Yanis Varoufakis on Europe's Energy Crisis, War in Ukraine & Crackdown After Queen's Death

this is democracy now democracynow.org the war and peace report i'm amy goodman with juan gonzalez as ukraine continues to seize more russian occupied land and its largest counter-offense of today we turn now to look at how the war in ukraine's leading to an energy war in europe last week russia announced it would not resume sending natural gas to europe via the nord stream one pipeline until the west lifts sanctions imposed after russia invaded ukraine in february prior to the war russia supplied europe with 40 percent of its natural gas now european nations are scrambling to find ways to cope with gas shortages as well as soaring energy prices they're growing fears the energy crisis could lead to rolling blackouts and the shuttering of some industries during the winter we go now to athens greece to janus varafakas member of the greek parliament former finance minister of greece his latest piece for project syndicate is headlined time to blow up electricity markets giannis welcome back to democracy now what do you mean we shouldn't have electricity markets it's an abomination think about lamey there can't be an electricity market to the extent that in your apartment in your studio there is one single wire coming out of the wall carrying electricity there can't be a market it's a natural monopoly the only way we could have had a market would be if we had 50 different wires each belonging to a different company and we could choose which one we connect our appliances to but of course that would be completely crazy because we would have 50 grades running through every suburb through every city through the land that would be so inefficient it would be ridiculous so what we have is not really markets we have the state that steps in and pretends that there is a market simulates a market creating a kind of semblance of competition between producers of electricity and the semblance of competition between supposedly retailers of electricity people who are companies that buy electricity wholesale and then sell it to you individually but all that is estate creation it's you know libertarians right wingers nightmare if you want yeah it's a market is a fake market created by the state and the impact of this being a fake market emerges during periods of stress like in the 1970s when we had the oil crisis and then of course that translated into electricity price crisis and now with what is happening with supply chain interruptions and the war in ukraine the thing to remember is that electricity prices the prices that people in new york and los angeles here in athens everywhere the prices we pay have risen by a much greater factor than the cost of producing electricity so you've got the oligarchs that are dominating this state market that sudo market that fake market benefiting tremendously out of this crisis and and yes i wanted to ask you about this uh the uh europe made a decision clearly following the collapse of the of the soviet union that it would uh integrate its economy especially when it came to energy with russia and now of course is being forced rapidly uh to move for other sources of gas and oil uh could you uh talk about the this decision of the original decision and now the change and what the impact of europe's strategic uh decisions are having on the rest of the world actually if you look at it historically the decision uh goes back to the early 70s it was back in the early 70s that west germany and the soviet union started this arrangement of providing cheap gas to the german industrial machine in exchange for the taunt in exchange for cash that the soviet union was collecting uh the tragedy is that since the you know lehman brothers collapsed wall street implosion in 2008 which very quickly brought down the whole of the banking sector in europe and precipitated a major economic and social crisis in europe with greece being of course the worst hit place but germany france italy spain every ireland portugal we all suffered as a result during that period we didn't invest in energy in renewables we had zero investment in almost zero investment in the renewables that we needed in order to save the planet on the one hand and to decouple from the putin regime in russia and it's only now years and years later that the chickens are coming home to roost across europe and the impact on the global south of europe buying up gas and oil wherever it can find it well it's awful isn't it we are exporting poverty uh in 2008 2009 2010 with the crisis of the german and the french banks initially and then the public debt crisis europe exported deflation to the rest of the world we exported unemployment to the rest of the world now we are exporting poverty energy poverty which translates then into food poverty because as we speak there is a scramble by germany by france by italy even by little greece to buy all the gas that we can you know in liquid fight form from norway from qatar from algeria from wherever they are selling it and of course rich rich europe rich european countries relatively rich they can outbid the whole of the african continent most of asia latin america in those markets so they are pushing prices up for those countries the developing world and while at the same time food shortages are hitting those countries so you know yet again europe is exporting misery to the rest of the world we've been doing this for a thousand years it's not you right colonialism began from these shores janice if you could talk about your call for an end to russian sanctions and your response to the latest kind of ukrainian blitz taking back city after town russia though saying they would not negotiate at this point well it's a tragedy that people are not negotiating when there's a war wherever that war happens but i have to say that amy whenever an invaded country manages to repel the invader i rejoice i rejoice now that the russian troops are being pushed back i would rejoice if palestinians managed to claim back their stolen land i would rejoice everywhere and anyway invaded peoples claim back their homes their cities their villages their fields their olive trees whatever having said that we have a complete tragedy here in europe with ukraine because i cannot see this war ending there can be no final victory either for putin or ukraine there is very little doubt that putin is as we speak is planning another murderous escapade in different parts of ukraine um we are in for a very long war uh the victims of of of which are going to multiply and um you know which will spread far and wide as we said there will be people dying of hunger in africa in latin america we are going to have an inflammation of the new cold war between the united states and europe on the one hand and china and russia on the other hand with african nations asian nations uh pulling their hair out because they they're clearly they don't like putin they don't like what putin is doing but at the same time they refuse to accept that the united states of america the government of the united states of omega or the europeans can impose sanctions on anyone they don't like because they know that these sanctions have never been either efficient or in the interests of the majority of people in the majority of countries and and janus i'm wondering uh the the the big story in the corporate commercial media the past few days obviously has been the death of queen elizabeth uh your perspective uh from uh uh as a as a a leftist political leader from greece uh about all the fixation uh in much of the western world over monarchs and obviously the royal family of britain i try to be very careful whenever somebody dies independently of my opinion of the deceased to respect the people who are in grief and therefore i will be very restrained in my response let me however give you a response my grief is for civil liberties for freedom of expression an acquaintance of mine the other day had a very interesting experience outside the house of commons the parliament of the united kingdom in london you know next to big ben or under the big event there was an arrest recently of a demonstrator who had the audacity to hold a placard up not actually it wasn't even placard it was a piece of paper in which he had scribbled not my king as charles was passing by this person was arrested my acquaintance a couple of days later went to the same spot and had a blank piece of paper and a pen blank piece of paper and a pen and the police came along and they were about to jump on him and he said to them so if i write here on this piece of paper not my king will you arrest me and they said yes so they were waiting now that to me is the death of democracy and since your wonderful channel is called democracy now i think it is something that we should all be very very aware of

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 327,953

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: 55Uvt0iWDl8

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022