The war in Ukraine was a godsend for NATO
BORN: Instead of showing magnanimity to an adversary that no longer wanted to be an enemy, the US continued to exclude Russia and rejected any idea of a common European security architecture.
The specter of nuclear war
NUCLEAR WEAPONS: The main message of Annie Jacobsen's book is to demonstrate how terrible a nuclear war would be. A nuclear war would destroy the indispensable anthropological basis for any form of high culture and technology.
"We fight against human animals and we act accordingly."
MIDDLE EAST: Robert Fisk reflects on the normalization of warfare and the Israelis' contempt for international law. He also looks at his own role as a referent from bloodbaths and massacres, at his stories from mass graves, from torture and executions for almost half a century.
There will be suffering anyway
EARTH:How can we use civil disobedience to ensure that we have a livable earth?
Desire, according to Lacan, is impossible to grasp
PSYCHOLOGY: Blaise Pascal was a contradictory figure: He was one of the most important mathematicians and scientists of all time, but at the same time a rather strict and dogmatic Catholic. By dogmatic is mainly meant that he emphasized a clear distinction between faith and knowledge. And ask yourself: Is there a difference between 'idiocy's truth' and 'truth's idiocy'?
The breakdown of technological systems
DISASTERS: Georgina Voss reveals how our modern society is often trapped by an ideological belief in technology.
Dommer Giovanni Falcone – Cosa Nostras nemesis
MAFIA: Giovanni Falcone, this inspirator with the dark mustache and the winning smile, lived to be only 53 years old. He is a stalwart in the fight for the values most people say they stand for. Perhaps Roberto Saviano writes about him precisely to recall the extent of the sacrifice, its motive, its achievements, and what qualities are required. He himself is well aquainted with this.
Enemy culture or brotherhood
ETHICS: Umberto Galimberti advocates an ethic of aimless wandering, condemns domination and advocates a cosmopolitan, biocentric view that life on earth is the measure of all things. He promotes an ethic suited to the unpredictability of the new world of technology, that of the wanderer – dealing with difficulties as they arise, with whatever means are available at the time.
The cursed woman's language
SEXISM: When she died of cancer last year, aged 51, Michela Murgia had become a feminist icon in Italy. As a writer and playwright, she won high-profile awards in the 00s before she began to see writing as an instrument for activism. As a journalist and feminist, she truly understood the power of the symbiosis of sound and writing. Words matter, they can divide, and they can infect.
A kind of unofficial indictment against the State of Israel
Palestine: Israel has cultivated close relations with 'Papa Doc' in Haiti, Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania, Pinochet in Chile, and the Hutu regime in Rwanda. And when Israel's largest arms fair, the ISDEF Biennale was held, it attracted more than 12 international visitors from over 000 different countries' military, police and security services.
A mentality from the Cold War era
INTELLIGENCE: In the United States, 18 different U.S. agencies at the government level are engaged in intelligence activities. In 1996 there were 6 million decisions to declassify material – by 2016 this had grown to 55 million!
The future is already here
COMMUNITY: What happens when there is further pressure on falling profit rates brought on by cheaper products for consumers, triggered by greater competition? And with a kind of intensified state control of virtually all socio-economic aspects of life?
Without shame in life
SHAME: The Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has noble motives for her outbursts against the establishment, but she is also part of a modern trend where shame and shaming have become part of everyday politics and the often dystopian debate on social media. This book takes a closer look at shame.
The small, enchanting hover
SICILY: The poet Joachim Sartorius has written a feather-light book about the magic in the Sicilian city of Syracuse.
How we sense other people and the world
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?
"The Age of Transformation"
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.
Recent art activist projects
activism: The growing part of contemporary art intervenes in ongoing political debates and uses the relative autonomy of art as a starting point for art activist interventions outside the art space.
Femicide as a fairy tale
VIOLENCE: If 'feminicide' has not yet established itself as a term in Norway, it is on its way into our language. It simply means femicide, but is often linked to the spouse, partner or a family member. Last year, 90 women were victims of femminicide in Italy, which places the country in third place in Europe.
The offended male
SEX: Here the male author asks: "How could I understand that I found myself in a culture that wants to identify me with the very heroes that legitimize this culture's dominance?"
The intolerance of divergence
TRANSFORMATION: Hartmut Rosa is a central critic of modernity. He emphasizes the importance of our resonant experiences – be it with another, a work or a book – as a central part of being human.
Structural changes in the public sector
HABERMAS II: The policy is marketed via advertising and propaganda and not through discussion. The audience is affected by echo chambers and filter bubbles. And what does globalization mean for today's public?
The citizen's 'autonomy' as a condition for political publicity
PUBLIC: The image of the public in the Enlightenment was an ideal image of enlightened citizens gathered in an audience that discussed – or 'deliberated' – to arrive at the best solution. But what happens when early hair loss, premature ejaculation and simulated disability become therapy texts for the endless frustration of living in one of the world's supposedly richest and best countries?
A seasick pirate on spaceship Earth
ECOLOGY: In this story, life on the sailboat becomes a microcosm. Tourists' life in the south disturbs the wildlife – while underwater life has been lost due to overfishing, erosion is increasing due to lost kelp forests. Is it possible to understand that the world that supports the body and consciousness is nature itself?
Vampiric overconsumption
WATER: Do we know the figures behind today's water consumption? For example, cotton from the fashion industry accounts for 10 per cent of global CO2 emissions – more than aviation and shipping combined. It costs 2700 liters of water to produce a cotton T-shirt. 140 liters of water to produce a cup of coffee. And one kilogram of beef requires a whopping 14 liters of water. Must we always let capitalism trump the future?