A warm welcome!

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.

Uncertain hope for a good future

by Karin Leukefeld,* Germany/Syria

(19 July 2024) Crises and wars in the Middle East undermine the right to education. Aleppo, June 2024: The school year is coming to an end. Before the long summer holidays, pupils in Syria are preparing for their exams. For the older ones, it’s about the university entrance, the Baccalauréat, for the others it’s about the end-of-year certificates. The centralised school system is a relic from the time of the French mandate (1920-1946), which the Syrians, like the Lebanese, have retained. In other parts of the Arab world, which were defined by the British Mandate or – after the Second World War – by the USA, the British or US school systems prevail.

Destroying Ukraine with Idealism

Why Ukraine should not have the “right” to join NATO

by Glenn Diesen,* Norway

(19 July 2024) Political realism is commonly and mistakenly portrayed as immoral because the principal focus is on the inescapable security competition and it thus rejects idealist efforts to transcend power politics. Because states cannot break with security competition, morality for the realist entails acting in accordance with the balance of power logic as the foundation for stability and peace. Idealist efforts to break with power politics can then be defined as immoral by undermining the management of security competition as the foundation of peace. As Raymond Aron expressed in 1966: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.

Coronavirus pandemic – Wuhan market was not place of origin

by Pascal Derungs,* Zurich

(19 July 2024) The evidence is mounting: Unscrupulous researchers have probably developed the virus. A laboratory accident brought it into the world. “Das Lügengebäude bröckelt” (“The pack of lies is crumbling”), is the title of Professor of Physics Roland Wiesendanger’s article in the political magazine “Cicero” In it, the internationally renowned scientist summarises the current state of knowledge on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. He describes the official interpretation, according to which the virus is of natural origin and is said to have accidentally jumped from bats to humans at the animal market in the Chinese city of Wuhan – at the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) of all places – as a “pack of lies”.

How the USA removed Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Imran Khan, from power

Insights from Jeffrey Sachs

(12 July 2024) In a five-minute video,1 Jeffrey Sachs describes how the USA ‘removed the democratically elected Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, from power’. “This is the way America conducts foreign policy” – says Jeffrey Sachs.

The US-controlled fact-checking mafia from Correctiv, DPA, NewsGuard & Co. is facing a strong headwind

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.
On Swiss neutrality

Swiss Government opens the debate on the “Neutrality Initiative” with a lie

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.