#WorldPressFreedomDay


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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts
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the imperial narrative makes peace seem unnatural

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.

Read more »

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a master class in geopolitics with Eva Nowotny and Jeffrey Sachs


Eva Nowotny, former Austrian ambassador to three countries: France, the UK, and the US, in discussion with Jeffrey Sachs

block quote by Eva Nowotny, copy-pasted from YouTube:

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*


Excerpts of the auto-generated transcript are shown in the PDF reader below. They are responses by Sachs to prompts or questions by Nowotny. The question leading to the last response, “Yes, this is all about China, believe me,” at 1:05:30, concerns inviting African leaders to a summit in Washington: whether the invitation is window-dressing or has some substance to it.

Please note that the copy-paste of the text is unchanged. Even gross errors such as “his big new” for “Zbigniew” (!?)* have been left uncorrected.
The present March of Folly (!?) began in the first half of the 1990s, soon engaged in the Serbian war – “in 1999 we bombed Belgrade 41 days in a row” – the first war in Europe since WW2, and in 2014 triggered some serious violence in Ukraine. According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the conflict in Ukraine resulted in at least 13,300 deaths and over 30,000 injuries before the Russian invasion in February 2022. After that the pace quickened..

None of this craziness is in the interests of ordinary people. All of it is top-down. And it is set to accelerate for as long as those at the top are able to manufacture consent for it among the rest of us.

    “They work so hard to manufacture our consent because they absolutely require it.”*
    —Caitlin Johnstone, rogue Australian journalist (!?)

Sachs talks about AUKUS – transcribed as “August” – a strategic agreement that aligns Australia with the (UK and) US. Anyone exposed to media in a NATO country can read the article the (@caitoz) tweet in the notes below this post links to and compare their own experience with the onslaught Australians are now exposed to:

  ☛   manufacturing consent (*!) for an “inevitable” war with China


“The truth is that China has matched America at its own great game of capitalism – and that is unforgivable.”
—John Pilger, at 50:18 in this video:


a prescient documentary from 2016 by John Pilger*


***

Europe seen as big loser in the proxy war with Russia: “I see Europe as the big loser …”
/ Jeffrey Sachs at 35:54 in featured Kreisky forum video at top

Australia looks like being the big loser in a war with China.

And we are all big losers in a nuclear winter. (!?)

When anyone living can only envy the dead:

see tweeted article, archived*


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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts

the tweeted article is also on Substack here and archived here


image from an article available here

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Seymour Hersh on his claim US blew up Nord Stream – interview on Democracy Now!


…

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*


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*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archives of miscellany, notrehta, or fw posts

Seymour Hersh’s piece “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline” is here and archived here




listen to the tweeted podcast – here – for helpful background to the interview on Democracy Now!

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