Bronx Cheer
Today we inhale deeply to herald the economist Jeffrey Sachs for his “expertise” in international affairs. We extend our tongues between our tensed lips and blow him a raspberry.
Dr. Sachs, once a bright young Harvard expert sent to reform Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed, did not only fail to find the right formula for liberating the state-run economy, free of graft. He has also more recently managed to make himself a relentless stooge for murderous dictators and genocidal regimes from Russia to China and Syria. He is among those conspiracy theoreticians who believe that the unfortunate autocratic countries have been forced into inhumane systems of torture and mass murder by the United States, a country he appears to hate with intensity.
The Harvard-trained Sachs—as he was once heralded as a way to elicit admiring gasps from discerning news consumers—might be thought of as the yang to Tucker Carlson’s yin, or perhaps an intellectual protégé of Michael Flynn, or a latter-day apostle of Chairman Mao. However he is categorized, this blog awards him with its prestigious Bronx Cheer for his tireless advocacy of murderous tyrants.
Here is his unofficial bio, as posted by Pekka Kallioniemi, a research scientist at Finland’s Tampere University, on Twitter:
In today's #vatniksoup, I'll introduce an American economist and academic and political commentator, Jeffrey Sachs […]. He's best-known for his deep hate for the "US hegemony", and for his love for the totalitarian regimes in Russia, China and in Syria.
Sachs studied economics at Harvard and is currently working as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and as the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
He's advised various countries on economic policy, including Bolivia, United Arab Emirates and several post-communist economies, often advising with transition from Marxism-Leninism to market economies.
After successfully stabilizing the Polish economy, Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and later Russian president Boris Yeltsin asked for his help. He was an adviser to Yegor Gaidar on macroeconomic policies, utilizing so-called economic shock therapy.
As you may know, the reckless adaptation of market economy in Russia mostly led to poverty, starvation and transfer of wealth to oligarchs and to organized crime.
For a long time, Sachs has been an advocate for dismantling the "US hegemony". He's a big proponent of the "multipolar world", and has lately suggested that the "world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe", naturally blaming the US because it's the US that forced Putin...
...and his acolytes and propagandists to threaten everyone with nukes. He's also suggested that it was actually the CIA that provoked the Soviet Union to attack Afghanistan in 1980. He's blamed CIA's 2011 operations in Syria for Putin's military assistance to al-Assad in...
...2015, probably blaming the CIA for bombing of hospitals, for chemical attacks, and for "doubletapping" civilians and humanitarian workers, too. He also likes talking about the "Western promise" of NATO not expanding towards east, a promise that, according to Gorbachev...
...himself, was never even made. Naturally, according to Sachs, the Revolution of Dignity and the outing of Yanukovych were also planned by the US. Jeffrey has also said that "the Minsk Agreements failed when Ukraine’s leaders decided not to honor the agreements", ...
which is just utter BS: https://twitter.com/neil_abrams/status/1593604628603715587 And if you want to talk about political agreements, why didn't Russia honour the Budapest Memorandum of 1994?
And again, if the verbal "security guarantees" made to Gorbachev were supposed to be honored, why did Putin invade Crimea in 2014 even though in 2008 he said that it's part of Ukraine? Makes you wonder.
In Sachs' rhetoric, the nations that have joined and want to join NATO have no sovereignty or free will to join any alliance they want. In this line of thinking, these countries are just pawns and "buffer zones" between the imperialist nations.
But for most Eastern European countries Russia is the reason they joined NATO - the leaked documents have shown, that Putin and his cronies had plans to take over at least Moldova and Ukraine, and also had pretty nasty plans for the Baltic countries who are in NATO.
In 1939 USSR, along with Nazi Germany, invaded Poland. Then in the same year, Finland. 1940 they attacked the Baltics and annexed parts of Romania. In 1956, USSR went for Hungary. Then in 1968 they invaded Czechoslovakia. I wonder why these countries wanted to join NATO?
Sachs has also blamed the US for COVID-19, saying that it came out of "US lab biotechnology". Previously, he had called Trump's Wuhan lab leak theory, blaming the Wuhan lab for leaking the virus, as "reckless and dangerous".
In May 2022, Sachs stated that Finland's NATO membership would undermine peace in Ukraine, saying that "All of this talk of defeating Russia, to my mind, is reckless". In Jun 2022, he co-signed a letter calling for ceasefire and questioning the military support for Ukraine.
He's also appeared twice on [Russian TV propagandist Vladimir] Solovyov's show, calling for Ukraine to negotiate and stop calling for the retreat of Russian troops in Ukraine. He's also blamed the US for the Nord Stream sabotage, and even addressed the UN Security Council on behalf of Russia about the topic.
Jeffrey is also a big fan of China. He's said that the term "genocide" doesn't apply to the repression of Uyghurs in China. When asked about this in an interview, he evaded the question & referred to "huge human rights abuses committed by the US" - pretty solid whataboutism.
The Twitter thread with images and links was posted here.
That's the kind of bio I think he will want to hire ‘Jhofferman’ to remove from his Wikipedia page.
On another note, I think we will be facing a environmental problem as a result of global warming that no one is addressing. Mountains. Have you seen any articles about mountains shrinking due to climate change? I don't understand why, but it is being kept secret, assuming the government and environmentalists are aware. Well, here is the truth. Mountains will shrink and there will be repercussions. Toll roads like those at Pike's Peak and Mt. Washington will become more costly, assuming the tolls remain the same. There are other issues, as this will effect tall buildings, too. Elevators may need to be recalibrated. Heliports on top of buildings will have to inform pilots of a change of altitude. Why will all this happen? Science. Mountain height, and even the height of some very tall buildings, is expressed in elevation above sea level. So, if sea level rises, mountains will be shorter. Let your minds wander and think of a world with shorter mountains and buildings and, for sure, many unforeseen consequences. Who is working on this when they are not even talking about it?