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

um China is about to flood Europe with cheap microprocessors and electric vehicles. Israel is currently on the verge of seeing a second NABA war crime. I think the ethnic cleansing the EU was looking for to try to start a run on the Hungarian currency. uh, America is polarized and seemingly disoriented. potentially years from now facing a state of collapse and a revolutionary state in the Middle East has quite successfully blocked a strategic choke point for Global um Logistics and it's only February, it's only February and what this tells us is that we live in a moment of deep disturbance. transformational change and I don't mean the trivial cliché that we have been told for the last 25 years is actually happening.

Some of these changes happen once in a generation, some once in a century, some once in several centuries, such big moments. and big events demand big ideas and I can think of no one better to discuss big ideas than tonight's guest, Jan Faracis, former Minister of Finance, academic, economist, author of his most recent book Techn Feudalism. I think it's available for BU on the front. I saw him signing copies uh very meticulously before it's an exceptional book exceptional book uh I really enjoyed it

yanis

thank you for joining us on Downstream IRL good evening thank you very much for being here it's so good to be together with so many people after the confinement Years of loneliness and two-dimensional zoom and , you know, the total disconnection we all felt during that time, thank you Aaron for doing this, thank you Novara Media for existing in a world where the media is complicit in genocide, so what are we?

What do you want to talk about? I want to talk about so many things. I want to talk about China, Russia, obviously, we'll talk about Israel, Europe, the United States, we only have an hour, that's the problem, so we'll talk. Those things for an hour first How are you? How is your life treating Yanis Faracis? You've had a very hectic few years. Look, I'm remarkably well to the point that I feel guilty for being well in a world, you know, that constantly finds newness. ways to depress us uh, it managed to depress me a lot in June because they are small but vociferous and I think it is a very Progressive Party.

On March 25 in Greece we had nine seats in the Ggree Parliament, we managed to lose them in June, um and guess who. They were beaten by a fascist party called the Spartans, it's the Golden Dawn Nazi Revival, so I spent at least a month in severe depression and found it very difficult to get out of bed, but I got over it and I'm doing great now, but you already know. Individually we can be well, we have the duty to be well individually but collectively we are depressed, aren't we? This is a terrible world and our political leadership, especially the leadership of the left, is primarily responsible for the crimes against humanity and against logic what is happening k starma OMG OMG ol de Schultz in Germany the leader of the SPD who is the leader of the left in Austria I don't even know because no one cares they have a communist mayor in um Gratz yes, in fact, in fact and they light up the atmosphere and they have a government supported by the far right, yes, in Vienna, so you know we really need to pull ourselves together and um there's a vast majority of people out there are good decent progressive people and yet our political sphere. is constantly expelling from its ranks anyone who doesn't parrot the establishment's serial nonsense or support policies like, for example, the genocide in Gaza, so I want to talk about a lot of things, like I said, Europe, China, the United States United, but given this is what you feel very passionately have you started this um you said that the center left is complicit in what is happening in Gaza what is your opinion on that because of course a secular person could be watching or listening and thinking, well, look at the Conservatives are in power.

A different story, of course, from Joe Biden in the United States, a normally progressive person who has really given Israel a target to commit war crimes. Why is Labor responsible when they are in opposition? Because if the opposition is center-left. party is supporting the orchestrated genocide in Israel, which legitimizes the government that is supporting the orchestrated genocide of Palestinians in Israel and means that there is no hope for any representation of the people who say they wait for a second massacre and the insidious SDI of Zionism that is essentially white supremacy, settler colonialism along with prison camps and mass extermination, that's what they are doing since 1948 and having the support of the left means there can be no hope, I mean if you are Rish sunak Kama you have done your job for you in legitimizing their complicity in what is happening in Gaza, so at this point of um Israel, what should the solution be, um, in quotes, because you just made a criticism there of Zionism that, again, someone could listen and feel an instant emotional response, but many of the things you are talking about have been well documented, it is at least a very evil form of ultranationalism, at least I don't think it can be denied in any way, how do you solve this ?, if that is the creature that we are dealing with or the world is dealing with and it has the backing of I think probably the only military superpower in the world.

It is 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 is not our job to tell you, our job is to maintain the kind of narrative and political campaign that consistently 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, the Europeans, are to blame, not Hamas, not the Israeli settlers, not even Netanyahu, and I will explain to them that please continue.

I will explain to them that for centuries we have been harassing them. Jews from one pgam to the next Europeans not only the Nazis the British the Croats the Russians the Ukrainians the Greeks the Italians we have been persecuting the Jews for centuries and then of course this C series of programs and persecutions ended with a holocaust, the German Nazis are mainly responsible for the Holocaust, but it is not only them, the Croatian 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 obeyed in the Holocaust and then when it was no longer fashionable to be anti-Semitic after 94 45 remember what King George said the problem with Mr.

Hitler is that he made the moderate type of anti-Semitism impossible remember he said that in 1945 um well, so the Europeans adopted Zionism now, what is Zionism? only that it is ultra-nationalist and right-wing and all that, from where I am, no Zionism can be summed up in the slogan that was invented at the beginning of the 20th century, which is a land without a people for a people without a land, now that it is white supremacism when The British landed in New South Wales, in Australia, they immediately declared that the land of Australia was Teran nullius, an empty land, a land without people, so the 5 and a half million aborigines were simply not people, which was the beginning of the genocide. because when you say that 5 million people are not people who have a license to kill, they have a license to massacre, they have a license to genocide, then that was your case.

Zionism has many different currents within it, there are left-wing Zionists, there are right-wing Zionists, they are socialist Zionists, but what they have in common is that they do not recognize that Palestinians existed or exist today, they talk about them as Arabs, you know they could having gone to another country, the earth is people, less people, so you have the largest alliance, the most toxic. between anti-Semitism and white supremacism, that is Zionism in the United States, have you seen those photographs of American Nazis with sasas and Israeli flags? It sounds, at first it seems like a contradiction, how can you hold aasa with one hand and the Star with the other? from David, not if you are a far-right American Zionist because you think all Jews should go there the same way Europeans went to the United States to kill all the natives.

Native Americans go there so we don't have you. among us and if you are also a religious fundamentalist you believe that your Jerusalem should be Jewish so that the second coming can come and Christ can then raise your dead in Minnesota, all the sensible people that you know in the forefront of us. politics um yeah, to conclude the point, just so you know that it is perfectly compatible to be anti-semitic and 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, that's why the truly anti-Semitic European political leaders were Zionists, they sided with Zionism, okay, and since 1948 the apartheid Israeli state is trying to create a kind of confluence to bring together the slogan of the Zionists with facts about The ground the slogan of the Zionists was still a land without a people for a people without a land and the facts on the ground were that there were many Palestinians there who we have to get rid of now that is the job of the IDF so we are responsible for that ourselves.

We Europeans are responsible for that because our war on the Holocaust is deserved, we should feel guilty for the Holocaust for which we are responsible. The Holocaust is being used as a cover and excuse for the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Do you think liberals, especially in Europe, understand that Israel could actually be the future of European politics? I think it could be the future of the West, which is let's say ethnically religiously homogeneous uh culturally homogeneous um highly militarized uh you know, I was recently talking to a Palestinian Instagrammer um, we'll put that interview on Downstream on our YouTube channel, extraordinary man, you know , he has 800,000 people on his account, he is a journalist, he is telling these stories, he lost his sister and he has seven children at once and they are still in the rubble and I was listening to his story, the youngest was a month old and then I go on my Twitter account and people complain about being offended. on a college campus and I say, well, I'm sorry to hear that.

I don't like that you're offended. I don't like that you know graffiti or whatever. F, that's bad, this is much worse, huh, but what's interesting? What I'm saying is that people in the center who say they believe in the rule of law and human rights do not understand the extent to which Israel is sabotaging, in quotes, the rules-based order of international law or what exists of it, and We saw it decades ago with nuclear nonproliferation. It already happened, we were not destined 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 start to happen with human rights, the disappearance. of a believer in universalism because there are fascists all over Europe saying this is exactly what we want, we want high birth rates, we want to expel immigrants, uh, and we want to encourage a kind of social policy and quite a bit of solidarity. which is based on the opposite of multiculturalism, so why do some liberals who claim to believe in all of this also support a project that is the complete anthesis of it?

Look, the reason I'm leftist is because I'm not ready. prepared to outsource the concept of Freedom to so-called liberals who don't give a damn about liberalism. Look at the authors of the American Constitution and their Prelude to the Bill of Rights, which is a beautiful poem dedicated to Liberty, Jefferson. all these people had slaves, they were slave owners and you know, Jefferson, even when he died, he didn't live, heh heh, he didn't put a clause in his will that would free his slaves, that's why the greatest poems in honor of Liberty They have been written by people who were slave owners, I think that tells you everything you need to know about the hypocrisy of liberals.

Similarly, you know, take Nick's leg, where do I remind him? Why do I remind Nick of this name? Wow, why do I remember this name? He was the leader of the Liberal party in that frivolous and ridiculous Coalition with the Bulls um and one of the first things he did was put his signature on legislation that severely restricted the basic human rights of the people of Great Britain against all principles of the liberal party. They are not liberals. These people claim that they use the term to deny the substance, but beyond that, that connects with Jefferson when Jefferson talked about the beauty of freedom, he was not referring to worms, or chickens, or black people, He wasn't referring to worms, or chickens, or black people. for half-blacks like me, who know the Mediterranean, the so-called wogs, yes, yes, people who are deeply tanned or lightly tanned, so it all depends on, I mean, David Hume had this concept of centric circles that you are in in the center of a series of concentric circlesand, according to David Hume in his treatises on human nature, people who are further and further away from that series of concentric circles care less, so liberals are the people for whom those people agree that There is a circle that matters to them. white men and maybe some honorary men who happen to be women like Thatcher, for example, 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, and immediately after that, there. there are the non-humans for whom there are no Universal rights and that Circle of those who know the circle that determines the border lineseparate and segregate those who legitimately have universal human rights and those who do not, that is quite malleable, so Saddam Hussein used to be, You know, they're a friendly bastard, you know the joke about how Blair and Cheney knew. he had chemical weapons, they kept the receipts.

I remind you that in 1983 there was a launch missile. An Iraqi exit missile purchased by the F from the French hit a US Navy ship and killed quite a few US Navy sailors, sending Cheney back. then to befriend you, you know, effectively put it on your back, he says, okay, yes, there was friendly fire for the Circle to expand and contract depending on the interests of the so-called liberal establishment. They are not liberals, they are just an establishment. At this point, this is notable, so it was a couple, I think it was a couple hundred US Marines.

I think in the early 80's they were murdered by the Iraqis, that's okay and they were immediately forgiven because Saddam Hussein was their bastard. I remember when I lived in Britain then and I remember that maybe Jeremy was Jeremy Corin and he was with us, so there was a group of us demonstrating in front of the Iraqi embassy against Saddam Hussein because he killed tens of thousands of Kurds using chemical weapons that Britain provided. So we were here in London demonstrating in front of the Iraqi embassy and Thatcher's metropolitan police came after us as if we were the worst enemies of the state, with the mountain police they beat us, arrested us and all that, imagine, I have to use a Greek. word aporia meaning the feeling of perplexity when a few years later, a few years later, because people like me and I'm sure you and definitely Jeremy and Tony Ben back then opposed the notion that it was in the interest of humanity invade massively.

Iraq and killing 1 million people, we were described as servants of Saddam Hussein by the same people who armed him in 1983 and beat us for protesting against him, you know, but that never ends in 2001, back in Athens, at the University of Athens. I remember attending a meeting of the Senate of the University of Athens I was a professor I was the government of Greece had just sent to the Senate a request for us to grant Mr. Putin an honorary doctorate and I was in a junior position in the Senate calling him a war criminal because he had just killed 250,000 Chen to solidify his regime today they call me Putin's servant again, that never ends back then Putin in 2001 was the blue-eyed boy of the Western establishment, not only the Greek, the British, well, everyone thought Putin was cool, so you know where, how I started saying all this.

I think you said it never ends and then you GOT it in, but quickly on this, oh yeah, the hypocrisy of the Liberals don't give a damn about the freedom we have, yeah, in Iraq, we don't know the half of it, we really don't know the half. . Saddam Hussein was using industrial quantities of chemical weapons against Iran from 1980 to 1988. Not once, not twice, hundreds of times, I think we're talking almost 20,000 chemical weapons projectiles. The Americans gave them the positions of the Iranian forces knowing that he would use those weapons. In fact, they asked him to bomb them like crazy, you see, and they're the good guys. guys, they asked him to bomb them to bomb Iran because Iran had just organized the anti-American Islamic revolution, remember the confrontation with the American diplomats at the US embassy in Teran, etc., and Saddam Hussein took his marginal orders of the United States invaded Iran, it did not invade Iran of its own volition, it was financed by the Emirates and particularly by Kuwait, well this is not a detour, that was the reason why it later did Kuwait because it wants to have its debt forgiven war.

Anyway, we've talked about Iraq enough, we've talked about Russia, we've talked about Blair, we've talked about Nick, I'm sorry, I don't know what happened. Something feels a little off. the historical figures of the world and, um, the head of meta communications anyway, um, uh, let's talk about the United States, um, this is in the last few months, obviously, we are seeing events in the Red Sea, the total Joe Biden's inability to reign in Netanyahu. Is this just a weak leader at one point in history or does it point to something else which is really the demise of an Empire that has been coterminous with a global capitalist economy for the last century.

I wish I could agree with you that they are the ones who reflect the decline in the power of the United States. I don't think it does at all, uh, and I don't see any changes at all. Has a US president ever opposed Israel's genocide of the Palestinians, the nakba, the six-day war? the Americans were behind them, you know, their satellites guided Israeli missiles in the 60s, 70s and 80s, today, every piece of weaponry that the Israeli army, air force and navy have comes from the United States. United as we speak, they are given those You know, as we speak, 10,000 pound bombs are being delivered through Creit and Alexandris to Greek ports.

This is the route, not the Silk Road, but you know, the road of death that American weapons take to reach Israel. Biden is not weaker than Reagan. was or was Obama or Lyndon Johnson before that, there has been a consistent policy of treating Israel as America's bully in the Middle East, but it's not just Israel, so obviously you have and I'm not suggesting that this is a good thing. . an increasingly belligerent and assertive Russia, we have an increasingly prosperous and technologically advanced China, are we moving? I guess I'll rephrase the question from a unipolar world to a multipolar world and what that means because you sound skeptical of the idea of ​​us moving towards multipolarity. oh, there is certainly no multipolarity, what there is is a new

cold

war between the United States and China, that's all.

Russia is insignificant, I mean, it is important if you are Ukrainian and you are bombed, there is no doubt about that. but again, if you are in South Sudan and you are caught in the Civil War in South Sudan, your life is not better than if you are in Khv or you know parts of Donbas, but if you look if you want. look at the concentration of economic, financial, technological and military power, you have to focus on the United States and China, the European Union is the stupid continent that it is. I was talking to the president of Mexico, you know, that me and me.

We were visiting him a few months ago in Mexico City and you know that he is a comrade, he is a friend and he is the president of Mexico, right, so he was telling me with pain in his heart that you know that he is very pro-European, eh, he is culturally very. near Europe is under the belly of the Beast, the United States and trades with China and says he was asking me for some sources of hope for Europe to stop being irrelevant and I couldn't provide any because we are deindustrializing, we have missed the next Revolution Industrial, so green technology and big tech are gone, we have nothing to compete with either the United States or China and we are increasingly stagnating and proving and reconfirming my claim that they are stupid and irrelevant continents, Uh, China.

Significant Russia is more important than the telegraph, the Times and The Guardian would like to present it 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 people in Russia don't use dollars, they use rubles, so it's not about how many dollars they have to buy bullets, but how many rubles they have to buy Russian bullets, and they have quite a few of Those, um, but there is no dynamism, it is shrinking demographically, there is immigration from Russia, not only now because of this since the Soviet Union collapsed, um, but you know, the main concern is, um, the new

cold

war that Donald Trump started. against China and you know, we had this discussion when it was in October because it's part of chapter six of my book M.

I had a question. I was baffled why Trump would start a cold war against China. Remember it started when it banned a Chinese telecommunications company, Huawei, from operating in the United States and then it banned another z z t and then another and then it introduced serious uh TS on aluminum exports and so on and so on and of course as far as you know. You could say Ah, that's Trump, what do you expect? He's crazy, but then Joe Biden is elected and instead of reversing this cold war against China, he accused him twice, it was like the Australians say he gets angry, he presented a bill by which he banned everything. sales of advanced microchips to China this is like telling Beijing that we will do everything we can to prevent it from becoming a technologically advanced country, that is a declaration of economic war, declaration of economic war, so that puzzled me and I was wondering why that.

Would they do that if you ask the American diplomats, the politicians, the media, the people who say, oh Taiwan, come on, throw another one why Taiwan is important 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 it? did everything they could to get China into the World Trade Organization and all the iPhones were produced in Shenzhen, you know, and Shanghai, etc., they wanted to invade Taiwan back then, they claimed it was theirs, so that's not the case. may be the reason why it didn't change that is and then when they tell me but they are spying on us what are the Americans complaining about that someone is spying on them the NSA is spying on all of us, including Sunak, you know what He says better than he does because he forgets very easily, so it can't be that and you know what my explanation is.

I told you last time, but these people weren't there. China is the only country that has developed this new form of capital that I call Cloud Capital, which is the part of capital that when accumulated gives its owner the greatest power, it is the limit capital that lives inside your phone, the algorithmic capital powered by AI, which is not new, it has been happening for 10 15 years now if you think about it, there is no British or European competitor to Google, Facebook, um amazon.com, Uber, Airbnb, any of these platforms . None, no British, no German, no French, no Indian, a competitor for 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, imagine an application that we don't have here in Europe or in Great Britain, if you don't want to be considered European, I don't know. why wouldn't you, but maybe not, um, you don't have an app that allows you to watch movies like Netflix, call a car, a taxi like Uber, tweet to do that, and also send money. pay to make free payments to anyone in the world for free without charge no bank charge attached that application does not exist in the West the Chinese have it like this to the extent that the United States remains hegemonic because it has a monopoly on all payment systems : when you pay someone, even within Great Britain, that payment reaches the other person to whom you make the payment through a system entirely controlled by the United States, not the Bank of England, nor by England or the European Union totally by the United States, that's why it explains that people understand that if you are using Visa or PayPal, people understand that, Visa and PayPal are all American, but a bank and a bank transfer, how are you?

It is possible to make 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 prevent you from making a payment from Lloyd's Bank to Norwest inside London after the second war world. Europe and Great Britain did not have a payment system, we were in ashes, after World War II, the European continent was in real ashes and Great Britain was bankrupt, so when Breton Woods rebuilt the financial system through the system of central banks , the international payments bank and all that Swift you have You've seen the acronym Swift, this whole system is an electronic payment system, a messaging system that sends messages to One Bank, you know that 10 35 p goes from here to there, That system is totally controlled by the United States because it was the United States that created it later.

Breon Woods in 1944 and that remains to this day, so back to the question: are we watching? NoI say the end of the American Empire. I completely agree with you on that, but its disappearance potentially removes certain parts of the world. world, maybe Western Asia, um, what we saw at the end of last year that the Retreat took place, sorry, when did you see the Retreat take place? Okay, if anything, they're increasing their presence in West Asia, I think we'll find out, but here's the thing. so again, I'm sure a lot of people here, of all people, are potential Navara supporters, I hope, or Novara viewers or listeners.

People with a lot of information, but a lot of people don't know that you know that there have been over 100 attacks against the American military in Syria Iraq, you have had the Iranians take ships on one side of the Arabian Peninsula. Obviously you have the Red Sea on the other. There is a region at war right now, for sure, and it is a war against the United States. I mean, we. By the way, nothing that happens against the US is reported as such, Iran supported the Iraqis in Iraq against the Americans in Iraq, that is the Iraqis, but Iran supported organizations apparently throughout the region and it feels like it's um, it's a crucial moment actually for us the Empire and that part of the world and look, I'm not suggesting that he's going to retreat, he's out, but he seems to be under increased pressure military, political, in West Asia It is the vanguard of all this that has been around for a long time and could be repeated. the same argument regarding Taiwan, of course, they've been making it for a long time, the point is that now China can execute something like this in a way that it couldn't have done 30 or 40 years ago.

I'd like to go on a tangent for just a minute and then let's get back to the question about the United States in China because you mentioned Iran. I am very conflicted, very conflicted because, on the one hand, my heart and my mind are committed and dedicated to the lives of women. Revolution of Freedom within Iran against theocracy these are our comrades women life Freedom at the same time what the Americans want to do by overthrowing the regime in Iran is to create another fragmented and destructive regime like the one they inflicted on Iraq, so why That's what I?

I'm saying that I'm conflicted: I don't want the United States to defeat Iran and the United States to win in that part of the world, but at the same time I don't want the Iraqi regime in Iran to maintain its authority over women in particular because we have gender. aside on Iran, okay, I just wanted to state that I am confused and conflicted I close the parenthesis, let's come back now, unfortunately, this confrontation between the United States on the one hand on the one hand and Iran on the other, together with various forces, you know, among the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Houis, etc., who may be backed by Iran, it is not bad to be backed by Iran, um, they have agency, although the Houis are by not being led by Iran, they can receive weapons of Iran, it's like saying you know the Vietnamese were, because they were backed by the Soviet Union, that they were led by the Soviet Union, they weren't, they were waging a National Liberation struggle and they would. accept weapons from whoever gave them um however I don't see if if I were in the Pentagon I wouldn't be worried about the developments in the military field what I would be worried about are the developments in the field fintech financial technology um field because the Chinese with the that we talked about and in particular something that I have not yet mentioned, the digital currency of the Central Bank of China, are creating circumstances that can easily undermine the monopoly that the dollar has in international transactions because all the power of the Americans of the United States all this panoply of force is based on the US dollar.

The US economy is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of the world economy. The US economy is deep in the red. They have a huge trade surplus. Sorry, huge trade deficit since 1968. They have a huge budget deficit of 6 and a half percent every year. Budget deficit, so they need other people's money. They are the only empire in the history of humanity that gets stronger the more mentally they are, what allows them to do that is that. they print the world currency, the dollar, so if you're a capitalist, a German capitalist, a Chinese capitalist to this day, right? um you need to sell to the Americans 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 are a Chinese capitalist in Shanghai or in Frankfurt and you have all these dollars and What do you do with those dollars?

You can't spend them in Germany or China, so you take them to Wall Street and invest them in real estate in stocks mostly American debt, so you're financing the American government to build the armies and have aircraft carriers in the East, so That is the nexus around which American power revolves, the dollar, the Chinese threaten with that. because now, if you are a capitalist, if you are a bag of money, if you are from Saudi Arabia with many billions, you know someone from Abu Dhabi, an imam from Indonesia, an imam from Malaysia, you are really thinking twice before to put all your eggs in the dollar. basket Why?

Because you saw that the Americans just confiscated 400 billion dollars of Russian money. I'm not going to judge that. This is not an argument about whether they should have done it or not, it is a fact that they did it that way. if you are an idiot from Dubai or a rich stinker, usually a bastard from Indonesia, because to be rich in Indonesia you can't be a good person, or in Greece, and you have all these billions, you think they got angry. Go to Putin's men and they took his money. What about me? I'm not the best guy in the world.

Maybe tomorrow they will be angry with me, so you are not going to put all your money in the Chinese digital currency, but you. I'll put some of that in there just for myself, yeah, Plan B in case the Americans come and that's a clear and present danger to American hegemony. Therefore, and here is my explanation, you have the new Cold War, the Americans are attacking technological evolution. of Chinese fintech, the combination of big tech and the financial sector because they want to kill this payment system, you know, before it grows and challenges the US dollar, the US dollar digital system, so the microprocesses that you mentioned, which was this one.

However last year we were not going to send microprocessors to China smaller than a certain size which is in all applications by the way. I think last year China spent more on imports maybe not last year but the year before on microprocessors than As for gasoline, the amount of money it spends on these things is absolutely extraordinary and, by the way, it is the largest oil consumer in the history of humanity. They are spending more on importing microprocessors, so obviously this is an important part of our strategy and I think. that's undeniable, they want to take into account their ability to create artificial intelligence applications, you know, 5G Internet, etc., sure, but in terms of infrastructure, I want to fit us in now with Europe because you are saying that Europe is fine. but you are saying that these two powers there is a game now between China and the United States.

Europe clearly has to make some kind of decision now, what or maybe not? Maybe don't say that, what I find really interesting here in Britain in The first line of this whole debate is that Huawei got kicked out a couple of years ago, now they got the email from Washington to kick them out and they did what they were told, yeah, and they were building 5G U 5G infrastructure at the time and I. I'm sure people here know this, we don't have 5G in this country, your phone might say 5G, it's not faster than 4G, that's a lie, we have Placebo 5G, it's true because the Chinese don't build it anymore, that's it and that is a very material consequence of launching ourselves next to the United States, uh, we do not have the level of technological innovation that we should have if we continue to listen to all the politicians that we want to be, you know, high technology, high productivity, our 5G does not works. the 5G built in Tajikistan by Chinese engineers is going to be better, from a European perspective, when it comes to things like 5G or efficient and effective payment systems, etc., it is a question of and this is very relevant for Greece, yenis, because we are geographically much closer, right?

Will the new Silk Road reach Airus and Athens? What is your reading on the issue of the technological backwardness of your telecommunications system here in Britain? I have good news for you, Germany. It's worse Be glad, they still use faxes in their ministries no, seriously, seriously German ministries still work with faxes why because of austerity because of austerity because for 15 years of belt-tightening by the German State means that they did not invest in technologies that have been left behind. That is why Germany is now deindustrializing. Let me clarify this point because I think it's really crucial.

Then I'll go back to Britain and the Silk Road and all that, take the electric car, which is the future. You may not like it. I personally don't like it. I like them because I'm old fashioned and I like to listen to the gasoline engine, don't tell my friends in the green movement that it's okay, I'm an old biker, what can I do? I once drove an electric motorcycle, it was really very powerful, fantastic. I hated that it didn't smell like anything anyway, again close support, now the electric car is a is the death of the German auto industry, it's not that there will be no car production in Germany, they will produce as many cars as they were before the electric car But that is not where the comparative advantages of the German industry were.

Its comparative advantage was in manufacturing very high precision gearboxes and alternative engines. Electric cars have a much lower added value and what is going to be extracted from the value comes from what I said before Nube Capital, let me put it this way, buying a Tesla can cost quite a bit of money, but Elon Musk will collect money 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 any spare parts you buy from them to fix the car, but Tesla, because you know Tesla, did you know that Elon Musk can shut down your Tesla? , you know, you get out of the car. dealership you have your beautiful everything glamorous everyone singing everyone dancing Tesla Elon Musk can decide Kate Smith your car is off press a button and through a satellite you know completely, it's like Apple can turn off your iPhone if it wants, but it won't do it but it's already in the United States, I don't know if you know that if you buy a second hand Tesla and don't register it at a Tesla dealership, they turn it off and you can't drive, which also works the other way around because Tesla knows information about what music you are playing listening when you go to your child's school, where you went yesterday, what mood you were in, because it just has the ability to listen to your conversations in the car or conversations. you are having people who use your phone so that it has all this data of yours.

Tesla sells this data daily. This is what I mean by the power of the cloud. Capital that Volkswagen does not have and that does not own the cloud. There is nothing like it in Europe, which is why Europe is behind China. Have you heard of a company called byd, build your dream? It's almost as big as Tesla now. I think I think it got bigger for a day and then. went back or anyway yeah it's huge it's big and it's going to be much bigger okay they've got all that so it's America and it's China and here we missed the boat when after 2009 when the Bank of England was printing money, the European Central Union The bank was printing money, I mean the loss of the election in 2017, our loss, you know, when Jeremy didn't win was fundamental because if in that Labor Party Manifesto you will see that there was a policy that I know because I worked on it with John.

McDonald um, for creating a public Investment Bank whose purpose would be to issue bonds like McDonald issues bonds to the tune of 200 billion remember the 28 billion that Rachel Reeves no, that would be the goal of that would be to issue bonds worth 200 billion every year supported by the Bank of England that will not be repaid by taxpayers that would not be added to the public debt because it would be a separate bank and the point would be that that would go to Green Tech than if that had happened to From, say, 2018 onwards, there would have already been six years of these huge investments in green technology in Britain, we could have done the same in the European Union, we didn't, so now we're just sitting on our dilapidated sofas and watching the Americans and the Chinese to try and invent the future, so going back to my previous question, who, who and who?

We are very involved in the 5G issue, this is probably quite prominent because the Americans literally do not develop 5G , you have Ericson,the Swedes, and you have the Chinese, and it's more tempting for countries further east to be part of what has been called, you know, the new Silk Road, particularly someone like Greece, I mean the United Kingdom probably be something different, you know, and I think this also with respect to um highspeed 2. You know, people say cost overruns. How can we build it? How can we save money? You know, it would be really easy to get the Chinese to build it. you save a lot of money, but Aaron, that's St, that's St for you, she weakly destroyed the ability of the British industrial base to build things, decided we don't want to build things, we're going straight to the service sector.

We're going to have the financialisation of gambling in the city of London and you know, importing things to sell through Tescos and that's the business model that she developed, and Tony Blair thought it was brilliant, so he pushed it even further more and then you had the financing. collapse of the sector in 2008 2009 and since then the 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 that they have been printing trillions of pounds to refloat The ruling class while practicing harsh austerity against the British people, this is not simply misanthropic, unfair and quite disgusting, it is also a sure recipe for the stagnation of British capitalism, so even if you are, you know an old-fashioned liberal of the 19th century who believes in progress.

I know the growth of the GDB and all that, um, which is consistent, of course, with the climate catastrophe and all that, but still, even if that is their goal, the policies that governments have followed since then, all governments at all times. Only one of them has exhausted the capacity of even British capitalism to be dynamic, so when the trust list said: "My God, you know we've wasted all this time and we need to refocus on growth, What the hell are you talking about?" list, you have been part of a Tor party that has exhausted British capitalism's ability 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 didn't want to be capitalists anymore. they wanted to be tenants they want to sit in their mansions and collect they were no longer interested in making things the chinese are making things the germans are making things the problem with the germans is that they are so aeran that they stopped investing in making the next thing and the chinese They came and said, "Okay, we'll do it." Americans are always on top of the game because they either have other people make things for them and then magnetize their profits to Wall Street through this dollar payment system.

Look, why do I say we are here in Europe and I include Britain in Europe, whether you like it or not, you know we are all around the world, even very poor people in Ghana, in Zambia, they are looking at us and you know. what do you see very stupid people um so we have talked about Europe we have talked about the United States I want to talk about n uh nordstream what do you know nordstream nordre nordstream also yes, who did it nordstream one you mean sorry nordstream well, the one that exploded, sorry, who did it, America, it's really very simple, it's really very simple, you know, they've been saying it for years, do you remember Miss Nuland, Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, yeah?

In fact, she had announced a long time ago that if the Germans do not stop importing natural gas from Russia, we will have to take action, what more is needed? And, in case you remember when it first blew up, they immediately told the BBC that BBC ITV everyone immediately blamed Putin now why would Putin blow up the gas pipeline with which he sells gas to his best customers to discover the war ? He is a war criminal. He is a bastard. He is a neoorthodox fool. KGB you can say all kinds of things about him he is a terribly poor human person but he is not stupid he wouldn't blow up his own gas pipeline and now I don't remember what you know but now there is a lot of evidence that it was the United States and the United States neither They're not even denying it, no, yes, they are, they're winking at us, yes, it was us, but we're not going to say it was good, but there are two things here that I want, I want to get so that It was one of those stories in the ones that, and I sound crazy when I say that, I sound crazy a lot of times, but you know, the mainstream media was scrutinizing us, saying this was Russia.

I think they were absolutely convinced that they were the last people who would do it. to be making, I mean, it's not implausible, but it's an absolutely crazy statement to make with so much weight and so much gravity, that was one thing, it was just one of those moments where I thought, wow, the media, there's not even a effort here to get to the facts, the objectivity, the truth. um, serving their audience at all, not at all, um, but secondly, the politicians, particularly the German politicians, didn't say anything. So at this very moment, your people are being crushed by high energy prices, at the same moment that your industrial class, as you say, is facing crisis. industrialization, for various reasons, increased competition from China and all that, you just came out of covid, the stagnation of the global economy obviously affected your exports at that very moment, you lost a cheap and really reliable source of energy and your own kind internal politics won.

I'm not saying who did it, what that says about German politicians, the politicians of Germany, but also the political class of Europe. I mean, when they try to stop people like Jeremy Corbin, I'm not sending Mr. Damn to Greece, he doesn't count, but this guy. of leftist populist leaders when they try to destroy them and they give them so much uh well, is it precisely to prevent people from reaching the top in German politics in British politics in French politics they say no, this was the CIA is that the 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 agreement between the Allies in 1944 was that Germany would be deindustrialized and its factories would be destroyed and, in fact, , 1,750 German factories were destroyed by the Allies in the process of turning Germany into a grazing land to prevent it from rising again.

It was the Americans who sent their Secretary of State in 1946 to make a speech. of Hope in which they effectively told the Germans, okay, we've changed our minds, we Americans have changed our minds, uh, and we're going to reindustrialize you, you're going, you're going, you're coming in from the cold all the time . German industry was built as a result of the United States' decision to allow them to rebuild. They owe a deep debt of gratitude to the United States and complete dependence. Everything was done on the basis of American loans. Remember 1950, another little aside. I remember I was at the Eurogroup with the German Finance Minister, the now late Wan sh and others, and he comes out and starts giving a speech about the sanctity of debt, a debt is a debt, it is a debt and it must be done .

I paid every euro, every cent, and then when I spoke up, which is why I didn't like him, I said: I'm sorry, the only reason you represent an industrialized German is because a debt is not a debt, it is not. a debt in 1953, most of your debts were canceled by the Americans, the British and all the allies, including the debts you owed my country, so if you are an American industrialist, you owe the Americans and not It is not only a past debt, but also a future debt. because I mentioned before that Mercedes-Benz would stop operating tomorrow if it did not sell Mercedes-Benz to the United States and these Mercedes-Benz are being paid with dollars that Mercedes-Benz then takes to the United States and invests in American property, so yes You are Mercedes-Benz or you know a large shareholder of Mercedes-Benz, they are your God, you do nothing to disturb the sleep of the God who lives in Washington, maybe also in California, so that is explained by German politicians.

They have one thing in common, whether they are left or right, they are complete and utter cowards, look what is happening now with Gaza, even the left, my leftist comrades, I don't talk 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 who work, my comrades, you know, they banned the Palestinian author from giving a performance in their theater because he was recently Palestinian, That's why I'm saying that all German politicians, each and every one of them, are cowards and have the fear of the tall poppy syndrome, that if they know that they are a poppy that is a little taller than the others, they raise their hands and head above the above. the parapet will be mechanized by Machin G so they won't talk so everyone knew the Americans blew up the Nordstream 1 in the west but everyone was looking at everyone else will everyone say it and because you know no one was saying? no one said it coward this in action we need a Navarra Germany from the looks of it we about Michael yes we do it we about Michael Walker saying that it was I have to say that there are independent media in Germany and they are extremely brave and they do a very good job, but They are fighting and they are fighting because you know that in the end Britain, with all its flaws, is still a better place to be a leftist than Germany.

That's why Marx is buried here and not in Germany. you know your job as a novada if you were functioning in Germany would have been impossible, go on, let's go and I will go to Germany on Friday morning, uh, for dm25, the Movement for Democracy in Europe, we are going to present in the European Parliament. Parliamentary elections like me, Mara 25, our electoral wing in Germany, as well as in Italy, as well as in Greece and if you were still in the European Union, given that K would probably have to run here too, and I tell you our Now my comrades in Germany are sending me frantic, anguish-filled messages because, um, uh, the theaters we have booked for our events are threatening to keep their doors closed because they portray me as an anti-Semite simply because because what you see in Germany now is that you can only talk about genocide if you support it, if you oppose genocide, you can't say the word if you say Netanyahu does, go, go, take Gaza, bomb them, it's okay if you want to talk about Israel from Del Río Al Mar eh and apart from hiding from The Río Al Mar is 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 Río Al Mar you're banned because you're anti-Semitic 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 he says, "I think you would just do it." I told it very seriously. I don't think you can get this theater to do what we're doing here tonight in Berlin. That's really interesting because you often know that on the left we will criticize the United Kingdom, the British state, etc. or British national character or whatever, yeah, but that's what you know, you want to be exceptional, you know, British exceptionalism. It cuts both ways, you know, the British Empire used to think it was the best, the brightest and the biggest, the 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's something in it and it sounds like a Buran conservative thing, but I think there's something that It's that there's actually instinct in this country, where most of the time someone who doesn't agree with you will still tell you, "Well, you can have that point of view, as long as you don't hurt anyone," while you're actually looking at it from the outside. in someone like Germany during the last six months of last year, that is simply not the case, there is a deep instinctive conformism to prevent people from saying things they don't agree with, in fact, you know, this is a very delicate, for example, no I do not agree with the Nazi ban.

I know that doesn't sound very popular, but I'm a liberal. I want to defeat the Nazis. I want to beat them to pulp, not physically, you know, at the polling stations. I want them to disappear. in the electoral colleges I want to defeat them culturally I want to defeat them in the fight for ideas Ban them you know, effectively you say that you have no right to run in the elections what they are doing to Trump now in the United States States where they are trying to remove him from the ballot electoral, that is a catastrophe.

This is legitimizing Trump. It is legitimizing people who support Trump because they think he is being persecuted by the establishment to which he belongs. I don't believe in banning opinions. That can make me feel uncomfortable. You know that idea of ​​a safe space? We need to have a safe space where we don't get triggered by things we don't like. That's bullshit, but you see, in Germany they have this now. alternative for the Germans is a pretty vile part is what a horrible fascist Nazi like the ones we have in theGree Parliament the ones who defeated us and won our seats right I don't want these people to be banned I want to get them back I want to defeat them I don't want to see them in prison just because they are Nazis I want to see them in prison If they raise their hand and hit someone like the murderers of Golden Dawn, but you know, we should be as a left because we liberals are not liberals as we said before we have to preserve basic political rights even for people who are vile and who say nasty things in Germany at the moment they started thinking about ban the afd they have 20%, what will happen if it is banned? a party of 20% So you delegitimize democracy, which is the greatest gift to the Nazis because then they can turn around and say look, what does it mean to be a democrat?

You just ban anyone you don't agree with, am I completely wrong? I don't agree more, we're going to have to end there and move on to the questions and hopefully some answers. Yan Faracis, a very enlightening hour.