SZ:

Nach dreistündiger Debatte verkündete Fraktionschef Dietmar Bartsch: „Wir haben versucht, dass wir gemeinsam aus dieser Sitzung herauskommen. Das haben wir hingekriegt.“ Der Parlamentarische Geschäftsführer Jan Korte konnte berichten: „Es gibt keine Verletzten.“ So was hat in diesen Tagen Nachrichtenwert bei den Linken.

SZ:

„Ich muss betonen, dass wir heute nicht so sehr mit der Ukraine, der ukrainischen Armee, sondern mit dem kollektiven Westen kämpfen“, sagte der Verteidigungs­minister. „Weil die Waffen, die die Ukraine hatte, heute tatsächlich zu Ende sind.“

FAZ:

Am Ausgangspunkt steht eine Analyse der problematischen Tendenzen der bestehenden „Konsumentendemokratie“, die anhand von vier Stichworten erfolgt: Ökonomisierung, Emotionalisierung, Infantilisierung und Pädagogisierung.

Ω Ω Ω

Dass die Fehlentwicklungen andernorts schon viel weiter vorangeschritten sind als in Deutschland, wo das Niveau der öffentlichen Debatte immer noch relativ hoch sei, gesteht der Autor zu, der sich auch ansonsten jeglichen Kulturpessimismus versagt.

„die Fehlentwicklungen andernorts schon viel weiter vorangeschritten sind als in Deutschland, wo das Niveau der öffentlichen Debatte immer noch relativ hoch sei“ I found really very funny, as it is something I’ve tried to communicate to US friends for years.

San Francisco Chronicle:

American adults under the age of 65 should regularly be screened for anxiety, according to updated recommendations from an influential group of health experts.

…

This marks the first time the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, an independent agency, has recommended regular screenings without symptoms. It also recommends depression screenings for adults and children. Its proposals were posted on its website on Tuesday and will remain open to public comment through Oct. 17. The research that went into the recommendation started before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the task force said the past two years have likely worsened issues such as social anxiety, excessive fear, and worry.

„Excessive fear“? 🤔

Spiegel:

Scholz verteidigt Nein zur Lieferung von Kampfpanzern an die Ukraine

Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz bekräftigt, bei Waffen­lieferungen an die Ukraine keine Alleingänge starten zu wollen. Von den Telefonaten mit Wladimir Putin erzählt er, diese seien »immer im Ton freundlich« gewesen.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854.

Various versions of the first paragraph here were a favorite of coworkers and acquaintances in the San Francisco Bay Area. „The mass of people lead lives of quiet desperation, but not I: I go to Burning Man each year, and along with a select tens of thousands of others differentiate myself from the mass.…I am different from the others because I realize we are all doomed, and rather than feel desperate I devote myself to The X-Files/ Walking Dead/ Game of Thrones/ medical marijuana/ scotch bars/ micro breweries.“

This approach to life/retreat from life is quite evident in high tech in Europe as well. There is a curious refusal to openly discuss global heating, potentially followed by a wise claim of informed resignation: „we are all doomed anyway (by the conditions which moments ago I denied), therefore only the naïve, the gullible, the conspiracy theorists discuss the issue.“

I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacrifices to humanity, they ran no risks, not even to their property; that after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls.

—Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience: A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866).

Die Zeit:

Nach Angaben Selenskyjs wird sich die Ukraine dabei nicht nur auf die Gebiete konzentrieren, die sie vor dem russischen Überfall im Februar kontrolliert hatte. Auch die Territorien der von Russland unterstützten Separatisten im Osten des Landes und Städte auf der seit 2014 von Russland annektierten Krim würden zurückerobert, kündigte der 44-Jährige an: „Denn die gesamte Ukraine muss frei sein.“

What can he actually mean here?