An attempted suicide in Rep.? The new collaborator, an economist whose value does not make sense to discuss (his curriculum vitae speaks), still writes about NATO expansionism and spares no praise for China. And there is an interesting temporal coincidence with Khamenei’s words about women
Odessa, from our envoy. Tuesday’s Repubblica had a page to make readers jump, as they say. It was signed by Jeffrey Sachs, from Brazil, and with a title dedicated to the Amazon – the lure I read it for. In reality, he announced the beginning of his collaboration with the newspaper with an index of topics and a tone that made it resemble the program of a new editor rather than the debut of a column. “We are witnessing an astonishing convergence of global change, upheaval and peril. Solutions lie in understanding, cooperation and problem solving. Better understanding the New World Economy will be the focus of this section in the coming months”. It’s already a bit unusual, but it can happen, I don’t know, that a publisher goes to dinner with a famous economist, already assiduously consulted by his journal, and advocates his writing. All the more if, in perilous times, writing it helps, as in the first title, a throw it in ecology – “Even at the cost of breaking with the Atlantic Alliance?”, “Well, maybe then we’ll see”.
But Sachs, in keeping with his style, has been careful not to smooth the edges of his position on the world in general and on Ukraine in particular, the two issues on which he stands at the antipodes of the newspaper’s line. In fact, he pointed them. For example: in an interview with Fubini for Corriere at the beginning of last May, he said: “We are in the midst of a proxy war between two expansionist powers: Russia and the United States”. Even here that air of equidistance goes to hell: “It was the US attempt to expand NATO to Georgia and Ukraine that triggered the wars in Georgia (in 2010) and in Ukraine (from 2014 to today)”. Equally drastically, his speech for the new multipolar condition of the Earth translates into a cordial appreciation of China: “… But the reality is different. China is an ancient civilization of 1.4 billion people (nearly one in five in the world is Chinese) that aims for high standards of living and technological excellence”. And so on. I won’t argue with Sachs’ value: any ordinary person is crushed under the weight of his resume. (Read it on the boundless Wikipedia in English: the Italian version, precisely, crushed, is as dry as an obituary). Sachs’ “leftist” predilections and their coincidence with certain landings of the extreme right have long been the subject of more varied and more or less amazed attentions. Only in the last few days those of Winter dream in Haaretz (“Eminent US Scholars Against Aid to Ukraine: When Smart People Take Stupid and Immoral Positions”, the names are those of Sachs, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt), by Slavoj Zizek (to Vazha Tavberidze for Radio Liberty, “Denazification should begin at home, in Russia”, which juxtaposes Chomsky and Sachs and brilliantly regrets that Napoleon did not win the Russian campaign), of the Wall Street Journal (Adrian Karatnycky, “Putin’s American cheerleaders – cheerleaders -“, here, with Sachs, Mark Episkopos and Dimitri Simes, assiduous and applauded guests of Vladimir Solovyov’s Abominable Russian Program). And so on.
I was interested in the temporal coincidence between the (attempted) suicide of Repubblica, referred to in the first and committed on page 4, with the social warnings of Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei about the enslaved and exploitative condition of women in the West, and the insatiability of their men and abusers. “Western women were severely harassed last year, and despite everything, these countries say they support them and their rights. When they talk about women’s freedom they mean this freedom. No, it’s not freedom, it’s rather a slavery, an outrage. Unfortunately, it took us a long time to understand this. It only became clear to us after the Islamic revolution. Previously, even influential people in Iran said that free, unlimited relationships between men and women in the West satisfy men and prevent sexual abuse. They said that when men are sexually satisfied they don’t commit those crimes. But does it seem to you that Western men are satisfied? Or does it seem to you that they have become a hundred times more greedy?”
Whenever one is amazed or scandalized by the collusion between left and right on the subject of democracy and freedom, by their partiality, by the unsurpassed limit between their formal proclamation and the substantial condition, one is not satisfied with the affinity between their ideological points and their original sources. Scratch under the skin of sexuality. Down there gasp Khamenei and Kirill, and a few Western harassers: and, to let them work in peace, the prophets of the multipolar status quo, of the state of tolerance. “We have already entered a multipolar world, where each region has its own problems and its own role in global politics.” Let each mistreat his women, and his children, and his freaks, in his own way.
