miscellany

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:

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

see tweeted article, archived*


the tweeted article is also on Substack here and archived here


image from an article available here