 Okay. And there we have it. We are live. Hello, hello, hello. I'm Mayor Kilili, and we are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe, and this is our live coordinating call featuring subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. And today is Europe Day, where traditionally we celebrate peace and unity in our continent and hold hands as we sing Beethoven's Ode to Joy, except is there really a reason to celebrate our border guards are complicit in the deaths of people trying to reach Europe. The planet continues to heat up. Fascism is on the rise. War is now raging right on our doorstep. And throughout Europe is teetered between failing to respond to these disasters and contributing to causing them. And sort of that doesn't make you anxious that I don't know what does but the antidote to anxiety is action. And that's why today is particularly important for our movement the end 25 because on this Europe Day, we're launching a new manifesto. It's the first total rewrite of our founding documents as we started all this in 2016 it's crowdsourced from and approved by our membership. The result of months of work, the manifesto it lays out how we can take back power from the oligarchs, the people who really rule Europe and the people who own our politicians, our banks, and our data. It maps out a new reinvigorated dn 25 that's more radical and more confrontational and we hope more effective than ever so today with our own Yanis fire factories and the rest of our crew. We're going to take stock of where Europe is at. And we're going to show why we think our manifesto is the solution and discuss how to turn it into a reality now you out there. If you've got thoughts, ideas, rents, questions, comments, concerns if you hear something about our manifesto and think that's just pie in the sky pipe dream rubbish. Instead they should be doing this challenge us. We're not afraid of debate. Please put your comments in the YouTube chat and we'll put them to our panel. So let's kick it off. We'll start with Yanis. Thank you man. Hello everyone. Before I talk manifesto today I got up in the morning and I switched on my financial times up, which is what I do to start my day with, because one has to read the news straight out of the capitalist enemies mouth. And I just couldn't believe my eyes. There was this first page news, first page news of the financial times, that the person responsible for the European Union's foreign affairs and Mr. Borrell, high commissioner for something. The person that stands as our foreign minister, our European foreign minister came up with a remarkable idea, which I think is a good segue into our manifesto, in a sense. He said that, look at what the Americans did. The American Central Bank confiscated $6 billion of the Afghani Central Bank for money that was in there before the George W. Bush invasion of Afghanistan before 9 11. And they confiscate, the Americans confiscated Afghanistan's savings effectively in order to, and this was a Joe Biden idea, in order to compensate the victims of 9 11 30 years later. And why, if the Americans are doing this, why shouldn't we confiscate the holdings, the reserves of the Central Bank of Russia, in order to rebuild the Ukraine. And I thought, my God, am I, is this a nightmare? Or is this the reality? Could the person in Europe who is actually responsible for foreign policy be so deranged, so off his rocker, so criminally insane? Because first, I don't think Europe would ever have before the war in Ukraine agreed that it was a good idea by the United States to confiscate the little money that the Afghanistan Central Bank had at a time when 50% of Afghanis are dying of hunger. One would have thought that the European Union would not have said, yeah, that this is a good idea for the Americans to do. And beyond that, one would have thought that in the continent where rationality, mathematics, geometry grew and became substantive. That Mr. Borrell should have thought that, you know, the only way Ukraine can be rebuilt with Russia's money that we will confiscate is if we take Moscow in the end, in the end of a third world war. Now, Mr. Borrell, I mean, I didn't vote for Mr. Borrell, did you vote for Mr. Borrell? I don't believe any of us voted for Mr. Borrell. So he decided that he's going to drag the European Union, kicking and screaming into a third world war, and what? He had this epiphany and suddenly he announced that this is what Europe has come to. This is orchestrated, idiocy, combined with deranged madness. Now, we created DiEM25 back in 2016 because we could see that this was coming. We could see from the way the European Union had responded to the financial catastrophe of 2008 with a bailing out of the banks, then with the serial assault of peoples starting with Greeks and then moving to the Irish, and then going to the Portuguese, and then going to the Italians, and the Spaniards, and the French, and the Cypriots, and of course the German working class. The so-called Euro crisis wasn't a crisis of the money, it was a crisis of the European Union and the Eurozone in particular. We saw what happened in the summer of 2015 when Mrs. Merkel, then Chancellor of Germany, and President Erdogan of Turkey agreed collectively together in unison to violate international legislation against refugees, or to violate the international legislation that supposedly holds regarding refugees. It's been a steady decline. So in 2016, we, DiEM25, at the Volksbühne Theater, we inaugurated our manifesto. And the manifesto was a very radical document, in the sense that it was the first time that somebody from the left, or people from the left, and from the Greens, and from various varieties of progressive politics, we came together and we laid down a manifesto, which didn't blame the Germans, it didn't blame the Greeks. It didn't talk about a clash between the North and the South, but what it said was there was a clash, a clear clash between an oligarchy without frontiers across Europe, and working people, unemployed people, disabled people, people who don't have power, in Germany, in Sweden, in Greece, in Portugal, in Ireland, in Spain, in Portugal, everywhere. And we said it is time for all of us to have one transnational movement, not to be constrained by the nation-state or political parties that are nation-state specific, to create a transnational movement and have a manifesto that tells our story and tells the world, and Europeans in particular, what we think should happen and what our duty must be. Now, since then, something happened. The wave of excitement caused by the rebellion of the people of Greece in 2015, if you remember, the rebellion of people in Ireland, the rebellion of the Indygrados in Spain. That was defeat. We were all singularly defeated. The M25 succeeded in existing, but did not succeed in taking over the institutions of Europe. But we are alive, we are breathing, we are spreading the word, and we have learned lessons. We've learned two lessons, primarily. The first one is that we need to be more radical. Just talking about democratizing Europe is not enough. And the second thing we learned was that we need to get our hands dirty with electoral politics. Existing political parties that are nation-state based will never, ever espouse a transnational humanist pan-European agenda. Those lessons we have introduced and blended in with our manifesto, the result is manifesto 2.0. The one that we are celebrating today, we chose the day, which some people call Europe day, I call the defeat of Nazi's day. It's the day when the Nazis were singularly and finally defeated. It is about time that we recover the spirit of hope that that victory over Nazism gave Europeans and effectively gave the left, because let's face it. The only people who stood up against the fascists in Italy, in Spain, in Britain, in Greece, the Nazis in Germany and so on, from day one, from day one, not at some late stage, from day one, where the communists and the socialists, nobody else did, from day one. Allow me, Marin, to finish off, just in order to give a flavor to those of you watching out there who have not had the opportunity of reading either the original version of the manifesto or the human, just to read out in the introduction. The title is a manifesto for democratizing Europe. Europe will be democratized once the oligarchy is overthrown. For all their concerns with inflation, migration, populism, climate change, pandemic, security and terrorism, only one prospect truly terrifies the powers of Europe, democracy. They speak democracy's name, but only to deny, exercise and suppress it in practice. They seek to co-opt, evade, corrupt, mystify, usurp and manipulate democracy in order to break its energy and arrest its possibilities. For ruled by Europe's peoples, government by the demons, is the shared nightmare of big tech, big pharma, permanently bailed out bankers, fund managers, insurers, the security military industrial complex. In short, the research and tapestry of cartels perpetually contemptuous of the many and of their organized expression. Their army of unelected bureaucrats, technocrats and nobists pulling the strings of governments in general and of the European Union institutions particular. Political parties appealing to liberalism, democracy, freedom, environmentalism, social justice, etc. only to betray their most basic principles when in power. Governments whose policy of socialism for the financiers and harsh austerity for everyone else fuels nativist populism, which the same governments audaciously pretend to rail against. Corporations that use terms like sustainability and net zero to continue with business as usual, greenwashing their planetary scale vandalism. And media moguls who have normalized disinformation and weaponized fear and weaponized fear monitoring. And so on and so forth I won't continue. I'm just giving you the spirit. But we're saying is that the greatest threat to the powers that be that speaking the name of democracy is democracy. This is why we have D as the first letter of D in 25. And because democracy is a very radical idea that those who speak. In its name, the radical center of the macrons, the miracles of the soldiers or the draggies of the laguards and so on, they fear it. And we need to put that fear of democracy in their minds and their spirits, because this Europe is not going to change through gradualism and through reform. It will only change through a confrontation with with those powers that be. Thank you, Janice for setting the scene there. And if you would like to read on manifesto to see what is this document we're actually talking about. Just please go to dm25.org. It's right there on the front page. And you'll see there's a long version, a short version, a short version and simple language and also an audio version for listening to on the go. Julia Moore from the UK. Over to you. Thank you. Thanks, Miran. Hello everybody. Hello team and hello everybody viewing tonight. Thank you. I'm going on from what you're saying. I am a citizen of one country, the UK, and I'm a resident at the moment of another country in France. And to launch our manifesto tonight and this discussion, I want to link those two countries and just going on from something that you said. The manifesto, please read it. I would say please read the detailed element of it. This is a document to read. And the phrase that comes out all the way through is it's transformative, not reform reform is tinkering around with the edges of a system that is clearly no longer fit for purpose. And we as a transnational movement are bringing those threads together because we can see the commonalities across not only the world but certainly across Western Europe where democracies are crumbling. And the way people vote and the way people are concerned about things is the evidence of that. So I just want to go back and use the UK's recent experience of Brexit to illustrate just a couple of things in the manifesto that it as it details. Brexit is specifically mentioned in our new manifesto because it's a historic case study of a clear and current indication of why the current system across Europe but certainly in the UK is no longer fit for purpose. And it also temporarily gave disaffected disadvantaged groups a feeling of self perception and powerfulness, which of course was cruelly and now desperately betrayed as those groups of people are seeing their livelihoods damaged their incomes reducing the growth of food banks the growth of mental health issues etc. In any trail we have a case study and we have it very close to our hearts and for those of us in the UK, we are living and breathing it every day. So, our manifesto is radical in the positive sense of being progressive. It is saying systems are no longer fit for purpose. In the UK, we have in a couple of weeks time a people's gathering that is looking specifically at the role and function of public institutions, and what we can do to transform them note the word transform and not reform so we want the UK membership to be part of that in discussion that will form the future of the direction of DM 25 UK and it is part now of our integral movement policy as we move forward and game representation in in various voting systems. So that's the UK element speaking as a as a resident of another country so I'm speaking from France. And as I was talking to my colleagues that today in the media today and I caution to say the mainstream media. There is a flurry of interest in the alleged shaking of heads and banging of heads of the socialist alliance who have agreed in principle a pact in terms of the strategy for the upcoming legislative elections which take place here next month in June. And under the leadership of Melanchon the the what's called the dinosaur socialist alliance has agreed to a place certain candidates in certain strategic areas. And the key rider for that the driving purpose for that was to go after those 12 million white vote abstaining votes of people who are disengaging from the political system. And this is the strategy. Now whether or not it is a sustainable strategy will be something that I think my CC colleagues will comment on and I'm merely putting forward the news as it's happened today. We do have a French colleague on the CC today and I'm sure she will have something to say about that. But reading our manifesto makes us look more prepared for government than any governments that I would say if our members look around in their domestic countries and and have a look at the manifesto is detailed. It not only says how and why it says who and it's a blueprint for engaging grassroots community levels and getting people back not into a standard system but getting people to want a new system and we've got the blueprint for that as well. So I would urge everybody to read the detail start with the short version by all means but do read the detail the the importance really is in that detail. But I hope that gives our viewing audience a flavor of the transnationalism and the way that we are pulling the threads together. I think that's it. Thanks Miranne. I think that's the end of the report from France today. Thank you, Julia for that. Well, just to say that CC, a DM 25 buzzword that you just used was short for coordinating collective which is us this bunch, the people who are deciding the general direction for DM 25 and coordinating activities. Okay. Let's just put a couple of questions from the chat into this discussion. Well, two comments actually first Matthew Oh says that we should, we should impose an income slash wealth cap to make the existence of the rich illegal defund the oligarchy says we should we should exploit the divide among the capitalist the lower level and the super wealthy and harsh sheet and Akram have two versions of the same question. They're looking to ask how exactly are we going to overthrow the oligarchy as we claim, and what's the guarantee that overthrowing the oligarchy will not result in the making of a new one. Let's move to Johannes Fair from Germany. Johannes. Thank you madam and yeah good to be with you all and with the listeners as well and the the watchers the viewers. I'm not sure I can directly answer one of the questions what I wanted to speak about is a little bit the term oligarchy because where I'm coming from from Germany, and I think in generally in central northern Europe. It was often used for rich and influential people outside of our countries, for example, the Russian oligarchs are a common expression when we talk about and suddenly also it was possible to talk about seizing some of their goods and money they have in our countries, but yeah, here we don't speak so much about the people that are actually rich in our country, so I had a look and the top 10 German. Rich people had 144 billion dollars worth of wealth before the pandemic. And that grew in the pandemic to with about 80% to almost double 256 billion dollars. And I think that those are rich people in Germany, those are very influential people. Those are the 1% of the 1% and they exist I think in every of our countries. And one of the important tasks that we have is especially in countries like Germany, I think, to actually speak about those topics because the general public doesn't. The general media doesn't speak so much about it, because I think they, of course it's not so much in their interest. So this is something I wanted to share about so I think the oligarchy is everywhere it's international. So we also, and this is one of our big strengths in the end 25 are work working against it everywhere. And the other point I wanted to make is that in Europe, Julian Assange now is in prison for 1100 days. 1100 days already. And this is also something that clearly shows that there is a big lack of democracy and freedom of the press also in our countries we also there this is another topic where we in general the media and the public speaks a lot about what's happening in other countries in terms of press freedom and so on. But I think we also have to take care of this business at home. And this is what we are about. I think we have two strategies to maybe go a little bit into what are we actually doing. We built up local collectives and groups on the ground to do activism on the streets in direct confrontation. And as we for example did in Berlin, couple of weeks ago in front of the Russian embassy to protest against the war. And also we are building in some countries like Germany, Greece and Italy to have political parties to actually challenge directly on the ballot box. So these are two ways that we're working. Thanks Johannes and of course in Greece, our party mayor 25 is in parliament and it's good that you mentioned the term oligarch there which is a very strange loaded term used exclusively for foreign countries, whereas over here, we have quite business men, unquote, well I don't think that's true at all and we can call them all oligarchs. Yuliana Zita from Germany. Yes. Thank you. I want to build on what Johannes just said about Germany and the oligarchs, because I think this is also for me the reason why the manifesto the new manifesto so timely. It's because it's a topic where people slept for a very long time and it's not only that oligarchs in other countries are bad. The problem is that people for a long time and I mean I grew up and I'm coming from Frankfurt. It's a city of bankers, you know, we have a lot of money in the city. And while I was also working you know in gastronomy and bars and so on I had my own. I knew a lot about, you know, the shift of real estate in the city and I could see gentrification happening right in front of front of my eyes, where oligarchs and big money used to buy everything in the city. And when I used to point that out to people that this is not good that we will lose a big aspect of our culture also, because having like, you know, shops who are, you know, run by real people, so to say, or restaurants or anything you can imagine you know, you need to have space for that. So if everything gets bought by a few individuals, then, you know, you lose your space of living, you know, and the city of Frankfurt also sold a lot of real estate to oligarchs on top. So people were really blind about it. But now I feel like people are slowly waking up to the fact that there is a problem that there is a problem with this profit over everything mentality that people from big businesses have. And you can see it in discussions about Elon Musk buying Twitter, although I think it doesn't make any difference which oligarch owns Twitter right now. But, you know, it's, it's, I think, a timely discussion. Therefore, I believe it's much more important to educate people on who the enemy is when it comes to democracy and I think that big money is a huge topic here. Thank you, Juliana. Ivana Nenovic from Serbia. Hi, thanks. Because I'm from Serbia, which is not part of the EU and in the EU narrative, it's not even part of Europe. This is a sad day always for me. But there is a bittersweet moment because of the launch of our manifesto, which was the reason why I joined DM in 2016 in the first place because it was the only document that I have read that was talking about United Europe, and not those who are deserving of being part of Europe or EU. And on this day, we can see more hypocrisy. If that is even possible from the EU establishment or oligarchy, call it as you wish. The word is always used in favor of those who are speaking, as Johanna said. The oligarchs are always in some other country, now they're in Russia. And even the parade in Moscow today, which is a celebration of victory over fascism, is being spinned and portrayed now as something that is demonstrating power in this moment when the war is raging. Which I don't see it as that, that this parade was happening every year. And we have to remember that without Soviet warriors, we wouldn't have won this war perhaps. So this is also something to always remember that whoever is in power today is not entitled or deserving or guilty of everything that happened before in the past. Another thing that makes me happy because we are launching our manifesto today is that I could reply to my friend who moved away from Belgrade to London 14 years ago. And when we spoke recently he told me we are done with democracy for at least next 10 years. So with the DM-25 and with our radical progressive policies and manifesto, I am sure that we can overthrown this oligarchy and make sure that another one won't be created by having accountability and with democratic processes that we are setting up and promoting that should be possible. Thank you, Ivana. Yanis, could I bring you back in? Perhaps to just answer that question there that was posted that how can we guarantee that there will not be a new oligarchy once the current one is overthrown? We can't, can we? There are no guarantees in politics or in history. But this is a bit like saying, you know, we're having a pandemic, let's defeat it, and somebody is saying, yes, but how do we know that there won't be another one? I love it, however, because I was piqued by something that Johannes said and then others commented on. The question of oligarchy, I understand that it has a particular meaning in the Anglo-Saxon world and in Germany, maybe in Austria as well, where the word oligarch means Russian or maybe, you know, Belarusian as well or Ukrainian for that matter, right? Former Soviet. Well, folks, I'm a Greek so I'm not going to take this lying down. Oligarchy is the opposite of democracy. Oligy means few, ruled by the few. Remember our friend Jeremy Corbyn's slogan in the United States, in the United Kingdom, for the many not the few. So a system of government which gives power to the many is called democracy and a system of government that gives power to the very few is called oligarchy. That's what it means. It is not nationally tainted. It is not exclusive in Russia, in Ukraine. I wrote an article some time ago, a few weeks ago saying, okay, I'm happy that we are expropriating the Russian oligarchs. But what about the Greek ones? What about the German ones? Speaking of the German ones, I hope you will not think it impertinent. Because I've done a little bit of research a long, long time ago. I did some reading and it's quite clear. If you look at TIC, I'm just going to refer to companies that everybody knows because they're very famous in the car world. Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, BMW and Volkswagen. Symbols of German engineering and engineering. Each one of them can trace its success in the Nazi era. That's where it started. Ferdinand Porsche started Volkswagen by Convisi Hitler. His son, Ferry Porsche, was a volunteer in the SS. Herbert Quant, who built up BMW, BMW, was a well-known work criminal according to the German government. Friedrich Flick was convicted in Nuremberg. He is the man behind Demler-Benz. Today, the Quant family, their net worth in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is 40 billion euros. The Flick family is only 4 billion. But remember, this is the guy that was convicted in the Nuremberg trial. So, don't give me that about the oligarchs being Russian. They're not Russian. They're Greek as well. They're German. They're Brazilian. They're Nigerian. They're Kenyan. We need to expropriate them. But to expropriate them, we're not going to... This is going back to the question that you read out from the forum. It's silly to say that you're going to put a cap. So what? If you steal one billion, it's okay. Then the next dollar is not. And where do you draw the line? There's no rational money in which to draw the line. Look, in response to somebody who said, okay, let's defund them. Well, I don't know what that means. The way in which capital accumulation happens has to do with the ownership of the means of production. So if you can own companies that you don't work in, and other people work in them, of course you're going to accumulate capital. So I'm going to go back to my radical roots and say that the problem is the share market, the idea that you're going to buy and sell shares. For me personally speaking, it is as preposterous as buying and selling human beings. That may sound extreme to some of you. But you know what? The idea that you could not buy and sell human beings a few centuries ago was thought preposterous because slavery was considered a natural thing. Great men and women in years and centuries past, like Aristotle, all the way up to maybe the French Revolution, they thought that slavery was absolutely natural. There was nothing wrong with that. In the same way that we think that owning shares, buying and selling them is natural. I don't think it is. I think that it should be like library cards. In universities, you enter a company, you're hired, you get one vote. One share. That's it. You cannot sell it. You're not going to buy it. Imagine if we did that. Right? And then you can make as much money as you want. You would never be able to make billions if you couldn't own companies in which you didn't work and in which other people worked. We did not have ownership rights over the companies. And finally, there's no final. That's it. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you, madam. There is something else, if I may, Janice. I have a question. Oh, about France. No, no, no. It's a question I've got for you about the manifesto that I'd like to answer. It's just on the subject of the term oligarch. Because I mean, the front page of our manifesto says that Europe is ruled by oligarchs and that they own the politicians that were supposed to defend us against them. Could you outline some of the ways in which behind the politicians you have so-called oligarchs who are actually putting strings without being conspiratorial or anything like that? Because often the politicians are the face of this problem, the face of the establishment, but rarely do we look behind. So if you could outline that, it'd be great. The beauty of Darwinism is that it demonstrates how you can have a pattern of evolution without a conspiracy. So similarly, the economic and social regime that we live under, late capitalism, some may call it hypercapitalism, or in tier capitalism, I call it techno feudalism. It doesn't matter what you want. This exploitative system that we swim within. If you think about it, I mean, we know this because we started political parties in Germany in this, we started the movement. We know how difficult it is to have access to the media and to money. Because without access to the media, you cannot be hurt. It doesn't matter what the quality of your manifesto doesn't matter if nobody can read it or knows about it. The media have a remarkably concentrated power in terms of distributing information. And the media is owned by the people who do not want any political change because they are the ones who own the companies that I was referring to before. So this is a natural selection process whereby a system that selects for the oligarchs also selects for the oligarch control of information. And therefore politicians who do not conform with the interests of the oligarch will never be hurt. That's point number one. It's not the only point. There's a second point. Even the ones who do get selected, I mean, I became as a result of the historical access and minister of finance in Greece. So I did manage to use the rapture in the time space continuum in order to get in there. You get injected by the system because the system, in the same way that you can have, a very efficient technology die in the evolution of technologies. We know that it's not the best technologies, the most efficient technologies that survive. The standard example that we used to use a long time ago for those who remember was between VHS tapes and Betamax tapes. Betamax tapes were much better than VHS tapes. Which ones died? The good ones. Not the horrible VHS clunky ones. So you're going to have that, especially in politics, right? If you are adjoining dissonance, if you speak words that are against the interests of the oligarch, then immediately the whole press system is going to destroy you. They're going to demonize you. I mean, in the Mera conference now this coming Thursday, we have Jeremy Corbyn giving a keynote speech. He's a very good example of somebody who's been demonizing simply because his manifesto was not in the interest of the oligarch. And last but not least, it's not that the people who get selected through this process are liars. I remember I was having this conversation with a minister, I'm not going to say whom. A minister from France, somebody who became quite big and who may be currently president. Oops. And he said, oh, no, but I truly believe in what I'm telling you, Jens. And I said, yes, because if you hadn't believed it, you would not have been selected by the system to be in the position you are. I'm not challenging that. I'm not saying that you're lying. I know you're believing what you're saying, but that's why you are where you are. If you didn't, you would not have been selected. You had been disposed of as the foreign body to the system. Thank you, Jens. Let's move to Amir Kiyai, our policy coordinator, based in the Hague. Amir. Thank you, Mehran. Something that is quite prominent as well in our manifesto is the emphasis on unity, of the movement of our members, of course, of also calling for unity amongst the general public to get more involved in the democratic process. That we have outlined and are different in our blueprints. But we are also highlighting that the need to overthrow the united oligarchy because the oligarchy is actually united and coordinated. And so, as it always is, the importance of us being unified and not being divided is just is really central to our manifesto. And this also is quite apparent from how hard the oligarchy is fighting unionization, right? So we know already with the struggle of the Amazon workers to unionize to the gorillas in Germany. Even they are struggling so hard to unionize that the gorillas corporation is moving its headquarters from Germany to Netherlands, which is as a easier, of course, laws for the corporations and so forth. So this aspect of unity is really critical. And joining Game 25 really means joining a program of action with a blueprint for transformation that we've laid out. And of course, we're constantly evolving this and branching out into different areas. We've got amazing volunteers now working on developing the green jobs concept. For example, education and so on and so forth besides our flagship program, Green New Deal for Europe. So I obviously always urge people to look at our programs and of course join a movement. Thank you. Thank you, Amir. And again, the website is dm25.org. You can just click through to our new manifesto or the Green New Deal for Europe policy package that Amir just mentioned. Lucas Fabraro, our communications coordinator from Brazil. Lucas. Thank you, Amir. I wanted to very quickly read this introduction to our new manifesto page, which you alluded to earlier. It says Europe is ruled by oligarchs. They own the apartment we live in, the banks that keep our money, the vaccines that save our lives, the apps we need to work, the data these apps collect about us, the oil and gas that heat up our planet. And more importantly, they own the politicians that were supposed to defend us against them. I think that's very important for us to keep in mind because if we think about the issues that we're currently facing and the things that we do in our daily lives. You know, oligarchs and billionaires, they don't live in a different plane of existence. They live in the same economy as we do. So they don't, they're not getting, they're not enriching themselves with a different type of currency or different, different type of wealth, a different type of money. It's money flowing from our pockets into their pockets. So every time we pay our rent at the end of the month, an oligarch is getting that money. Every time we put some money in the bank, an oligarch is getting that money. When we take a vaccine, you know, an oligarch gets paid for it. You know, when you order your groceries, using an app on your phone, an oligarch is getting that money. So we're bound together and anything that is good for them is bad for us. And I wanted to give a very concrete example coming from Berlin where I live, which has been going through a very severe housing crisis in the past few years, which has been aggravated tremendously by foreign money from corporations buying up housing stock in the city, not only for German as well, but nevertheless, you know, big corporations buying up thousands upon thousands upon thousands of apartments and jacking up prices and renovating and building luxury houses and things like that. And there was a campaign last year to bring about a referendum that had a proposal to expropriate some of those companies, the biggest ones, the ones that own more than 300,000 housing units within the city. That, of course, encountered a lot of resistance. The campaign to start off with didn't have a lot of money, didn't have obviously no support from the establishment whatsoever on the contrary. Nevertheless, the grassroots movement was built up, you know, people from all over the city collected signatures. It was a lot of signatures that needed to be collected for this to be on the ballot, but it succeeded. It wasn't over when it succeeded in collecting the signatures because then it has to be approved by a majority in the ballot. And it was, you know, quite comfortably actually with 59% of the votes, if I'm not mistaken. And then what happened? Well, the current city government in Berlin is refusing to implement it. They want to stall. They want to build, to set up a commission to analyze the proposal. And it's the same politics. If you want to kill the proposal, you set up a commission to analyze it. So they're just dragging their feet and hoping that it's going to go away eventually and they're not going to implement it. And that's really, I mean, is there anything more transparent in terms of a refusal of living up to the principles of democracy than a referendum being approved by the majority of the population? And then politicians just saying no, saying that they're not going to implement anything or what's saying there. I'm sure that brings up memories for a lot of us here, especially for people like Yanis and Yohan with everything that happened in 2015 in the referendum that was ignored and in Greece as well. So what's the more of the story? I think the more of the story is that we need, if we're going to get out of this and build something different, we need the two pronged approach. We need a movement, we need a grassroots movement much in the way that grassroots movements were built here in Berlin and in Greece that managed to succeed in those referendums. But we can't count on politicians to implement them. So we need an electoral element to our projects as well. So I think that's what DM brings to the table and what makes us unique apart from our values, which are unique as well, but in terms of just the strategy of it. I think that's what makes us unique that we're transnational and that we have a movement and then we have an electoral side of political parties to support us in implementing that vision. I don't think it's really possible to implement something that's so ambitious without having those two elements in our project essentially. And to answer to one of the questions that was put in the chat, how do we guarantee that even if we succeed in overthrowing the oligarchy, how do we guarantee that a new one is not going to just appear? Well, I can't say we can't, but we'll be damned if we want to at least try. Thanks, Lucas. I've got a question in the chat that I think you could tackle as a communications guy. If the media systemically discards or denigrates information that isn't in the interest of oligarchs, what is DM 25 strategy to get around that and be heard? So it's a more practical question, but if you could answer what are the things we're doing to break through that wall? Well, it's very difficult because among all of the other things that were mentioned and it's not mentioned in our intro, but something else that the oligarchs also control is the means of communication. So it's not an easy task at all. I think what we need to do is we need to play the long game. We need to work in changing what's called by political nerds like a lot of us here, the overtone window. So the thing that the window that represents what is permissible in the discourse and it might seem that's something that's very set and immutable, but it's not. It's shifting all the time, but it does so very slowly. So we need to do our best to shift what is permissible and what's seen as normal in normal conversations that you have. But again, it's a very slow process and I think that's something that we're doing right now more than ever. We're talking a lot about the term oligarch here and we're essentially trying to impart in the people who are watching this that it's a lot broader than a specific type of oligarch coming from a specific part of the world. So I think that's the that's what we need to do. That's what we need to do. I do think I do believe firmly that as much as we hate the technical feudalists that own Facebook and Twitter and Google with YouTube and those platforms, we need to use them as we're doing right now. We're watching this on YouTube so that we need to recognize that this is how you reach mass audiences in this current world. You know, there's a particular system that we're living under. We have to participate in it to a certain extent, even if we want to bring about the end of it. And so, you know, it's a slow process is not very easy. You if you become too successful too fast you run the chance of being silenced by those people, but you know, again, is just some is a fight that you need to take. Thanks Lucas. A couple of quick questions from the chat. Well, actually, there's a comment here because there are a few questions about NATO and someone says discourse about NATO is not permitted in DM 25 because I'm not answering. I'm not reading out those questions, but that's not true. We've we've tackled NATO on previous on previous live streams. So please refer to to those we've had three or four already about the Can I but it on this on this man. Yeah, there is something topical. Yeah. As you know, there is in the forum already of DM 25, a series of all member vote proposals. One of them concerns a proposal that some of us have tabled for the 25 to campaign vigorously in favor of a new non aligned movement, a movement of non aligned countries, nations, blocks, regions. This is essential. And I think it's the answer to the question regarding our position vis a vis NATO, because if we endorse this proposal this AMV vote, this AMV, and I thoroughly recommend that members vote in favor. Then that answers the question, because if you're supporting a non aligned movement, effectively, you're opposing the division of the world between military blocks, one of which, of course, the largest being NATO. I know that a lot of our comrades and friends will be worried about that. We already had comrades who were very close associated with us with whom we run together in Poland, for instance, during the main 2019 European Parliament election that have lambasted us and me personally for criticizing NATO. This is a debate that we are having in DM 25. I don't believe that we have the right as DMS to go down the road that our former comrades in Rasmus suggests, which is to say, Oh, who are you to tell polls that we shouldn't be NATO. Yes, it is. I'm against all facts and I'm telling you you shouldn't be NATO. In the same way, you can tell me what your name is and tell me what you think Greece should be doing, because we're a transnational movement. We do not say, ah, you know, but of my country, you don't have either have an opinion about my country. This is exactly the opposite of what DM 25 is all about. So together with Jeremy Corbyn on Friday morning, 11 o'clock, other time, nine o'clock London time, 10 o'clock Central European time, you can actually watch this live because it will be live streamed. Jeremy and I are going to be giving a press conference in Athens. As I said, 10 o'clock Central European time. In which we're going to argue in favor in favor of a new non aligned movement, which is going to force me in the nicest possible way to suggest to the delegates of matter 25 in our Congress on the same day. Actually on the following day on the Saturday, Saturday the 14th of May, that we vote for Greece's exit from NATO. So they're made. We are not missing our words about it. Thanks for that, Janice and you've also directly answered another question which was, don't you think it's time to join that all European progressive forces form some kind of pacifist counter revolution well it's not pacifist in this case but definitely stretching out beyond to incorporate others. One more comment which I think is spot on the persecution of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, something that is very close to the end 25 heart and something we've campaigned on since our founding proves what a threat transparency is to the oligarchs. Well said, Bural Madra from Turkey around. And hello, everybody. You know, I was in Venice. And I think the the Mr. Manitas Julian Assange project was quite successful and people were aware of what he was doing. But I think we should have supported him more in Venice with I don't know how but it should be much better if we could also give him a support. In the manifesto is now really perfect and with all the simple explanations, etc. But for Turkey's conditions this manifesto is an utopia you can imagine that it is an utopia. Yes, in general, 40% of the population is somehow in tune with all the concepts the manifesto is declaring. But the current state in Turkey is not so encouraging for people to join in very quickly and accept this manifesto and disseminate it. In Turkey. But I think as the M25 in Turkey we will we will try our best to to convince people to read the manifesto and to join in. Yes, this is our task now. About the oligarchs. Yes, there are many oligarchs in Turkey. And they are really recklessly stealing and destroying whatever belongs to the people and to the country and even including the historical heritage. For example, Hagia Sophia became a mosque and now there are many, many incidents which is really dangerous for the heritage there. And I think in Turkey we have still, we don't have this techno-federalism. We have traditional federalism. Yes, it is already. And so we have also traditional oligarchs. I don't know how to explain it, but they are traditional oligarchs. But because of the inflation and because of the of the race of all, I mean, petrol and all the basic goods in Turkey, people are becoming aware of why this is happening. And they are really learning about the concept of oligarchy or feudalism or whatever. So it is only the beginning. And I hope it will become more, more effective. And you have this e-topic democracy in Turkey soon. Thank you. Thank you, Barel. And just to pick up on what you just said and to reference what Lukas said about expanding the Overton window. I think something that we all need to do. I mean, DiEM25, but groups that are similar to us as well is to name some of these people. I mean, they've all got faces. They've all got families, business partners. They live in mansions. Who are these people, these oligarchs? Not this amorphous, anonymous cloud of people. These are real people because when you name something and you put a face to it, then you've got your target and you understand who you're dealing with and what you're attacking. Juliana Zeta, let me bring you back in. Juliana from Berlin. No, Frankfurt. Sorry. Yes. I just wanted to add one small thought on confronting oligarchy. And I think it fits well to what you just said, Mechan. Yes, one is to name them and really to point out what they're doing. But also when it comes to confronting them, I think everyone, especially everyone from the working class has run into injustice in confrontation with oligarchs who own the company they work in, for example. And I think confronting them is also a matter of standing up as an individual. So yes, please read the manifesto. And if you like it, join the movement, but also please read it. And if you don't join the movement, still fight for it. You know, I think the only way for us to succeed over the oligarchs in long term is to have many, many, many, many people supporting, you know, to confront them. And also in terms of Julian Assange, I believe if every day for two months, one or two million people would be in front of this, in front of the prison, we would talk differently about it and media wouldn't be able to ignore it. But we lack the masses. So in any case, mobilization of everyone is needed. If you want to succeed. So I think this is another aspect that's adding up to what we as a movement can do and the strategies that we have. But also everyone who's watching here has to mobilize themselves and the energy they have left during this crisis to confront those powers. Thank you, Juliana. And with that, I think we're going to wrap up. We're at the top of the hour. Just one last question from the chat or suggestion, which is that we need to campaign in DM against the imminent threat of Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Well, our local collective in Stockholm is actually planning a local campaign on exactly that. So please, please sign up if you haven't already. The email address, what's the email address? Forget the email address. The web address. It's been a long day. The web address is dm25.org slash join and you can get involved and help to make the manifesto that we've been talking about today a reality that manifesto again, it's on our front page right now, dm25.org dm25.org. Someone said it sounds like the M 25 like the London Road in the chat. No, D M D I E M 25.org. And you can read it in long form, short form, print it out, listen to it. There's an audio version as well. And please, if it inspires you, sign up dm25.org slash join. Thank you again for your attention today and see you two weeks from now on the Tuesday. So my brain is too adult to calculate what date that will be, but it will not be Tuesday of next week. It'll be the following Tuesday or sign up for our YouTube channel and you'll get a notification when it's there. Okay 24 someone sending me. Thank you. Thank you for saving me there. Take care. Stay safe and thanks again.