by Marlen Simeon,* Switzerland
(18 July 2025) (CH-S) Eighty years ago, on 6 and 9 August 1945, American atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The horror grips everyone who contemplates the consequences of these acts – the suffering is incomprehensible. It is also incomprehensible that today, the use of atomic bombs is being considered again.
by Prof. Dr. Rüdiger H. Jung*
(18 July 2025) “The ‘spirit of our time’ [...] keeps us in a frenzy of activity so that we do not come to our senses and ask ourselves what this restless devotion to goals and achievements actually has to do with the meaning of the world and the meaning of our lives.”
by Robert Seidel*
(4 July 2025) The Israeli army’s attack on the Iranian Republic drowned out the threatening rumblings of war in Europe because it heightened the danger of a Third World War. But how is it possible in Europe itself to create a mood in which ever more people seem willing to “voluntarily” sacrifice their lives, the lives of their loved ones, their own prosperity and future? And how is it possible that such a far-reaching change of course is accepted without complaint? In short, how is “willingness to go to war” created?
by Alex Krainer, TrendCompass*
(4 July 2025) Last month, Chinese scientists made a major breakthrough with the experimental 2-megawatt thorium reactor in the Gobi Desert by refueling the reactor while in full operation – a world-first achievement.
by Detlef Koch*
(27 June 2025) Today, 13 June, marks the start of an event in Vienna that was long considered unthinkable: Jews from all over the world are gathering – rabbis, Holocaust survivors, intellectuals, Mizrahi activists, left-wing voices from the diaspora – to publicly, confidently and in an organised manner criticise Zionism. Not out of hatred, but out of responsibility. Not as a taboo-breaking act, but as a return to the ethos of Jewish history. The “First Jewish Anti-Zionist Congress” is not a marginal phenomenon. It is the moral symptom of a radical change – and an invitation to finally rethink the concepts that have paralysed political criticism for decades.
by Suzette Sandoz*, Lausanne
(27 June 2025) Could the cruel war between Israel and Palestine finally provide an opportunity to raise awareness of the role of universities? The rectorates are stammering and getting annoyed, students are demonstrating, the police are sometimes intervening – it’s a pitiful sight.