Jeffrey Sachs Discusses U.S. Wars and Lies

Jeffrey Sachs:

Jeffrey Sachs on X:

I regard the United States as the most lawless, dangerous country in the world by far. You cannot believe how much misinformation we get every single day. Because I have advised more than 100 governments around the world. I have seen things with my own eyes. I've seen U.S. CIA coups. With my own eyes. Governments lie, but superpowers make super lies. And if you're running the largest war machine in the world, you are going to lie all the time,

The entire Iraq war was not because they thought there were weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of Mass Destruction was the outcome of a focus group inside the Pentagon. How are we going to sell this war to the American people? Who made the decision two days ago that ATACMs can shoot deep inside Russia, another brilliant move. We don't even know if the President of the United States is Compos Mentis. Right now we have a deep state that makes these decisions. Not a word of explanation to the American people. It's all lies, and I've seen it all through my life, because I've been advisers to prime ministers and to presidents and to central bank governors and to some of the wonderful people on this panel, and I've seen a lot.

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The Horrors the U.S. has Inflicted Upon the People of Syria

Have you ever wondered about the horrors the U.S. (through its CIA) has caused to the people of Syria? 500,000 dead and 10 million people displaced. Jeffrey Sachs explained this on Morning Joe:

I think we have to step back and not put this in partisan terms. This is a US mistake that started seven years ago, and I remember the day on on your show, when President Obama said, Assad must go. And I looked at you and Joe, and I said, how is he going to do that? Where is the policy for that right? And we know they sent in the CIA to overthrow Assad. The CIA and Saudi Arabia, together in covert operations, tried to overthrow Assad. It was a disaster. Eventually, it brought in both ISIS as a splinter group to the jihadists that went in. It also brought in Russia.

So we have been digging deeper and deeper and deeper. What we should do now is get out and not continue to throw missiles, not have a confrontation with Russia. Seven years has been a disaster under Obama, continuing under Trump. This is what I would call the permanent state. This is the CIA. This is Pentagon wanting to keep Iran and Russia out of Syria, but no way to do that.

And so we have made a proxy war in Syria. It's killed 500,000 people, displaced 10 million. And I'll say predictably so, because I predicted it seven years ago, that there was no way to do this and that it would make a complete chaos. So what I would plead to President Trump is get out like his instinct told him, by the way, that was his instinct. But then all the establishment, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Pentagon, everybody said, no, no, that's irresponsible, but his instinct is right, get out. We've done enough damage seven years, and now we really risk a confrontation with Russia that is extraordinarily dangerous, reckless.

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Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn Discuss Ukraine, Censorship and Insanity

Fascinating discussion about Ukraine, censorship and the insanity of the neocons (of the U.S. and western Europe). Here's an excerpt from a much longer conversation titled "Gambling with Nukes" by Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi 0:16

There's a gamble implicit in it. You are firing missiles at a nuclear power and you are gambling that they are not going to fire them back, right? And there was, there were actually quotes from American officials talking about how, you know the real irresponsible people were the Russians. They were the ones you know, who were being irresponsible. Let's see what was the quote? The EU foreign policy chief Joseph Burrell said it's not the first time that Putin plays the nuclear gamble, okay? And this was before the launch of the British missiles, and after the launch of the of the ATACMS missiles. And then, and then this guy, [British Prime Minister, [Keir] Starmer, who comes out, and he looks like a cross of Max Headroom and Noel Coward. I mean, like, I can't even that the whole presentation is so disturbing. This like kind of blinking creature who speaks in that bizarre accent, just repeating catch phrases over and over again while he talks about firing missiles at Russia. It just seems crazy, right? And then that is succeeded by new news that came out that, apparently, the French are going to be next, and they're going to, they're going to be sending something called SCALP missiles into Russia. And, you know, then we get the ICBM fired back. Walter Kirn 1:59 Well, they're, they're all they're all making themselves targets, aren't they? I mean, they're lining up. Should there be any doubt about the legitimacy? Who cares about legitimacy? Who cares about all the rules anymore these? Who cares about the norms? Dude, they just broke the biggest norm in history, which was to send our missiles into a nuclear state to land and explode. That's the biggest norm in American or world history, since those kind of things were invented, frankly, so the rules based international order--that's out the window. Norms are out the window, not shooting missiles into the home territory of the greatest nuclear power next to the United States is out the window. All of this being led by a lame duck American president who is all week in South America, while his vice president, who just ran for president, is vacationing in Hawaii. Well, Aloha. The whole mask is off.

The thing that scares me is how these people ever expect that they and their party will be taken seriously for five seconds should they ever try to float a peace message or a humanitarian message. Again, the party of social justice, and in England, the left wing party, the Labor Party, to which Starmer belongs, are at a moment when we have actually, in the United States, the center, the crown, of this power structure, voted out our executive It is beyond insane, and it will not end well. Matt, just as I was upset on Monday, I can tell you that next week we will be even more upset. Things are going to happen, and things are already happening every day, when this missile went off this morning. Every power in the world that has modern warning systems had an alarm go off right for the first moments after its launch. The United States had to assume that it was under nuclear attack.

[MORE . . .]

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Andrew Sullivan on Ukraine

Andrew Sullivan:

There was something truly surreal about President Biden suddenly changing course and agreeing to give Ukraine advanced long-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory in the last two months of his administration. There was no speech to the nation; no debate in the Senate; just a quiet demonstration of unilateral presidential fuck-you power. You know: the kind we’ve long worried about with Donald Trump. The missiles up the ante considerably against a nuclear power for a simple reason. As Putin noted:

[E]xperts are well aware, and the Russian side has repeatedly emphasized this, that it is it is impossible to use such weapons without the direct involvement of military specialists of the countries producing such weapons ... We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities. And in case of escalation of aggressive actions we will respond also decisively and mirrored.'

There was a time when a NATO missile strike on Russian territory, followed by a Russian threat to attack NATO “military facilities” in response, would have caused the world to stop dead, paralyzed by the fear of nuclear armageddon. Yet here we are, blithely preoccupied by Pete Hegseth’s sexual exploits and Congressional bathrooms.

Others are not so sanguine. “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” Ukraine’s former military chief, Valery Zaluzhny, warned yesterday, noting both the new involvement of NATO troops and the involvement of North Korea. Our own president, having brought us much closer to the brink as a lame duck, seemed unconcerned. He was last seen wandering off-stage in the vague direction of the Brazilian rainforest. Not optimal.

The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was even punchier, and pledged to allow Ukraine to use British long-range missiles as well: “We need to double down. We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war.” When asked if he was prepared to risk the UK forces or Ukraine or a third country like Poland being nuked in response, as Putin has threatened, Starmer simply ignored the question. ...

The brinksmanship over Ukraine will set a precedent for brinksmanship over Taiwan. What Putin and Biden have done — by allowing this conflict to persist, despite no chance of a conventional military victory for either side — is to render the world far less stable and far more dangerous than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Quite a legacy for a president we were assured was a foreign-policy master.

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