From the Tom Woods Letter:
Nobody ever accused economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University of being a radical libertarian or indeed a radical anything. He is a comfortable member of the Establishment.
But even he can’t stomach the “Russia blew up its own pipelines” absurdity that nobody in the world except U.S. television viewers believes.
In a recent television broadcast, Sachs stunned his regime mouthpiece hosts when he said:
I was attacked in the Atlantic for being on the side of peace. And I confess I’m on the side of peace. I am very worried that we are on a path of escalation to nuclear war, nothing less than that. We have essentially a war in which Russia feels that this war is at the core of its security interests. The United States insists that it will do anything to support Ukraine’s defeat of Russia. Russia views this as a proxy war with the United States. And whatever one thinks about this, this is a path of extraordinarily dangerous escalation. And I am very fearful….
A lot of the world is watching the events in horror and a lot of the world doesn’t like this NATO expansion, which they interpret as at the core of this. They want to see compromise between the US and Russia in vote after vote in the United Nations. Basically, it’s been the Western countries that have been voting for sanctions and denunciations and other actions, whereas most of the world, certainly most of the world counted by population, is on the sidelines.
They just view this as a horrible clash between Russia and the United States. They don’t view this, as we describe it in the media, as an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine. Anyone in the United States, they’d say, well, what else is it? But that’s because the way that our media have been reporting; this conflict [actually] goes back a long time.
It didn’t start on February 24th, 2022. In fact, the war itself started in 2014, not in 2022. And even that had antecedents. And so most of the world doesn’t see it the way we describe it. But most of the world is just terrified right now, frankly, because it’s unbelievable to be hearing only one side, Well, we’ll use nuclear weapons if we need to, and the other side saying, no, you can’t frighten us….
Europe is in a very, very sharp economic downturn. The sharp decline of output and living standards also shows up as a rise of prices. But the main fact is that the European economy is getting hammered by the sudden cutoff of energy. And now to make it definitive, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, which I would bet was a US action, perhaps US and Poland.
One of the anchors demands his evidence for this claim. Sachs replies:
Well, first of all, there’s direct radar evidence that US helicopters, military helicopters that are normally based in Gdansk, were circling over this area. We also had the threats from the United States earlier this year that one way or another we are going to end Nord Stream. We also have a remarkable statement by Secretary Blinken last Friday in a press conference [in which he said] this is also a tremendous opportunity. That’s a strange way to talk if you’re worried about piracy on international infrastructure of vital significance.
I know this runs counter to our narrative. You’re not allowed to say these things in in the West. But the fact of the matter is, all over the world, when I talk to people, they think the US did it. And by the way, even reporters on our papers that are involved tell me privately.
What Sachs is saying is eminently sensible, but we have an American public raised on conformity and compliance (thank you, government schools), so anyone dissenting from the Establishment-supplied narrative is automatically demonized.
People, I assure you, Hillary Clinton and Mitch McConnell and the CIA are not your friends. I promise.
This is seriously the most bizarre case of Stockholm Syndrome of all time.
If we could educate people in a way that doesn’t portray the ruling class as wonderful geniuses looking out for our welfare, maybe we wouldn’t be so cavalier about nuclear war, and maybe we wouldn’t be so inclined to accept whatever line CNN feeds us, dismissing everyone else as traitors.
Well, here is my ten-year contribution to that particular cause:
http://www.LibertyClassroom.com
