 Hello, you out there and welcome to another coordinating call of the 25 the progressive movement for Europe. Yes, we're working and thinking in public. Today, we're going to talk about well as usual burning issues which is our take on what's happened in the world this week, and we'll also be looking outside Europe to have a foreign policy perspective of what's going on in the wider If you've got questions, comments, concerns, rants, things that you want to say in relation to what we're discussing, please put them in the chat and I might read them out in between the interventions. Let's kick it off. Who's going first? Nobody. Hands up stacks. No. But you know, I was going to say and that concludes our call for. No, I'm kidding. Go on, Janis. And then everyone else please start. Too much courtesy here. Everybody letting everybody else speak. So, you know, the task falls upon me to break this wall of courtesy and congeniality with another rave of mine. Right. Okay, so let's start from outside Europe and then close in into the dismal, stupid continent, because that's what Europe is. Yeah, I think I could just stop speaking here in a sense because I said it all, you know, close in on the stupid continent that is Europe. But before we concentrate on this dismal land of ours. Let's begin with the United States because, you know, we are now in March, we've had two full months of Joe Biden in the White House, and we can make a quick assessment of what that means for the world. What it means for progressives, what it means for movements. And as we anticipated, it means nothing good. Absolutely nothing good. Where do we start? Let's start with Iran. And I'm starting with Iran because Biden was part of the Obama administration, who's greatest accomplishment by their own criteria was bringing Iran in from the cold. Striking a deal between the United States, the European Union and Iran that would end the marginalization of Iran, it would end the sanctions and would create the most stringent inspection regime in the history of the universe, whereby effectively Iran would give the right to Americans and Europeans to pop in at any point in any site to inspect anything regarding the nuclear program. And in return what Iran would get was a normalization of its relationship with the West investment and unfreezing of its assets around the Western world. And all the benefits that come with the end of the embargo. Donald Trump was livid about this arrangement. And the first thing he did, one of the first things he did when he got into office was to end it. And to end it, not simply by withdrawing the United States from the agreement with Iran, but actually threatening the European Union and corporations based in the European Union with annihilation, effectively, if they dared trade with Iran. If the Europeans dared, you know, honor the deal with Iran. So the Iranian leadership against the background of a lot of opposition within the regime from hardliners took the risk of effectively saying yes to Obama and to the Europeans to Merkel. They did everything that was asked of them. Both the Europeans and the Obama administration confirm that Iran bent over backwards to accommodate the West. And then Trump comes in, throws it all out, threatens the Europeans, makes a fool out of Merkel by splitting her from Macron on this issue. Demonstrate to the Europeans that European companies have to do what the Americans tell them to do, because otherwise they will be cut off the Swift system, the system of international payments. And this deal dies. Iran waited for a couple of years before saying, OK, so the deal is off. We go back to whatever it is that we were doing with uranium enrichment, for instance. Now, Biden comes in and one would have expected, since he was instrumental, he was part of the administration that created that deal with Iran to say, OK, sorry about Trump. It was an aberration. Now I'm back. Let's go back to where we were. No, he expects the Iranians to honor the deal before the United States remove the embargo that Trump imposed. Instead of saying it was the American side that reneged on the deal. So we are going to go back to where we were just before Trump came in. No, he insists that the Americans continue with the same embargo that Trump put in place while the Iranians honor the deal that the American side violated. So effectively what Biden is doing is continuing the same policies as Trump with a great deal more hypocrisy thrown in, which is exactly the same thing that he's done with Saudi Arabia. You've seen that when it comes to the Khashoggi dismemberment, let's not call it murder, the dismemberment of that man in Istanbul, right, inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, dismemberment, slow dismemberment. We're talking about a kind of cruelty that has never been seen since the Middle Ages at least. The CIA report came out, Biden published it and effectively confirmed that this is what happened and it happened under the princes, the great princes instructions. And what does America do? Nothing. Just some cosmetic sanctions, no sanctions when it comes to arms sales, no sanctions when it comes to the regime itself. It's business as usual. The war in Yemen will proceed exactly as it was proceeding before. When it comes to Palestine and Israel, need I say more? Nothing. Netanyahu has exactly the same carte blanche today as he had other Trump. Biden may not be as enamored of Netanyahu as Trump was, but on the ground precisely zero difference. So yet again, the radical center has demonstrated that the only fundamental difference between it and the new fascist of the Trump regime is hypocrisy. The radical center simply adds greater doses of hypocrisy in it, which would not have been such a problem if it wasn't for the fact that our comrades in the United States have elected this guy. It was Bernie Sanders and it was AOC and our comrades that mobilized Black Lives Matter in Georgia for Biden to be elected. Now, that to me is a great problem because it's a great threat because very, very soon it will be our side that will be blamed for Biden's imperialism. It will be our side that will be blamed for the fact that a huge amount of money is going to be thrown at the American economy and all of it is going to go to the corporate sector. You've already seen that the minimum wage of $15 an hour has been very conveniently ditched with the support of right wing Democrats in the Senate. I have no doubt that Biden is not unhappy because he was never in favor of Medicare for all of $15 per hour minimum wage. He only made those noises in order for our side to help him get elected. And that comrades for me is the greatest threat. The greatest threat is the de-radicalization. I've been speaking a lot today, I was in parliament speaking a different language very, very loudly. So you have to forgive my inability to articulate properly. The de-radicalization of the soft left of, you know, the center left, which is becoming weaponized yet again by the establishment. And finally, let me come to our dismal continent. Our great and good leaders made wonderful announcements in the last few days that they are relaxing the fiscal compact. In other words, austerity for yet another year, including 2022. They are not going to clamp down on fiscal consolidation and the fiscal compact. Effectively, what they're doing is they're accepting the reality that the pandemic is making it impossible to balance the books of the governments, including the German government, anytime soon. But they will clamp down again. The expectation that they will be clamping down works backwards. You know, serious investors, people that would seriously consider investing money, not in the stock exchange, but in actual good quality stuff, stuff that actually produces other stuff that we need, from green energy to whatever. They will be thinking, okay, in two or three years time, we'll have another bout of austerity, people will not have enough money to buy stuff as if I'm going to invest today. And what they do is they take whatever money they have, they have a lot of it because the European Central Bank keeps printing it and they will take it to the stock exchanges to buy back their own shares, boosting inequality further without investment. The politics gets poisoned continuously. When it comes to the fiscal matters regarding the Eurozone, just know the one thing that Eurointelligence was very good at pointing out this morning, that it all depends on the politics of Berlin. As long as this ridiculous constitution of the Federal Republic contains a dead break, there will be no serious reconstitution of the European Union fiscal policy. We're going to continue with socialism for the bankers and the corporates on the one hand, and austerity for the many. Already you can see the repetition, we've talked about this before, the repetition of the Euro crisis, we can see it with the vaccine fiasco. The implementation is now complete. Austria and Denmark have already struck deals with Netanyahu Israel to produce countless doses of the new variety of vaccines for the future outside the consolidated centralized EU vaccination program. The Czech Republic and Slovakia are already in bed with Russia and China. This fragmentation of the EU is continuing. This is why I'm so angry with the European Union because it is our union and yet the powers that have been in control of it are destroying it, they are fragmenting it, they are disintegrating it. They are turning a very rich and potentially very smart continent into the stupid patient of the world. Thanks, Janice. Renata. Yes, I wanted to use very quickly and it is, I'm sorry if it sounds like an abrupt interruption and not that continuity or a response to Janice is different topic on Monday is International Women Day. And I wanted to bring to the attention something important to women from my continent, and the double discourse of Europe and in the US with sanctions and all of that, you know, all the fuss about Navalny imprisonment contrasted to these two women, you know, murdered by Hitman, directed by the government, one is Bertha Caceres in Honduras, 2016, five years ago. The other is Marielle Franco in Brazil in 2018, murders in total impunity and of evidence linking the state. Because they were defending, one was defending the environment, courageously, the largest dam was stopped thanks to Bertha Caceres. Investment of course investment from European institutions was involved and there was a report accusing the European institutions of gross negligence on this investment. Nobody moved a finger, you know, just few declarations of concern, and the countries keep, you know, going down, down, down, down, democracy keeps decaying. And these women, like, you know, even if, even if the work was remarkable, remain forgotten. That was the murder of Bertha Caceres was on the third. Of course Obama administration, when Hillary Clinton was head of secretary of state, not much happened, you know, you will not hear like much about it. And the same with Marielle Franco and I think that it is very interesting the role of Europe here, because if we imagine a Green New Deal, a congruent feminist Green New Deal. These kind of murders that happen often, and that are often silenced by the press shouldn't be like, you know, like just a little tiny food note on a newspaper and yet another anniversary when we celebrate impunity and the victory of those in power and which is a complex system of corruption that transcends the national corruption, where Europe is often complicit and investing and profiting out of the environmental and social decade of countries in different continents. And I just wanted to honor their memory. I speak highly about them. Remind our duty as internationalist of remembering the, not forgetting that the need of justice of accountability for them and also the need of better mechanisms of collaboration and dealing with other nations from Europe, not for that not to happen again. For that not to go unpunished. So, just that and say to all the comrades in the network and that we keep the fight as women, and that the feminism that we practice in this movement is a feminist that is against war and feminism that is against austerity and feminism that goes for solidarity for the best us and the Marielle is the work. Just that, and the comrades in the coordinating collective as well. We keep here, we keep present and we keep fighting. Thank you, Renata David. Thanks, Mary Ann. If you'll allow me just a comment as well, given that we're talking about you know Europe, and how it can be a force for good. It's a little bit different from what I just said although I completely subscribed to what, what she did say, but let me start with the one claim and that claim is that actually we don't really have a true European Union we just don't have it. European Union, just two words that have been put together to give out people to give to give people the impression that we actually have a united Europe the truth though, is far from it, and you don't need to look very far to verify this claim, we have a monetary union but we certainly don't have a political union and in the absence of the latter there's no point really referring to a European Union it will it will only become such a united when it turns into a federal democratic Europe which is what must happen if we were to move forward. At the moment though it feels a bit like looking at blue painting and calling it green you can repeat the claim that it's green a thousand times it still doesn't change the fact that it's blue, which is precisely what the European Commission has done with the, with its green deal there is nothing green about it instead what we have is a clear this union just look at what happened in 2008 with the centuries and what happened in 2015 with the crushing of Greece, what happened with the EU Turkey deal and the general approach to migration and refugees that we're seeing still today, and also now what's happening with the vaccines, and you know the examples are numerous we could go on and on and on so if those words European Union are to mean anything and here I include European non EU countries as well. As we advocate must be politically integrated federal democratic and in such a configuration for the you to be a force for good in the world must obviously stop selling arms to other countries and instead support democratic movements elsewhere where those movements emerge as opposed to what we currently have is precisely the opposite where we have is a new member states which are often more interested in pursuing aggressive foreign policy by directly or indirectly bombing targets in the name of peace and security. So just to finalize you know what kind of Europe should we envisage. Well, comrades, let me just take you back to what's in our manifesto. So just to quote from it. What we need is a historically minded Europe that seeks a bright future without hiding from its past and internationalist Europe that treats non Europeans as ends in themselves. A peaceful Europe the escalating tensions in its East and in the Mediterranean acting as a bulwark against the sirens of militarism and expansionism and open Europe that is alive to ideas people and inspiration from all over the world, recognizing borders and signs of weakness spreading insecurity in the name of security so put a finer point to it. Can Europe be a force for good in the world. Well, it's not inconceivable that it could be but it's also far from inevitable that it will. It's really largely up to us and what we do with it. So, thank you. Thank you David for reminding us of that barrel. Would you like to go. Thank you. So, news from Turkey, as usual, not so pro optimistic. Today this helicopter crash was really a tragedy nine soldiers died. This really made me very sad about these young people. It was the fault of the military system. Probably, there is also a heavy snow in East of Turkey very heavy snow. Probably it was the reason for this crash. The first issue in Turkey is still the progressing and 11 over 11,000 cases every day 10,000 11,000 cases, but the debt numbers are now down to 60 persons per day. So what happens in the political arena is the discussion of the closing of the pay party is still going on between all the parties. The CHP party is against it, but I think they are trying to convince the other oppositional parties to oppose to this closing. And the other issue in the political level is the human rights. The president has declared that a new human rights project is going to be launched in the next weeks. But at the same time, there is a big court issue with 120 journalists who are still in jail. And also, you know, the famous writer Ahmed Altan Osman Kavala and no doubt the former leader of the party are still in jail since three years. And what else can I say about the yes, Renata talked about the women issue because eight of March. Many angels in Turkey are preparing big protests in every city in Turkey. In eight of March, we hope that it will not be restricted or it will not be banned by the police. So they could make these protests even if it is dangerous in coronavirus issues. But it seems that in 2019, over 300 women were killed. In 2020, over 250 women were killed. And every day we read in the newspapers these women clies. And now it is called in Turkey, Femisit. Femisit is a gene scrum, which is really not a very familiar concept in Turkey. But now people are calling it Femisit. The M25 is not in progress because we could not establish our PNC. We hope that in the coming weeks we will be able to establish a PNC so that we can work in a more systematic way, in a more organized way. But we as, for example, Istanbul DSG is really working very energetically. And we made many video conferences with academicians about the issues, problematic issues in Turkey. I think this is all I can say for today. Thank you for listening for these not so good news. Thank you, Boral, and just a clarification for people that don't know PNC. That's our provisional national collective, the national coordination of the M25 in Turkey or in other countries. Yeah, nice to see everyone. Well, I'll start with some news from Croatia for those who don't follow Croatian politics. The most interesting, there are several news, the most interesting one, political one is that the mayor of Zagreb died actually on my birthday a few days ago. He was a mayor for 20 years, known for many corruption scandals, known for inventing populism before this term was even invented 20 years ago. And it opens a very interesting situation now in Zagreb, which of course is the capital of Croatia and I would say the most important place of political power besides the prime minister. Hopefully our friends from the political, green left political party Možemo, they still have big chances according to our polls. Tomislav Tomasiewicz has a big chance to become the mayor of Zagreb. But unfortunately everything resembles the situation Yanis faced, you know, when cities that came to power in the sense that the system during the last 20 years was so corrupted. So many loans were made dodgy deals and everything that it will be very, very difficult. Well, to stay in power even, but it's an interesting situation I think we as the M25 as we did already at the last local elections, we should support this party. So that's something concrete we could do we could ask our members to support it and to mobilize around it. The second news from Croatia. Well, it's similar to what Yanis already mentioned to some other countries in Europe. Now there are negotiations about the Russian work Russian waxing sputnik. You've probably seen that in our neighborhood Victor Orban, besides quit quitting the EPP was also vaccinated by by by the Chinese vaccine. And I think this is what what I would love to talk about today is how Europe's or use incompetence is actually contributing to a major shift in geopolitics today. Because I think the incompetence of the EU has various morbid symptoms to put it like that. And actually it is bringing to the further disintegration of the European Union. When we found the DM 25 of course we said that the EU will be democratized or it will collapse. What we didn't have in mind then is that a virus would appear and kind of accelerate this collapse these days in Croatia. Some of the media was reminding us that Croatia vaccinated so far 166,000 people 166,000 people which is around I don't know. It's a very small number as you can see, but it reminded us that what even now we'll recall and some other people who might be watching us from the Balkans. That the last major during the last major outbreak of smallpox variola Vera in Yugoslavia in 1972 Yugoslavia wasn't just able to produce its own vaccine at the Institute of immunology in Zagreb which is another symptom in the meantime it was completely destroyed during the so called privatization process as many other things. But it was also very smart in geopolitics so it was even cooperating not just with Eastern Germany and China but even with the United States. So that was socialist Yugoslavia in the 70s cooperating with the United States. So fast forward my question is of course. Why does it take so much time we can see that currently Brussels is deciding about the Russian vaccine, but why does it why is it taking so much time to cooperate with other big geopolitical players. I know that both Russia or China have serious problems when it comes to democracy human rights and so on, but I think that Euro Asian integration is unstoppable. And of course, coming back to the very beginning. It doesn't suit the United States it doesn't suit Joe Biden it doesn't suit transatlanticism, because if they want to prevent anything, it is Euro Asian integration. And let's not forget Europe is not even a continent, you know, it's a peninsula of Asia. So I think our future is whether we want it or we don't want it necessarily a Euro Asian future and I think we as the 25 should be looking in that direction. Unfortunately, we don't have something like the non aligned movement anymore, which was able to cooperate with other countries, for instance Cuba said that they will produce 100 million vaccines until the end of the year. Why wouldn't pressure Greece, cooperate with Cuba, for instance, because we don't have an unknown non aligned movement, luckily to end up with some good news. We have the progressive international, which is working in that direction which is working in the direction of, on the one hand, creating this necessary bonds with other countries, mainly from the global south. On the other hand, casting the light on us interventionism, what is happening now in Ecuador, for instance, after the elections, a sort of soft pool. What is happening now with the bombing of Syria and so on. And while the good news for all progressives is that the progressive international will continue with this work, while we in the new, of course, will face very dark days. Unfortunately. Thank you stretch crew and something you just touched on with someone in the chat is also asked. Costadinos Guru Tidis asks, what exactly happened in the EU Parliament with the party of or ban. This is the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor or ban putting his party out of the European Parliament's center right EPP group. Would anyone like to comment on this for Costadinos. Yeah, this very briefly. For a while now, the EPP, effectively, the Christian Democrats running it, the German Christian Democrats running it. We're in two minds. They needed Orban's MEPs. Without them, they would never have elected Ursula von der Leyen as president of the European Commission. Right. Those votes were essential. She would never have been. America would never have gotten Ursula as the president of the Commission. So they needed them at the same time. They were very embarrassing, because they, you know, they're under constructed fascia fascist oids. And they froze them. They froze their membership. But the EPP does not have a mechanism or did not have a mechanism for expelling parties from its midst. They could expel members, individuals, but not parties. So yesterday what happened was they voted with an overwhelming majority, 80 something percent to have a process for expelling parties. And immediately, Orban could see the writing on the wall that this was for him pulled out before they can, you know, quit before he was fired, in a sense. But that's really the only thing that this means is that the the block of the Christian Democrats in the European Parliament now are not the largest anymore because they lost feeders. And there will be a reconfiguration amongst the fascist oids, because remember, there is a grouping of the led by the polls. The British, the British stories used to be part of them. There's another grouping between Le Pen and Salvini. Right. Maybe Salvini now, because he's supporting Draghi, will move to the EPP. And maybe the Hungarians, the feeders, Orban's party, is going to move into some kind of agglomeration with the polls or with Le Pen, we shall see. But it's not good news, comrades, whatever happens. Yeah, I was going to comment on what Sretzko said about Europe needing to move closer to Asia or the Americans not wanting us to move in that direction and to strengthen the transatlantic relations instead. Well, the topic that we gave ourselves was really what, how can Europe be a force for good in the world. And if we're going to go all real, idealistic on on on that. I don't think that we should even be thinking of the world in, in terms of these spheres of interest that currently exist. For example, that there are countries where the Chinese invest and there are other countries that are part of the Russian sphere of influence and their countries where the Americans several first bit and so on. So, I think that ideally, I know it's not it's not happening anytime soon because Europe is not even managing to do so within its own continent but ideally maybe Europe should be the one to play a role of making an alternative offer to to any of these countries not saying to engage in bidding war with them but to be a stopgap to make a fair investment offer for countries around the world independent of which block they're currently supposed to be in so that nobody is forced to accept a bad offer or one that has too many strings attached. This is in line with Simone de Beauvoir's ethics that I've been reading recently, which is basically saying that what is good how can Europe be a force for for good we need to ask ourselves what is what is really good. What is good according to her is what enables people around us to strive for self actualization to give them the freedom, but also the material foundations to live life as they wish, and to do the projects they wish, of course, for as long as their project is not to subjugate someone else. So, from this perspective, another thing that Europe could do in order to give people around the world and countries around the world, this freedom to to strive towards their self actualization could be for for example also debt forgiveness. I think that Europe should argue for debt forgiveness for poor countries so that these countries can pursue their own priorities in terms of what they want to fund. And this must not come with the kind of strings that were sent to Greece, for example, the practice to make that relief dependent on capitalist reforms with basically promising that relief only in exchange for policies that hurt the poor and that have no democratic backing in the country. And of course, trying to force dictatorships to respect human rights and to give their citizens more freedom. So, I think that what we need to avoid is to make people's choices for them. Bova says herself, sometimes there is no objective, better or worse system of government or laws on a particular subject, sometimes there is, but sometimes there isn't. Just like a person might want to pursue a career as a composer or a career as a painter and neither of them is particularly is objectively better or worse. So, in my wildest dreams, and I know we're very, very far from them right now, the EU would become the kind of superpower that enables people in the rest of the world to choose their own path. Thanks, Judith, for that. Yes. Back in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, a group of French communists visited Saigon. Actually, not Saigon. They were somewhere in the jungle where they met with Ho Chi Minh. And they asked him, comrade, what can we do to help the struggle of the Viet Cong for liberation? And Ho Chi Minh said, why don't you have a revolution in France? I think that is the essence of it. There is nothing that you can do for Asia, for Africa, for the rest of the world, for climate change, right? For Latin America, for Central America, unless we have a revolution in the European Union. There is no such thing as Europe. We have a fragmented set of competing oligarchic interests. They are intentionally damaging Europe because their power depends on this Europe not being a superpower, on maintaining its status as a stupid continent, wasting resources, not investing. The only reason why the Chinese are investing in Southern Europe, in Croatia, in Serbia and so on is because there is a vacuum of investment. There is no European investment in Europe. That's why. So when you create a vacuum, like nature hates a vacuum, the economy hates a vacuum. And then all sorts of other investments will come in. And so to cut the long story short, this is why DM exists. Because we think in terms of a pan-European rebellion, a pan-European clash with those who are operating at a pan-European basis to keep the European Union both inefficient and unjust. That kind of European Union, unless we overthrow the existing elites within the European Union, can be of no help to anyone around the world. It cannot be a force for good. To be a force for good, we first need to liberate Europeans from the European Union's establishment before we can stop the European Union from being a force for evil, an imperialist force. Thanks. I would like just to conclude that we have a group in DM-25 for all of the members who are interested in the topic of foreign policy, peace and international relations that we have a task force which is creating DM's policy that would make this idealistic thinking into reality and make Europe united and stop selling arms to all sides and let people settle their internal affairs internally. Thank you. Thanks for that, Ivana. And I think that brings us to the end of our coordinating call. See you next time.