miscellany

ICYMI: This morning CODEPINK's @medeabenjamin and Tighe Barry told @SecBlinken to #FreeAssange and seek #JusticeForShireen at a #WorldPressFreedomDay event where he mentioned neither of them. pic.twitter.com/SV6KdoVkUc

— CODEPINK (@codepink) May 3, 2023

this post is a very lightly edited copy-paste of a piece by Caitlin Johnstone*

I – Caitlin Johnstone – have been ranting all week about the shocking war-with-China propaganda escalation in Australian mainstream media, and I feel like I could easily scream about it for another month without running out of vitriol for the disgusting freaks who are pushing this filth into the consciousness of my countrymen. One really can't say enough unkind things about people who are openly trying to pave the way toward an Atomic Age world war; in a remotely sane world such monsters would be driven from human civilization and die cold and alone in the wilderness with nothing but their bloodlust to keep them company.

One of the most obnoxious things said during this latest propaganda push appeared in the joint statement provided by the five "experts" (read: empire-funded China hawks) recruited by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age to share their obscenely hawkish opinions in an official-looking media presentation. This paragraph – screenshot above – has been rattling around in my head since I first read it:

Australia must prepare itself. Most important of all is a psychological shift. Urgency must replace complacency. The recent decades of tranquillity were not the norm in human affairs but an aberration. Australia’s holiday from history is over. Australians should not feel afraid but be alert to the threats we face, the tough decisions we must make and know that they have agency. This mobilisation of mindset is the essential prerequisite to any successful confrontation of China.

Do you see what they're doing there? These professional China hawks are explicitly trying to frame peace as a strange "aberration", and war as the status quo norm. They're saying Australians require a "psychological shift" and a "mobilisation of mindset" from thinking peace is normal and healthy to thinking war is normal and healthy.

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Betrayal is the closing act in nearly all proxy wars.
—Chris Hedges*

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. He serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, and an SDG Advocate for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. From 2001-18, Sachs served as Special Advisor to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan (2001-7), Ban Ki-moon (2008-16), and António Guterres (2017-18). Sachs has authored and edited numerous books, most recently A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2018), and The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions (2020).

Eva Nowotny, Board Member of Bruno Kreisky Forum, Amb. ret., Chair of the Vienna University Board

Recorded at Kreisky Forum, December 14, 2022*

No Sunny Days For A Decade, Extreme Cold And Starvation: ‘Nuclear Winter’ And The Urgent Need For Public Education https://t.co/7IxrdeekCn pic.twitter.com/8E4MiJl34D

— Forbes Europe (@ForbesEurope) February 14, 2023

…

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined now by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh to talk more about his new piece, “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline.” While the White House has described Hersh’s reporting as, quote, “complete fiction,” calls are growing for an independent probe into the explosion.

Sy Hersh, welcome back to Democracy Now! If you can flesh out what it is you found in your report and what first tipped you off, albeit there were a lot of public comments, including the Polish government right after the bombing saying, “Thank you, America.” Lay it out for us, Sy.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, first of all, I think the reporting really can be described as a friend of mine did: What I did was really deconstruct the obvious. I mean, you have to hear what the president said. But, of course, there were secret plans, that I’m writing about, and they include — there was a committee set up. Jake Sullivan was directly involved. He was the national security adviser, still is. They set up a team to look at options about how to put pressure on the Russian government to back off.

…

source: transcript on the Democracy Now! website* – archived*