Broadcast

Freedom & Equality
Peg Birmingham
Freedom and equality are foundations of democratic societies. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the United Nations in 1948, is a milestone document that establishes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Yet despite the lofty aims of the UN Declaration, much of the […]
Truth & Lies
Marci Shore
Hannah Arendt says lying aids the powerful and leads to public cynicism. She warned that lying by leaders undermines democracy. Truth is an uncontestable fact. Lies are not. Calling things you don’t like a hoax makes it difficult for citizens to cut through the lies, particularly when there is no evidence to support them. To […]
Hannah Arendt on Totalitarianism
Marli Huijer
Hannah Arendt is one of the most original and influential political thinkers and scholars of this epoch. Her work and her ideas today are as relevant as ever. She wrote about ideology, racism, totalitarianism, imperialism, terror, propaganda, and antisemitism. She is best known for concepts such as the human condition, the banality of evil, and […]
Israel, Genocide & Palestine
Omer Bartov
Genocide has been called “the crime of crimes.” Alas, mass murder is nothing new, but the term genocide is of relatively recent origin. It was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer, to describe the Holocaust and the Genocide of the Armenians. The UN passed the Genocide Convention in 1948, and it went into effect […]
Christian Zionism
Veronica Sherman
In 1878, William Blackstone, a foundational figure in early Christian Zionism, published a book titled Jesus Is Coming. The best-selling work popularized the idea held by some Christians that God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people. In the late 19th and 20th centuries in the U.S., Britain, and elsewhere, Christian Zionism gained followers. This […]
International Law & the Case of Gaza
Ilan Pappé
The International Criminal Court is an independent judicial body that hears cases on individuals charged with crimes against humanity, starvation, war crimes and genocide. The Genocide Convention, which the U.S. has ratified, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” In November […]
Antisemitism & the Rise of Fascism
Marci Shore
Antisemitism, hatred of Jews, is centuries old. It exists today. It’s a blight on humankind and must be resisted. However, criticism of Israeli state policies should not be conflated with antisemitism. One should also point out that Islamophobia, hatred of Muslims, is on the rise. Fascism is a political term. It should not be used […]
A World of Empire
Timothy Snyder
From the ancient world to modern times, tyrants had dreams of empire and they would realize those dreams through conquest. The purpose of empire is to expropriate the land, labor, raw materials and markets for the imperial hegemon. Language is a factor. Euphemisms like freedom, democracy, and liberation are deployed to cover the nefarious activities […]
The Nuclear Legacy of Artificial Intelligence
Koohan Paik-Mander
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 […]
Targeting Venezuela
Steve Ellner
For sheer brazenness, the January 2026 kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores, ranks near the top in the long history of U.S. interventions in Latin America. They were taken to New York and jailed to await trial in June 2027. Trump’s policies aside, U.S. sanctions on Venezuela were […]
Militarism, Empire & the Decline of Democracy
Chalmers Johnson
In ruling circles and in the media, it’s all fine and dandy to talk about Rome and British, French and Soviet empires, but it’s impolite to talk about the United States as an empire. If you do, you’ll be ridiculed and labeled a loony Marxist. But it’s there with its hubris and arrogance and colossal […]
Propaganda: Laundering Narratives
Renée DiResta
Many people, when they hear the word propaganda, immediately associate it with Nazi Germany and torchlight parades or Putin reviewing the troops in Red Square. But propaganda has Roman Catholic church origins going as far back as 1622, when Pope Gregory issued a proclamation using the term to exhort the faithful to propagate the faith. […]

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