We Are In A New Cold War | Downstream IRL with Yanis Varoufakis

Yanis Varoufakis is an economist and author who served as Greek Finance Minister in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash. Since then, he has become one of the most sought after public speakers on the left.

He joined Aaron for a IRL edition of Downstream at EartH in Hackney, North-East London to talk about China, Gaza and the new cold war being waged in ‘the cloud’

Set decoration was provided by After Noah.

Yanis was in London to promote the new documentary series, ‘In The Eye Of The Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis’ which can be watched here: http://www.eyeofthestorm.info

00:00 Intro
03:03 2023 for Yanis
05:36 Israel & Palestine
13:45 The Problem With Liberals
24:45 Is The US a Dying Empire?
35:49 China, Russia & Iran
43:51 The New Cold War
55:45 Nordsteam & Germany
1:04:04 Novara Germany Wouldn’t Be Possible
1:06:23 Banning Fascists Doesn’t Work

Novara Live broadcasts every weekday from 6PM on YouTube and Twitch.
Episodes of Downstream are released Sundays at 6PM on YouTube.
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[Applause] um China is set to flood Europe with cheap microprocessors and electric vehicles Israel is presently over seeing a second NABA war crimes I think ethnic cleansing the EU was looking at trying to start a a run on the Hungarian currency uh the United States is polarized and seemingly disoriented

Potentially within years confronting a state of collapse and a revolutionary state in the Middle East has pretty successfully blockaded a strategic choke point for Global um Logistics and it’s only February it’s only February and what this tells us is we do live in a moment of profound disruption

Transformation change and I don’t mean that in the platitudinous cliche way we’ve been told for the last 25 years it’s actually happening um some of these changes are once in a generation some once in a century some once in several centuries so big times and big events

Call for Big Ideas and I can’t think of anyone better to discuss Big Ideas then this evening’s guest Jan faracis he’s a former Finance Minister academic Economist author his most recent book techn feudalism I believe it’s available to BU at the front I saw him signing copies uh very

Fastidiously earlier on it’s a outstanding book outstanding book uh I really enjoyed it yanis thanks for joining us on Downstream IRL good evening thank you so much for being here it’s so good to be together with so many people after the lockdown Years of Solitude and two- dimensionals zooming and you know just

The the complete disconnection that we all felt during that time thank you Aaron for doing this thank you to Novara media for uh existing in world where the media are complicit in genocide so what are we what do you want to talk about I want to talk about so

Much I I want to talk about uh China Russia obviously we’ll talk about Israel Europe the United States we’ve only got an hour that’s the problem um so we’ll talk about that stuff for an hour firstly how are you how’s life treating yanis faracis you’re had a very frenetic

Few years look I am remarkably well to the extent that I I feel guilty for being well in a world you know we that that is constantly finding novel ways to depress us uh it managed to get me really down back in June because um are small but

Vociferous and I think very Progressive Party Mar 25 in Greece we had nine seats in G gree’s Parliament we managed to lose them in June um and guess who won them a fascist party called the Spartans it’s the in Rebirth of the Golden Dawn Nazis so I

Spent at least one month in serious depression finding it very difficult to get out of bed but I overcame it and now I’m really well but you know individually we can be fine we have a duty to be well individually but collectively we are down in the dumps

Aren’t we this is a terrible world and uh our political leadership especially the leadership of the left is chiefly responsible for the crimes against humanity and against logic that are taking place k starma my goodness my goodness ol of Schultz in Germany the SPD leader who is the leader of the left in

Austria I don’t even know because nobody cares they do have a communist mayor in um Gratz yes indeed indeed and they light the mood and they have and they have an ultr right supported government yeah in Vienna so you know we really need to pull ourselves together and um

There is the vast majority of people out there are good decent Progressive people and yet our political sphere is constantly jettisoning from from within its ranks anyone who does not parrot the inanities the serially insane inanities of the establishment or supporting policies like for instance genocide in

Gaza so I want to talk about lots of stuff as I said Europe China the us but given this is what you feel very passionately about you’ve started with this um you said that the center left is is complicit in what’s going on in Gaza what’s your view on that because of

Course a lay person might be watching or listening and thinking well look the Tories are in power um a different story of course of Joe Biden in the United States a normally Progressive person who’s really given C blanch to Israel to do war crimes why is Labor responsible when they’re in

Opposition because the if the opposition leftwing Center left party is supporting orchestrated genocide in Israel that legitimizes the government that is supporting the orchestrated genocide of Palestinians in Israel and it means that there is no hope for any representation of the people who say hang on a second massacres and

The Insidious IDE ology of Zionism which is essentially white supremacism settler colonialism coupled with prison camps and massive extermination that’s what they are doing since 1948 and to have the left supporting that means that there can be no hope I mean if you’re Rish sunak Kama has done your work for you in

Legitimizing your complicity in what’s going on in Gaza so on this point of um of Israel what needs to be the um quote unquote solution because he just made a critique there of Zionism which it again somebody might hear that feel an instant emotional response to it but a lot of

The things you’re talking about have been well documented it’s at the very least a very vilant form of ultra nationalism at the very least I don’t think that’s in any way deniable how does this then get resolved if if that’s the creature we’re dealing with or the world’s dealing with and it

Has the backing of the I think probably the world’s only military superpower eron it’s very important that we do not pontificate to the people who live in the land of Palestine in the land of Israel what needs to be done it’s not our job to tell them what to

Do our job is to maintain the kind of narrative and political Campaign which constantly supports Universal human rights that is our job as Europeans I feel we have a duty to accept 100% responsibility for all the crimes that are being perpetrated in the land of Israel Palestine today we

Europeans are to blame not Hamas not the Israeli settlers not even Netanyahu and I will explain that please go on I will explain that for centuries we’ve we have been hounding Jews from one pgam to the next Europeans not just the Nazis the British the croats the Russians the

Ukrainians the Greeks the Italians we have been persecuting Jews for centuries and then of course this C series of pograms and persecutions ended up with a holocaust the German Nazis are chiefly responsible for the Holocaust but it’s not just them the croat Nazis the Greek Nazis the Italian Nazis the French Nazis

Under the vishi government the Estonian Nazis the Lithuanian Nazis the Polish Nazis they were all complied in the Holocaust and then when it no longer was fashionable to be anti-semitic after 94 45 remember what King George said the problem with Mr Hitler is that he made the moderate kind of anti-Semitism

Impossible remember that he said that in 1945 um okay then Europeans adopted Zionism now what is Zionism it’s not just that it is ultra Nationalist and rightwing and all that no Zionism from where I’m standing is summarized in the slogan that was invented in the early

Part of the 20 Century which is a land without a people for a people without a land now that is white supremacism when the British disembarked in New South Wales in Australia immediately they declared the land of Australia to be Teran nullius an empty land a land without a people so

The 5 and a half million Aborigines were simply not people that was a beginning of genocide because when the moment you say 5 million people are not people that’s Licensed to Kill it’s licensed to Massacre it’s licensed to genocide so that was you Zionism has many different currents within it there are

Leftwing zionists they right-wing zionists they’re socialist zionists but what they have in common is they do not recognize that the Palestinians existed or exist today today they talk about them as Arabs that you know they could have gone to some other country the land is people people less so you have the

Greatest the most toxic alliance between anti-Semitism and white supremacism that’s Zionism in the United States have you seen those photographs of American Nazis with sasas and flags of Israel it sound it looks at first like a contradiction how can you hold with one hand aasa and

With the other the Star of David not if you are an American Ultra rightwing Zionist because you believe that the Jews should all go there in the same way that the Europeans went to the United States to kill off all the natives Native Americans go there so we don’t have you

In our midst and if you are also a religious fundamentalist you believe that the you Jerusalem should be Jewish so that the second coming can come and Christ can then resurrect your dead in in Minnesota all the sensible people who are you know at the Forefront of us politics um yeah

So to just to conclude the point so you know we it’s perfectly point it’s perfectly compatible to be an anti-semite and the Zionist you just want the Jews to go to Palestine it’s really very simple you don’t want them in unich you don’t want them in London

You don’t want them here there this was why truly anti-semitic European political leaders were zionists they sided with Zionism okay and since 1948 the Israeli apar heide state is trying to create a kind of Confluence to bring together together the slogan of the Zionist with a facts on the ground the

Slogan of the the slogan of the Zionist was still is a land without a people for a people without a land and the facts of the ground was that there were lots of Palestinians there who whom we need now to get rid of that’s what the job of the IDF is

So we are responsible for that we Europeans are responsible for that because our gu over the Holocaust which is deserved we should feel guilty for the Holocaust we are responsible for the Holocaust is being used as a cover and an excuse for the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians do you think that

Liberals particularly in Europe understand that actually Israel could be the future of European politics I think it could be the future of the West which is to say ethnically religiously homogeneous uh culturally homogeneous um highly militarized uh you know I was speaking recently to a a Palestinian instagrammer

Um we’ll be putting that that interview on Downstream on our YouTube channel a remarkable man you know he’s got 800,000 people on his account he’s a journalist he’s telling these stories he lost his sister and has seven children in one go and they’re still in

Rubble and I I was hearing his story the youngest was one month old and then I go on my Twitter feed and people are complaining about feeling offended at a University campus and I’m like well I’m sorry to hear that I am I don’t like you

To be offended I don’t like you know graffiti or whatever F that’s bad this is immeasurably worse uh but what’s interesting to me is that the center people who claim to believe in the rule of law human rights don’t understand the extent to which Israel is sabotaging quote unquote the rules based

International law order or what exists of it and we saw this decades ago with nuclear nonproliferation it already happened we weren’t meant to have a proliferation of nuclear weapons Israel develops one guess what Saddam Hussein says well I want them the Iranians say well I want them and I think something

Very similar could actually start to happen with human rights the demise of a believer in universalism because you’ve got fascists right across Europe saying this is this is exactly what we want we want High birth rates we want to kick the immigrants out uh and we want to

Foster a sort of social political quite and quite solidarity which which is based on the opposite of multiculturalism so so why are some liberals who claim to believe in all this stuff also backing a project which is the complete anthesis of it look the reason why I am a left

Winger is because I’m not prepare prepared to subcontract the concept of Liberty to the so-called liberals who don’t give a d damn about [Applause] liberalism look take the authors of the American Constitution and it’s Prelude the Bill of Rights which is an a Pian a beautiful poem dedicated to Freedom

Jefferson well all these people had slaves they were slaves owners and you know Jefferson even when he died he did not live he he he he did not put in his will a clause that would liberate his slaves so the greatest poems in honor of Liberty have been

Written by people who were slave owners I think that tells you all you need to know about the hypocrisy of liberals similarly you know take Nick leg where did I why do I remember this name to Nick wow why do I remember this name he was the leader of the liberal party in

That frivolous and ridiculous Coalition with the Tores um and one of the first things he did was to put his signature in legislation which severely restricted the basic human rights of the people of Britain against every principle of the liberal party they are not liberal these people they

Claim they they use the term to deny the substance but beyond that and that connects with Jefferson when Jefferson was talking about the beauty of Freedom he didn’t mean it for worms for chickens or for blacks he didn’t mean it for for half blacks like me from you know the Mediterranean the so-called

Wogs yeah yeah people who are deeply tanned or lightly tanned so it all depends on I mean David Hume had this concept of centric circles where you you are at at the center of a series of concentric circles and according to David Hume in his um treaties of human

Nature the people who are further and further out of that series of concentric circles you care less for so Liberals are the people for whom those conent there’s one Circle that matters you boura white men and maybe some honorary men who happen to be women like Thatcher for instance you know or Georgia

Melone whoever you know does their bidding for them in the European Union or you know in the oecd or the IMF uh and then immediately after that there there there are the nonhumans for whom there are no Universal rights and that Circle of who you know the circle that determines the

Borderline separating and segregating the ones that legitimately have Universal human rights and the ones who don’t that’s quite malleable so Saddam Hussein used to be you know they’re friendly bastard you know the joke as to how did how did Blair and Cheney know that uh he had chemical weapons they kept the

Receips I remind you in 1983 there was an exoit missile Iraqi exoit missile bought by the F from the French that um hit an American Navy ship and quite a few Sailors of the US Navy were killed they sent Cheney back then to make friends with you know

Effectively put him on the back he say okay yeah there was friendly fire so that Circle expands and contracts depending on the interests of the so-called liberal establishment they are not liberal they’re just an establishment on on the this point this is remarkable so this was a couple I think it was a

Couple of hundred US Marines I think in the early ‘ 80s they were killed by the Iraqis nothing happens and they were immediately forgiven because Saddam Hussein was their bastard I remember when I I used to live in Britain then and I remember maybe Jeremy was Jeremy Corin

Was with us then there was a group of us demonstrating outside the Iraqi Embassy against Saddam Hussein right because he killed tens of thousands of Kurds using chemical weapons provided to him by Britain so we were here in London demonstrating outside the Iraqi Embassy and thatchers Metropolitan

Police went for us as if we were the worst enemies of the state with mountain police they beat beat us up they arrested US and all that imagine my I have to use a Greek word aporia which means the sense of puzzlement when a few years later some

Years later because uh people like me and I’m sure you and definitely Jeremy and Tony Ben back then we opposed the notion that it was in the interest of humanity massively to invade Iraq and kill 1 million people we were described as Saddam Hussein’s handmaidens by the same people who were

Arming him back in 1983 and beating us up for protesting against him you know but that never ends in 2001 back in Athens at the University of Athens I remember attending a senate meeting meeting of the Athens University Senate I was a professor I was the government of Greece had just

Sent to the Senate a request that we bestow upon a s Mr Putin an honorary doctorate and I was in a minor it of one in the Senate calling him out as a war criminal because he had just killed 250,000 Chens in order to solidify his regime today I’m being called Putin’s handmaiden

Again it is never ending back then Putin in 2001 was the blue-eyed boy of the western establishment not just the Greek one the British one well everybody thought that Putin was great so you know where do how how did I start saying all this I think you you said it never ends

And then you ENT that but quickly on this oh yes the the hypocrisy of the Liberals they don’t give a damn about Freedom we got that yeah on Iraq we don’t know the half of it we really don’t know the half of it Saddam Hussein was using industrial

Amounts of chemical weapons against Iran from 1980 to 1988 not once not twice hundreds of times I think we’re talking almost 20,000 projectiles with chemical weapons the Americans gave them the positions of Iranian forces knowing he would use those weapons of of they actually asked him to bomb them crazy

You see and they the good guys they asked him to bomb them to bomb Iran because Iran had just staged the anti-American Islamic revolution you remember the the the the the standoff regarding the Americans diplomats in the Teran US Embassy and so on and it Saddam Hussein got his marging orders from

United States to invade Iran he didn’t invade Iran of his own accord it was and he was financed by the Emirates and particularly Kuwait well this is we not detour that was the reason why then made Kuwait because he wants them to forgive the war debt anyway we’ve talked enough

About Iraq we’ve talked about about Russia we’ve talked about Blair we’ve talked about Nick c um sorry about that I don’t know what what came over something feels a bit out of kiled there they world’s historical figures and and um the head of communications for meta anyway um uh

Let’s talk about the United States um this is in the last several months obviously we’re seeing events in the Red Sea the complete inability of Joe Biden to Reign Netanyahu in is this just a weak leader a moment in history or or does this point to something else which is really

The demise of an Empire which has been coterminous with a global capitalist economy over the last century I wish I could agree with you that it’s em that it reflects the waning of the power of the United States I don’t think it does at all uh and I don’t see any change at

All was that ever a US president that opposed Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians the nakba the six- day war the Americans were behind them you know their satellites were guiding the Israeli missiles in the 60s in the 70s in the 80s today every single piece of Weaponry

That the Israeli Army and Air Force and navy have comes from the United States as we speak they give those you know 10,000 lb bombs as we speak they’re being delivered through creit and alexandris to Greek ports this this is the the route not the Silk Road but the

You know the death road that American armaments take to reach Israel Biden is not weaker than Reagan was or Obama was or Lyndon Johnson before that there’s been a consistent policy of treating Israel as America’s bully in the Middle East but it’s not just Israel so you’ve obviously got and

I’m not suggesting this as a good thing you’ve got an increasingly belligerent assertive Russia you have an increasingly prosperous technologically advanced China are we moving I suppose I’ll rephrase the question from a unipolar to a multi-polar world and what does that mean because you sound skeptical of the idea of us moving to

Multipolarity oh there’s certainly no multipolarity there is what there is is a new cold war between in the United States and China that’s all that is Russia is insignificant I mean it’s significant if you’re a Ukrainian and you get bombed by them there’s no doubt about that but

Then again if you’re in South Sudan and you are caught up in the Civil War in South Sudan your life is not better than it is if you are in khv or you know parts of donbas but um if you look if you want to look at the con concentration of economic

Financial technological and military power you have to focus on the United States and on China the European Union is the stupid continent it is I was talking to the you know to um to the president of Mexico that I and I were visiting him some months ago in

Mexico City and you know he’s he’s a comrade he’s a friend and he’s the president of Mexico right um so he was telling me with pain in his heart that you know he’s very pro-european uh he’s he’s culturally very close to Europe he’s under the belly of the Beast the

United States and he trades with China and he says he he was asking me for some um sources of hope that Europe will stop being irrelevant and I couldn’t provide him with any because we are deindustrializing we’ve missed the next Industrial Revolution so Green Tech and

Big Tech gone we have nothing by which to compete with either United States or China and increasingly we are stagnating and proving and reconfirming my allegation that it is a stupid and irrelevant continents uh China significant Russia more significant than the telegraph the times and the guardian

Would like to present it as because you know there is this tendency to say that the Russian economy is only the size of Spain well that’s true if you measure it in terms of dollars but the people in Russia don’t use dollars they use rubles

And so it’s not a question of how many dollars do they have by which to buy bullets the question is how many rubles they have with which to buy Russian bullets and they have quite a few of those um so but but there is no dynamism it it is shrinking demographically there

Is immigration from Russia not just now because of this ever since the Soviet Union collapsed um so but you know the the main concern is um the new cold war that Donald Trump started against China and you know I we had this discussion back in when when was it in October of

Because it’s part of part of the chapter six of my book M I had I had a I was puzzled by why would Trump start a cold war against China you remember it started when he banned a telecommunications company Chinese one Huawei from functioning in the United

States and and then he banned another one z z t and then another one and then he introduced serious uh TS on aluminium exports and so on and of course May one you know one could say Ah that’s Trump what do you expect he’s a Madman but

Then Joe Biden gets elected and instead of reversing this cold war against China he double charged it he went as the Australians say ape full on he introduced a bill by which he banned all sales of advanced microchips to China this is like saying

To Beijing we will do whatever we can to prevent you from becoming an advanced technologically advanced country that’s an economic War Declaration of economic War so the my I I was puzzled by that and I was asking myself why would they do that if you ask American diplomats

Politicians media people they say oh Taiwan come on pull another one why is Taiwan significant oh because they want to invade it yes they wanted to invade it in 1950 in 1960 70 you know when Bill Clinton was doing his utmost to induct China into the World Trade

Organization and all the iPhones were being produced in Shenzhen you know and Shanghai and so on they wanted to invade Taiwan back then they claimed it to be their own so that that can’t be the reason that didn’t change that is and then you when they tell me about but they are uh

Spying on us what the Americans are complaining that somebody’s spying on them the NSA is spying on all of us every single one of us including sunak they know what he says better than he does because he forgets very easily right so it can’t be that and you

Know what my explanation is I told you last time but these people were not there um China is the only country that has developed this new form of of capital which I call Cloud Capital which is the part of capital which when it accumulates bestows upon

Its owner the most power it’s the cap capital that lives inside your your phone the algorithmic AI driven Capital which is not new it’s been happening now 10 15 years if you think about it there is no British or european competitor to Google to Facebook to um amazon.com to Uber

To Airbnb to any of these platforms none no British no German no French no Indian competitor to them China has a bigger and better version of each one of them in China and not only that but there is an application called WeChat that belongs to stensen which imagine an application we

Don’t have it here in Europe or in Britain if you don’t want to be considered European don’t know why you wouldn’t but maybe you don’t um you don’t have an an app that allows you to watch movies like Netflix to call a car a cab like uber to send tweets to do

That and on top of that to send money to pay to make payments for free to anyone in the world for free no fee no banking fee attached that app doesn’t exist in the west the Chinese have it so to the extent that the United States remains hegemonic

Because they have the Monopoly of all Payment Systems when you pay anybody even within Britain that payment Finds Its way through to the other person to the person to whom you’re making the payment through a system totally controlled by the United States not the by the bank of England

Not by England or the European Union totally by the United States this is why explain that cuz people understand if you’re using Visa or PayPal people get that well visa and PayPal are all American but a bank a a bank transfer how’s that well the it is possible for a payment to be

Made within Britain um without going through one of the filters that go through Washington but Washington has the means to press a button and stop you from making a payment from Lloyd’s Bank to Norwest within London after the second world war Europe and Britain had no payment

System we were you know in ashes after the second world war the continent of Europe was in genuine ashes and Britain was bankrupt so when Breton Woods rebuilt the financial system through the system of central banks the bank of international settlements and all that Swift you have

You seen the acronym Swift all this system is in electronics payment system a messaging system which messages One Bank you know 10 35 p is going from here to there that system is totally controlled by the United States because it was the United States that created it after Breon Woods

In 1944 and that remains to this day so to go back to the question then of are we seeing I don’t say the end of American Empire I completely agree with you there but the demise of it retreat potenti from certain parts of the world maybe West Asia

Um what we saw late last year that Retreat taking place pardon when did where did you see that Retreat taking place okay so if anything they’re increasing their presence in West Asia I think we’ll know but this is the thing so again I’m sure many people here of

Everybody is you know Navara potentially supporters I hope or Novara viewers or listeners High information people but lots of people don’t know that you know there have been over 100 attacks on us armed uh forces in Syria Iraq you’ve had the Iranians take boats on one side of

The Arabian Peninsula You’ obviously got the Red Sea on the other there is a there is a region at War right now sure and it’s a war against the United States I mean we’re not it’s not reported as such anything by the way which happens against the US Iran backed no it’s

Iraqis in Iraq against Americans in Iraq that’s Iraqis but Iran backed organizations apparently across the across the region and it and it does feel like it’s um it’s a pivotal moment actually for us Empire and that part of the world and look I’m not suggesting it’s going to retreat it’s out but it

Seems to be under greater pressure militarily politically in West Asia is The Cutting Edge of all of this than it has been for a very long time and that you could repeat the same argument with regards to Taiwan of course they’ve been saying it for a long time the point is

Now China can execute something like that in a way it couldn’t have 30 40 years ago I would like to go off at the at the tangent just for one one minute and then come back to the question about the United States in China because you mentioned Iran I am very

Conflicted very conflicted because on one on the one hand my heart and my mind is committed and dedicated to the woman life Freedom Revolution within Iran against the theocracy these are our comrades woman life Freedom at the the same time what the Americans want to do by overthrowing the regime in Iran is

Create another fragmented destructive regime like the one they inflicted upon Iraq so how that’s why I’m saying I’m conflicted I do not want Iran to be defeated by the United States and to see the United States victorious in that part of the world but at the same time I

Do not want to see the regime in Iraq in Iran maintain its authority over particularly the women because we have gender aparti in Iran okay so I just wanted to State it for the record that I’m confused and in conflicted I close the parenthesis let’s go back now um unfortunately

This confrontation between the United States on the one hand and Iran on the other alongside with various you know forces amongst the Kurds amongst the Iraqis amongst the huies and so on who may be backed by Iran it’s not a bad thing to be backed by Iran um they are

They have agency though the houis are not being directed by Iran they may receive weapons from Iran it’s like saying that you know the Vietnamese were uh because they were backed by the Soviet Union that they were directed by the Soviet Union they were not they were fighting a National Liberation struggle

And they would accept weapons from whoever gave them um nevertheless I don’t see if if I were in the Pentagon I would not be worried about the developments on the military terrain what I would be worried about are the developments on the fintech the financial technology um terrain because the Chinese with we

Chat and in particular something I haven’t mentioned yet the digital currency of the Central Bank of China they are cre creating circumstances that can easily undermine the Monopoly that the dollar has on International transactions because all the power of the Americans of the United States this

Whole panoply of force is based on the US dollar the American economy is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the world economy the American economy is highly in the red they have a huge Trade Surplus H sorry huge trade deficit since 1968 they have a huge budget deficit 6

And a half% every year Bud budget deficit so they need other people’s money they are the only Empire in the history of humanity who are growing stronger the more they are in the headed what allows them to do that is that they print the world’s currency the dollar so

If you are a capitalist a German capitalist a Chinese capitalist to this day right um You need to sell to the Americans in order to make your own profits so you sell to the Americans the Americans Buy in dollars they have a deficit and you get dollars so you’re a

Chinese capitalist in Shanghai or in Frankfurt and you have all these dollars and what do you do with these dollars you canot spend them in Germany or in China so you take them to Wall Street and you invest them in real estate in shares primarily in American debt so

You’re financing the American government to build the armies and to have the aircraft carriers in the East so that that is the Nexus around which American power revolves the dollar the Chinese threaten that because now if you are a capitalist if you are a money bags if you’re Saudi

Arabian with lots and lots of billions you know somebody from Abu Dhabi an Indonesian magnet a Malaysian magnet you are really thinking twice about putting all your eggs in the dollar basket why because you’ve seen that the Americans just confiscated 400 billion of dollars of Russian money I’m not going to pass

Judgment on that this is not a discussion of whether they should have done it or not it’s a fact they did it so if you are a shake from Dubai or a stinking Rich usually bastard from Indonesia right because to be stinking rich in Indonesia you can’t be a good person

Right or in Greece for that matter and you have all these billions you think well they got pissed off with Putin’s men and they took their money what about me I’m not the best guy in the world maybe they will get pissed off with me tomorrow so you’re not going to

Put all your money in the Chinese digital currency but you’ll put some of it in there just to me yeah Plan B in case the Americans come and that is a clear and present danger for American hegemony that is why and here is my explanation you have the new Cold War

The Americans are attacking the technological evolution of Chinese fintech the combination of big Tech and the financial sector because they want to kill this payment system from you know before it grows up and challenges the American dollar the American dollar digital system so on the the microprocesses thing which you mentioned

Which was the this embargo last last year we’re not going to send microprocessors to China smaller than a certain size which is in all the lace applications by the way I think last year China spent more on importing maybe not last year but the year before that

On microprocessors than on uh petrol the amount of money it spends on this stuff is absolutely extraordinary and by the way that’s the largest consumer of petroleum in human history they’re spending more on importing microprocessors um so this is obviously a significant part of us strategy and I

Think that’s undeniable they want to under mind their ability to create AI applications you know 5G internet etc etc for sure uh but on the on the point of um uh infrastructure I want to sort of dovetail us now with Europe because you’re saying Europe’s over right but

You’re saying there these two Powers there’s this play now between China and the United States Europe clearly has to make some kind of a choice now what or maybe not maybe you won’t say that what I find really interesting here in Britain at the front line of this whole

Debate is Huawei gets kicked out a couple of years ago now they got the email from Washington kick them out and they did as they were told yeah and they were build building 5G U 5G infrastructure at the time and I’m sure people here know this we don’t have 5G

In this country your phone might say 5G it’s no quicker than 4G it’s a lie uh we have Placebo 5G it’s true because the Chinese aren’t building it anymore that’s what and that is a very material consequence of throwing ourselves alongside the United States uh we don’t have a level of

Technological innovation we should have if we we keep on hearing from all the politicians we want to be you know High Tech High productivity our 5G doesn’t work the 5G that’s built in Tajikistan by Chinese Engineers is going to be better so from a European perspective

When it comes to things like 5G or or effective efficient payment systems and so on is it a question of and this is very relevant for Greece yenis cuz you’re geographically a lot closer right will that new Silk Road go all the way to airus and Athens what’s your what’s

Your read on that on the question of um the technological backwardness of your telecommunication system here in Britain I have some good news for you Germany is worse Rejoice they still use faxes in their Ministries no seriously seriously German Ministries are still run on faxes why because of austerity because of austerity because

For 15 years tighten belt tightening of the German State means they didn’t invest in Technologies they have fallen behind this is why now German is deindustrializing allow me to to make this point because I think it is really crucial then I come back to Britain and Silk Road and all

That take the electric car which is the future you may not like I personally don’t like them because I’m oldfashioned and I like to hear the petrol engine don’t tell my friends in the green movement that okay I’m an old motorcyclist what can I do I I I did ride once an electric

Motorcycle it was really very powerful fantastic I hated it didn’t smell of anything anyway um again close the bracket now the electric car is a is is the um death of the German car industry not that there will not be car production in Germany they will be

Producing as many cars as they were before the electric car but that’s not where the comparative advantages of German industry their comparative advantage was in making very high precision gearboxes and reciprocating reciprocating engines electric cars have much lower value added and what value is to be extracted comes from what I said before

Cloud Capital let me put it this way a Tesla May cost quite a bit of money to buy but Elon Musk is going to be collecting monies from anyone who has bought Tesla forever not just at the point of sale when you buy a Volkswagen Volkswagen

Gets a certain W of money from you and that’s it after that maybe whatever spare parts you purchase from them to service the car but Tesla because you know Tesla did you know that Elon Musk can switch off your Tesla you you you know you you drive out

Of the car dealer you have your beautiful all glaming all singing all dancing Tesla Elon Musk can decide Kate Smith your car is off presses a button and through a satellite it completely you know it’s like apple can switch off your your iPhone if it

Wants that it won’t do it but it already in the United States I don’t know whether you know that if you buy a secondhand Tesla and you not register it with a Tesla dealer they switch it off you can’t drive which also works the other way around because Tesla knows ga

Information as to what music you’re listening to when you’re going to your child’s school where did you go yesterday what mood were you in because it simply it it has a capacity to hear your conversations in the car or the conversations you’re having with people

Using your phone so it has all this data from you Tesla sells this data on a daily basis this is what I mean by the power of cloud Capital Volkswagen doesn’t have that doesn’t own the cloud doesn’t have anything like like that Europe that’s why Europe is behind China

Has it have you heard of a company called byd build your build your dream it’s almost as big as Tesla now I think I think it was did it get bigger for one day and then it went back or anyway yeah it’s huge it’s big and it will be much

Bigger okay they have all that so it is America and it is China and we here have missed the boat when after 2009 when the bank of England was printing money the European Central Bank was printing money I mean the loss of the election in 2017 our loss you know when Jeremy didn’t

Win was pivotal because if in that labor party Manifesto you’ll see that there was a policy I know because I worked on it with John McDonald um for creating a public Investment Bank the purpose of which would be to issue bonds like McDonald issues bonds right

To the tune of 200 billion remember the 28 billion that Rachel Reeves no that would be the the point of that would be to issue bonds of worth 200 billion every year with a support of the bank of England not to be repaid by the taxpayers that would not be added to the

Public debt because it would be a separate bank and the whole point would be that that would go into Green Tech that if that had happened from let’s say 2018 onwards there would have already been six years of these very large investments in Green Technology in Britain we could have done the same

Thing in the European Union we didn’t do it so now we are simply sitting on our dilapitated couches and watching the Americans and the Chinese go at it and invent the future so to go back to my previous question then who who who do we throw a

Lot in with and on the question of 5G this is probably quite Salient because the Americans literally don’t develop 5G you’ve got Ericson swedes um and you’ve got the Chinese and it is more tempting for countries further east to be part of what’s been called you know the new Silk

Road um particularly someone like Greece I mean the UK probably somewhat different you know and I think this as well with regards to um highspeed 2 you know people saying cost overruns how can we build it how can we save money you know what would be really easy get the

Chinese to build it you do it you save a lot of money but Aaron that’s St that is St for you she wanly destroyed the capacity of the British industrial base to build things she decided we don’t want to build things we’re going to go straight to the service sector we’re

Going to have the city of London financialization gambling and you know importing stuff to sell through Tescos and that that that’s the business model that she developed uh and Tony Blair considered that to be brilliant so he turbocharged it further and then you had the financial sector collapse in 2008 2009 and since

Then governments in Britain have been doing only one thing because they are such class Warriors and they are so loyal to the bis of this country to the aristocracy of this country they have been printing trillions of pounds to refloat the ruling class while practicing harsh austerity against the

British people now this is not simply misanthropic and unjust and pretty disgusting but it is also a sure recipe for St stagnating British capitalism so even if you are you know an oldfashioned 19th century liberal who believes in progress you know GDB growth and all that um which is consistent of

Course with climate catastrophe and all that but nevertheless even if that is your objective the policies that have been pursued by governments since that all governments every single one of them uh have depleted the capacity of even British capitalism to be dynamic so when list trust was saying oh my God you know

We have wasted all this time and we need we need to re refocus on growth what on Earth are you talking about list you’ve been part of a Tor party that has depleted the capacity of British capitalism to be capitalist you see the problem with British capitalists is that

At some point I don’t know exactly what when that happened they no longer wanted to be capitalist they wanted to be renters they want to sit in their mansions and to collect they were not interested in making things anymore the Chinese are making things the Germans are making

Things the problem with the Germans is because they are so aeran they stopped investing in making the next thing and the and the Chinese came along and said fine we will do it the Americans are always on top of the game because they either make other people make stuff for

Them and then magnetize into Wall Street their profits through this dollar payment system do you see what I why I’m saying that we here in Europe and I include Britain in Europe whether you like it or not that you know we are everybody around the world even very impecunious people in

Ghana in Zambia they are looking at us and you know what what they see very stupid people um so we we’ve talked about Europe we’ve talked about the United States I want to talk about n uh nordstream what n you know nordstream nordre nordstream too yeah who did it

Nordstream one you mean sorry nordstream well the one that was blown up sorry who who did it the United States it’s really very simple it’s really very simple you know they’ve been they’ve been saying it for years do you remember miss nuland the deputy secretary of state Victoria nuland yeah she actually

Had announced it ages ago that if they if the Germans don’t stop importing natural gas from Russia we will have to take measures what what more do you need and in in case I remember when it first blew up they immediate the BBC the BBC ITV they all immediately blamed Putin now why

Would Putin blow up the gas pipe with which he’s selling gas to his best customers to find the war he’s a war criminal he’s a bastard he’s a Neo Orthodox fool KGB you can say all sorts of things about him he’s an awful awful poor excuse of a human

Person but he’s not stupid he wouldn’t blow up his own gas pipeline and now we already I can’t remember what you know but now there’s plenty of evidence that it was the United States and the United States are not even vfly denying it no yeah they

Are they’re sort of winking at us yeah it was us but we’re not going to say it was right but there’s two things here I want to I want to get so that was one of those stories where and I I sound crazy when I say

That I sound crazy lots of the time but you know the mainstream media was scoping us on mass they were saying this was Russia I think this they were absolutely convinced the last people who would be doing I mean it’s not implausible but that’s absolutely crazy assertion to make with so much weight

And so much gravity that was one thing it was just one of those moments I thought wow the media there’s not even an effort here at getting to facts objectivity truth um serving your audience at all at all all um but then secondly politicians particularly German politicians didn’t say anything So at

The very moment your people are being crushed by high energy prices at the very moment your industrial class is like you say facing de-industrialization for a bunch of reasons increased competition from China and whatnot you just come out of covid uh stagnation of the global economy obviously hit your

Exports at that very moment you’ve lost a really reliable cheap source of energy and your own domestic political class won’t say who did it what does that say about German polit Germany’s politicians but also Europe’s political class I mean when they try and stop people like uh

Jeremy Corbin I won’t send Mr cuss in Greece he doesn’t count uh but these sort of populist leaders from the left when they try and Destroy them and they give it so much uh well is it precisely to stop people rising to the top in German politics in British politics in

Frenchs politics say no this was the CIA is that is that the Crux of the matter fundamentally the Crux of the matter is this don’t forget that the German Constitution was written by Americans don’t forget that the original deal between the Allies in 1944 was that German would be Germany would be

De-industrialized its factories will be destroyed and indeed 1,750 German factories were destroyed by the Allies in the process of turning Germany into a pastoral land that is to prevent it from ever rising up again it was the Americans who sent their Secretary of State in for 1946 to

Deliver a speech of Hope in which effectively they said to the Germans okay we’ve changed our minds we Americans have changed our minds uh and we are going to reindustrialize you you’re going you’re going you’re coming back in from the cold the whole of German industry was

Built as a result of the decision of the United States to allow them to rebuild they have a deep debt of gratitude to the United States and a complete dependence it was all done on the basis of American Loans remember 1950 another little aside I remember I

Was in the Euro group with you know the German Finance Minister who the now late Wan sh and others and he comes out and he starts delivering a a speech on the sanctity of debt a debt is a debt is a debt and you have to pay every last Euro

To the last cent and then when I took the floor that’s why I didn’t like me I said I’m sorry the only reason why you are representing an industrialized German is because a debt is not a debt is not a debt in 1953 most of your debts

Were written off by the Americans the British and all the Allies including debts you owed to my [Applause] country so if you’re an American industrialist you owe the Americans and it’s not just a past debt it’s also a future debt because I mentioned that before uh Mercedes-Benz would stop operating tomorrow if it

Didn’t sell mercedes-benzes to the United States and these mercedes-benzes are being paid for with dollars that then Mercedes-Benz takes to the United States and invests in American property so if you are Mercedes-Benz or you know big shareholder of Mercedes-Benz they are your God you do nothing to disturb the sleep of the God

Who lives in Washington maybe in California as well right so that that explain and German politicians they have one thing in common whether they’re on the left or on the right they are cowards complete and utter cowards look at what’s going on now with with Gaza

Even the left my comrades on the left I’m not talking to them anymore you know the Rosa Luxenberg Center named after the Fantastic Rosa Luxenberg which is in I used to have a good relationship with these people that work my comrades you know they banned the Palestinian author

From making a presentation in their theater because he was Palestinian recently that’s why I’m saying all German politicians every single one of them are cowards and they have this [Applause] thing the fear of the tall poppy syndrome that if they you know are a poppy that’s a bit taller than the other

Ones you know raises it hand his head above the above the parapet they will be Machin G machined down so they don’t speak so everybody knew that nordstream 1 was blown up by the west by the Americans but everybody was looking at everybody else will everybody will anyone say

It and because you know nobody was saying it nobody said it coward this in action we need a Navar Germany by the sounds of it we about Michael yes we do we about Michael Walker saying it was I have to say there are there are Independent Media in Germany and there’s

Extremely extremely courageous and they do a very good job but they they are struggling and they are struggling because you know this in the end Britain with all its faults remains a better place to be a lefty than Germany this is what why Marx is buried here and he’s not buried in

Germany you know your job as novada if you were functioning in Germany would have been impossible go on that’s we are going the n and I are going to to Germany on Friday morning uh for dm25 the Democracy in Europe Movement we are going to run in the European Parliament

Elections as me Mara 25 our electoral Wing in Germany as well as in Italy as in um as in uh Greece and if you were still in the European Union given K would probably have to run here as well um and I’m telling you our comrades now in Germany are sending me frantic

Messages full of angst that um uh the theaters that we have booked for our events are all threatening to keep the their doors shuts their doors shut because of U me being portrayed as um an anti-semite simply because because you see the thing in Germany now is you can

Only talk about genocide if you support it if you oppose genocide you cannot speak the word if you say Netanyahu yes go go go take Gaza bomb them it’s fine if you want to talk about Israel from The River To The Sea huh and apart hide from The

River To The Sea it’s fine in German say that but if you say look I’m against apar and I’m against genocide and I want Universal basic human rights from The River To The Sea you’re banned because you’re you’re an anti-semite so we’ll have to face that

On Friday so you don’t think Nara could have existed in Germany that’s a really interesting point and it says I think you would simply have very serious I don’t think you would be able to get this theater to do what we’re doing here tonight in Berlin that’s really

Interesting because often you know on the left we’ll we’ll criticize the UK the British State Etc or the British national character or whatever yeah but that’s you know you want to be exceptional you know British exceptionalism Cuts both ways you know the British Empire used to

Think that it was the best the brightest and the biggest right and then the left wanted to think that Britain was the worst place we are so exceptional because we were the worst you are neither the best nor the worst I love it but no I think there is something to it

And it’s sounds sort like some Buran conservative but I think there is something to it which actually there is Instinct in this country where most of the time somebody who disagrees with you will still say well you’re allowed to have that point of view fine as long as you’re not hurting anybody whereas

Actually from from the outside looking into someone like Germany over the last six months of the last year that is simply not the case there there is this deep instinctive conformism to stop people from saying things they disagree with indeed uh you know this is a very um sensitive issue for

Instance I don’t age agree with Banning Nazis I know that doesn’t sound very popular but I’m a liberal I want to defeat Nazis I want to beat them into a pulp not physically you know in the in the polling stations I want them to disappear in the polling stations I want

To defeat them culturally I want to defeat them in the in the struggle for ideas Banning them you know effectively say saying that you don’t have the right to run in elections what they doing to Trump now in the United States where they’re trying to get him off the ballot

That is a catastrophy this is legitimizing Trump it is legitimizing the people who support Trump because they think that he’s being hounded by The Establishment to which he belongs I don’t believe in banning opinions that may make me feel uncomfortable you know this idea about a safe space we need to

Have a safe space where we don’t get triggered by things we don’t like that’s [Applause] crap but so you see in in in in Germany now they have this alternative for deuts it’s a pretty vile part it’s qu Nazi fascistic horrible like the ones we have in gree’s Parliament the ones that beat

Us and won our seats right I don’t want these people to be banned I I want to win them back I want to defeat them I don’t want to see them in prison simply because they are Nazis I want to see them in prison If they raise their hand

And strike anyone as the Golden Dawn murderers did but you know we should as the left be because the Liberals are not liberals as we were saying before we need to preserve basic political rights even for the people who are vile and who say obnoxious things in Germany the

Moment they started thinking of banning the afd they have 20% what what’s going to happen if you ban a party of of 20% Then you delegitimize democracy that is the greatest gift to the Nazis because they can then turn around and say look what what does it mean to be a Democrat you

Just ban anyone you disagree with am I completely wrong no I couldn’t agree more we’re going to have to end there and go to questions and hopefully some answers Yan faracis a very Illuminating hour W