You have our trilingual online publication in front of you. We hope you will take your time to read it and recommend us further. We are happy to inform you about new publications with our newsletter.
by Norbert Häring,* Germany
(12 July 2024) NewsGuard, presumably an important service provider for the government’s censorship campaign against independent, critical media, is facing a parliamentary investigation in the US to clarify the company’s relationship with the government and its handling of conflicts of interest. The so-called fact-checkers are also facing massive headwinds.
by Christoph Pfluger,* Solothurn
Dear readers
What many people don’t know: Neutrality is part of Switzerland’s DNA. But it is not enshrined in the constitution.
This is why Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis was able to throw it overboard at the end of February 2022 without a Swiss government decision, without a parliamentary decision and without a referendum.
by Glenn Diesen,* Norway
(5 July 2024)The Ukraine War was a predictable consequence of an unsustainable world order and became a battleground for charting a future world order of either global hegemony or Westphalian multipolarity. The objectives to defeat Russia militarily, economically, or politically by isolating it in the world all failed.
by Dr Stefan Nold,* Germany
(5 July 2024) “Is this some kind of Christ thing?” a young guy asks me as I walk through Darmstadt-Arheilgen on a Monday evening, a large poster with “12 commandments for peace” around my neck. There are only a few of us. A fitter from Berlin, a master craftsman, a retired vocational teacher and a few others. An emeritus maths professor holds up the white flag. “Put up passive resistance, resistance wherever you are, stop this war machine from continuing before it’s too late,” said Petra Kelly, one of the founders of the Green Party, in 1983. She is dead, just like Rudi Dutschke and Antje Vollmer; her party now sings in favour of the arms lobby. The peace movement has died and Alexander Gauland, Walter Wallmann’s former under secretary, who made his new party big by stirring up nasty resentments, is giving speeches in the Bundestag on the war in Ukraine that Willy Brandt would have given in the past. I no longer understand the world.
by Suzette Sandoz,* Lausanne
(5 July 2024) Were the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans aware of the end of their civilisation? And did all the peoples who perished, whose ruins remind us of their former greatness, consciously accept their destruction?
by Marita Brune Koch
(5 July 2024) The feeling to be “in the wrong bod”, not clearly belonging to any gender – according to our media, many people, especially young people, are preoccupied with the question of whether they are male, female or something else. For all those who didn’t want to admit it until now, this year’s ESC (Eurovision Song Contest) has hyped the topic: The winner was the Swiss singer Nemo, a young person who identifies as “non-binary", i.e. who defines himself as neither male nor female. This is also referred to as “gender fluidity”. Now, American doctors are calling for a reversal.