degree at the Islamic University of Gaza in September 2023, a month before Hamas’ daring assault on southern Israel, and the start of Israel-USA’s genocidal assault on its Gaza concentration camp, now past its thousandth day. Lama’s university now lies in ruins, demolished by US bombs. She hopes to continue her education in the UK or Ireland. Lama has produced one zine to date, a collection of 21 poems entitled ‘Rain Was Once a Promise’. Listen to our conversation in today’s GPM podcast. Click on the play button on the top of this story, or go here. Listen to our complete conversation here: Rwandan genocide museum (David Kattenburg) In Rwanda, east/central Africa, the 32nd anniversary of the 1994 genocide has just come to a close. Over the course of those awful hundred days, between April 7 and July 15, 1994, an estimated eight hundred thousand ethnic Tutsis and a lesser number of their Hutu neighbors were brutally killed by Hutu extremists armed with knives, hoes and machetes. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription Over Rwanda’s airwaves, venom flowed. Announcers at Radio-Television Mille Collines (from Rwanda’s popular nickname, the ‘Land of a Thousand Hills’), urged listeners to “kill the cockroaches.” Established in July 1993 by Hutu extremists “to create harmonious development in Rwandan society,” RTLM became the genocide’s key driving force, mobilizing grassroots members of the notorious Interahamwe militia. Fueling the furnace of racial hatred, RTLM chiefs distributed both machetes and cheap pocket radios, in huge numbers. Efforts to halt the genocide, through an enforceable UN resolution, were blocked by the Clinton White House. Unlike its open support for Israeli genocide in Gaza, thirty years later, US support for the Rwandan genocide was tacit and sophisticated. “[The] US wanted to see its imperial proxy, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by General Paul Kagame, seize power in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali,” this 2024 analysis says. “It wanted to displace France and the French language and establish itself as the dominant power in East and Central Africa. It wanted ready access to the immense mineral wealth of Rwanda’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which Rwanda and Uganda would invade two years later.” Listen to my documentary about the Rwandan genocide, produced back in 2009, for CBC Radio’s Dispatches program. Click on the podcast play button at the top of this story, or go here. Listen to another story of mine for CBC Radio, here: Donate with a $15/monthly subscription
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    59 Min.
  • Ocean’s Eleventh Hour

    Ocean’s Eleventh Hour
    Jun 27 2026
    Snowball Earth Long before the explosion of multicellular life in Earth’s oceans, a half billion years ago, those oceans were covered in ice hundreds of meters thick. Beneath that ice, darkness reigned, and photosynthetic organisms fell silent (there were no animals back then). Snowball Earth, is how geologists describe the planet back then. Joe Kirschvink, a geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, pioneered the concept in the early 1990s. Viewed from the moon during the Cryogenian and early Ediacaran periods of the Neoproterozoic Era of Earth time, between about 720 and 640 million years ago, Earth would have glistened like a snowball. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription Two pan-planetary glaciation events have been documented — the Sturtian, between about 720 and 660 million years ago (mya), and the Marinoan, between about 645 and 640 mya. Take a close look at the top right of this chart Last week, the Canadian geologist who popularized Joe Kirschvink’s idea, helping to overcome widespread skepticism, gave a talk at McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario. Having earned a geology degree from McMaster University in 1964, Paul Hoffman worked for the Geological Survey of Canada for a while, studying Proterozoic geology across Canada’s north, then moved on to the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, at the University of Victoria. Hoffman is now Sturgis Hooper Professor Emeritus of Geology at Harvard University. I interviewed Paul Hoffman back in the early 1990s, for my Earth Chronicles series. At the time, Proterozoic carbonates and the involvement of plate tectonics in Earth’s early history were his areas of specialty. Hoffman was aware of Joe Kirschvink’s Snowball Earth idea, but never dug down into the details. In the course of geology fieldwork in northern Namibia, studying the relative proportion of carbon isotopes in sedimentary rock, his interest grew enormously. When I heard Paul Hoffman would be giving a talk at Mac about Snowball Earth, I registered. Hoffman’s mid-June presentation to a roomful of Mac grads — reviewing evidence for Snowball Earth from the fields of geochemistry, paleoclimatology, biology, and molecular phylogeny; outlining how life may have radiated from that exceptionally chilling experience (“the early Ediacaran fossil record (635-575 Ma) is understudied outside China”) — was both engaging and intellectually challenging. Afterward, Hoffman accompanied me to the studios of CFMU, where we sat down for a talk about Snowball Earth. Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription Listen to our complete conversation here: California tide pool (David Kattenburg) Then there’s the status of Earth’s oceans today. Largely liquid, they’re in a worrisome state. Seventy percent of Earth’s surface is covered in ocean. Currently pegged at 8.4 billion – and growing – human populations have wreaked havoc on them, contaminating them with chemical substances of all sorts, monumental volumes of plastic, and megatons of terrestrial sediment. A third of the CO2 humans have pumped into the atmosphere over the course of the last 200 years, burning fossil fuels, has ended up in the oceans, acidifying them. Acidification pushes ocean carbonate chemistry out of long-established equilibrium, disrupting the ability of shell-forming plankton — the base of marine trophic chains — to build their shells. At the same time, ninety percent of anthropogenic, CO2-generated atmospheric heat has been absorbed by Earth’s oceans, both heating and expanding them. The rate of sea level rise has reportedly doubled over the past fifty years, threatening coastal communities around the world. Over a third of humanity lives within a hundred kilometers of the coast, mere meters above the ocean’s fast rising surface. Alongside changes in the physical structure and chemistry of Earth’s oceans, the animals and plants that call them home are taking a hammering. Impacts on coastal salt marshes, seagrass meadows, mangrove forests, and coral reefs — among the most productive, carbon-storing ecosystems on Earth — and on iconic marine mammals in both coastal and pelagic zones, are easy to observe. Much less easy to monitor are the extraordinary communities of free-floating plant and animal plankton, and soft-bodied benthic (bottom-dwelling) organisms inhabiting the depths of Earth’s open oceans, especially along submarine ridges and seamounts, on abyssal plains, and at the bottom of incomprehensibly deep trenches. Research continues to highlight the extraordinary lives of creatures few if any humans have ever observed. Their ability to thrive, unbeknownst to humans, is astonishing. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription If Earth’s ocean creatures are in trouble, so are humans. But ocean experts are hopeful. Oceans need to be managed more effectively. The GPM spoke about this ...
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    59 Min.
  • Earth in Motion

    Earth in Motion
    Jun 23 2026
    Love of Rock

    By David Kattenburg

    Between the winter of 1992 and spring 1994, backpack on my back and vintage, analog Nagra III reel-to-reel tape recorder over my shoulder, I traveled across Canada – twice — visiting places and interviewing people from Prince Edward Island to the west coast of Vancouver Island.

    Out of this audio-recording adventure, thirty-two hour-length docs emerged, exploring planet Earth, global ecology, and sustainable human development. The Earth Chronicles, the series was called. Together with co-producer Peter Hutton, I raised an astonishing $120,000 for the radio project (equivalent to about $220,000 dollars today).

    Producing The Earth Chronicles was a task of epic proportions. In a room at the Yellow Brick House, on Strathcona Street South, countless hours were spent listening back to all these voices, recorded on dozens and dozens of reels of quarter-inch tape; wax pencil and razor blade in hand, slicing, splicing and assembling voice sequences; lengths of magnetic tape around my neck, over my shoulder and knees, and piled up neatly across the floor.

    Across town, in the production studio of 93.3 CFMU, McMaster University Radio, thirty-two editions of the Earth Chronicles got mixed down, all perfectly narrationless — voicescapes.

    Here’s one of the first editions in the Earth Chronicles series, ‘Earth in Motion’. It features the voices of some of Canada’s most eminent geologists and Earth system scientists (William Fyfe, Digby McLaren, Paul Hoffman), and a host of other geologists and humble rock lovers.

    ‘Earth in Motion’ also features a singer-songwriter named Shawn O’Halloran.

    Shawn was one of Hamilton’s most talented artists. ‘Tectonics’ is one of fourteen songs he wrote for The Earth Chronicles, and performed, on guitar, accompanied by veteran Hamilton-area percussionist (and CFMU jazz host) Paul Panchezak. Shawn O’Halloran passed away in 2019, way before his time.

    Listen to ‘Earth in Motion’. Click on the play button above, or go here.
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  • Free Speech Suppressed — AI Embraced

    Free Speech Suppressed — AI Embraced
    Jun 13 2026
    At Columbia University, one of the US’s most prestigious academic institutions, the suppression of free speech and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence go hand in hand. On May 12, in front of the university’s closely guarded gates at Broadway and West 116th Street (one of the last places where Columbia students are free to stage loud, public protests), a small group of students and faculty gathered to protest what they believe is the uncritical integration of AI into Columbia teaching and learning systems. To whit: the creation of an academic program called ‘Claude for Education’, offering free student access to advanced models of ChatGPT and Gemini, and awards to faculty members who incorporate AI into their courses. Announced on May 5, Columbia’s in-house chatbot program effectively subsidizes corporate erosion of student reading and writing skills, while plagiarizing the intellectual property of university faculty, the protesters’ hand-out said. Students also oppose Columbia’s ‘AI Minor’ program, offered in the 2025 academic year, and a new ‘AI Masters’ program to be offered this coming Fall, both of which they say soft-pedal the ethical hazards of AI systems. Instead, critics say, the two programs “capitalize” on the profitability of advanced AI platforms, while catering to the “rapid rise in industry demand” for AI-trained students. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are among the corporate heavyweights Columbia’s new AI-based programs are designed to serve, the protesters hand-out said. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription “We cannot trust Columbia to properly educate its masters students on the risks of this technology when the university is invoking the “projected value of the global AI market”,” the hand-out said. Citing Columbia University’s “historical collaboration with the military industrial complex” — including the development of atomic bomb technology at Columbia, and its involvement in the advancement of Cold War-era military theory — the hand-out also called on Columbia to disclose how much money it’s receiving from AI companies. Topping their complaints, on the eve of university commencement ceremonies, Columbia students were angered by the news that the names of graduating students would be read out, not by an esteemed, two-legged faculty member, but by an AI “robot.” “Class Day is the only time that every student is individually acknowledged by the administration,” the students rote in their protest flyer. “The switch needlessly removes human intention from a special Columbia tradition.” Of course, no tradition is more foundational — at Columbia, or any other academic institution — than the right to freely pursue scholarship, study, teach, and speak out on matters of public concern — especially contentious ones — without fear of reprisal. Since the start of Israel-USA’s genocidal war on Gaza, in October 2023, under pressure from the Trump Administration and the university’s “corporate-heavy” Board of Trustees, Columbia has been among the country’s most free speech-averse campuses — banning protests against the Gaza genocide, calling in police to break up protest encampments, and suspending and expelling students. Based on feedback from 55,000 currently enrolled students at 251 US colleges and universities, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) places Columbia University second to last in its ‘Speech Code Ranking’, assigning it a ‘Yellow’ rating – “Abysmal.” Sixty-five percent of Columbia students told FIRE that they “self-censor” “at least 1-2 times a month.” FIRE identifies sixty Columbia faculty members, instructors and students who’ve been investigated, sanctioned, terminated, suspended or expelled by the administration for speaking out against the Gaza genocide. The suspension and expulsion of Columbia Masters students Catherine Curran-Groome, Aidan Parisi and Brandon Murphy was reported here. Columbia’s commitment to free expression is steadfast and enduring, Acting President Claire Shipman wrote in September 2025. Others are see things differently. The pursuit and persecution of Columbia student protest leaders speak volumes about academic freedom and free speech on the West Harlem campus. With the apparent complicity of Columbia authorities, ICE thugs have targeted Columbia students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi, both active in support of Palestine, and in opposition to US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. The Trump regime is seeking to deport both. Columbia University has not come to their defence — certainly not loudly. Columbia University students & faculty protest in front of university’s main gate (David Kattenburg) In the minds of some Columbia students, the administration’s jaundiced view on free speech and its passionate embrace of AI go hand in hand. Listen to them, and a few of their faculty supporters, in this edition of the GPM...
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    58 Min.
  • Smash And Grab

    Smash And Grab
    Jun 7 2026
    A Conversation With Nikhil Pal Singh

    From Caracas to Minnesota, from Iran and Cuba to the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, from the Persian Gulf to the waters of the eastern Pacific and Caribbean, Donald Trump and his henchmen are collapsing US foreign military and domestic policing operations into a single, unified domain of imperial impunity.

    A domain where anything goes; where Trump and his minions, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and US ‘Homeland Security’ chiefs, consider themselves free to carry out military/policing operations without restraint, largely immune from Congressional oversight, and beyond the reaches of international and domestic US law.

    Their preferred modus: sudden, highly dramatic acts of violence and murder that can be parlayed into media spectacles, staged for instant transmission to the American public and the world on Donald Trump’s “Truth Social” platform.

    “Smash and grab” operations, American historian Nikhil Pal Singh calls these.

    In a recent article for the journal Equator, Singh unpacks the Trump regime’s core innovation: the expansion of the borders of US state power, collapsing foreign and domestic violence into a single domain of impunity.

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    “Homeland empire,” US academic Nikhil Pal Singh calls this.

    Nikhil Pal Singh is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History at NYU, focusing on the intersection of contemporary US history and political theory.

    Singh’s first book, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy, was recognized as the best work of US civil rights history by the Organization of American Historians.

    Singh’s other works include Climbin’ Jacob’s Ladder: The Black Freedom Movement Writings of Jack O’Dell, Race and America’s Long War, and Reconstructing Democracy: Black Intellectuals in the American Century.

    Listen to our complete conversation with Nikhil Pal Singh. Click on the play button above, or go here.
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  • Forests Not Forever

    Forests Not Forever
    May 30 2026
    Forests are among planet Earth’s core biological systems. Covering about a quarter of its land surface, forest biomes regulate Earth’s climate, and host most of its biological diversity. Forests also provide humans with food, fiber, and energy. Their contribution to human cultural and psychic wellness, individually and collectively, is beyond calculation. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription In response to the relentless decline of terrestrial forest cover, between 1995 and 1997, an International Arrangement on Forests (IAF) was established within the United Nations, as a framework for the development of forest policy and cooperation. Out of the IAF, the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF), the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, the Forest Financing Facilitation Network, and the UN Strategic Plan for Forests 2017–2030 emerged. The Strategic Plan sets six Global Forest Goals: to reverse forest cover loss, improve forest livelihoods, support the development of sustainable forest products, promote inclusive forest governance and cooperation across sectors, and to mobilize financial resources crucial to achieving these goals. The UNFF is the international community’s core venue for discussion on all matters forest-related. The UNFF is a commission of the Economic and Social Council, one of the UN’s five principal arms. All UN members states belong to the Forest Forum. Annual sessions focus on forest protection policy, knowledge exchange, and the promotion of practical measures to conserve and expand Earth’s forested cover. Between May 11 and 15, the UNFF held its 21st session in New York City. The GPM was there. The highlight of UNFF21 — this year’s Forest Goals Report. The Global Forest Goals Report 2026 is less than optimistic. With less than five years to go till 2030 — target date for global sustainability goals established at the 1992 Rio Summit — Earth’s forests are in peril, it says. Global forest area has declined by more than 40 million hectares over the past decade, the report says. Financing for sustainable forest management remains far below estimated needs. At the same time, it says, countries are advancing reforms, expanding restoration efforts, strengthening forest governance, and scaling up cooperation. Listen to voices from this year’s session of the UN Forum on Forests. Click on the play button above, or go here. In order of appearance: UNFF21 chair, a Turkish forester, Ismail Belen. Lok Bahadur Thapa, Permanent Representative of Nepal, and President of the UN’s Economic and Social Council. Annaliena Baerbock, former German Foreign Minister, and President of the current, 80th Session of the United Nations. Bjorg Sandkjær, former Deputy Minister for International Development at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Sandkjær presented this year’s Forest Goals Report. On the sidelines of formal sessions, the GPM spoke with: Ana Paula Vargas, a consultant for Brazil’s Ministry of Indigenous Peoples. David Flood (Zonzei Maiingun), a member of Matachewan First Nation, an Ojibway band in Treaty 9 territory, northeast Ontario, and General Manager of Wahkohtowin Development, a social enterprise jointly operated by three First Nations. Listen to our complete conversation with David here: The GPM also spoke with Juliette Biao, Secretary General and Director of the UN Forum on Forests. As West Africa’s first female forester, Biao helped resolve forest-related conflicts in the international park separating Burkina Faso, Niger, and her home country, Benin. Since 2022, Biao has served as the Director of the Secretariat of the UN Forum on Forests. Ms. Biao is a dual national — of Benin and Canada. Listen to all these voices in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription
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  • Battered, Bloodied & Victorious

    Battered, Bloodied & Victorious
    May 22 2026
    Battered and bloodied by US and Israeli bombs and missiles, weakened by years of economic sanction and US maritime blockade, Iran still thinks it’s come out on top. It may be right. Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu seem to think so, and are clearly frustrated. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription The Israeli Prime Minister spoke with Trump at least twice this past week. Read-outs of their phone conversations (there have been dozens of calls and personal visits to the White House since the start of their war) have not been released, but we can imagine what the two discussed. Netanyahu, the subject of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in besieged, occupied Gaza, almost certainly pressed Trump, a convicted felon, for an end to their supposed cease-fire with the Islamic Republic, and a resumption of savage bombing. Israel-USA’s declared aim: preventing Iran from developing a bomb. Washington’s position has always been clear: Only Israel has the right to enrich uranium and amass a nuclear weapons arsenal — undeclared and exempt from international inspection — and to threaten to nuke its neighbors. Israel’s aim is much more expansive: annihilating the Islamic Republic; fracturing it into a patchwork of ethnic entities; pushing it into crippling chaos. Will Trump agree to start bombing Iran again? Netanyahu, a staunch advocate of permanent war against the self-declared ‘Jewish’ state’s neighbors, does have a knack for pulling Trump by the nose. ‘Bibi’ is “a very good man,” Trump insisted, a few days after their phone talks, but he, Trump, is in charge. Netanyahu “will do whatever I want him to do,” Trump reassured a crowd of corporate media flacks, somewhere between Washington and his Florida golf course. None of them asked about Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Judging from recent developments in the Persian Gulf, Iran will actually do what it wants to do. Within hours of Trump’s blustering claim that he, not Israeli’s indicted war criminal, is calling the shots, and that Iran will never, ever get a nuclear bomb, the Islamic Republic announced that its far more powerful nuclear option has been fine-tuned. Henceforth, Tehran declared on X (where pronouncements of this sort are made), all maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — from the waterway’s eastern portal, between Kuh-e Mobarak in Iran and Fujairah in the UAE, to its western end, across the narrow strait between Qeshm Island in Iran and Umm al-Quwain in the UAE — will be managed by a freshly minted Persian Gulf Strait Authority (PGSA). Alternatively pegged at a dollar per barrel of transported oil, or a $2 million flat fee, PGSA transit tolls must be shelled out in advance, in crypto currency. Iran’s transit toll appears to expand on an earlier, more modest levy, two months and a bit after Israel-USA launched its war against Iran, in flagrant breach of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter . “Iran’s demands over the Strait of Hormuz demonstrate that Iranian officials believe they won the war,” says Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. They’ve certainly turned the table on the conjoined twins who’ve been assaulting them. For his own thoughts on whether this is so, and on rapidly evolving associated events in Iran today, the GPM spoke with a distinguished scholar on all matters Iranian. Ervand Abrahamian is a Professor of History at Baruch College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among the books he’s authored: Iran Between Two Revolutions (1982), Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (1993), Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran (1999), Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran, and Syria (2004), and A History of Modern Iran (2008). Professor Abrahamian’s latest work, Oil Crisis in Iran – From Nationalism to Coup d’Etat, explores the motivations of the US-UK-engineered overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, back in August 1953, based on an analysis of previously unreleased diplomatic communications. Continued favourable access to Iranian oil was the key driver of the CIA-MI6-engineered coup, Abrahamian argues, not fears of Soviet influence over the democratically elected Mossadeq administration, at the height of the Cold War. The GPM sat down with Professor Ervand Abrahamian at his Brooklyn home, across the East River from the United Nations. Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here. Donate with a $15/monthly subscription Listen to our complete conversation here:
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  • Techno-Fascist Manifesto

    Techno-Fascist Manifesto
    May 9 2026
    Iran Turns Tables on Israel-USA On May 4, Donald Trump swore that Iran would be “blown off the face of the earth” if it didn’t immediately restore maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump’s genocidal fulminations have become familiar. Late last month, he predicted that “a whole civilization will die” if Iran doesn’t do what he wants. Weeks earlier, Trump vowed to send Iran “back to the Stone Ages” (plural) if Iran didn’t lower its neck to US-Israeli imperialism. Well, Iran doesn’t seem to be listening. Indeed, according to numerous informed observers outside the Trump Administration, the Islamic Republic has actually turned the tables on Israel-USA, scoring what many see as a strategic victory over the conjoined entity. To catch up on the current situation, the GPM reached out to Arang Keshavarzian, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. Keshavarzian is the author of Bazaar and State in Iran: Politics of the Tehran Marketplace (2007), Geographies and Histories of the Iranian Revolution (2021), and Making Space for the Gulf: Histories of Regionalism and the Middle East (2024). Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here. Watch our complete conversation here: Boys will be boys. Tech Bros certainly will. While Donald Trump and his crusading Christian warrior chief, Pete Hegseth, vow to rain hellfire on Iran, Silicon Valley ‘titans’ pronounce on how they intend to rule the world, backed by AI-based surveillance and weapon systems. Over a mid-April weekend, AI wunderkind Alex Karp, founder of the surveillance giant Palantir, posted a 22-point manifesto about all this. Like most pompous pronouncements, Alex Karp’s bursts with Big Narrative. The “Technological Republic” owes a “moral debt” to America and the world, and “free email” won’t cover the bill. Civilizational decadence must be squashed, says Karp, along with “vacant and hollow pluralism,” and the “dysfunctional and regressive” belief that all cultures are equal. (They’re not, says Karp) Karp’s fixes? AI-based military deterrence, obligatory “national duty” (as if humans have something to offer in his dystopian future), reinvigorated religious faith at upper state echelons … and the remilitarization of Germany and Japan. Inevitably, Alex Karp’s manifesto has drawn fire. Among those speaking out, a group of academics at the University of Ottawa. David Murakami Wood is one of them. David Murakami Wood is Professor of Criminology in U. Ottawa’s Faculty of Social Sciences, and Canada Research Chair in Critical Surveillance and Security Studies. His research focuses on emerging AI-based “smart cities”, private surveillance companies, AI regulation, and the relationship between surveillance and the climate crisis. Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here. Watch our complete conversation here:
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    59 Min.