Audio

Yanis Varoufakis – Happiness, Inc. – Think Again – a Big Think Podcast #149

Jason GOTS: As the Wu-Tang Clan once put it: “Cash moves everything around me… Get the money. Dollar dollar bill, y’all.” I grew up not wanting to believe this. All the stuff that seemed worth having was hard to put a price tag on. But under global capitalism, there’s a lot of hard, sad truth to it. As an American child of the 1980s, I absorbed the message “find yourself!” “Follow your passions!” But there are powerful economic forces at work, shaping our lives and opportunities.

Trump vs Europe: He’s threatening European banks and industries with sanctions. If they don’t cut off trade with Iran, they would be barred from American markets and transactions with American banks. We asked Yanis Varoufakis for his analysis—he’s the former finance minister of Greece who led the resistance to European Bankers demanding austerity—now he has co-founded DiEM25 an international grassroots movement that is campaign for the revival of democracy in Europe.

Ladies and gentlemen, the main reason for being here tonight is to use, in our capacity as the Democracy in Europe Movement – DiEM25 -, to press whatever resources we have into the service of healing the rift between progressive Remainers and progressive Leavers. We have enough divisions in the UK, we have enough divisions in the EU, we do not need another one along the lines of Brexit. Yes, we at DiEM25 campaigned, along with Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Caroline Lucas and others for a radical remain. But I am not here, tonight, as a Remainer.

This is an extract from a speech at the ‘Alternative Investment Forum’ on 9th February 2018.

Hailed by the establishment for decades as the “greatest modern philosopher in the world” and as the “greatest logician,” we see how paper-thin and easily refuted the theses of Bertrand Russell are. 20 years later Russell penned his “Nobel winning” book Impact of Science on Society that was a rehash of everything in The Scientific Outlook.

As promised, we come to Programmed to Kill, an earlier, and equally important book from Dave McGowan, of Weird Scenes Inside Laurel Canyon fame.  I summarize his thesis and in the full talk give my analysis and commentary based on the numerous other analyses I’ve read regarding related material.  We look at the strengths and weaknesses of his book, as well as the crucial connection to Hollywood, which created a whole new entertainment genre surrounding ‘lone gunner sickos’….or are they really lone gunners?

A handful of Canadians are waging a noble fight to return their central bank, the Bank of Canada, to its chartered role as a low and no-interest financier of government projects and the public interest. That case is at the center of a new book called Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism.  We speak with author Joyce Nelson about […]

1. Press review on the Andrew Marr show, BBC1 tv 29th January 2017

https://varoufakis.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/lnl_20170125_2205-european-new-deal.mp3