The drug state that skipped democracy
ALBANIA: Why does the West support a country that is in the clutches of organized crime?
Coronary vaccines: science and myths
CHRONICLE: Science has made rapid progress in producing a vaccine against Covid-19. But can vaccine programs be based on active consent and autonomous choice by citizens? And does scientific rationality now go hand in hand with creative forms of irrationality?
literature
Is there any reason to rejoice over the coronary vaccine?
COVID-19: How far are the authorities willing to go to get the population to listen, follow health advice and take the coronary vaccine? In Norway and Sweden, the vaccine is voluntary, while Danes may be forced to take it. There is currently no real skepticism from the public sector about the vaccine - vaccination is recommended.
top issues
Vaccine coercion part 2: Tracking and monitoring
SURVEILLANCE: Corona testing of travelers to Norway will now be mandatory. In the near future, you may also be required to have a corona passport when you fly. In China, drones are used to monitor the people.
The dissatisfaction, the frustration, the inconsolability, the hopelessness and the mistrust
USA: The philosopher Espen Hammer gives in a new book a crystal clear analysis of US policy. This is a country where the value of lobbying is estimated at well over NOK 40 billion.
Is renewable energy enough when the planet's total energy requirement is 15 TW
ENERGY: We already have enough technologies to initiate a full transition to renewable energy sources. According to David Elliott, solar power also has a potential of a staggering 20 terrawatt - more than the world's total energy consumption
Living in the true sense of the word
ARCHITECTURE: Christian Norberg-Schultz's emphasis on local art has helped shape generations of architects. Can we build better than we do today?
Vaccine compulsion - some corrections
ACCORDINGLY: Author Trond Skaftnesmo comments on MODERN TIMES 'review of the book Vaccine intake.
Bookchains social ecological model inspires
The surprise was big when Bookchin's co-worker, Janet Biehl, opened her letterbox at home in the USA in 2004 and found a letter from a former German diplomat who, on behalf of Abdullah Öcelan, wanted to establish contact to exchange thoughts on Bookchin's ideas.
The Kurds in Rojava
ANARCHISM: In Murray Bookchin's social ecology, Abdullah Öcalan saw how the dynamics of women's liberation could and must be reconciled with direct democracy and ecology.
STRATEGIES 'WILL TO SACRIFICE LIFE: The military commanders wanted to annihilate the Soviet Union and China, but Kennedy stood in the way
ESSAY: We focus on American Strategic Military Thinking (SAC) from 1950 to the present. Will the economic war be supplemented by a biological war?
More universal philosophy
ESSAY: Time to learn what the world's many translating female philosophers thought? Or what about the omitted African philosophy? Four books provide a broader understanding of the history of thought.
Everything is the fault of others
MASS MEDIA: Where the advertisement gave a feeling of well-being, desire and pleasure, the new media consumption gives the feeling of paranoia, anger and mistrust. Hate seller. Also on Capitol Hill.
On the dark side of truth
MEDIA: The struggle for truth - and thus for documentary - has become brutal. A new book analyzes how truth claims and digital culture shape our political realities.
A planet we ourselves have brought into radical imbalance
EARTH: Anthropocene means more than writing about ecology, environmental history or global warming. How about the greenhouse effect heating the ocean at such a speed that it is equivalent to pouring a billion boiling teacups into the ocean every second?
To salvage what is salvaged can
TECHNOLOGY: Are artificial intelligence and drones good news for nature and the protection of the planet's ecosystems?
Acting alcoholics
MUSICIAN BIOGRAPHY: A blissful mixture of sins of omission, narcotic excesses and bloated but fragile self-images - interspersed with violence?
Healing in the natural
INNOVATORS: The anarchist collective project Monte Verità was a groundbreaking, vibrant center with inspiration for ideas that are heard even today.
- We must be happy, even with the prospect of extinction
INTERVIEW: The Italian activist philosopher Franco "Bifo" Berardi talks to MODERN TIMES about America's arrogance, loneliness, rebellion, mortality, and Buddhism as role models.
The ecocentric man
NATURE: Conversation portrait with author Erland Kiøsterud about our ecological responsibility.
Everything we love is transient, fleeting, temporary
ESSAY: It is our self-understanding that is at stake today. With their aggressive, partly inflated subjects, Western technologists, economists and artists have for centuries sat above nature. In the ecosystem, man is in nature, it is a part of nature, on which he is completely dependent. Can we protect biotopes, habitats, rivers, lakes, soils, oceans and commons? This essay looks at five books examining the ecosystem.
The masses and the people
PSYCHOLOGY: Is it possible to understand why the majority choose a leader or a slave-like existence?
Why populism?
TRUMP: In the latest issue of Agora with populism as its theme, Donald Trump comes out in two variants: in a very personal version (where he owes just about everything he owns) and as a patrimonial leader in a postmodern USA
Foucault and neoliberalism
PHILOSOPHY: Shortly after Agora's magnificent publication on populism, the magazine follows up with an even thicker publication. This time it is about Michel Foucault and his groundbreaking series of lectures on neoliberalism.
Bjørneboe, Gateavisa, and post-anarchism
Is it possible that traits from anarchism still have great validity for some of us today?
The fascist paradox
USA: Did the poor, as a result of the American political system, have no choice but to ally with the oligarchs who created them in the first place?
UN states: Far from banning killing robots
WEAPONS OF THE FUTURE: Human Rights Watch has issued a report on the regulation of autonomous weapons. What will determine the wars of the future?
When corruption comes to life
BEIRUT: In its extreme consequence, corruption contributes to the loss of human life. We saw it in Bangladesh when the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed in 2013.
The devil is in the system
DEATH PENALTY: The Berlin winner There is no devil is a strong statement against Iran's state executions and a morally complex depiction of living in a totalitarian society.
Bittersweet comedy in New York
DRAMA COMEDY: Director Sofia Coppola and actress Bill Murray were successful Lost in Translation and are now reunited in On The Rocks, in which Murray portrays a skirt hunter who is never far from a dry martini.
A powerful and different beast
HOLOCAUST: The Painted Bird is a powerful and disturbing film that depicts a young boy's cruel experiences in Eastern Europe during World War II.
HUXLEY'S DYSTOPIA: What would you rather be - happy or free?
SCIENCE FICTION: The TV series based on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World contains - by including digital surveillance - also an essential element from George Orwell's dystopian vision of the future.
Forty years of dreaming of a better life
NINOSCAS CAMP: Independence and detachment from violence and oppressive macho culture in Nicaragua - filmed for forty years.
Blacklisted workers were denied a job
CONTROL: Unthinkable bureaucrats, sneaky employer organizations and a corrupt police monitor and blacklist "troubled" or suspicious workers systematically.
Who dares disappoint the camera?
NUDENESS: Norwegian Jan Dalchow's new documentary series about body shame is honorable, but also trivial and sentimental.
Short film winners with political sting
NORWEGIAN SHORT MOVIE: Many of the films at this year's digital short film festival in Grimstad dealt with current political themes.
Short film program about the Y-block and the vulnerability of architecture
ARCHITECTURE: Two films about the Y-block have, in the shelter of the ongoing demolition, become both documentation of ideological oscillations and mourning hymns over a lost time.
Moments into the suffering of others
DOCUMENTARY PHOTO: The opportunity is there now to see what professional documentary photographers are doing.
At a time when only "necessary" travel is allowed
TO TRAVEL: Where are you going to travel when the pandemic ravages the destination? In the literature, of course. On the desolate islands of the books, you can stretch up the hammock without being infected by anything other than longing.
