When the "Churchill" of the European Left is brutally beaten in Athens, where are the NY Times, The Financial Times, Reuters & Even the Guardian to Cover it?
Yes, I'm the one who years ago gave Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek Financial Minister from tumultuous year of 2015, this "title," someone who is also a member of the Greek Parliament...
Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
Yanis Varoufakis should be a household word in the United States, but he is far from that, despite being significant enough to be called by Larry Summers during the Greek financial crisis of 2015, when Greece voted down the “deal” offered by the “Troika” of the Eurozone which Varoufakis felt Greece could never repay without stripping the country of its remaining assets via privatization. For those readers who don’t know anything about him, here’s a decent summary at Yanis Varoufakis
Former Greek Finance Minister and MeRA25 party leader Yanis Varoufakis speaks to the media in Athens on March 14, 2023.(Photo: Dimitris Kapantais/SOOC/AFP via Getty Images)
I’ve written about him fairly extensively and have spent a good deal of time with four of his many books, especially the widely praised “Adults in the Room” about the Greek crisis, which some reviewers compared to Keynes’ work on the disastrous Versailles Treaty of 1919-20, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace.” I can’t think of any higher praise than that.
I only learned of Varoufakis’ beating late Friday evening - at an Athens restaurant - this morning, St. Patrick’s Day, 2023, from my friend and former environmental colleague in New Jersey, Bill Wolfe of Wolfenotes, here at Wolfe Notes from Bill Wolfe who sent me an Email with coverage from Politico…Attack on Varoufakis Politico reportswhich is dated March 11.
By his own description on the YouTube video above, Varoufakis suffered a broken nose in six places and a fractured cheekbone from punches and kicks he said were surgically targeted. He was foolish to have left the restaurant where he was attending a meeting with the pan-European democratic movement he founded, Diem25, which he said he did to avoid a brawl in the restaurant.
He says he will be able to identify the lead attacker, and the irony of charges verbalized against him in the attack is cruelly ironic, and factually wrong, since he resigned from the Minister of Finance job the day after the Greek government caved in to the European Union’s terms, after voters had rejected them in a stunning referendum - by a wide majority.
I haven’t stopped following him despite the vast indifference to his work in the US, especially in the realm of economics, but also his criticism of the failed old European left, the reason he started a new political party. Quite recently he has been on the attack over the handling of the European electric grid and its consumer prices, which was privatized in much the same way that was attempted in the US “reforms” in the 1990’s: to create electricity markets with multiple layers including daily bidding, and separating the old power industry into energy generators, wholesale grid distributors and retailers selling to the local markets of homes and businesses. He seized upon the fiction that the free market craze of Neoliberlism was appropriate to this sector of the economy, noting as few have in the US that in the daily electricity markets, when there is a gap in supply, the winning bid goes to the highest, not lowest bidder and all the losing bidders then get that higher price. Consumers too. I invite readers, if they can get through to PJM who runs the 13 state Mid-Atlantic and Central US “market” to ask whether they use the same pricing “tool.”
Varouvakis has also been working on a new book about the trends of Neoliberalsim, leading the world economy towards “Techno-Feudalism.”
The picture of Greece that Varoufakis paints in the wake of the massive train wreck at the end of February, where a passenger train collided with a freight train on the same track, a grisly head on collison, is vastly different than that of the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, interviewed at Darvos earlier this year by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria. Rosy Greece pictured at Darvos in PM's interview
And his friend, American economist James Galbraith, who worked with him behind the scenes in Greece in 2015, has this blistering commentary on the state of Greece, also vastly different than the current Prime Minister’s, posted at Project Syndicate just one day before the attack on Varoufakis: Galbraith on the price of Greece's "Austerity" program
With so much news breaking recently, I’ll leave the Varoufakis story here, and let his interview at the top of this post on Greek TV speak for the man himself, his dignity and willingess under extreme circumstances, to not jump the gun, to “rush to judgement” on the chance that the Greek governmental investigation will get to the bottom of it. He might, from experience know better than that, but he’s willing to give it a chance.
And the unwillingness of the American and European mainstream press (even if that’s not where the Guardian belongs, being usually to the left of them) to cover this attack, so reminscent of the attack on Leon Blum in France in 1936 , speaks more about our broader troubles than the man Varoufakis himself, who was demonized in Germany after 2015, the man that I’ve come to defend here, and admire, win or lose in formal politics. (Leon Blum, 1936)
For those wanting a broader picture of the man and his ideas, the Cambridge Union interview does quite well. You can see why some in Greece might want to beat the hell out of him, since he does pretty well in public speaking appearances.
It’s a scary precedent when someone as accomplished as Varoufakis, and not just for his authorship and speaking ability, but even more for his sterling model of citizenship in Greek government and trying to reform the European Union - is made to “disappear” at a moment of peak threat to his life. I don’t like it - and just posted a comment at the Times linking to here, their story on the wealthy Westerners heading for Portugal, Spain and Greece to live better than the native citizens. I’ll be very surprised if they publish it.
But judge for yourself the man Varoufakis.
PS Well, the NY Times did publish my comment on their story “Americans Head to Europe for the Good Life on the Cheap.” : Thank you:
William Neil
Maryland7h ago
This reminds me of the interview that Fareed Zakaria did with Prime MinisterKyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece in Davos this February, which he featured on his GPS show. It was a picture of a rosy, successful Greece, paying its huge debts, meeting all the Euro terms from 2015 (including a 3.5% budget surplus, required annually) However, James Galbraith paints a very different picture of Greece put out to its creditors and the vast privatization under way, including the national railroad, whose new owner ran the track where a freight train collided head on with a passenger train at the end of February. It's very strange that the NY Times runs this article, which is good reporting, on what money will buy in struggling European countries with an ample sunshine regime, but the Times, the Financial Times, the WaPo, Reuters and even the Guardian didn't say a word about the brutal beating of Greek Parliament member Yanis Varouvakis, the "Churchill" of the European left. He was beaten to a nose broken in six places and a fractured cheek bone late Friday evening, March 11th. Beaten by a masked gang whose leader chastised him for his policy stance in 2015, getting his role entirely backwards. Times readers can get an account here:
From a loyal Times reader and commentator shocked at the lack of coverage.
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