Blätter An article by Hans Jos, entitled “Peace or Freedom?” marks the 80th anniversary of the fall of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In it, social philosophers discuss the ethical and political implications of the age of nuclear weapons through the prisms of Carl Jaspers and Guenther Anders.
Both philosophers struggled with the question of how to square the existence of a universal human dignity and the age of bombs, as enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. What they asked, does such assurance mean in the shadow of global annihilation?
His 1949 book History’s origins and goalsJaspers writes that humanity is at an inflection point due to the unique threat posed by atomic weapons. This transformation could have one of two consequences of the “nightmare” of the “global empire.” A “global empire” is a kind of global federalism that comes from “shaping a unified mass through total planning and fear,” or “communal decision-making.”
Cold War manicianism was naturally suited to thinkers of such harsh political duality, Joss said. “The fundamental claim that throughout history, all who “made constructive history” value freedom over life, ironically means that “must be read as a clear plea of the Western nuclear force.”
Günther Anders, in his book Human obsolescence (1956), agrees to the Jaspers that the bomb had launched a “completely new situation.” But Anders rejected what he called the Jaspers’ “two Hells axioms,” that is, “we must choose between the annihilation of mankind and the annihilation of freedom.”
Anders, recognised, the order of Jasper’s preference outcomes was to support Western military alliances such as NATO as a breakwater against the threat of totalitarianism. Anders accused the Jaspers of maintaining false “nobleman preparations” against all forms of collective protest, embracing hope in the form of solidarity actions “change the world if millions take it.”
Iran and Israel
In her article, “Cerefire and Repression: How the West abandoned Iran’s opposition,” Katajun Amirpur criticizes Israel and its allies of the United States and Germany for leaving the Iranian regime’s internal enemies during the recent Iran-Israel War.
Prominent voices associated with protests of women, life and freedom were killed in Israeli artillery bombardment like the popular young poet Parnia Abbassi. Not only that, the war unleashed a wave of internal oppression targeting suspected ethnic and religious minorities (Kurds, Balotis, Bahais and of course Jews) who were spying on Israel. Overall, around 900 people were rounded up in the aftermath of the ceasefire.
War is evidence and Amirpur is the failure of Israel and its allies’ imaginations. The Israeli attack may not have had the expected rally around flag effect, but “as long as people may hate their government, they even hate more arrogant intervention.”
Iranian novelist Amir Hassan Chehertan I insisted By attacking Iran, “Israel lost its only friend in the region.” Given that Hamas is a major client of the Ayatollah’s hated regime, many opposition Iranians felt certain solidarity with Israel on October 7th.
Amirpur doesn’t want to go that far, finds a piece of comfort in the shared history of both countries. Because of all the tragic stupidity of the war, both ties that unite Iran and Israel are too old (6th Cyrus the Great, the Persian King of Cyrus the Great, in the first century BC, appears to have deported the Jews after Babylonian prisoners, and the far too modern (now with about 250,000 Israeli Iranians) will be disbanded.
‘Wir Schaffen Das’
On the 10th anniversary of Germany’s “Summer of Immigration,” when then-Chairman Angela Merkel opened the border to asylum seekers, Bern Kasparek and Vasilis Zianos retain the state of EU asylum policy ten years after the populist, right backlash.
New German Prime Minister Friedrich Merz may have been riding his election victory in the background of his promise to crack down on immigration, but according to a letter of EU law, his options are limited: Germany, found in the Common European System of Asylum (CEA), says that “we need to respect the obligations arising from fundamentals and human rights.
These constraints led to Mertz and other conservative European heads of states, such as Georgia Meloni in Italy and Dick Schov of the Netherlands, to search for “innovative ideas.” Kasparek and Tsianos focus on three such strategies.
The first is to ignore or distort international law unrelatedly. Earlier this year, for example, nine EU members called for a “new and open dialogue” on the interpretation of the European Human Rights Treaty, arguing that “what once was right may not be the answer for tomorrow.” Not so subtle, Meltz’s Home Minister Alexander Dobrinz has instructed border police to drive away asylum seekers, a clear violation of CEAS’s Dublin regulations.
The second strategy is a so-called third-party solution, which is offloaded to a non-EU state while asylum seekers await the results of the application. Not only is such a scheme legally suspicious, they have proven “unrealistic, unsustainable and, above all, expensive.”
Thirdly, and in the author’s eyes, the most dangerous strategy is “instrumentation of migration.” It is an attempt to frame refugees as being forced onto member states by “third countries or hostile non-state actors.” Perverted, refugees are classified as manipulated victims as they could be victimized a second time by being denied asylum.
However, the chicken goes home and warns Kasparek and Tournos.
Also noteworthy: Text of a lecture from Russian author Sergei Lebedev Helsinki’s debate in Europe The May meeting compares the role of Russian society’s accomplice in the war with Ukraine and imperialism in Russian history. Full-length English originals have been released Voxeurop.
Reviewed by Nick Sywak
Source: Eurozine – www.eurozine.com
