Op-ed

Created
Thu, 19/12/2024 - 22:52

Western power is as strong as ever. What has changed is that the combination of socialism for financiers, collapsing prospects for the bottom 50%, and the surrender of our minds to Big Tech has given rise to overweening Western elites with little use for the last century’s value system. ATHENS – A motley crew of […]

The post The West Is Not Dying, but It Is Working on It – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Tue, 10/12/2024 - 23:00

On 15th August 2021, when the Kabul US-puppet regime fell, I expressed relief that US imperialism was defeated and, simultaneously, horror at what the women of Afghanistan were about to suffer in the hands of the jihadist Taliban. Immediately, the US liberal-imperialist lobby attacked me for… celebrating the Taliban victory. You see, for imperialism’s stooges, […]

The post Lessons from Syria: An imperialist’s enemy is not always an anti-imperialist’s friend – China Academy op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Mon, 02/12/2024 - 23:54

If the US president-elect’s efforts to eliminate America’s trade deficit succeed, real-estate prices in Miami and Manhattan will crash, the cost of servicing government debt will skyrocket and the Dow Jones will plummet. Perhaps he should be reminded that the most vengeful of deities is one that grants him his sincerest wish. ATHENS – Donald […]

The post America’s Trade Deficit Is Not Afraid of Donald Trump – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Sat, 04/01/2025 - 21:48

On 9 February 1967, hours after the US Air Force had levelled the Port of Haiphong and several Vietnamese airfields, NBC aired a Star Trek episode featuring a concept that clashed mercilessly with what had just happened in Vietnam: the Prime Directive – a general ban on its Starship captains from using superior technology (military […]

The post Star Trek: A humanist communist manifesto for our times – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Mon, 06/01/2025 - 22:13

How does wealth manage to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? By merely posing his dazzling question in 1952, Aneurin Bevan captured liberal democracy’s greatest paradox. Today, in the era of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance and their Big Tech brethren, Bevan’s time-honoured paradox has only grown preposterously. […]

The post Musk, Trump and the Broligarchs’ novel hyper-weapon – Le Monde 4-1-2025, full original English version appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Mon, 22/04/2024 - 22:18

Advocates of European unity used to celebrate the European Union as a peace project. But well before Russia invaded Ukraine, the European vision of a peaceful road to shared prosperity had begun to frazzle, and now the invasion has facilitated the EU’s mutation into something much uglier. ATHENS – Europe has become unrecognizable. Advocates of […]

The post A European War Union? – Project Syndicate op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Thu, 22/02/2024 - 09:22

It is one thing to U-turn on a modest green transition programme. It is another to do so using mendacious Tory economic paradigms. Rarely has a lacklustre policy been abandoned for a reason so bad that it threatens to inflict long-term damage on a society. Independently of whether the £28bn green investment programme was the […]

The post Why is Labour still using the self-defeating, discredited ‘maxed out credit card’ analogy? The GUARDIAN appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Thu, 22/02/2024 - 10:10

Manos, a sixth-generation farmer from Thessaly, put it to me bluntly when I asked him to explain why he was prepared to drive his tractor 400km to Athens to camp outside Parliament: “If I don’t, my farm will soon follow our village school, co-op, post office and bank branch into oblivion.” His story is neither […]

The post The roots of European farmers’ anger were baked into the EU – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Fri, 12/01/2024 - 21:34

It was early September in 1971. My mother had taken me in a taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy northern Athenian suburb to visit my favourite uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out the car, she put her arm around me and whispered words of courage in my ear. You see, Hotel […]

The post NATO from the perspective of having grown up under US-sponsored neofascism – UNHERD appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Sun, 24/12/2023 - 19:33

Against the backdrop of the new cold war between the United States and China, the European Union’s top brass seems to be adding to the pressure on China by issuing credible threats in response to four grievances. Alas, the Chinese authorities are probably more amused than alarmed. ATHENS – On the December 7, the presidents […]

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