Jeffrey Sachs Talks Reality (As Opposed to Establishment Fantasies)

By David Starr

The U.S. and Israeli establishments don’t exactly like economist Jeffrey Sachs because he has come out with some truths they find inconvenient, to say the least. Sachs is a university professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia.

Whether it is in the U.S. or Israel, the establishment continues not only to be in denial about the eruptions producing world conflicts, they have tried to retaliate against their enemies using censorship and acts of verbal and physical aggression.

Israel supporters can’t stand it when some (more like many) criticize Israel for its attempted genocide against Palestinians, and its brutality against others in the region. The anti-Semitic card has been played an uncountable number of times.

“Greater Israel” is the goal of the Zionist Nazis. They want to impose religious supremacy myths on anyone who dares to challenge that perversion. Or not.

Sachs has been strongly condemning Israel, particularly its leadership and supporters for war crimes or the support for them. Many in the Israeli population are guilty of this. All for religious supremacy, racism and ultranationalism.

(Sachs was the architect of “shock therapy economics” in Poland and Russia. It is said that Poland was a success story but Russia was not. Either way, capitalist shock therapy economics was a disaster for socialism. And Sachs should not be excused for this.)

In a piece by Sachs and Sybil Fares–Advisor on the Middle East and Africa for UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network–published in Al Jazeera, Israel is taken to task for its morbid goal of “Greater Israel.”

Sachs and Fares write that the cause for the Israel-Palestine war is precisely “Greater Israel.” And they call it “a terrible one” because it’s been the cause of wars in Iraq, Syria, Gaza and Iran.

Sachs and Fares emphasize that “this absurd and dangerous doctrine has two parents. The first are secular hardliners like Netanyahu who say that Israel must control all the land from the river to the sea to be safe, and damn the eight million Palestinians in the way.

“The second is the Jewish supremacist creed of Israel Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that God gave the land to the Jews alone.” Smotrich claims that there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Smotrich also vowed that Israel will continue to militarily occupy Gaza, along with parts of Lebanon, and Syria, adding that Israel will not commit suicide to make them happy. The thing is, Israel is committing suicide because of its very policies. It has gradually destroyed itself.

Sachs and Fares write that ‘”Greater Israel’ is paranoia, megalomania and religious zeal braided into a single program.” I would also call it a form of totalitarianism.

Sachs has also had views on the Russia-Ukraine war. In a Real News Network piece, Sachs is interviewed by Glenn Diesen, a Norwegian political scientist and Professor of Political Science at the University of South-Eastern Norway. This was originally published on Diesen’s Substack.

Sachs begins by saying, “the starting point is that the US assumed that it would never get to war. This whole debacle, this whole disaster, starts with the idea in the 1990s, that, at the end of the Cold War, the US reigned supreme and it would bring Russia into a US-led world.

“And when Russia did not accede to whatever demands the United States made, this was the reason the war went on. When Russia proved it could resist what the United States and Europe thought what would be a crushing blow after 2014–and then after 2022, Russia resisted again–that proved that Western power was less than was thought.

“Boris Johnson [former British prime minister] who was one of the real criminals in all this, a real culprit of this war, said in an interview that he could not let Ukraine sign a peace treaty with Russia in the spring of 2022 because that would be a threat to Western hegemony.

Further, “Russia sees NATO expansion and especially the incursion into Ukraine as being an existential threat, so it has very strong demands. Ukraine also sees itself as facing an existential threat with the invasion.”

The interview goes further into detail about the overall circumstances. It can be read here.

Sachs also had choice words in a Mint interview about the Iran War. And that the U.S. empire can’t win it, along with accurate details about Trump; as well as Palestine and Israel.

Jeffrey Sachs does sound like a Left/Progressive particularly with his views on the U.S. as an empire. Whatever the case, Sachs provides necessary information on various issues. 

Sachs talks realistically, while the establishment is politically intoxicated with its fantasies.