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Israel says there is no need for explanations as to why Hamas attacked on October 7, 2023. Pappé challenges that point of view. Without historical contextualization, the issues are not only incomprehensible but also make people vulnerable to propaganda. For decades, corporate media coverage has been lopsided in Israel’s favor. Israelis are humanized. Palestinians are demonized. The Israel–Palestine conflict didn’t start on October 7th, nor did it start with the 1917 Balfour Declaration or with 1967, when Israel occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, or in 1948 when the state of Israel was declared. Roots of the conflict began in 1882, when the first Zionist settlers arrived in Palestine.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s charismatic “I Have a Dream” speech is emblazoned in our historical memories. But another address to a much smaller audience on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York is no less significant. There King demonstrated his deep understanding of how the system works. He moved beyond a simple race analysis to include class and foreign policy issues. He forcefully denounced the war in Vietnam. He called the U.S. “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and he deplored the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism.” Exactly one year later King was assassinated in Memphis where he had gone in solidarity with striking sanitation workers. Recorded at Riverside Church

We hear from many quarters that "AI will destroy the world," but everyone's got a different scenario for what that means. The most sensational perspectives come from theorists like Geoffrey Hinton, the so-called "godfather of AI" or industrialists like Elon Musk. They warn us that one day,  a superintelligent AI could replace human beings in controlling the planet.  But we don't need to conjecture into the future. The scorched-earth destruction is already happening now. Jobs are hemorrhaging with no sign of return; data centers are turning U.S. farmlands into barren industrial gulags while consuming record levels of power, spewing volumes of carbon and using up our last freshwater sources; fusillades of deep-fake videos politically paralyze the public; an AI surveillance infrastructure is being constructed that will lock in fascism; and algorithms are telling ICE and the IDF who lives and who dies. It seems all too overwhelming. However, by tracing AI's lineage to the development of the atom bomb -- with the same ideologies and twisted logic -- it becomes apparent that solutions to the AI dilemma can also be found in nuclear history, in its disarmament successes.

In a time when scoundrels abound and corruption is rife, the need for resistance is critical. This is no time for fence-sitting and twiddling thumbs. Throughout history, people have fought and defeated autocracy by organizing with allies to challenge, disrupt, and roll back unfair rule. We are in such a moment now, as power is being centralized and the rule of law and decency are being undermined. The odds may seem too difficult, but perseverance and collective action can be effective. Through resistance, authoritarian rule can be rolled back. Historian Howard Zinn reminds us," The power of tyranny is overestimated and can be overcome by the unity and the determination of apparently powerless people."

Genocide is the most heinous of crimes and it connects to settler colonialism. Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz says, “Settler colonialism requires genocidal violence to attain its goal” of acquiring land. In North America and elsewhere this meant the Indigenous population was targeted for mass murder. North America’s huge landmass and resources drove the policy. In Germany, there was the Nazi desire for lebensraum, living space, in Eastern Europe. It’s interesting to see the parallels. The U.S. General William Sherman said in 1873, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children.” Seventy years later in 1943, Heinrich Himmler, the notorious SS commander, said, “I want to mention a very difficult subject with complete candor. I am talking about the extermination of the Jewish people.” Recorded at Simon Fraser University.