ISRAEL: MODERN TIMES can document that since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, the oil fund has increased its investments by 35 percent in companies involved in Israel's war crimes, occupations and violations of international law in the Middle East. In 27 of these, the oil fund has invested at least NOK 1430 billion by the end of 2024 – compared to NOK 930 billion the previous year.
PHOTOGRAPH: In Øyvind Hjelmen's pictures we are forced to look inward. The suggestive is far more often present than the bombastic. In this book one can raise the question of how photographs can be communicated.
ENVIRONMENT: Rachel Carson raised world opinion about the effects of environmental toxins on nature and ecosystems. Now another environmental burden threatens – one we create on the path to the 'green shift'. Radiation is today an overarching stress factor that can contribute to the emergence of most of the chronic diseases we struggle with.
MODERN TIMES CONVERSATIONS: A few years ago, Pål Steigan restored an old dilapidated Capuchin monastery north of Rome – to run site development and seminars. When MODERN TIMES recently interviewed him, around 15 people had gathered there for a symposium, in the village of Tolfa. Steigan is clearly someone who never gives up. See the previous newspaper for the first part of the interview. Here we see in del to on his entrepreneurship, the online newspaper steigan.no and his criticism of capitalism.
ECOLOGY: This time, MODERN TIMES looks at a book that, in its breadth and depth, treats our time and future, ecologically as well as culturally – as when culture is naturalized. About India: Here the most meticulous rituals are performed to keep the world in balance. About China: the Chinese emperors who used music to harmonize society. In Europe's stormy history, the dream of harmony and order is projected into the afterlife. Erland Kiøsterud tries to find a cosmology that can create a certain order and meaning in the world, while at the same time demanding total honesty. (See also our film about Kiøsterud here).
REPORT: Ramallah is the city of power and business. You move through Ramallah's cafes: Sufi, which looks like Paris. Snowbar, for a cocktail by the pool. The revolving Sky Terrace on the 23rd floor of the Palestine Tower. Rukab ice cream parlor. Ensherah for journalists. Café de la Paix for smart business people, or Vintage, next to the municipal fountain, with its water show and the music from Titanic.
PROMETEUS: Sloterdijk's book addresses the dark side of freedom, how humans freely and unrestrainedly (albeit with shame) consume the earth's resources without caring about the consequences, because we have the right and freedom to do so.
POETRY: Two poets with great sensitivity to the world around them and the present, albeit a contemporary era seen from the perspective of the past – as they are referred to as 'retrogardists'.
EXCEPTIONAL STATE: Democratically elected leaders can manipulate us into believing there is a crisis due to immigration, homosexuality, terror, viruses, abortion, or moral decay in the population.
NATURE: How about recognizing some of the many wild bees we have in Norway and gaining an interest in nature's diversity of species? Here is a scientifically based book free of irony and scientific distance.
CHINA: The Chinese nation marches forward with Marxist nationalism and global infrastructure, while the West stumbles in its own insecurities. It will be difficult for the United States to realize that its heyday is over. Has China found the formula for a new world order – or is it just old authoritarian wine in new bottles? And is Xi more Leninist than his predecessors?
RESISTANCE: On the occasion of the more fascist turn we are now experiencing with the inauguration of Trump and his government in the United States, we bring back the criticism from the American Michael Hardt and the Italian philosopher Antonio Negri. Do you not think that there is any alternative to capitalism, or that there is no possibility of changing the situation from the side of power – the economic inequality, racial and gender discrimination, the climate crisis? Then Hardt's latest book The Subversive Seventies is a welcome attempt to establish historical connections between the 70s and today. Furthermore, to articulate feminism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism and anti-imperialism, while the various organizations maintain relative autonomy, equality and diversity.
ETHICS: Is ethical thinking even possible – how can we humans develop moral thinking when the world is as changeable as it is? Erland Kiøsterud's collection of essays, from which MODERN TIMES has chosen two different analyses, contains contemplative texts about art, man and nature.
EUROPE: Peter Sloterdijk saw Europe as a kind of theater, with ever-new attempts to recreate and imitate the Roman Empire. The continent stands for humanistic ideals, but has nevertheless produced imperialism and countless wars. Why does a Europe characterized by a stoic ethic of self-restraint and a Christian message of peace and love lead to so much exploitation and oppression in practice?
ARCHITECTURE: Sacred Modernity contains 139 images of modern churches. One could perhaps say that the book reflects the barren and displaced soul of humanity, the new society of stunned strangers…
POWER:Today's autocratic regimes have turned what was once a domestic policy into a foreign policy doctrine. Autocracy Inc. is brilliant and terrifying from Anne Applebaum.
POETRY: Latin America is in many ways an extension of Europe, with widespread poverty. Cities, human destinies, misfortune, love, everything seems bigger in Latin America.
PSYCHOLOGY: What makes Pico Iyer's book different from other descriptions of spiritual breaks from a hectic life is that his focus is not on what he has left behind, but on what he is striving towards.
ISLAM: Samia Rahman attempts to analyse what it means to be a Muslim woman in Britain today. Barriers in the form of veiling, lowering the gaze or physical separation of the sexes are, according to her, “a misunderstanding of the wisdom of Islam”.
POLITICAL: Denmark is now a member of the UN Security Council and must try to contribute to developing or re-establishing respect for the UN's mission. What does the book Liberating the United Nations say? And what about seeing ourselves as part of nature – with the mindsets, systems and objects we surround ourselves with today, it is difficult to understand, according to Jakob Jespersen.
MEDIA: Populists use the same stylistic devices: scandalization, incitement and imitation – something that politicians exploit. Press ethics, source criticism, thoroughness and transparency are difficult enough in the midst of today's media crossfire, which is characterized by haste and a weak economy.
USA: The explosive power of the atomic bomb has seduced and dazzled politicians for over 80 years. With the atomic bomb came a victim mentality, invoking an 'urgent necessity' – but this was exaggerated and used to trivialize human suffering and ecological destruction. As an example of the tests we struggle with today, the contamination that will affect humans and other life forms in Great Bear Lake for at least 800 years to come.
POLICY: In a time when right-wing radicals create false security in connection with myths about nation and family, the left must also learn to speak to emotions. It matters little whether one is right; one must also appeal to people's emotions. Our vulnerability needs a language that politicians understand.
ENVIRONMENT: While politicians either downplay the climate crisis or focus on illusory sustainability, Kohei Saito shows what both reinforces the eco-crisis and social inequality – exemplified through "Jevons' paradox" and the "Netherlands error".
BIOWEAPONS: The combination of astonishing historical facts and compelling analyses of science policy makes medical professor Stig S. Frøland's book on biological warfare a compelling reading experience. For example, good death microbes should have high mortality, preferably be paralyzing, have a high infectiousness, be easy to produce and suitable for creating fear.
PHILOSOPHY: Jürgen Habermas' growing interest in religion in this new conversation book can be interpreted as a symptom that the concept of rationality with which he initially operated was too narrow. Today, philosophy and religion, as well as psychology and a number of other sciences, are struggling to understand or redefine the incomprehensible in our lifeworld.
CLIMATE CHANGE: The long coming heat could mean that our children and grandchildren will have to live underground to survive. What do we do about the crisis that has definitely become a consequence of limited or no action?
ESSAY: The French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari are concerned with the multiplicities of the periphery or “minorities” and the possibilities for new mechanical productions. Since 1968, performance art, music, dance, theater, literature, and cinema have merged into multimedia lines of flight. But individuals are reduced to nodes in networks that are modulated through measured amounts of stimuli and responses (“broadcast yourself,” “like”). We analyze the significance of this in more detail.
SECURITY: The Nordic Peace Alliance is working to ensure that the Nordic region becomes a nuclear-weapon-free zone. This year's conference in Skåne, Sweden in July will address topics such as Common Security and the legacy of the Helsinki Conference.
BORN: In his rewriting of the song "He's Dead, but He Won't Lie Down," Otto Nielsen took issue with what he saw as a revival of Adolf Hitler's ideas. 80 years after the victory over Nazism, the song's message is more relevant than ever. But no, the threat does not come from Russia.
WAR: Norway has – at one level or another – participated in all of the US and NATO wars since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. We also help remove leaders we believe some should not have. But what are we willing to die for?
RHETORIC: The so-called rules-based international order is not a set of internationally accepted specific rules – nor does it create order. With an imperialist mindset, there is now one set of rules for our allies and another for our enemies – between the countries called the civilized “garden” and the uncivilized “jungle”.
POLITICAL SATIRE: We watch the TV series that analyzes the courage of press cartoonists and the relevance of their work in the democratic struggle and in the defense of the rights of individuals and especially women.
RESISTANCE: We try to analyze President Trump as a late-capitalist fascist whose political program is based on racial exclusion, xenophobia, transphobia, misogyny and a vision of national rebirth. This in a country where more than 30 people are killed by firearms every year, an average of over 000 victims a day. But also: we see a return to political crime to suppress protests. This is the case everywhere today, but besides the US it is especially visible in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Emirates and Iran.
FUTURE: Political systems and new technologies have given us a sense that the promises of the future have faded. Would it be a tragedy if there were no more humans on the planet?
CULTURE OF PEACE: A culture of peace is not accepting the enemy images that are primarily created by the military-industrial complex – which is fully aware that if people are not afraid, they will not accept the crazy arms race we are in.
TECHNOLOGY/ISRAEL: Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli military has been making extensive use of cloud and AI services from Microsoft and its partner OpenAI, with the tech giant’s employees deployed to various units to support the deployment in Gaza, a joint investigation shows. Microsoft personnel work closely with units in the Israeli army to develop products and systems. From October 2023 to June 2024, the Israeli Ministry of Defense spent $10 million to purchase 19 hours of engineering support from Microsoft.
ARCHITECTURE: Israeli Eyal Weizman is the founder and director of Forensic Architecture – a research group that uses architecture as an approach to investigating state violence and human rights violations. The group collaborates with artists, architects, researchers, lawyers and journalists – and sometimes with a court. Their main areas of work are Palestine and now Gaza.
LANYARD: We speak with Yahya Sarraj. Since 2019, he has had the least desirable job in the world: He is the mayor of Gaza City. In recent months, they have been preparing the plan “The Gaza Phoenix” for reconstruction – together with specialists not only from Palestine, but also from European, American and other Arab countries. A plan that was unanimously approved by all 25 municipalities in the Gaza Strip. “The Gaza Phoenix” is neither Hamas nor Fatah.
PROFILE: Chantal Akerman opens a cinematic space without demands for productivity. Her idiom is that of the auteur, where she has full artistic control over and ownership of the films. In her cinematic philosophy, time is a form where time seemingly stands still. And what does Christine Smallwood say about her work? MODERN TIMES has been on exhibition – and has read.
ESSAY: In Europe, around 500 versions of the fairy tale Cinderella have been recorded. The film Cinderella is not only about being queer, but also about how identity is controlled. And hence what 'archive' one has at their disposal.
ISRAEL: The Center for Research Architecture, CRA, has developed a unique laboratory for forensic architecture with an interdisciplinary team of researchers, architects, academics, visual artists, and journalists. This is a new field of research where state violence and systemic racism are viewed with new scenarios.
THE SEA: Peter Tangvald was a charismatic Norwegian adventurer who died in a shipwreck when this film's director was five years old. This is a story about the women and children left behind, about suppressed voices, and about the illusions built around one man's seductive myth of freedom.
BORN: If this had been 30 years ago, we would have bought into this narrative. We have alternative media, independent writers, investigative journalists, WilkiLeaks, and solidarity communities outside the military-media research community.
DIPLOMA: What NATO is failing to do today? With a mildly satirical exterior and a deadly serious core, Arthur Franck's account of the groundbreaking Helsinki Accords of 1975 demonstrates the great historical significance of a diplomatic process that was considered both boring and irrelevant at the time.
CORRUPTION: Alexis Bloom's gripping exposé of the web of lies that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently woven to avoid corruption charges shows how one man's fear of prison has led to war and instability in the Middle East. It's about a man whose ego has grown to the point where he sees himself as a kind of King David figure leading the Jewish people to salvation.
WAR: Norwegian officers see the world from the US. Johan Galtung interviewed about the publication of War Without End in Norwegian, where he wrote the foreword. Among other things, it is mentioned here that the integration of the armaments industry is the part of the economic sector that is coordinated the fastest in the EC area.
Last Monday, the Storting decided that Norway's place should continue to be a forward base in NATO's command system. SV was joined by two representatives from another party and voted against. Large parts of the debate were a continuous cannonade against the Electoral Association, which never acknowledges that Norway should be the bearer of arms for the great "western democracies".
MODERN TIMES CONVERSATION: We hear from Pål Steigan about his political background, upbringing and thinking. Also about the establishment of the newspaper Klassekampen, and his time in the AKP (ML) and Rødt parties. He is contrarian and censored in Norway when it comes to many issues. We have chosen to let him speak with his own arguments, where we meet him in Italy at the Franciscan monastery he has furnished as a writing room and seminar venue.
MEDIA: To uncover something about the independent media in Turkey, I visited P24, at the literature house for culture and political debate – in the heart of Istanbul.