GBlog

The British musician and producer Brian Eno meets Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister for Greece’s Syriza government, at Eno’s recording studio in west London. Both are stylish, shaven-headed men famous for their radical ideas. Eno, 67, started out playing synth and wearing leopardskin shirts in the 1970s with Roxy Music and went on to produce, among others, David Bowie and Talking Heads. Varoufakis, 54, who turns up in his trademark leather jacket, describes himself as a libertarian Marxist and has taught economics in the UK, Australia, the US and his native Greece. He and Eno are friends, and recently attended a U2 concert together. Both are phenomenally well-read men, keen theorists who regard themselves primarily as activists.
(theguardian, 28 November 2015)

YV: The way I try to express my own fear of, and hope for, the future is that we have our choice, which is between Star Trek and The Matrix. Star Trek is this: we’re all sitting around having philosophical conversations like in the ancient Agora in Athens and the slaves are not human. There are holes in the walls on the Starship Enterprise; you ask for something and it comes up. Fantastic. So then you can explore the universe and talk to Klingons. That’s one choice – the utopia. The dystopia is The Matrix, where the machines are being fed by our own energy. We are plugged into a false consciousness that the machines have been created to keep us happy. We think we are leading a perfectly normal life, but all along we are the slaves of the machines. So these are the two extremes. And the choice whether we go to Star Trek or The Matrix is ours. It’s a political choice...

BE I am [an optimist] because I think what you believe is what you make happen. That’s a fundamental aspect of one’s life philosophy. You either believe you stand outside life and watch it, or else you believe you’re engaged and the set of beliefs you take to it forms part of the future. If you take a set of beliefs that is pessimistic and paranoid and defensive – maybe the set of political beliefs North America now has, for example – then you end up with a different future. We are constantly writing our future ourselves. It sounds as if I’m talking about faith, but I’m not – because I’m an atheist...

Lesebefehl!! (Deutsche Fassung, gekürzt im FREITAG 49/15)

Mit Bryan Ferry sprach ich aus gutem Grund nie über Politik. Brian Eno


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Der rechts am prä-historischen Sythesizer ist Brian Eno, links am Piano Bryan Ferry. Aus dem Jahr 1972 von dem debut studio album Roxy Music, produced by King Crimson's lyricist Peter Sinfield,
- das Album mit dem legendären 1950s-style album cover, shot by the photographer Karl Stoecker, featuring model Kari-Ann Muller.


The name Roxy is a Persian baby name. In Persian the meaning of the name Roxy is: Dawn; bright.

YV ... you were saying optimism is almost like religion – it is a faith. So you can look at what happened in Paris and empirically deduce that the world is going to be a very bleak place, or you can choose to be optimistic about it. It’s an activist optimism. These people are prepared to sacrifice their lives in order to close minds and close borders and erect barriers; the great question for us on the receiving end is, “Are we prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to keep the borders open, and to open minds instead of closing them down?”

In an exclusive interview with MEE, the former Greek finance minister gives his opinion on the economics of war, terror and refugees
Interviewer: Charles B. Anthony



Ansehbefehl!! Das ist doch mal eine Analyse, - die von hiesigen Politikern so nicht zu hören ist (- auch nicht von Bartsch - NEIN zum Syrieneinsatz der Bundeswehr! - siehe unten). Dagegen bewegt man sich hier auf dem Niveau des Meisters des Notstands (oder noch drunter wie der sozdem Außenminister: "So fundamental und umfassend dieser Terror wirken will, so umfassend und geschlossen müssen wir ihm begegnen.")
Lost in Translation. More Than This.


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Wunderbar: Der skeptische Optimist: Ist da noch was?