The cultural intifada
JENIN THEATRE: Recently many Palestinians were killed in Jenin. What does Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation entail in today's desperate situation? For The Freedom Theater in Jenin, the answer is still a cultural intifada. A performance is now being shown at the Human festival in Oslo.
A mirror image of the Cuba crisis
WEAPON SUPPORT: If the West gives more weapons to Ukraine, it only means that Russia's will continue to escalate the war. The consequence of the arms support is clear: It will not lead to Ukrainian victory, but to the destruction of Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of young Russians and Ukrainians killed.
Should we send weapons to Ukraine, and to Israel?
SCENARIO: MODERN TIMES here tries out an imaginary scenario to compare two irreconcilable conflicts. It is up to the reader to make up their own mind as to what this might mean.
Iconic paintings and photographs
Role models: In public Latin America, the addiction heroes Bolívar and San Martin or Che Guevara and Evita are either idolized or satanized through paintings and photographs. This book takes a closer look at why.
Permanent state of emergency
ESSAY: The power goes out, exchange rates fluctuate, bread prices explode, fuel disappears. There are also still traces of the explosion. Yet Beirut's hard-pressed citizens time and again manage to find a foothold in chaos. And the chaos is contributing to Beirut never becoming a clean-up city.
The limits of our way of life
FUTURE: Environmental disasters, global warming, crisis of civilization and planetary apocalypse have given rise to ideas about the doom of the earth and the end of time. Through a radical anthropology, a couple of authors make an attempt to restore our faith in the world.
Agamben: A burning house
PHILOSOPHY: Italian Giorgio Agamben describes and envisions different courses for our thinking than today's more technologically nihilistic will-driven production paradigm. Two books delve into other possibilities than the 'fire' he believes we find ourselves in. In this essay, Astrid Nordang tries to bring out some of this complicated material.
End Times Thoughts
PHILOSOPHY: While postmodernism involved an explosion, today's posthumous condition, according to Marina Garcés, involves a liquidation of all possibilities – an implosion. Yes, are the hopes we cling to today just market-adapted needs for hope?
Why is love political?
PSYCHOLOGY: Love is not a project of isolation, but a project of freedom, according to Seyda Kurt: The freedom to be able to choose for oneself is about radical tenderness, about justice.
Concealment, secrecy, intimidation
ABUSE: Three men in their forties informed their former school, the Jesuit Canisius College in Berlin, about how two priests had sexually abused them decades ago. This led to countless disclosures – not only of the abuse itself, but of the church's consistent secrecy.
Can the forests come crawling back?
NATURE: Afforestation is the cozy climate solution everyone likes. Fred Pearce believes it is far more important to fight logging and rather let the forest grow back on its own. He points out that with 25 per cent more trees, these would be able to pull as much as 200 billion tonnes of CO000 out of the atmosphere – enough in itself to keep us below the target of a 2 degree temperature rise by 1,5.
A voluntary forced relationship
PSYCHOLOGY: Is narcissism a social demand on the individual – that we must become more than what we are?
What really characterizes NETFLIX?
Netflix: Media professor Amanda Lotz provides some interesting perspectives on the global streaming services' business models and Netflix's success.
How the majority's opinions are created by the media
PUBLIC: Precht and Welzer want more "well-intentioned disputes" about views – not social media's definition, personorientering and arousal production. Their book has been met with everything from total rejection and hesitant acceptance to detailed criticism.
We lack faith, not faith in God, but faith in the world
PHILOSOPHY: The immune democracy. According to the Italian philosopher Donatella Di Cwesare, there exists today a political culture ruled by the fear of the foreigner and the future, a sham democracy in favor of security, control and short-term competitive considerations. And those who consider themselves "liberal" today have suffered greatly in standing up to the irrational impulses and decisions that govern the market and the pursuit of short-term profit.
When conservatism becomes radicalized
In Radikalisierter Konservatismus ("radicalized conservatism") by the Austrian political scientist and journalist Natascha Strobl, we get a well-written analysis of how conservatism can become radicalized....
Mutual solidarity
Reciprocity: Competition and cooperation are like nature's yin and yang, claim two French biologists. Today, recent biological and psychological research on reciprocity is based on both biochemistry, game theory, empirical examination of symbiotic relationships and the new sociobiology's theories of group selection.
The topsoil and the soil
With a renewed will to go deeper, Monbiot digs in this new book down to the roots, the very foundation of our modern...
The allurements of space
The architect and writer Fred Scharmen has written a well-thought-out book about living in space – which so far we only do on...
ASIA: «We are the ones who are far away, while they are in ...
TECHNOLOGY: According to Kevin Kelly, technology writer, photographer and publicist, the best thing you can do sometimes is slow down technology.
Challenging climate sobriety
ECOLOGY: We need such voices as Holly Jean Buck, who criticizes wishful thinking – precisely to help bring forward a hopeful, serious and long-lasting climate fight, beyond all easy optimism.
Can the technology revolution bring us out of disability?
ESSAY: Today, the extreme state is different than in the post-war period, when Sartre and Heidegger wrote about anxiety and authenticity. The existential threat today lies primarily in an uncertain planetary future.
The battle is between carbo-fascism and eco-socialism
CARBON FASCISM: Climate change facilitates economic speculation and political positioning. Against corruption, we must prepare not only for a state of emergency, but for a climate war against declared enemies, writes Marc Alizart.
The gentle, ordinary and tame
CHINA: Via the sinologist François Jullien, Arne de Boever reveals blind spots, dangerous prejudices and decisive differences in mentality in the meeting between East and West.
As the next phase of world history
BITCOINS: In a book that is both wild, elegant and utopian, accelerator Mark Alizart sees bitcoin as the very royal road to a classless society and a better future.