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After an eventful 2022, what can we expect from 2023? DiEM25 New Year’s message
, 01/01/2023
On behalf of DiEM25, greetings and Happy New Year. 2022 brought us a hideous War and crippling price hikes. 2022 brought environmental disaster closer to home and varieties of neofascism at our door. 2022 was the year our dire predictions about Europe’s failures and the world’s slide into a New Cold War were confirmed. But, […]
Crisis, Recession, the Left & the state of economics – INDIA & GLOBAL LEFT podcast
, 01/01/2023
00:00 Highlights 01:55 Who is Yanis 05:34 Financial crisis & recession 20:06 Revolutionary changes 22:04 European Right 30:22 European Left 37:15 Academics and economics.
Greece’s Varoufakis brings his anti-establishment party to Italy – POLITICO
, 06/12/2022
Yanis Varoufakis tried to rescue Greece from the austerity imposed by the liberal establishment. Then he wanted to rescue the whole EU. Now the motorbike-riding, leather jacket-wearing former Greek finance minister has turned his attention to Italy. “If ever there was a moment it is now,” the economist told POLITICO in an interview to mark the […]
The Techno-Feudal Method to Musk’s Twitter Madness – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 06/12/2022
Immediately after taking over Twitter and pronouncing himself Chief Twit, Elon Musk affirmed his commitment to safeguarding the platform as the “public square” where anything and everything is debated. It was a smart tactic, because it successfully diverted the public’s attention from what Musk is really up to. ATHENS – Elon Musk had good reasons […]
The New Iranian Revolution as an opportunity for the Internationalist Left – Project Syndicate
, 15/11/2022
Iran’s protesters will neither submit to the fascism hidden behind the regime’s pseudo-anti-imperialism nor surrender their country to the hegemony of the United States or their economy to financialized capital. The Western left should learn from them. ATHENS – Dealing with random, unprovoked abuse is never easy. But dealing with random, unprovoked praise can be […]
Rishi Sunak’s ‘grown-up’ austerity is designed to keep zombie capitalism alive
, 10/11/2022
The demise of Trussonomics was a welcome victory for decency and common sense in a minor battle within a broader class war. Sadly, the class that Liz Truss tried to bolster with copious tax and regulatory gifts will win this war by deploying an even nastier, blunter, dirtier weapon: austerity. Britain’s wealthy owe a debt […]
Discussing Technofeudalism, Ukraine & Britain with David McWilliams in Kilkenny – audio
, 07/11/2022
David McWilliams and I sat down in front of a splendid, heartwarming, boisterous Kilkenomics audience to talk about Technofeudalism but also Ukraine, Britain and Europe. The ersatz audio recording is not of the highest quality (sorry!) but it is not terrible either (especially if you have a good headset). Apologies for this but one of […]
Should electricity markets be reformed or disbanded? My debate with Michael Liebreich on Cleaning Up
, 01/11/2022
The other day, Michael Liebreich and I had a lively discussion on his CleaningUp podcast provoked by my call “to blow up the electricity markets”. It was fun but, of course, fell short of a comprehensive analysis of the complex issues pertaining to the political economy of electricity generation and distribution. Following our debate, Michael […]
Iran’s Revolutionary Moment as the Internationalist Left’s Great Challenge – by Shoja Azari
, 24/10/2022
Shoja Azari, is an Iranian visual artist and filmmaker based in New York, working with Sherin Neshat, his life-long partner and comrade, on art projects of note and substance. Their last project is Land of Dreams, a magnificent new film set in the United States but ever so redolent of meaning viz. the New Iranian […]
Our Task? To Inspire the Rebellion against the Legalised Robbery of People & Earth, even if it is too late – Reply to Chomsky, Fuentes & McPherson
, 17/10/2022
Have we, humans, passed the point of no return down the path to ecological ruin? Does ruin-without-end loom black across the land, the air, the oceans? I hope not but, regardless, I don’t think it matters. What matters is what we do. And how we do it. From now on. Until our last breath. Sure […]
Comradely disagreements between progressives over Ukraine & the New Cold War – Reply to Anthony Barnett
, 12/10/2022
Anthony Burnett, a friend, comrade and collaborator, just published an article in openDemocracy, a splendid and much loved source of progressive ideas and material, to which he alerted me in a mail reading: “Dear Yanis, we disagree but in solidarity!” Since Anthony’s article mentions me, along with Jeremy Corbyn, in its subtitle, here I am, […]
My take on Georgia Melloni and her incoming government – LTIO clip
, 10/10/2022
Italy is about to have a new far-right government under the self-declared Mussolini groupie Ms Georgia Meloni. In this LTIO episode (entitled Fascism: The Radical Centre’s Last Resort), with comrades Roger Waters, Ece Temelcuran and Frank Barrat), I share my thoughts on Meloni and Co.
How the West poisoned its money – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 10/10/2022
ATHENS – Capitalism conquered the world by commodifying almost everything that had a value but not a price, thus driving a sharp wedge between values and prices. It did the same to money. The exchange value of money always reflected people’s readiness to hand over valuable things for given sums of cash. But, under capitalism, […]
Is This the End of ‘Socialism for the Rich’? – The Atlantic
, 10/10/2022
Last Thursday, the International Monetary Fund spooked the markets and surprised the commentariat by chiding the U.K. Conservative government for fiscal irresponsibility. The shock was palpable. For the IMF to criticize the government of a major Western economy was a little like the janitor scolding the landlord for putting the building’s assessed value at risk. That sense […]
Trickle-down Truss is carrying on the dirty work of Thatcher, Blair and Osborne – THE GUARDIAN
, 01/10/2022
If Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget survives the storm it triggered, a banker on a million-pound annual salary stands to receive £50,000 of income tax relief – on top of the extra bonuses the bank can throw in, now that the Liz Truss government has removed the cap on them. Meanwhile, a Deliveroo rider gets a pep […]
Zombie capitalism is unravelling – THE NEW STATESMAN
, 29/09/2022
This is no sterling crisis. It is a crisis of British capitalism caused by 40 years of underinvestment and deindustrialisation, exacerbated by chronic reliance on speculative bubbles and triggered by Liz Truss’s extravagant kindness to Britain’s wealthy. While all eyes are on the fall of the pound, the real drama revolves around the Bank of England’s […]
The Greek Watergate – UNHERD
, 23/09/2022
Nothing surprises me more than politicians professing to be surprised that their phones have been tapped. In the world revealed to us by Edward Snowden almost a decade ago, no phone is beyond the reach of motivated eavesdroppers. This is not to say, however, that phone-tapping political opponents has lost its capacity to poison democracy. […]
Europe’s electricity market: the scam of the century? – Video
, 21/09/2022
Every fortnight, DiEM25’s coordinating team livestreams our internal discussions of topics central to Europe’s and the world’s current predicament. On 8th September 2022 we discussed the electricity price hikes that, like a wrecking ball, are destroying what is left of Europe’s sustainability as an economic and social entity. Here is a clip of my analysis […]
Why energy markets should be dismantled, especially during and after the war in Ukraine – On Democracy Now!
, 18/09/2022
We look at how the Ukraine war is contributing to an energy crisis across Europe with Greek politician and economist Yanis Varoufakis. Last week Russia announced it would not resume sending natural gas to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, blaming Western sanctions for supposed maintenance delays keeping the gas shut off. Prior to […]
Are we Greeks insufferable nationalists? UNHERD
, 18/09/2022
We Greeks have a reputation for being insufferable nationalists, most of whom genuinely believe that Greek culture is superior to that of other nations and peoples. We were even anointed the most culturally chauvinistic Europeans in a recent Pew survey. At the risk of confirming that stereotype, I shall blame it on… foreigners, with their immoderate […]
Time to Blow Up the Electricity Markets – Project Syndicate
, 18/09/2022
The European Union’s power sector is a good example of what market fundamentalism has done to electricity networks the world over. With the end of cheap natural gas, retail consumers and businesses are paying the price for their governments’ embrace of a shoddy theory. ATHENS – The blades of the wind turbines on the mountain […]
, 18/09/2022
Greeks and other southern Europeans could now be feeling schadenfreude as Germany faces the collapse of its economic model in the face of the Ukraine war and the new cold war with China. But with a democratic Europe in the balance, this is no time to gloat. ATHENS – It is never easy to wake […]