Voices of the Times (Stimmen der Zeit – 2019-2024)

2020 Advent in fearsBy Klaus Mertes[This article posted in 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.herder.de/stz/hefte/archiv/145-2020/12-2020/advent-in-aengsten/.] Illness is not only an individual problem, but also a social one. In ancient times, this was particularly evident in the case of leprosy. This disease was inevitably associated with social …

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America is not a democracy

Here’s a link to a great 10-page article in The American Prospect detailing a dozen systemic or structural problems (e.g. filibuster, Electoral College, dominance of low-population states, money in politics, lobbyists, Supreme Court errors). Problems don’t disappear but intensify when they are ignored! https://prospect.org/politics/2024-01-

Dear Mr. High Commissioner: Help Free Assange! – Feb 9

Mr. Assange is a defender of human rights; an innovative journalist and creative publisher; he is one of us. He should not be locked up but standing with us in our office. Is he not persecuted for doing what every serious human rights investigator should be doing every day: investigating …

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The indispensable opponent by Ingo Schmidt, 12/1/2013

The West’s hostility towards China has increased since China’s engine began to stutter. At the same time, the US government is pumping massive amounts of money into the economy and has thus been able to prevent an impending recession for the time being, but is far from regaining its former …

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Christ among the rubble

Christ among the rubbleAn evangelical pastor in Bethlehem laments that Christians in the western hemisphere have become accomplices to the massacre in Gaza. “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.” So said Jesus according to the Gospel. Now …

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John Pilger warns of a new fascism

Democracy is now fictitious. There is the all-powerful business elite that has merged with the state and its claims to “identity”. US admirals are paid thousands of dollars a day by Australian taxpayers for “advice”. Across the West, our political imaginations have been soothed by PR and distracted from the …

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Instrumental Reason and Left Politics by Andreas Hellgermann

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2024/01/25/18862483.php In the neoliberal variant of capitalism, postmodern pluralism dominates and with it a reason that is no longer trusted to understand the whole.. For instrumental reason, the actual world is always the best of all possible worlds since the question of a better world cannot arise in it. No …

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Cracks in the Culture of Silence by Andy Tamas, 9/1/2015

One of the more tragic elements of the culture of silence is that the dominated often internalize the oppressor – they become their own dominators, and behave toward themselves and each other much as the oppressor behaves toward them. This internalization is often created and maintained by the education system …

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The division of the world by Wolfgang Bittner, 1/11/24

The USA is responsible for what is happening in Ukraine with this provoked war, which is currently being overshadowed in the media by the Middle East conflict, just as it has determined developments in Europe for more than a hundred years…It is becoming apparent that Germany is being systematically destabilized …

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