In this summer issue, as MODERN TIMES's editor, I publish a selection of articles that probably reflect different opinions than most people have about the war in Ukraine.
Accelerationism: Several thinkers believe that it is possible for what they call a rather complacent left to carve out a better and freer future through capitalism and technology.
AFRICA: Disruption opens up for the capitalists a new display of power and new income: People, society and nature are reduced to raw material. The author Achille Mbembe's horizon is always the widest possible – the cosmic, earth-historical and planetary. Africa, despite all harrowing problems, is being called forth as a vibrant world center that still has powers in reserve, a teeming wildlife and a wealth of cultures.
SUBJECTS: Hartmut Rosa points out that today's late modern people react to the flood of information without "developing a stable understanding of what is relevant, of direction and prioritization". But does the well-educated academic here become an ideologue with religion as a weapon against an increasingly purpose-rational world where the economy colonizes the social?
POWER: Is it possible to explain why the resurgence of free market ideas has resulted in persistent unemployment, rising inequality and financial crises? According to Philip Ther, the corona pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have led to the end of an era – the world as imagined after 1989.
RUSSIA: Mikhail Khodorkovsky discusses Russia's future after Putin and advocates revolution, democracy and fair distribution of resources. It is about achieving a new, open and fair country that can reclaim its place in the international community...
POETRY: The social criticism of poet Angkarn Kalayanapong can be so caustic that he is said to repel Thai readers, where he rages against Western influence, against prostitution, destruction of nature, substandard urban planning, greed and corruption.
As the last pacifist utopia of the modern world, the European adventure must continue, writes Jean Quatremer, who can still quickly become the useful idiot of the world.