Jeffrey Sachs on Central Intelligence Agency

“The CIA has been involved in probably 90 or 100 covert regime change operations since it was founded in 1947. My whole life has been the United States at war. It’s sickening. These wars are disasters.”

“Jeffrey Sachs: If you study the CIA as I have for a lifetime, you know that false flags are actually their MO. Piers Morgan: Are you seriously suggesting that Barack Obama and his government and the CIA under his tenure launched a chemical weapons attack on Syrian people, killing a lot of civilians? Do you seriously think that’s what happened? Jeffrey Sachs: Oh, I’m not saying that Obama did it. Most of the time when the CIA does things, the presidents have no idea what the CIA is doing. Piers Morgan: But you think the CIA would launch a chemical weapons attack simply to smear Assad? Jeffrey Sachs: Of course it would. Are you kidding? It’s done much worse than that. It launches coups, assassinations, wars. The whole history of the United States after 1947 is bringing down governments.”

“What we’ve been hearing from the panelists is how the global food system works right now... It’s based on large multinational companies, private profits, and very low international transfers to help poor people (sometimes no transfers at all). It’s based on the extreme irresponsibility of powerful countries with regard to the environment. And it’s based on a radical denial of the economic rights of poor people... We’ve just heard from the Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many point a finger of blame at the DRC and other poor countries for their poverty. Yet we don’t seem to remember, or want to remember, that starting around 1870, King Leopold of Belgium created a slave colony in the Congo that lasted for around 40 years; and then the government of Belgium ran the colony for another 50 years. In 1961, after independence of the DRC, the CIA then assassinated the DRC’s first popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, and installed a US-backed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, for roughly the next 30 years. And in recent years, Glencore and other multinational companies suck out the DRC’s cobalt without paying a level of royalties and taxes. We simply don’t reflect on the real history of the DRC and other poor countries struggling to escape from poverty. Instead, we point fingers at these countries and say, “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you govern yourselves properly?””