USA: Donald Trump broke down established norms and led democracy astray, but he would never have reached this far, if the groundwork had not been laid by others – this new tradition of imprecise wording, secrecy and dodgy methods.
SYRIA: Carsten Wieland uncovers a large number of mistakes in the Western donor countries' handling of the humanitarian crisis during the Syrian civil war. He also mentions how rebel forces have deliberately starved local people to attract aid: Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Rwanda.
SPIN DICTATOR: After dictators left their mark on the 20th century with indescribable crimes, it can be difficult to understand how the authoritarian forms of government have made an apparent return in our time.
MESSIAN THOUGHT OF VIOLENCE: From Jewish identity in New York to messianic racism in the West Bank: The controversial rabbi Meir Kahane, whose thoughts live on with certain radical settlers in the West Bank, is the subject of a new and thorough biography.
COVID19: SARS in 2003, bird flu in 2005, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, combined with the financial crisis, massive refugee flows, and revolutions in the Middle East and Greta Thunberg's shrill doomsday voice, had largely immunized the population against something as abstract as Covid19.
ICE: We can not immediately compare the children from Islamic State with child soldiers, analyzes American terrorist researcher. Many of them no longer consider themselves children. Turning the time back to becoming regular school students again therefore seems almost impossible.
DIAGNOSIS: Does hope lead to disappointment and desperation to terror? With Alain Bertho, we can talk about a presentism, ie a lasting present, without past or future.
MODERNITY: The selfish pursuit of new extremes and the experience of the present has become a worrying symptom of a modern world in serious strays. An anxiety for the break and the space?