Yanis Varoufakis

The Online Speech Given by Yanis Varoufakis After German Police Raid Palestine Congress

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

German police move in to break up the Palestine Congress being held in Berlin on April 12, 2024.  (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

“Friends, we are here because vengeance is a lazy form of grief. We are here to promote not vengeance but peace and coexistence across Israel-Palestine.”

Prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis on Friday condemned the German government’s complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocidal attack on Gaza as well as its domestic crackdown on pro-Palestinian advocacy in an online speech originally meant to be delivered before a conference that was raided by Berlin police earlier in the day.

Varoufakis—a former Greek finance minister who heads the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25)—was scheduled to address the Palestine Congress, which was slated to run through Sunday in the German capital. However, hundreds of police officers blockaded the event venue on Germaniastraße in Templehof before storming the building and demanding organizers cut the livestream and end the event. Several people including at least one Jewish participant were led away by police.

“This is what democracy in Europe right now really looks like!” DiEM25 said on social media.

In his speech, Varoufakis lamented that “a decent people, the people of Germany, are led down a perilous road to a heartless society by being made to associate themselves with another genocide carried out in their name, with their complicity.”

“You want to silence us. To ban us. To demonize us. To accuse us. You, therefore, leave us with no choice but to meet your accusations with our accusations,” Varoufakis said, referring to the German political establishment—including the leftist Greens.

“So, let’s be clear: We are here, in Berlin, with our Palestinian Congress because, unlike the German political system and the German media, we condemn genocide and war crimes regardless of who is perpetrating them,” Varoufakis said. “Because we oppose apartheid in the land of Israel-Palestine no matter who has the upper hand—just as we opposed apartheid in the American South or in South Africa. Because we stand for universal human rights, freedom, and equality among Jews, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Christians in the ancient land of Palestine.”

Varoufakis’ speech comes as Germany faces an International Court of Justice case brought by Nicaragua and which accuses Berlin of complicity in the Israeli genocide in Gaza, where nearly 110,000 Palestinians—mostly innocent men, women, and children—have been killed or maimed by over the past six months.

The convening of the Palestine Congress, and the antagonism against it by authorities, coincides with a growing crackdown by German officials on pro-Palestinian voices in academic, artistic, literary, and other spaces.

Watch Varoufakis’ speech:

Read Varoufakis’ remarks as prepared for delivery:

Friends,

Congratulations, and heartfelt thanks, for being here, despite the threats, despite the ironclad police outside this venue, despite the panoply of the German press, despite the German state, despite the German political system that demonizes you for being here.

“Why a Palestinian Congress, Mr. Varoufakis?” a German journalist asked me recently. Because, as Hanan Asrawi once said: “We cannot rely on the silenced to tell us about their suffering.”

Today, Asrawi’s reason has grown depressingly stronger: Because we cannot rely on the silenced who are also massacred and starved to tell us about the massacres and the starvation.

But there is another reason too: Because a proud, a decent people, the people of Germany, are led down a perilous road to a heartless society by being made to associate themselves with another genocide carried out in their name, with their complicity.

I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian. But I am incredibly proud to be here amongst Jews and Palestinians—to blend my voice for peace and universal human rights with Jewish voices for peace and universal human rights—with Palestinian voices for peace and universal human rights. Being together, here, today, is proof that coexistence is not only possible—but that it is here! Already.

“Why not a Jewish Congress, Mr. Varoufakis?” the same German journalist asked me, imagining that he was being smart. I welcomed his question.

For if a single Jew is threatened, anywhere, just because she or he is Jewish, I shall wear the Star of David on my lapel and offer my solidarity—whatever the cost, whatever it takes.

So, let’s be clear: If Jews were under attack, anywhere in the world, I would be the first to canvass for a Jewish Congress in which to register our solidarity. Similarly, when Palestinians are massacred because they are Palestinians—under a dogma that to be dead they must have been Hamas—I shall wear my keffiyeh and offer my solidarity whatever the cost, whatever it takes.

Universal human rights are either universal or they mean nothing.

With this in mind, I answered the German journalist’s question with a few of my own:

  • Are 2 million Israeli Jews, who were thrown out of their homes and into an open-air prison 80 years ago, still being kept in that open-air prison, without access to the outside world, with minimal food and water, no chance of a normal life, of traveling anywhere, and bombed periodically for 80 years? No.
  • Are Israeli Jews being starved intentionally by an army of occupation, their children writhing on the floor, screaming from hunger? No.
  • Are there thousands of Jewish injured children with no surviving parents crawling through the rubble of what used to be their homes? No.
  • Are Israeli Jews being bombed by the world’s most sophisticated planes and bombs today? No.
  • Are Israeli Jews experiencing complete ecocide of what little land they can still call their own, not one tree left under which to seek shade or whose fruit to taste? No.
  • Are Israeli Jewish children killed by snipers today at the orders of a member state of the United Nations? No.
  • Are Israeli Jews driven out of their homes by armed gangs today? No.
  • Is Israel fighting for its existence today? No.

If the answer to any of these questions was yes, I would be participating in a Jewish Solidarity Congress today.

Friends, today, we would have loved to have a decent, democratic, mutually respectful debate on how to bring peace and universal human rights for everyone, Jews and Palestinians, Bedouins and Christians, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with people who think differently to us.

Sadly, the whole of the German political system has decided not to allow this. In a joint statement including not just the CDU-CSU or the FDP but also the SPD, the Greens and, remarkably, two leaders of Die Linke, joined forces to ensure that such a civilized debate, in which we may disagree agreeably, never takes place in Germany.

I say to them: You want to silence us. To ban us. To demonize us. To accuse us. You, therefore, leave us with no choice but to meet your accusations with our accusations. You chose this. Not us. You accuse us of anti-Semitic hatred. We accuse you of being the antisemite’s best friend by equating the right of Israel to commit war crimes with the right of Israeli Jews to defend themselves.

You accuse us of supporting terrorism. We accuse you of equating legitimate resistance to an apartheid state with atrocities against civilians which I have always and will always condemn, whomever commits them—Palestinians, Jewish settlers, my own family, whomever. We accuse you of not recognizing the duty of the people of Gaza to tear down the wall of the open prison they have been encased in for 80 years—and of equating this act of tearing down the Wall of Shame—which is no more defensible than the Berlin Wall was—with acts of terror.

You accuse us of trivializing Hamas’ October 7 terror. We accuse you of trivializing the 80 years of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erection of an ironclad apartheid system across Israel-Palestine. We accuse you of trivializing Netanyahu’s long-term support of Hamas as a means of destroying the two-state-solution that you claim to favor. We accuse you of trivializing the unprecedented terror unleashed by the Israeli army on the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and Easr Jerusalem.

You accuse the organizers of today’s Congress that we are, and I quote, “not interested in talking about possibilities for peaceful coexistence in the Middle East against the background of the war in Gaza.” Are you serious? Have you lost your mind? We accuse you of supporting a German state that is, after the United States, the largest supplier of the weapons that the Netanyahu government uses to massacre Palestinians as part of a grand plan to make a two-state solution, and peaceful coexistence between Jews and Palestinians, impossible.

We accuse you of never answering the pertinent question that every German must answer: How much Palestinian blood must flow before your justified guilt over the Holocaust is washed away?

So, let’ s be clear: We are here, in Berlin, with our Palestinian Congress because, unlike the German political system and the German media, we condemn genocide and war crimes regardless of who is perpetrating them. Because we oppose apartheid in the land of Israel-Palestine no matter who has the upper hand—just as we opposed apartheid in the American South or in South Africa. Because we stand for universal human rights, freedom, and equality among Jews, Palestinians, Bedouins, and Christians in the ancient land of Palestine.

And so that we are even clearer on the questions, legitimate and malignant, that we must always be ready to answer: Do I condemn Hamas’ atrocities? I condemn every single atrocity, whomever is the perpetrator or the victim. What I do not condemn is armed resistance to an apartheid system designed as part of a slow-burning—but inexorable—ethnic cleansing program.

Put differently, I condemn every attack on civilians while, at the same time, I celebrate anyone who risks their life to TEAR DOWN THE WALL.

Is Israel not engaged in a war for its very existence? No, it is not. Israel is a nuclear-armed state with perhaps the most technologically advanced army in the world and the panoply of the U.S. military machine having its back. There is no symmetry with Hamas, a group which can cause serious damage to Israelis but which has no capacity whatsoever to defeat Israel’s military, or even to prevent Israel from continuing to implement the slow genocide of Palestinians under the system of apartheid that has been erected with longstanding U.S. and E.U. support.

Are Israelis not justified to fear that Hamas wants to exterminate them? Of course they are! Jews have suffered a Holocaust that was preceded by pogroms and a deep-seated antisemitism permeating Europe and the Americas for centuries. It is only natural that Israelis live in fear of a new pogrom if the Israeli army folds. However, by imposing apartheid on their neighbors, by treating them like sub-humans, the Israeli state is stoking the fires of antisemitism, is strengthening Palestinians and Israelis who just want to annihilate each other, and, in the end, contributing to the awful insecurity consuming Jews in Israel and the diaspora.

Apartheid against the Palestinians is the Israelis’ worst “self-defense.”

What about antisemitism? It is always a clear and present danger. And it must be eradicated, especially amongst the ranks of the global Left and the Palestinians fighting for Palestinian civil liberties around the world.

Why don’t Palestinians pursue their objectives by peaceful means? They did. The PLO recognized Israel and renounced armed struggle. And what did they get for it? Absolute humiliation and systematic ethnic cleansing. That is what nurtured Hamas and elevated it in the eyes of many Palestinians as the only alternative to a slow genocide under Israel’s apartheid.

What should be done now? What might bring peace to Israel-Palestine? An immediate ceasefire. The release of all hostages: Hamas’ and the thousands held by Israel. A peace process, under the U.N., supported by a commitment by the international community to end apartheid and to safeguard equal civil liberties for all.

As for what must replace apartheid, it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to decide between the two-state solution and the solution of a single federal secular state.

Friends, we are here because vengeance is a lazy form of grief. We are here to promote not vengeance but peace and coexistence across Israel-Palestine. We are here to tell German democrats, including our former comrades of Die Linke, that they have covered themselves in shame long enough—that two wrongs do not one right make—that allowing Israel to get away with war crimes is not going to ameliorate the legacy of Germany’s crimes against the Jewish people.

Beyond today’s congress, we have a duty, in Germany, to change the conversation. We have a duty to persuade the vast majority of decent Germans out there that universal human rights are what matters. That “never again” means never again. For anyone, Jew, Palestinian, Ukrainian, Russian, Yemeni, Sudanese, Rwandan—for everyone, everywhere.

In this context, I am pleased to announce that DiEM25’s German political party MERA25 will be on the ballot paper in the European Parliament election this coming June—seeking the vote of German humanists who crave a member of European Parliament representing Germany and calling out the E.U.’s complicity in genocide—a complicity that is Europe’s greatest gift to the antisemites in Europe and beyond.

I salute you all and suggest we never forget that none of us are free if one of us is in chains.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Continue ReadingThe Online Speech Given by Yanis Varoufakis After German Police Raid Palestine Congress

Rule-of-Law Western Style’: Israeli Assassination Squad Kills Three in Jenin Hospital

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Security footage shows Israeli forces disguised as civilians and medical staff during a raid on Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin, a city in the occupied West Bank, on January 30, 2023.  (Photo: Screengrab via CNN)

Ibn Sina hospital’s medical director said the Palestinian men were “executed in cold blood.”

A team of Israeli forces disguised as civilians and medical staff raided Ibn Sina hospital in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday and assassinated three Palestinians, claiming without providing evidence that they were using the facility as a hideout and planning an attack inspired by the Hamas-led October 7 assault.

Journalists on the ground report that there was no apparent attempt to arrest the three individuals, whom the Israeli military identified as Mohammed Jalamneh, Mohammed Ghazawi, and his brother Basel Ghazawi. Ibn Sina’s medical director said the three men were “executed in cold blood.”

Al Jazeera reported that “Hamas confirmed that Jalamneh was one of its members.”

“The Jenin Brigade, which includes a number of Palestinian armed resistance groups, said in a statement that two of the three men were members of Islamic Jihad,” the outlet added.

A hospital spokesperson told The Associated Press that 18-year-old Basel Ghazawi “had been a patient in the hospital since October with partial paralysis.”

Security footage from the hospital shows Israeli forces dressed as civilian women and medical workers moving through a facility hallway and waiting area with assault rifles drawn.

Citing Palestinian officials, AP reported that the Israeli forces “opened fire inside the wards” of the hospital, located in the West Bank city of Jenin.

Palestinian health officials “condemned the raid and called on the international community to pressure Israel’s military to halt such operations in hospitals,” AP added. “A hospital spokesperson said there was no exchange of fire, indicating that it was a targeted killing.”

Hospitals have special protections under international law, but Israel has treated them as legitimate targets for military operations since October 7, endangering wounded patients and medical personnel by raiding and shelling the facilities at will.

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister and co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, sardonically described the Israeli forces’ Jenin hospital raid as “rule-of-law Western style” and rejected the notion that “you can kill anyone you like on a land that you are illegally occupying, brand him/her terrorist, and then vilify as antisemites the ancestors of everyone who questions your right to kill anyone you like on a land that you are illegally occupying.”

Al Jazeera‘s Charles Stratford, reporting from Ramallah, said Tuesday that “the Israeli army often surrounds and in some instances has attacked the three Palestinian hospitals in Jenin during nightly raids on the city.”

“But this is the first time they have entered a civilian medical facility in what seems to have been a well-planned, targeted assassination operation that Palestinian authorities are calling another violation of international law,” said Stratford.

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingRule-of-Law Western Style’: Israeli Assassination Squad Kills Three in Jenin Hospital

‘Dangerous and Desperate’: Sunak’s Net-Zero Flip Condemned by Left, Right, and Center

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

One of the many occasions UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak uses a private jet.
One of the many occasions UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak uses a private jet.

“Sunak’s U-turn today will be devastating for the people of the U.K. and for the planet we call home,” warned one Scottish Green. “It’s nothing short of evil.”

Critics across the political spectrum—from Conservative members of Parliament and corporations to Greens and climate campaigners—reacted with anger and resolve Wednesday following the announcement by U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that his Tory government would retreat from some of its key net-zero commitments.

Speaking Wednesday at the Downing Street Press Briefing Room in London, Sunak said his government is still committed to reaching net-zero by 2050, but in a “more proportionate way” that would bring a “greener planet and a more prosperous future.”

The rollback will reportedly include delaying a ban on the sale of petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles from 2030 to 2035, pushing back the phaseout of gas boilers, scrapping energy efficiency targets for some homes, dropping recycling plans, and canceling a planned air travel tax.

“This is a U-turn that will leave the Tories facing in the opposite direction of almost everyone, and finally end their hopes of reelection.”

“No one can deny climate change is happening,” Sunak said, adding that the county needs “sensible green leadership” instead of false choices that “never go beyond a slogan.”

However, Conservative peer Lord Zac Goldsmith — who resigned his ministerial post earlier this summer due to what he called Sunak’s climate “apathy” — called the prime minister’s reversal “a moment of shame.”

“His short stint as PM will be remembered as the moment the U.K. turned its back on the world and on future generations,” he added.

Shadow Climate Secretary Ed Miliband led Labour condemnation of the reversal, which he called “a complete farce from a Tory government that literally does not know what they are doing day to day.”

Brighton Pavilion Green MP Caroline Lucas slammed what she called Sunak’s “coordinated, calculated, and catastrophic rollback.”

“What this all reveals is that Sunak really doesn’t seem to care about the climate in the slightest—it’s little more than an afterthought,” Lucas wrote in a Guardian opinion piece published Wednesday.

Sunak must call a general election by January 2025, and his Tories are trailing the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls amid persistently high inflation, slow economic growth, and rising inequality.

“If Sunak mistakenly thinks the climate is merely a political device to draw dividing lines between his party and Labour, he will fail on his own terms,” wrote Lucas. “All it will do is draw an ever-greater divide between him and the people he seeks to govern.”

Climate campaigners roundly condemned Sunak’s decision.

“The government needs to double down now, not U-turn,” Kennedy Walker, a U.K. organizer with the climate action group 350.org, said in a statement. “We have the opportunity to show what a transition to a greener economy that works for people and the planet can look like; we need to hold leadership to account to make sure it happens and they follow through on their own promises.”

Riffing on the government’s “long-term decisions for a brighter future” slogan, Extinction Rebellion U.K. wrote on the social media site X: “Short-term decisions for a shitter future. Remember, this government took £3.5 million in donations from Big Oil and other industries before licensing new gas and oil.”

Many companies including automaker Ford and energy giant E.ON joined in criticism of the rollback.

“Our business needs three things from the U.K. government: ambition, commitment, and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three,” Ford U.K. chair Lisa Brankin said Wednesday. “We need the policy focus trained on bolstering the EV market in the short term and supporting consumers while headwinds are strong: infrastructure remains immature, tariffs loom, and cost-of-living is high.”

Some critics noted that Sunak’s announcement came on the same day the leaders of many nations—but not Britain or the world’s two top carbon polluters, China and the United States—gathered in New York for the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit.

“We’re in a climate emergency. The deadly impacts of climate change are here now and we have to act urgently,” Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan—the only U.K. speaker at the summit — told The Guardian Wednesday. “We have seen record high temperatures in London earlier this month and the hottest ever July. Over the last two years, we have experienced unprecedented wildfires and flash floods, destroying homes and livelihoods.”

“This government’s response flies in the face of common sense and shows they are climate delayers,” Khan added. “It beggars belief that not only are they watering down vital commitments, but they are also passing up the opportunity to create green jobs, wealth, and lower energy bills—as well as failing to give investors the certainty they need to boost the green economy.”

Sunak’s reversal also infuriated many people in Scotland.

“Rishi Sunak has blood on his hands,” National Union of Students Scotland president and Scottish Young Greens co-convener Ellie Gomersall toldThe National. “His excuse? It’s too costly. Well then all the more kudos to the Scottish government who are still moving forward with net-zero policies like low-emission zones, phasing out gas boilers, cheaper public transport, all the while on a budget severely restrained by the confines of devolution.”

“And of course when the Scottish government does try to implement simple yet effective measures like a deposit return scheme, Westminster comes along and blocks it,” she added. “Sunak’s U-turn today will be devastating for the people of the U.K. and for the planet we call home. It’s nothing short of evil.”

Alistair Heather, a Scottish writer and TV presenter, told The National that he was “almost pleased” by Sunak’s announcement.

“This is a U-turn that will leave the Tories facing in the opposite direction of almost everyone, and finally end their hopes of reelection,” he explained. “For mainstream voters, who understand that a clear, urgent movement of travel towards a green future is the best chance we have of mitigating the worst effects of the climate collapse, the Tories have made themselves completely unelectable. Good… Fuck the Tories. Mon the independence.”

“With the Left AWOL, our species is being quick-marched to extinction.”

The outrage was felt far beyond U.K. shores.

“At a time when the U.K. should be providing global leadership in transitioning off fossil fuels, especially in recognition of the impact its historical emissions have had in bringing about the climate crisis, the U.K. government is considering backtracking on already insufficient commitments,” 350.org Europe regional director Nicolò Wojewoda said in a statement.

Yanis Varoufakis, a former Greek finance minister who heads the left-wing MeRA25 party, wrote on X that “Sunak’s U-turn is a reflection of the total Europe-wide collapse of the market-based, neoliberal consensus on how to tackle the climate crisis. It marks the center‐right’s new path.”

“And with the Left AWOL,” he added, “our species is being quick-marched to extinction.”

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘Dangerous and Desperate’: Sunak’s Net-Zero Flip Condemned by Left, Right, and Center

Varoufakis Details Vision for Ending ‘Global Empire of Capital’ to Avert Catastrophe

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Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Yanis Varoufakis. Image: Olaf Kosinsky (kosinsky.eu) Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0-de

Creating a new international economic order “sounds like an impossible dream,” said the former Greek finance minister, but “not more impossible than the principle of one person, one vote, or of the end of the divine right of kings once sounded.”

KENNY STANCILDecember 12, 2022

Humanity faces a grim fate because the global ruling class refuses to depart from the capitalist status quo even as their quest to maximize profits intensifies the climate crisis and the prospects of a nuclear war. But with enough solidarity, progressives around the world can build an egalitarian, democratic, peaceful, and sustainable society.

That’s the message shared Monday by former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who outlined his vision for how the left can work together to end the “global empire of capital” and forge a humane future—part of a Progressive International-led effort to chart a path toward a “New International Economic Order for the 21st century.”

Varoufakis began by noting that “we have never been closer to a nuclear holocaust than today,” as the doomsday clock that scientists invented in the 1940s quickly approaches midnight. Meanwhile, there is another clock “counting down to the moment humanity will have passed the point of no return from climate catastrophe.”

“What is the global ruling class doing to avert these twin calamities?” asked Varoufakis. “Their best to push humanity over both cliffs at once.”

“They have started a new Cold War,” said Varoufakis. “They are pursuing white-hot endless wars around the world—wars that help them sell more weapons than ever.”

“They are drilling with renewed gusto for oil and gas, while delivering speeches on environmental protection,” he continued. “They are turning the screws on workers everywhere, while waxing lyrical about social responsibility.”

“Enough of their hypocrisy, their war-mongering, their financialization of lives, and the privatization of our commons,” Varoufakis declared. “Progressives of the world refuse to take sides on this new ‘cold’ hot war. We are instead building a new non-aligned movement to fight for humanity’s survival by working for peace, solidarity, and cooperation,” he added, referring to the assemblage of Third World nations that refused in the wake of decolonization and throughout the Cold War to side with either the United States or the Soviet Union.

According to Varoufakis, the “one thing” that undercuts cooperation, solidarity, and peace is “the reign of capital over labor and the debt bondage it inflicts upon the majority everywhere—in the Global South, but also in the Global North.”

As the 50th anniversary of the United Nations’ 1974 adoption of the original non-aligned movement’s proposals for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) nears, Varoufakis argued that to turn progressives’ yearning for a NIEO into reality, a revived non-aligned movement must “direct large quantities of money into the things humanity craves, from plentiful green energy to public health to public education and poverty alleviation.”

Just imagine, said Varoufakis, if existing international financial institutions were restructured and invested “10% of global income into the green transition, especially in the developing world.”

“Unless we bring down the global empire of increasingly concentrated capital, there is no chance we can end wars, eradicate poverty, or avert climate disaster.”

“Of course,” he acknowledged, “this will remain a dream unless our movement manages to dismantle the global empire of capital.”

To end “the tyranny of capital over people” and reclaim “plundered commons on land, in the oceans, in the air, and soon in outer space,” Varoufakis called for two key reforms.

The first is to ensure that “corporations belong to the people who work in them on the basis of one person, one share, one vote,” said Varoufakis. The second is to deny “banks a monopoly over peoples’ transactions.”

Once that happens, banks and profits will “wither as society’s main drivers,” the political economist argued, “because the banks will be defanged” and the distinction between profits and wages erased. “The simultaneous euthanasia of the labor markets and the share markets, along with the defanging of the banks, will automatically redistribute wealth and as a magnificent byproduct, remove the main incentives for waging war.”

Moreover, “the end of capital’s power over society will allow communities collectively to decide health provision, education, [and] investment in saving the environment from our virus-like growth,” he continued. “Genuine democracy will at last be possible, to be practiced in the citizens’ and the workers’ assemblies—not behind the closed doors where oligarchs and bureaucrats gather.”

Varoufakis admitted that “the twin democratization of capital and of money sounds like an impossible dream.” However, he countered, “not more impossible than the principle of one person, one vote, or of the end of the divine right of kings once sounded.”

“Unless we bring down the global empire of increasingly concentrated capital, there is no chance we can end wars, eradicate poverty, or avert climate disaster,” said Varoufakis. “This twin democratization is nothing short of a precondition for our species’ survival.”

The former Greek finance minister concluded by calling on progressives everywhere “to unite in a common struggle not just for humanity’s survival but for a chance at giving every child that is born tomorrow and in the future a chance at a successful life… on a livable planet, where war has become extinct, along with poverty and fear.”

Varoufakis’ address is part of a campaign that Progressive International launched last Thursday at the People’s Forum in New York City, where scholars and policymakers from around the world met “to present, deliberate, and develop proposals for a New International Economic Order fit for the 21st century.”

In a pair of videos shared Monday, Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of the thinkers who participated in last week’s discussion, stressed the need to ditch neoliberal policies, to “claw back some of the rights that we have lost over the past 50 years, and to reinvent what we see as a just, equitable, sustainable, viable international economy.”

To start with, policymakers must “undo the major privatizations” of the past half-century, said Ghosh. Alluding to the ongoing refusal of wealthy countries and pharmaceutical corporations to share know-how and transfer technology that would enable the expanded production of Covid-19 vaccines, tests, and treatments, she also called for action to address “the concentration of knowledge, which has become something that is actually obscene and actively killing people.”

As part of its campaign to win a fresh U.N. declaration on a NIEO by 2024, Progressive International has also launched The Internationalist, a subscription-based newsletter featuring exclusive interviews; accounts of struggle from trade union, social movement, and political leaders; academic research; translations; art; and more.

The latest edition includes an interview with Andrés Arauz, an economist and former minister of knowledge and human talent under ex-Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. The conversation with Arauz, who narrowly lost the 2021 presidential election in Ecuador and was part of last week’s panel convened by Progressive International, focuses on the “political economy of under-development in the Global South.”

During last week’s event, Yusnier Romero Puentes, deputy permanent representative of Cuba to the U.N., announced that the Cuban government had invited Progressive International to host a NIEO-focused summit in Havana on January 25, 2023.

Progressive International general coordinator David Adler told the audience that “we are again in a moment of rapid geopolitical transformation with the end of the unipolar domination of the United States—but we lack a common vision of the multipolar world that is now in formation.”

“Next month in Havana, we will bring together governments, political representatives, popular movements, scholars, and policymakers to start the process of constructing that common vision and building the power to bring it about,” he added.

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Continue ReadingVaroufakis Details Vision for Ending ‘Global Empire of Capital’ to Avert Catastrophe