 Hello, hello. And welcome to another coordinating call of DM25, the Movement for Europe, featuring progressive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Merron Khalili, and we've got a few topics for you today. First, we'll talk about the crisis at the EU-Belarus border where tens of thousands of families are stranded in desperate conditions. To what extent are they being weaponized by political forces in Belarus and political forces in the EU? Then we'll talk about Germany, where we've just founded a new political party. What are the next steps there for us at DM25? And as the new coalition government takes shape, what are we going to do about providing a progressive alternative for German voters? We'll talk about how to make next Black Friday or Black Friday, make Amazon Payday with our sister organization, the Progressive International. But first, there's someone who unfortunately is missing here today, and that's our colleague, Rosemary Beckler, who passed away last weekend. So first, we'll be remembering her. Janis, please get us started. Thank you, Merron. Rosemary is one of those exemplary comrades, human beings, scholars, activists, that we simply could not afford to do without, not just DM25, the planet, humanity. I got to know her because she joined DM25 on day one of DM25 when we converged in Berlin. She was there. She had no reason to be there, except that as a true internationalist, left-wing socialist internationalist, she saw in DM25 an opportunity to work across borders. That was the one thing that really motivated Rosemary's life, to break down borders. Whether these are borders between communities, trade unions and political parties, different groups and group of schools within the left, the Greens, different regions and countries, she had this penchant for demolishing the walls that separate, she had this true belief, genuine belief in the capacity of progressive causes to bind together people and communities. And ever since she joined DM25, she's been the best example one can think of of somebody who is hugely supportive of everyone, each and every one of us, while at the same time being hugely critical. Because today, with all this nonsense that has infected even the left about the importance of safe spaces and everybody being kind to everyone, she is a paragon of what we really need it, which is, yes, you need to support everyone, everybody must feel that they belong, while at the same time being ruthlessly critical of everyone, including herself. She, you can go into a website and you can see that Johannes and others and David have put together a beautiful tribute to Rosemary Bachelor. I shall simply end this, I could talk for four hours by saying that none of us knew she was sick because she thought it was just a nuisance that she was very ill. And she also believed that as long as she had the breath inside of her, she was immortal. And the way she put it to us was that because she was actually sending us messages with guidelines on what we should do for our national health service campaign in Britain, our party in Germany, our party in Greece, even while she was dying from a hospital bed. And most of us didn't even know she was sending us those messages from a hospital bed. We just, I knew, but I was even trying to, it was very difficult to imagine that she was so ill because her messages were long and juicy. And then at some point they stopped. And that was the end. Soon after that, we found out from Nick, her wonderful husband, great comrade that she passed. It's devastating for all of us. But at the same time, we have a duty to celebrate her life and to draw strength from that. She would not want us to lament. She would not want us to mourn. She would simply want to do that what she said in her last email to me. And I'm sure in other emails, she had equally significant things to say, poignant things to say to others. She said, go to sleep now, she said. You've been very tired with all this campaigning that you do. I will go to sleep as well. But going to sleep simply meant recovering strength to continue the struggle. So here's to you, Rosemary. Thank you, Yanis, and we'll miss you, Rosemary. Okay, we're going to talk now about the crisis at the EU Belarus border. And if I can pass the ball back to you, Yanis, because I know that you have to go and you started talking about this topic last time. And it's evolved a little bit since then. So perhaps if you could speak about that and then we can open it up to everyone else on this topic. Well, the great German philosopher, not even a hugely progressive one, Emmanuel Kant, made the point that the one thing we don't have the right to do is to treat human beings as means to some exogenous objective and that we have a duty as human beings to treat human beings as ends in themselves. To treat them for what they are. An autonomous purpose. So weaponizing and instrumentalizing people is a form of slavery. And Kant's point, and I think it was a good one, one that another German philosopher Hegel took further, was that if you do that, if you instrumentalize people, then without recognizing it, without even realizing it, you are instrumentalizing even yourself. Okay, from the highly abstract philosophical, let's go down to earth and to the tangible. In the summer of 2015, when Syrian refugees and other refugees started streaming from Turkey to Greece, the island of Lesbos famously, but other islands as well. Angela Merkel had an epiphany for about 10, 15 days. She was a good person. She opened Germany's borders to these refugees. And immediately after that, the Christian Democrats within her own party threatened to topple her. So being Angela Merkel, she immediately came to a very sorted deal with President Erdogan of Turkey. Effectively what Merkel did was to go to Mr. Erdogan and bribe him with billions of euros so that Erdogan would allow her and the rest of the European Union, which did as it was told by Angela Merkel, to violate international law. What Erdogan was trying to do was to increase his own power vis-a-vis the European Union. And he was instrumentalizing these refugees, controlling the flow of refugees to the European Union, okay? In order to extract benefits, diplomatic benefits, financial benefits and other benefits from Angela Merkel. And Angela Merkel cut a deal with him. She bribed him with billions of dollars and euros to, you know, if he regulated those flows, we would then violate, we the Greeks, the Germans and so on, we would violate our obligations to refugees. So it was a double weaponization or instrumentalization of hapless refugees. Erdogan was weaponizing the refugees so as to extract concessions and money from Merkel. Merkel was weaponizing and instrumentalizing the refugees so as to signal to their friends in Syria, in Nigeria, in Ghana, in Afghanistan, don't come to Europe because you will end up in Turkey or in a horrible camp, you know, on Samo's. Now we have prison camps, you know, like prisons, large prisons. Why am I mentioning this? I was supposed to be talking about Belarus. Well, because if one dictator discovers that there are benefits to be had, similar to the ones that another dictator has extracted from the European Union, what did Merkel think? Didn't she know that Lukashenko and others would, you know, bordering the EU would look at all the benefits that Erdogan manages to extract from her and say, I want some too. So this is exactly what he did. When the European Union started imposing sanctions against Belarus, the regime, the leadership of Belarus, Lukashenko said, okay, I'll do it. I'll do it as Erdogan did. So he had some refugees imported from Turkey and other places to Belarus and weaponized them. And what is the European Union doing? Instrumentalizing those people. So you've got the Belarusian authorities pushing them towards Europe, the European Union, the European Union pushing them back. And now Angela Merkel and Lukashenko are engaged in exactly the same process of corrupt misanthropic issues that Merkel and Erdogan and they will find some formula. But what really matters is that Europe is losing its soul. It is selling its soul out in exactly the same way with Belarus as it was with Turkey. This is to the detriment of the people of Turkey, to the detriment of people of Belarus, to the detriment of the souls of citizens of the European Union and of course, to the detriment of Scotland in no man's land. This Europe is going to go down in history as their major violator of human rights. You know, Lukashenko, he's here today, gone tomorrow. The European Union is supposed to be a rules-based liberal democratic construct. This liberal democratic construct, which is only liberal and only democratic in name, is going to be the one that history will judge very, very harshly. Sianis, Maya Pelovich. So yesterday we had an opportunity to see an episode of The Envoys where my dear guest was Basil Abu Fahir who is a Syrian cellist that now lives in Brussels. And I had an opportunity to talk with him and probably we will have a link in somewhere where you can see it and you can see the whole show. But while talking to him, I had an opportunity to hear his whole story because he is a Syrian refugee. He came to Europe in 2015. He was one of the fortunate ones. He was from an upper class family. So he had money to actually come to Europe. And he told us, which you can hear in the show, the whole situation of him coming to Europe and of all the criminal activities that happened while he was coming and he needed thousands and thousands of Europe, him and his family to come to Europe. He was of course in the refugee camp for fortunately only a some month and a half or two months in very terrible conditions. But he was, and he says about himself that he was one of the fortunate ones. Of course, not all of the refugees were fortunate. Ask him to come to Brussels. But the thing that he forgot to tell me during the show, which I would like to say now because of course we talked about a lot of things. So we couldn't, he just forgot to tell me and it is an important thing is that he still has in his ID card where it says nationality. It doesn't say his nationality, but it says refugee. So from 2015 to now, which is like 2022 in a couple of months, he is still a refugee in Europe. And of course, all the expectations he had of the promised land Europe that he was coming to after a couple of years, now he thinks of Europe differently, seeing how Europe dealt with the whole crisis. And he also told me that of course at this moment because he doesn't want to return of course to Syria. He doesn't know what the situation precisely there is because he doesn't live there anymore. But still in a way he thinks that the war in Middle East is not finished, it's just began. And he thinks from his position of a young man that lives in Brussels from Syria, that the whole story has just started and we will see a lot of it in the near future. So I think that this is a crisis that is not over and in my opinion and of course in his opinion and that it's a crisis we will have to deal with in the next periods. Thank you for sharing that Maya. Ivana, Nenadavic. Yes, thank you. I would like to underline basically what Janice and Maya already said. And that is the hypocrisy that I can see from the European Union once again when it comes to this judging non-EU countries for not accepting the refugees while the EU has barbed wired fences and the dogs at the border of Hungary or Croatia. So we must not forget that refugees are coming daily to the Balkans to Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia which are also passing the hot potato between the borders. And while refugees are in this black hole of non-EU countries in the Balkans we don't even have the records what's going on. And those prison camps are just torture points for them where they're waiting, the bureaucracy is heavy. Maybe 10 of them will pass, maybe they won't. It's just torture. And now the focus is only shift to Belarus and Polish border in my opinion because there is just another dictator that should be replaced. So it's convenient, but unfortunately it doesn't have anything to do with solving the crisis and providing people the free movement. Thanks, Ivana, Patricia. Potso. Thank you. Well, on one hand Europe seems as Ivana just said once again to be unable to deal with these humanitarian crisis. But let me underline that it's interesting to see that a network of mayors is coming up to welcome these refugees. Let me explain you a little bit better. There is on one hand government of the national countries that are completely unable to find any form of agreement. On the other hand, mayors of the same countries is starting working together. I can make example. For example, I live part of my week in Palermo. The mayor of the city of Palermo is one of these men. But there are also other cities like Tirana, like Postnam in Germany, for example. And they are trying all together at least first of all to welcome people who need to be welcome. And after this starting any other type of discussion. So that it's interesting for us as DM-25 also to understand that's what we always said that local, in a way, local solution, municipality is a good way probably a form of possible hope in this moment. Where of course once again, Europe is totally unable. Thank you, Patricia. And thank you for moving us towards solutions in this terrible situation. Avid Castro. Thank you, Mehran. Just to go back to what Maya was saying earlier about Basel because I actually happened to live with him. So I've heard these stories over the last five years since I've known him when we met here in Brussels. By the way, Basel also was the person who created the music for our DM-25 documentary. If you haven't seen it, you should go and watch it on our YouTube channel. But just a little comment about Basel. The idea when coming to Europe, a lot of people obviously would imagine that it would be a land of peace and a land of security and somewhere that they could look forward to living with their families and so on. But what actually happened, and not just to Basel, but to I would say the majority of refugees and migrants that have arrived in Europe over the last 10, 20 years has been precisely the opposite. Instead of finding peace and security, they found essentially permanent insecurity where their families have been split up. They haven't been able to see each other. And that's something that we have to change. I mean, what kind of European Union is this? And even he mentioned yesterday, there is no European Union. There's a European, this Union has also we've been saying at the DM-25. So we have to put forward solutions as a movement. We have to be able to also be in power in order to implement those solutions so that we can actually act as a European Union and not this kind of divided and this United, this, you know, Union of States, apparently that we have today, you know, this has to end so that we can actually be a force for good in the world, but also within our continent. Thank you, David. Well said. Amir Kiayi. Thank you, Mehran. And just to add to, you know, as you're moving the conversation into what the policy positions, et cetera, should be in DM-25, as many of the audience might have seen from our website, we have a green paper on a migration issue, of course. And not only do we include measures that are looking at the issue from a short-term point of view instead of changing, for example, front-text from a, you know, militarized border force into a search and rescue, et cetera, transition, but also looking at the underlying causes of the crisis facing us. And that is primarily wars and military conflict, which Europe is very much involved in, whether it's supporting dictators that lead to civil wars, et cetera, across the near East and in Africa and other parts of the world, but also the fact that the weapons industry is quite active in many of these countries. That's the first issue. The second issue, of course, is climate change. And as the audience also is aware of from a green idea, for your point of view, we are trying to tackle that. So this is the difference. We are looking at the audience, and if there's any people who are willing and able to join DM-25 to work on these policies, that would be very welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Amir. And if you'd like to work on that, DM-25.org slash join is the address to stick into your browser. Let's move to our next topic. The weekend before last, no, was it last weekend? I forget now. These weekends are merging into the weeks, but we've recently started a party in Germany, a political party called Mara 25, as our Greek party is called. And next steps, what are the next steps for that party? How can people in Germany and across Europe get involved in providing a real progressive alternative for people in Germany? Let's start with Judith Meyer. Yeah, I think that people are already realizing how important our alternative will be for Germany, because as you may have heard, the coalition talks are in their final stages. And we're seeing that basically the only reason a lot of people voted greens to prevent climate catastrophe is not really a big topic for the greens there, rather happy to give up a lot of the goals, such as ending coal earlier, or restricting the sale of combustion engines earlier than the EU demands it anyway. Also, we're seeing that the list of prospective ministers that has been leaked is very dark. We would see, for example, Lindner as finance minister. So this means more austerity for Europe. And also for Germany, of course, he would have a very strong line on that. Then what, that was kind of expected, I mean, between, it was always going to be either Habeck or Lindner. Habeck would have been better, I think. What was less expected is that the FDP, that is the Liberal Party, they're going to claim the health ministry and they want to put in a guy called Teura. I was not so familiar with this guy before, but apparently he's close to the corona denying faction, like close to, yeah, basically it's going to be a catastrophe to have this guy in charge of the health ministry at this time, even if he doesn't explicitly say that there is no pandemic, he's saying that we should behave as if there was no pandemic, he is against closing anything down, basically anything that might hurt the economy. That is looking pretty awful. And yeah, the Greens would have mainly a topic in the economy and climate ministry, which would be a powerful ministry, but who cares if they're not even going to have any rigid targets in the coalition treaty, who cares. And yeah, Annalena Berbuck would be foreign minister. Now I might have said previously that it's a good idea for the Greens to have the foreign ministry because the Greens come from a tradition of pacifists and pro-migrant stances, but Berbuck in particular is not a pacifist, she's as hawkish as the Green can get. And also the Greens have been hemming and hawing about the refugee crisis on Europe's borders in the past few weeks. So if they're doing that before they even formally get into government, I am not expecting all that much from them. And I think that a lot of people are seeing this already who might have put their hopes in the Greens or in SPD, and they're seeing that basically this government will be not that different from the previous ones and that is why we need this alternative for Germany and we needed it yesterday. Thank you. You took the words right out of my mouth. I was going to say you painted the picture. Fortunately, we have an alternative. Johannes, tell us about that. Yes, thanks. We had a very exciting weekend. Actually it was 10 days ago, 13th of November here in Berlin where we presented Mera 25, who's going to be, which is going to be an alternative for politics in Germany to be different from what we just heard tonight. I think beginning with the migrant crisis and people being used from different sides, as Janis explained, as well as the current COVID crisis really getting very, very bad here in Germany and the cases are rising and there's no politics that actually tackles that. And of course, as well as Judith already said now, the climate crisis is lurking behind and what we really need I think is the politics that in the current talks, the word stability is used a lot. Stability for the finances, stability to not change that much, but I think what we really need for all kinds of reasons that I've just mentioned is a new vision for actually taking responsibility, politics taking responsibility for the states of the country as we are in and the continent as well, of course, and what we presented and there will be this week, there will be a video released from the whole event so you can all watch it. So watch out our YouTube channels of the Mera 25, our party in Germany, but also this one of course for this video to rewatch the event and what we presented was our program and not the 160 pages that you can read on our website but the 11 goals that we have that we took out of this program and that are important for us. I'm going to mention two now, which are tackling some of the things that we heard about tonight. The first one to mention is the goal to abolish Frontex. As Amir already mentioned as the M25 has the goal to transform it into something that is good for humanity. That's also what we are going to have as one of our aims of the lecture wing, the party in Germany and to abolish the debt break that we have actually written in our constitution in Germany which is a huge problem for all good things and good things you would be able to do if you would actually manage to get into power to change our society and fight climate change and our social problems that we have. This is not possible with the current stability policy that is very prominent in Germany and we are going to take this hat on. Thank you, Johannes. Juliana next but perhaps you can answer the question for me. If I'm sitting in Germany watching this and I like what I just heard from Johannes and I want to get involved, how do I do it? What does the M25 new party in Germany marry 25 need and also what's the electoral timeline that you guys are looking at? When might this party be competing in elections or is that not yet decided, Juliana? Yes, thank you, Mehran. Well, to answer your question I think we can put the link to our homepage of Mehran25.de in the chat so this is where you can first look at our programme and there you have all the information you need about us at this moment. For us it will be, I think, and this is just, we haven't finished our strategy yet but we're looking at local elections probably in the middle of next year and not trying this far. That could be something realistic for us so this will be our first step. There are other local elections before but there are two short notice for us and what we need is basically everyone. We need everything and everyone. I think with the election being now two months away what you can really see in Germany in Germany feels like an abandon ship right now. The current Chancellor is kind of gone and the new government is yet to come but I've saw recent polls and there hasn't been that much less trust in a government coming up after elections in this one. Schultz is also a Vice Chancellor at this point but he hasn't been publicly seen for two months so I think there is a lot of fears and a lot of anxiety going around to Germany about what's happening here. The corona crisis is at the same point as it was last year but there's no plan. There's no one having any vision how to come out of this. The new government hasn't said anything so I think it's really time for people to look for alternatives and they will look for alternatives because how I can feel it in my circle of people friends around there are all like we have no idea what's coming up the next five years and nobody's very hopeful that any goal will be reached when it comes to climate crisis or when it comes to the low wages when it comes to essential workers because they are really really being really isolated in this crisis they have to work all the time and to be there for the mistakes that politics are making and work all the time but they're not getting much more payment and I think the new government will not do that so this is what I'm saying is people need to organize and they need to voice what they want because it won't be served to them just because it's the right thing to do because what we see is politics in Germany is not doing the right thing it's just simply playing political chess games who will be getting which ministry and so on so I think it's clear to everyone and for us it will be very exciting to start from that point because it's not a better point to start from I mean it's not nice that we have this situation but I think it's a good point to start speaking to people and giving them a perspective with our program, with our points and to see how they will react on it and I think from the event last week or ten days ago we already saw that many many people are on board with our program and that's very important so please check it out and join Thank you Juliana and for you out there who may have missed the address mera25.de if you would like a new way of doing politics in Germany get off the spectator seats and sign up and get in touch and you can be part of making this happen Beral, Beral Madra on Germany Thank you Yes looking to all these developments from Turkey maybe we'll make the environment more clear what I'm thinking is at the moment we have already 5 million refugee people living in Turkey but today one dollar became 13 lira which is quite high I have really no problems with my living but even people in my position are thinking about the next future in Turkey because everything inflation is 30% or something so how do you think all these 5 million people will be able to live in Turkey when 20 million people are under hunger line and another 15 million is power to line so I think the governments the new government in Germany and all the other governments will have a difficult problem in front of them because these people will not be able to live in Turkey forever so there will be another movement from Turkey to Europe because when I went to take my visa I saw a line of 100 people in 3 hours there were 100 people and people the official people there told me that everyday 200 people are looking for visa to Europe so maybe people will take their time and go to the visa offices in Turkey and one by one they will come to Europe so in the near future Europe will have a more difficult problem dealing with all these foreign people the others they are the others they are all still the others for European populations so I think this will be a problem thank you Beryl and migration will definitely be something that the German party will be aiming to tackle if when it gets in power ok let's move on to the next topic this Friday is Black Friday and as last year we are going to attempt to make Amazon pay we've got David Adler from our sister organisation the progressive international talk about this campaign David the floor is yours press the wrong button you should be able to see me now thanks for the introduction I think you said we are going to attempt to make Amazon pay now we will together make Amazon pay and we are very excited with the development, the evolution the growth of this campaign from a year ago where we had the crazy idea of building the first global coalition of workers environmental activists, tax justice advocates to take on Amazon and its exploitative labour practices destructive environmental policies that was a huge success for the first time we had traction in multiple countries we built a parliamentary group of over 400 MPs in 36 countries signing an open letter to Jeff Bezos to make it clear that the divide and conquer strategy that Amazon relies on to get its way in whatever jurisdiction this was not going to stand since then we've been working to build that coalition across Amazon's supply chain so that's not just the warehouse workers, delivery workers in countries like Germany and Poland and Spain and Italy although we have deep in the relationships across the unique global affiliates and Siegel in Italy and Verdi in Germany and many others but also across the supply chain in Cambodia and Bangladesh where government workers who are working for Amazon suppliers have faced mass firings and underpaying and wild schemes that basically suppress labour organizing in Amazon suppliers which we hold to be just as important as actual Amazon employees so this mobilization on Black Friday will be the largest in history strikes and protest actions in over 20 countries it will be a true transnational strike which in the spirit of GM25 speaks to our vision of the world and its need to transcend national boundaries and defence of things like workers' rights and put an end to corporate impunity and we're calling on everyone to get involved so we're very excited about the work that we're already doing with people like Lucas with Claudia with David on having the campaign take flight across the GM25 but we would encourage anyone who's watching the stream to go to makeamazonpay.com to see where the actions are located to get in touch with us if you'd like to host an action if you'd like to join one that's already there there should be some more information that we can pass along because we're going to need as many arms and legs and eyes and ears as possible to make this clear so we're calling on people to respect the digital picket line I think that the DM line on the Black Friday mobilization is that it shouldn't just be restricted to Black Friday that Black Friday is kicking off a whole weekend of engagement with these questions of consumer kind of gluttony and trying to contain that those deals in order to send the right signal to our corporate overlords that we won't stand for their corrosion of our democratic institutions and their erosion of labor rights so with all that keep your eyes out we'll be rolling out make sure to sign up so you can stay in touch with the campaign as we announce new actions as we roll out actions from the streets to the parliaments around the world and and get involved whether that's getting in touch with members of the CC who are involved with the campaign or whether it's getting in touch with the PI directly we'd love to hear from you and there's so much work to do to either stand in solidarity or advance this campaign in all the different domains where Amazon is present which as you did will remind us is the entire internet and many of the most destructive industries that we've been talking about on this call from the military industrial complex to front texts that I'm sure uses Amazon web services to issues around you know air to one and the deployment of surveillance technologies so it's time for us to stand up and I think that this Black Friday mobilization will be really inspiring moments and it's incredibly exciting for us to have DM leading that fight across Europe so thanks for the chance to speak about it briefly here and like I said make Amazon pay.com is where we'll have a lot of the information and chance to sign up to the campaign so you can stay at the date and get involved ahead of Friday thanks for that intro David just a quick question I mean could you perhaps give us a sneak preview of what people will be asking people to do how they can get involved for this campaign yeah so we have a list of strikes and actions and protests in different countries that are already planned so one of the major things we want to do is invite people across Europe to get involved with those actions to increase their size and representivity and have DM have a real presence in the actions that are already planned but there's also room to be hosting your own event I mean this thing can go from the smallest social media campaign 3-4 people who are getting online and you know kind of writing to tweeting about and facebooking about the campaign and the various people who are complicit in Amazon's various destructive practices from the shop floor all the way to the state house so that can be the smallest action all the way to organizing a small protest in your town square and your piazza where we're welcoming people to come we have all those assets posters banners all the things you might need to kind of set make the message public in the physical sense in your place I understand that many parts of Europe are going through another lockdown so if you don't happen to be in Austria or any other places affected by that lockdown we would welcome those actions and could put it out into the map of actions that we have now up on the site so it can really stretch from the small to the more ambitious and we have a lot of exciting stunts that I can't announce here but that are planned in places like Netherlands like Brazil to kind of have some fun with this and to try to use stunts to make sure the message is getting out there but it's not an exaggeration to say that Black Friday is one of the most profitable days for the corporation Amazon and so it's so critical that we kind of reclaim the power on that day as citizens as consumers as workers to send that message to Jeff Bezos and beyond Thanks David and a comment from the chat here that Make Amazon Pay seems to be catching really well catching on really well in my circles even those who have no clue what DM and Progressive International are so that's good I'm very glad that it's gaining traction and once again the address is MakeAmazonPay.com to get involved in that and I think with that we're getting close to the top of the hour we're going to wrap it up we've talked about the crisis of desperate families from the border between EU and Belarus we've talked about our progressive alternative that we're building in Germany a new political party that we founded we've talked about of course how to MakeAmazonPay and we've collectively remembered our colleague Rosemary Beckler who sadly died last weekend so thank you for paying attention for your comments on the chat and for supporting us for your engagement and we will see you at the same time in two weeks from now same place for the next