Who was behind the explosion of Nord Stream 1 and 2?
SABOTAGE: Earlier this summer, the US Navy participated in an exercise with underwater vessels in the area off Bornholm – where the explosions of Nord Stream 1 and 2 took place in September. What were they doing there? For Russia, the purpose of the gas pipelines was to intertwine Russia with Europe. Could the USA's motivation have been to break up this cooperation and start an economic war against Europe – as, for example, Germany has now become dependent on their LNG gas?
The military commanders wanted to annihilate the Soviet Union and China, but Kennedy stood in the way
Military: We focus on American Strategic Military Thinking (SAC) from 1950 to the present. Will the economic war be supplemented by a biological war?
The finance elite's manipulation of reality
THE PARADOX OF MONEY: Arne de Boever explores how the unstable reality of finance makes people psychotic – and pushes literary realism to its outer limits.
Iran's leader: "Do everything to stop them"
WOMEN'S MATCH: For far too long, Western authorities have relied on Iranian reforms and an illusion of a vibrant democracy. A Europe that has committed itself to human rights and feminist values in foreign policy must now – also regarding Women's Day on 8 March – support Iran's women and give them the opportunity to be heard. Women in Iran are no longer fooled by the hope of reform.
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.
A planet we ourselves have brought into radical imbalance
EARTH: Anthropocene means more than writing about ecology, environmental history or global warming. How about the greenhouse effect heating the ocean at such a speed that it is equivalent to pouring a billion boiling teacups into the ocean every second?
To start all over again
PHILOSOPHY: Hannah Arendt's age-old work explores thinking, freedom, will and the future. Is there anything thought-provoking about our technologically automated communities?
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?
Being threatened with death can make most people hold a ...
FREEDOM OF SPEECH: The opportunity to say something is always very limited, says MODERN TIMES's regular writer in this essay about different authorities' use of force. Away from today's mass media, an "underground" network of intellectuals has now emerged, including experienced journalists, intelligence officers, renowned professors and politicians.
Colonized by the hookup universe
INTERNET: Johann Hari points out in the book that the 'focus crisis' is directly dangerous for democracy and can contribute to forming totalitarian regimes.
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.
Without fellowship, no hope
By studying the modes of hope and the irresolutions of hopelessness, Ronald Aronson shows us what changing the world entails.
The pandemic will create a new world order
Mike Davis: According to activist and historian Mike Davis, wild reservoirs, like bats, contain up to 400 types of coronavirus that are just waiting to spread to other animals and humans.
The fires are natural for the landscape!
The ecology of the landscape: Who is responsible for the fires? With this year's forest fire season in California and Oregon, are we witnessing a new kind of "cultural disaster"?
Bigger, faster and more inventive
More people with ever-increasing energy consumption assume that we are accelerating technology development at an ever wilder pace.
To value a way of life, different from that of us humans
ETHICS: 'Secondary experiences' train us to empathize with people who are in situations we ourselves have no experience with. Martha Nussbaum believes that fiction such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky can do this.
"I do not see beauty in war, but there is beauty in everything"
THE PHOTOGRAPHER: Beauty, suffering, wealth, poverty, superficiality and raped children are different sides of the same coin, says photographer Marco Di Lauro, who spent a week with the Red Cross in Bergamo during the covid-19 outbreak.
Italian whining?
ENERGY: When it comes to the energy shortage we are facing, could a possible answer be to let the state rule with a harder hand? And as for the war, are sanctions even an effective weapon? Federico Rampini's answer is no.
Ambivalent about gene manipulation
GENREDIGERING The new gene technology is putting a lot of risk on patients, parents and researchers. When letting nature take its course becomes controversial, choice itself becomes a problem.
The power of impotence
We need a new activism – not through revolutionary change, but through systematic efforts to develop a humane and free society.
The permanence and possibility of the crisis
PHILOSOPHY: Agamben's sketches for a theory of civil war are thus perhaps also a contribution to a new theory of revolution. Revolution beyond politics. Where the revolution is finally thought beyond any notion of a state and standing upright like a soldier who salutes. MODERN TIMES has chosen to print the afterword to Agamben's book about the civil war.
Everything we love is transient, fleeting, temporary
ESSAY: It is our self-understanding that is at stake today. With their aggressive, partly inflated subjects, Western technologists, economists and artists have for centuries seen themeselves above nature. In the ecosystem, man is in nature, he is a part of nature, on which he is completely dependent. Can we protect biotopes, habitats, rivers, lakes, soils, oceans and commons? This essay looks at five books examining the ecosystem.
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?
Corona reflections
ESSAYS: The Coronation is a thought-provoking but naive collection of essays about the pandemic as a social phenomenon.
A counterbalance to today's cruel lack of solidarity
Totalitarianism? The anarcho-communist critic Franco Berardi believes we have overestimated reason and intelligence as a world-changing force.