Category: Uncategorized

  • Voices of the Times – Table of Contents – 2019 to 2014

    STIMMEN DER ZEIT – 2019 2019 1. Looking at the planet By Klaus Mertes 2. Greetings from the future: secularization and de-secularization processes in the trendy Netherlands By Jan Lofeld 3. Leszek Kolakowski” On the significance of a philosophical admonisher By Theo Mechtenberg 4. Office and fear By Stefan Kiechle 5. Christian social ethics as…

  • 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 exclusion. The sick themselves participated…

  • 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 allegations and promoting truth, accountability…

  • 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 role as a global engine…

  • 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 the people in Gaza are…

  • 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 machinations of corrupt politicians who…

  • The Rise and Fall of the Second Trump Reich: Tick Tock by Thom Hartmann, 1/23/2024

    The Hartmann Report Discover more from The Hartmann Report A Daily Newsletter of Renaissance Thinking about Progressive Politics, Economics, Science, and the Issues of Our Day Over 70,000 subscribers Continue reading Sign in Daily Take The Rise & Fall of the Second Trump Reich: Tick Tock… A dystopian tale that conforms to Trump’s many campaign…

  • 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 problem arises that makes another,…

  • 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 that is controlled by the…