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The End of the European Summer

Europe is warming more than twice as fast as the global average—a terrifying statistic made all too apparent this summer as heat wave followed heat wave. European cities were never designed for these temperatures, and public health, infrastructure, and tourism are all under strain. Eric Klinenberg arrives in Milan just as “Europe’s third heat wave of the summer entered its fiercest stretch” and sweats his way across the continent to see how trees, shade, water, and other measures are being deployed to adapt urban centers. But with this crisis set to deepen can these experiments really keep pace?

Of all the problems that heat poses for Barcelona, losing some of the hundred and sixty thousand tourists who typically visit each day ranks low on the priority lists of most officials and residents. Some locals have staged protests, chanting “Tourists go home” while targeting visitors with water guns. But tourism employs more than a hundred and sixty thousand people in Barcelona and accounts for around thirteen per cent of its economic output, which explains why, despite concerns that the city gets too many visitors, more than seventy per cent of residents consider tourism beneficial. At midday, when I arrived on La Rambla, the city’s most heavily visited and photographed corridor, the street had little shade and surprisingly few people. At La Boqueria market, normally jam-packed at lunchtime, I found my way to a famously busy bar counter and took one of several open seats.

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Die ukrainische Raketenkrise und ihre Folgen

Während deutsche Medien weiterhin behaupten, die Ukraine könne das Blatt im Krieg gegen Russland wenden, wird die Lage in der Ukraine immer verzweifelter, weil die Ukraine unter einem massiven Mangel an Abwehrraketen leidet und der Westen keinen Nachschub mehr liefert. Da man davon in deutschen Medien nur wenig erfährt, übersetze ich hier einen Artikel der […]
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Bloomberg gibt eine erstaunlich realistische Einschätzung der Lage im Ukraine-Krieg

Ich habe schon oft gesagt, dass jeder, der sich informieren will, deutsche Medien meiden muss, weil sie unglaublich viel verschweigen und ihr Publikum dumm halten. Britische und amerikanische Medien verbreiten ebenfalls viel Propaganda, aber sie informieren ihr Publikum trotzdem viel besser als die deutschen Medien. Dass deutsche Medien seit Monaten behaupten, die Ukraine sei dabei, […]
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Warum Griechenland sich trotz Drucks aus Brüssel weigert, der Ukraine Luftabwehr zu schicken

Im Gegensatz zu anderen europäischen Staaten verfügt Griechenland immer noch über sehr große Reserven an Patriot-Luftabwehrraketen, die Kiew so dringend braucht, während die anderen EU-Staaten ihre Patriotraketen schon weitgehend an die Ukraine übergeben haben. Angesichts des akuten Mangels der Ukraine an Luftabwehr wächst nun der Druck aus Brüssel auf Griechenland, der Ukraine seine Raketen zu […]
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Beckett the Prophet

The peg for Robert Zaretsky’s essay on Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot feels flimsy: “the 70th anniversary of its American premiere,” which lagged the show’s proper premiere, in Paris, by three years. Disregard the peg; as Zaretsky makes clear, there’s not a bad time, these days, to consider Beckett’s best-known work, a demonstration of “solidarity and compassion” set against a “featureless, colorless vista.” The stage directions for Godot have Estragon, one of the play’s leads, look out into the auditorium as an extension of the devastation. “Inspiring prospects,” he says. Let’s hope so.

Of course, Godot never arrives. In a Sesame Street parody of the play, the tree, fed up with the melodramatic and nonsensical patter of two Muppets waiting for Elmo, uproots itself and walks off the stage. But we cannot uproot ourselves and walk off the stage; instead, stuck like Didi and Gogo in a state of non-arrival, we wait. For those who waited for an answer from Beckett, none ever came. He once snapped at the English actor Ralph Richardson, who asked if Godot stood for God. If he had meant God, Beckett said, he would have written God. The play, he insisted, strove to avoid definition. This strategy of avoidance leaves us to gaze at a landscape void of meaning, one that by turns is the source of our bemusement and amusement.

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