Jeffrey Sachs gives the EU Parliament a History Lesson

“In my view we need peace most importantly and my basic point is there are no deep reasons for conflict anywhere. Every conflict I study is a mistake.” -Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs asks the EU Parliament to open their eyes

Few can match Professor Sachs’ bonafides with regard to academic appointments, advisory roles to the most influential bodies of power and breadth of understanding of geopolitics and economics as it pertains to “sustainable development”. He is (very briefly):

• Former Harvard professor of Economics and director of the Harvard Institute for International Development

• A Columbia University Professor and director of its Center for Sustainable Development

• Recipient of numerous awards including being named among Time’s “100 most influential people” twice, recipient of the Padma Bushan, India’s third highest civilian award

• Author and/or co-author of dozens of books on the topics of economics, global inequality, American foreign policy

Beyond that, Sachs has held advisory roles to foreign governments on all major continents as well as UN Secretaries General, the W.H.O. and the World Bank. He is, in other words, extremely well connected and influential academically, politically and socially.

The question is, should you trust him?

The answer is, no. In this environment of misinformation peddled by sources on all sides of topics, trust in anyone cannot be justified, least of all on the basis of stature granted by institutions which in turn cannot be trusted to defend the interests of the 99%. Sachs himself admitted that “we don't speak the truth about almost anything in this world right now”.

Sachs has been an advocate for the disastrous WHO biosecurity agenda which would have secured a commitment from nation signatories to continue with gain-of-function research, the development of countermeasures (i.e. mRNA “vaccines”) and the implementation of tighter liability shields for damage resulting from their use.

As the chair of The Lancet’s Covid-19 Commission, he was a fierce critic of the lab-leak theory, blaming such notions on right-wing ideologues who sought to push the world into conflict using arguments that were not supported by biology and chronology.

He subsequently altered his position after appointing Peter Daszak, the notorious director of EcoHealth Alliance, to head a task force investigating SARS-COV2 origins, only to learn that his Columbia University colleague was not being transparent for obvious conflicts of interest. He has since publicly opined that lab-leak is a viable hypothesis and, in doing so, impugned the integrity of public health officials like Anthony Fauci.

Has he had a reckoning? Is he playing both sides? Who knows? And, who cares? It doesn’t matter if you or I trust him. The folks who have say in how the EU responds to world events do, and they opened their minds to something radical—the truth, or at least something much closer to the truth than they have ever heard. That’s why his speech was so important. That’s why I am writing about it.

At the very least he has demonstrated the wisdom of being able to change his mind and admit that he was wrong. That certainly counts for something in today’s world.

We don’t have to trust Jeffrey Sachs or anyone else. As long as we do not seek to place trust in someone we can instead endeavor to get better at assessing what is being offered without having to guess at the hidden motivations of the person who is doing the offering.

Here is my general approach. I ask myself:

• Is the person’s central message worthwhile and helpful? (Is there a good reason to listen closely in the first place)

• Do they present a cohesive and logical argument?

• Are they demanding that you trust them because they are an appointed authority or are they asking you to use your own logic and sensibility?

• What proof do they offer to support their thesis?

I invite you to approach Sachs’s speech to the EU Parliament on March 3 that way. Here is his commentary, in full. A Warning: If you absolutely cannot live without a “I stand with Ukraine” banner in your front yard, DON’T LISTEN TO IT:

To Summarize:

• The war in Ukraine will come to an end and that is a good thing for the Ukrainians and for Europeans

• The fear that Russia’s incursion into Crimea and the Donbass regions of Ukraine is an indication that Putin has his eyes on Brussels next is an absurd idea promulgated by war-mongering propagandists in America and Europe

• Anyone who concludes that Russia’s move to annex these areas was an act of pure aggression and not a desperate attempt to keep NATO off of her borders has no grasp of the historical events that led to this conflict

• Sachs reminds the audience that he knows all the players on all sides of this issue, but rather than demanding we genuflect to his opinion he encourages us to examine the historical record which clearly demonstrates that NATO, under US direction, has a 30 year history of violating agreements in order to provoke an inevitable Russian response.

• The EU should regard Russia as a vital and natural trading partner, not as an existential threat. Antagonizing their giant neighbor to the East serves only American Imperialism and not anyone else.

So by my standards, Jeffrey Sachs hit it out of the park.

Moreover, Sachs was frank and did not limit his critique of American foreign policy to the Russian issue. Sachs reminded the world that the wars in the Middle East were Netanyahu’s wars, not anyone else’s. He cited NATO Commander General Wesley Clark’s surprise when he learned, on September 20, 2001, that the United States had already committed to starting seven wars in the Middle East, years before any kind of 9/11 investigation had been conducted.

Obviously, these plans were hatched years before the events of 9/11 and can be traced to a white paper, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” written in 1996 by American Neo-cons for then (and present) Israeli PM Netanyahu.

He explained America’s foreign policy to the EU parliament like he was speaking to an auditorium of undergraduate students, because, sadly, that is what was necessary. Here are some of his best eye-openers:

• The American political system is a system of image; it's a system of media manipulation every day

• The U.S. has done the most to extinguish peace under President Joe Biden because he was not compos mentis for at least the last two years of his Presidency

• Being an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but being a friend is fatal (attributed to Henry Kissinger)

• Any place without an American military base is an enemy

• Neutrality is the the dirtiest word in the US political lexicon because “at least if you're an enemy we know you're an enemy. If you are neutral you're subversive because then you're really against us because you're not telling us—you're pretending to be neutral”

• With regard to the Middle East: “US completely handed over foreign policy 30 years ago to Netanyahu. The Israel Lobby dominates American politics. Have no doubt about it. I could explain for hours how it works. It's very dangerous”

• Netanyahu is a war criminal, properly indicted by the ICC (International Criminal Court)

• “By the way if anyone would like to discuss how the US blew up Nordstream,

  I'd be happy to talk about that”

Some will complain that all this has been obvious. I would agree. However it hasn’t been obvious to many who sat among Sachs’ influential audience. And Sachs is not a host of a popular podcast speaking to his subscribers. He is a respected voice on the international stage addressing the European political leadership’s failure to formulate any kind of foreign policy of their own. He was politely chastising the leadership of 400 million people to their faces.

I didn’t know who Jeffrey Sachs was four years ago. I was (and still am) unaware of many things. I was, however, aware of NATO’s inexorable march eastward despite the requests, turned demands, turned ultimatums from Russian leadership to relent. This is why I have been flabbergasted by the left leaning intellectuals in this country who paint anyone who asserts that both sides share the blame around the war in Ukraine as “Putin apologists” or spineless cowards for not coming to the defense of the Ukrainian people.

Why has this been lost on the “well-informed”? Who are they listening to?

With regard to the Middle East, Sachs never directly implicates Israel in the events of 9/11 but clearly has no reservations about acknowledging the plain fact that Israeli leadership under Netanyahu had the most to gain by those horrific events. Stating the obvious has sadly never been so dangerous as it is now.

The overwhelming evidence proves that three skyscrapers could not have been leveled in a matter of seconds by two plane collisions. Those events were planned and executed by unknown entities who not only had open access to the guts of those secure buildings but also to highly energetic explosives and, most importantly, the power to steer all major media outlets towards a single explanation. By doing so they, whoever they are, got their endless wars in the Middle East. But they had to pay a price. They had to expose the fact that this country does not have a free, independent press. There is no real guardian against tyranny here. That’s why this issue is still so important today.

Though President Trump has responded to the growing demand for a reinvestigation of the events of 9/11, we must ask, why has it taken so long? On what grounds are we to trust what we will be told now, two decades later, or in the years to come? Who would be against transparency other than someone who has something to hide?

We may never discover who the real perpetrators were, but it is clear that at least one entity, the Israeli messaging platform Odigo, had foreknowledge of the events of that day. Here is the 2001 article from Haaretz which reported that Odigo themselves admitted that someone on their staff notified at least two of its users to stay away from the World Trade Center Complex that morning.

And then there were the group of five young men working for a moving company called Urban Moving Systems. Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Yaron Shimuel and Omar Marmari were spotted in the parking lot of the Doric Apartment Complex in Union City, New Jersey, just after 8am on 9/11 where they were seen taking pictures and filming the attacks while also celebrating the destruction of the towers.

These so-called “Dancing Israelis” were detained, interrogated and eventually sent back to Israel. Very little can be confirmed about these young men. Bits and pieces have surfaced over the years. Did they have foreknowledge of the event as well? Did one have $4,700 dollars in cash stuffed in a sock? Did another fail an FBI polygraph test? Were explosive residues found in their moving truck? Did they all appear on Israeli TV months later claiming to be Mossad intelligence agents? If they did, how do we know that it wasn’t just youthful braggadocio? How can we know anything? That’s what a free, independent press is for. Do you see the problem?

However one point cannot be contested. Controlled or not, all information sources concede that they were celebrating. Why?

Could Professor Sachs be the next advocate for a 9/11 Reinvestigation?

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