 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome. I'm Meryl Kilili and this is another DM25 live debate except it's not exactly a live debate because it's Christmas and it's the last live debate of our fortnightly debates of the year, quite a mouthful. And this time we've got a special kind of holiday live stream where we're going to tap our panel for their personal recommendations for what kind of content they've consumed, books, music, podcasts, whatever during 2022 and also get a retrospective of the last year as we move ahead into the next one. And you, you out there, if you've got thoughts, comments, questions, rants, concerns, recommendations of your own, then please put them in the YouTube chat because this is live. And the last thing, because this is a bit of a different call this time, one of you will have the opportunity to win some nice DM25 merchandise. There is a pinned link in the chat now. I'm talking about the people who are joining us on the chat now on YouTube. So please click that link, the pinned link, enter your name and email address in the next 45 minutes. And at the end of the call, we will draw one lucky winner and get that merchandise sent off to you. Okay, let me hand the floor over to Yanis to kick us off. Yanis, 2022, go for it. Well, what a fantastic year that was. War returned to Europe. The left has been at its weakest and the most pathetic state in the history of the last 100 years. We hear in Greece, our electoral wing, as we call it, the Mera25, we have been very happy about the fact that we are still surviving and we have a decent chance of improving in our performance in the forthcoming election, which is, you can tell that we are in a festive mood today, but I am in a festive mood. We are doing really badly in absolute numbers. We are celebrating the fact that our little party may be doing 5%, which is considerably more than 3.44% that we got in the 2019 election. I can see on the face of our comrades, ecstasy, we are really very happy about that and we have reason to be happy because we are improving in a year when the left is collapsing everywhere and we are being absolutely defeated, left, right and center by the fascists on the one hand. Look at Melonius, his prime minister in Italy. Who would have thought that in the year 2022, a politician who grew up worshiping Benito Mussolini would manage to go from 4% in the previous election to government in Italy. And yet we met at 25, we're ecstatic that we're going from 3.44, almost 4%, to 5%. So, I think that, you know, I'm sorry, but there's somebody falling lower down incessantly, obviously wanting to share the brilliant success story that DiEM25 is. Look, I think that this is the time of the year, the festive season when we have to be very cynical and extremely self-deprecating because if we don't do it now, when are we going to do it? No, there is a serious aspect to what I'm saying. DiEM25 is simultaneously a catastrophe and a brilliant success. It is a catastrophe because think about it, we started in February 2016 in Berlin at the Volksbühne Theater. In fact, we had tens of thousands of people joining us. We had huge ambition, in fact, to take over Europe from the oligarchy. It hasn't worked. It really hasn't worked. In that sense, if you compare our pathetic performance in the last, what is it, six years, seven years with the fascists and the bankers and the Mario Draghi's and the Christian Lagards and the Emmanuel Macron's of the world, we've been a miserable lot. But at the same time, we've kept the flame alight. And we're here, we are growing at very low rates while the world around us has gone completely and utterly berserk. We have a situation where a former KGB colonel has committed a great nation, Russia, to a genocidal war in Ukraine. You have parts of the left in Europe proclaiming NATO whose only interest is in propagating its own imperialistic existence by prolonging that war in Ukraine until everybody's dead, if they could, they would. So part, and yet parts of the left are proclaiming NATO to be a kind of anti-colonial alliance. The world has gone mad all over us. Europe is no longer. I mean, the whole notion of the European Union, which we were going to democratize in the year 2022 has proven unfit for purpose. The European Union doesn't exist in my view. It's been taken over by NATO. It's been taken over by the warmongers. Look at the situation in Ukraine as it's going to be shaping up in the next months or years in relation to the European Union that we tried to democratize in order to save it and make it a force for good in Europe. What a pathetic idea that was. What a pathetic outcome we have. Okay, let's be slightly serious and I will conclude on a serious and at the same time comical note. At some point, what deem has been saying from the beginning, that is that only a peace process and the peace treaty will conclude the war in Ukraine. This is now becoming clear in the mind of any clear thinking person in the world. This quagmire cannot be resolved by military means. Putin will neither win nor lose. The Ukrainians and NATO will neither win nor lose. So a peace process is going to start at some point. The European Union is going to be absent from it by definition, by definition. It will, the European Union will be irrelevant and it's actually going to be worse than being irrelevant. Here is my thinking. Suppose, not suppose, conjure up in your head, in your mind, the first meeting at some Reykjavik or somewhere where these summits take place, these negotiations, peace processes take place, Oslo, wherever, Beijing, New Delhi, where the American representatives of the Zelensky government and Russia, maybe Beijing, maybe Turkey are meeting in order to carve out a peace process. Who is going to represent the European Union? This is a tragic question because there is no answer to it. It can't be Macron or Olaf Scholz because they would be veered by the warmongers from the Baltics, from Estonia, from Poland, from Finland, the Eastern and North Eastern member states of the European Union consider Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz to be put in appeasers. They will never accept someone like Macron or Scholz to represent the European Union. At the same time, since the European Union is the Franco-German accent, accent, axis, without France and Germany, there can be no European Union and certainly there will be no wad of money to pay for Ukraine's reconstruction without France and Germany. Berlin and Paris are going to veto, let's say Miss Kallas, the Prime Minister of Estonia, represented the European Union. Ursula von der Leyen, Mr. Borel, Mr. Michel, the President of the European Union Council, you just need to state their names to realize how comic it would be if they represented the European Union. So none of these people can represent the European Union. So the European Union is not simply not going to be represented. Maybe it will be there in order to wave the flag, but they will play absolutely no role in resolving the war in the heart of Europe. But they will be made by the United States to pay for any peace treaty and for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Because that's what the Americans do. When the Americans invaded Iraq under Bush number one, back in the early 90s, they made the Saudis and the Emirates pay for their invasion. Wherever they invade, they make somebody else pay for it. The Americans are, you know, leading the war effort in the Ukraine. They send all the weaponry and they get paid for it. There's no doubt of that. But they will make the European Union pay approximately the European Investment Bank came out with a number for it. 1.1 trillion euros is the sum that they came up with. The minimum that will be necessary to reconstruct the Ukraine. That's a bit more than the total budget of the European Union for six years. The total budget for the European Union for six years is a bit less than what will be necessary to reconstruct the Ukraine. So it's clear that the European Union budget is not going to be able to sustain that. So they will need to create a new common debt in the way that they created new common debt for a much smaller sum for the recovery fund. Okay, but we know that already there's going to be already, or we already know, there's going to be a massive negative response to that in Berlin. Already the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has ruled out any new common debt. And they have explicitly told the German government that, okay, they tolerated the pandemic recovery fund, but new common debt at the level of the EU will not be tolerated by the Constitutional Court of Germany. But nevertheless, let's say that the government in Berlin finds a way of bypassing its Constitutional Court. I cannot in my life imagine how the Spanish would agree to sharing the burden of this huge amount of money when it will be German companies that mainly, German and French companies, that mainly benefit from the contracts and the procurement that goes hand in hand with the rebuilding of Ukraine. I cannot see if, in my mind, in my mind's eye, Mr. Orban in Hungary agreeing to any of this, unless he gets huge concessions that the rest of Europe will never want to give him. I cannot see how Meloni is not going to use this as a magnificent opportunity to exact a pound of flesh regarding, you know, torturing the refugees that arrive on Italian soil or doing whatever it is that the Meloni government wants to demonstrate a capacity for accomplishing against the interests of humanity in order to justify the fact that they became the government of Italy. In other words, a little movement that began with great ambitions in 2016 was proven spectacularly correct in predicting that this Europe is gone will be a goner unless our DiEM25 manifesto of democratizing Europe succeeds. We were completely, spectacularly successful in predicting that. And at the same time, we live in a Europe that squeezes us out of existence, more or less, not out of existence, but squeezes us into a minimalist role because we are caught up in a huge conflict, which we predicted a conflict between two varieties of authoritarianism, the authoritarianism of Brussels and Frankfurt, of the liberal establishment, the corrupt liberal establishment. We now have complete evidence. Look at the Qatar Gate scandal in Brussels that is opaque, non-transparent, corrupt, reactionary, right-wing, democracy-free zone called the European Union is creating one crisis after the other, and now that there's a war in its vicinity, it is ruling itself out of play, out of the game. The liberal establishment that was responsible for this debacle is sort of caught up in a duel with a fascist, neo-fascist uprising in the Melonies, the Urbans, the Polish government, the Lepents and so on. But at the same time, the two are, as we said from the beginning, each other's accomplices, and it is voices like DiEM25 that never get heard beyond YouTube, beyond live-streaming events like ours today, tonight. It is a delicious contradiction between a grand success and a spectacular failure. That's DiEM25. But as long as we are alive and we keep this scandal alight, we have a reason to exist. And, you know, the night is darkest just before that little light starts glowing and glowing and glowing and maybe, you know, bringing in a proper day. By the way, this is what Mera means. This is the name that we used for our electoral wing. The day that comes after the night. This is our hope. It probably won't happen. But it's a good struggle to fight and to keep fighting and it's a good dream to have during this festive season. That was my lot. Thank you, Yanis, for that bittersweet retrospective. Juliana, Juliana Zeta from Germany. How was your 2022? And what might your recommendations be? Maybe you can also include those for people watching in terms of things to absorb content to get stuck into. Juliana. Thank you, Mera. Hi, everyone. Yes, just still processing what Yanis just said. No, I think 2022 was, I mean, after the last few years, was for sure not a better year for anyone. And I mean, if, even if sometimes, of course, positive things happen in our lives, it's just hard to be ignorant of what's happening around us. And for sure, if you see all the crisis evolving, like inflation and all those things that most people are hit by, I mean, yes, the war broke out. And for example, and the devastation that's happening there is one thing, but it spreads through all our lives. The kind of, you know, it's like a domino effect that invades all of our lives. So I think it's really difficult. What I've realized 2022 is that you have to put in effort to stay positive because, you know, sometimes you just want to put your head in the sand and be just ignorant of everything around us. And I think that the next years will be much harder even that it's really on people in political organizations and the left to really wake up at some point and focus on really important topics like what's influencing most of people. I mean, the left in Germany, for example, is if you see it like almost dead and then I see it on the positive that many people who are learning of meta-25 in Germany are really, you know, reacting positive to it and they are kind of getting pushy. Like why are you not doing more? Why are you not doing this? Why aren't you at these elections? And that's a positive sign that there is an urge for new parties, for a new, you know, kind of to keep this fire alive, as Janne said. And that's what's at the end, motivating me to, you know, stick to the task. And I think in terms of what we have done the past year since we existed in Germany as meta-25, can say, yeah, we founded our first, you know, branch in Bremen, which was just this month. And I'm really happy and proud that the group in Bremen mostly has done this amazing work. We will have our first elections next year, so everything will be focused on that and that will be amazing for us as a first milestone to see what we can do and what we can accomplish with the little resources that we have, but also, you know, the task to become a larger party will be very difficult for us, but, you know, you have to kind of keep going. And yeah, I think that 2022 has been a very, you know, a year where I've, where we've learned a lot in terms also of founding a party and then being very serious because the last time we had the party, we were just concentrated on European elections, but now it's just something else. And now you're in this, you know, also in this mind of what's happening nationally much more. And then you can see the, I mean, one funny thing is the word of the year in Germany 2022 is site vendor. And it's out of Schultz's speech after the war breakout and it's kind of, it's like turning point. And I'm still thinking about what that turning point was, like how could this be like a positive turning point? Because what it actually kind of means is like from the perspective of our government is that the turning point is that now Germany has this leadership in the world and that we're pumping up the military and so on. And this scares people, obviously, but also if you look at the left and your Liberals also, but especially at the left, many are falling for that. And I think this is also a huge danger in Germany that, you know, what we see in Italy may happen in Germany as well at some point, that many people will fall into the, you know, hands of the right-wingers because they are more critical of these things than the left, for example. So there is a void to fill and I hope that, well, we can accomplish that at some point, but it will be a slow process, especially with that few people that we are and I hope that many more will join at some point. Yeah, personally, we talked about it. I didn't have much time to read this year, so I'm a bit short on books recommendations and I have, if so, I have only one German book that I hope gets translated in English, to be honest. And it's from a person that was in our board a few years ago from Juliane Marie Schreiber. It's about the terror of the positive thinking, which is kind of this neoliberal notion that people who suffer and who are poor, it's their fault because they didn't self-improve enough and they are not thinking positive enough. So I really like the book because it's kind of, you know, pushing people to be angry. Like you can be angry about things and you are allowed to complain about the system and it's not your fault. If you're poor, there's something wrong, you know, with the political system of work. Yeah, so far. Maybe I'll come back later with some movie recommendations. Okay, thank you for that, Juliane. Dushan, Dushan Pajovic from Montenegro. Thanks. Thanks, Machen. Regarding everything, 2002 was definitely a lot for me at least. And we did a lot of activism and I expect to do much more activism in 2023. And I invite everyone with keen on doing direct action, civil disobedience, but also some less complex actions to join us. And I also invite our DMers who are watching this to be involved with the regular calls and we are more than open to have one-on-one calls to have calls with local collectives and so on and so on. So this is the right time to start and to engage with the M25, really. If you haven't until now, I don't know what you're waiting for. We had lots of battles. Me personally and the M25 as well, both wins and losses. Of course, I started on a more personal note to write more regularly for Montenegro media to be more present in the public political sphere. But that also took some tool on my health in general and a lot of comrades tonight are either suffering some things or are not even here because of their health. So many regards to them and just the point for our viewers who are excellent that they should take care of themselves, take care of their mental health. Of course, we need to change Europe and to change our countries and the world, but all of that cannot be sustainable if we don't look after ourselves. So my personal goal is to keep somewhat similar pace but to survive all of that mentally and physically to help the M25 to get on our feet in Montenegro as well, not just in EU and UK. And finally, to give some recommendations. So Mehran asked us to be the least political as possible so I will try to keep that in mind. Regarding the music, my biggest recommendation are the guys that just came back after a long pause which is No Clear Mind. It's a Greek band actually that is really underrated so give them some love if you like post rock and alternative rock. Regarding the movies and TV shows, Archive 81, it's hard for me not to spoil that one so I will just keep it on the second note. If you like to rest a bit and to take a brain out in the walk and just have a nice pace than Studio 666, it's a horror comedy even though I hate that genre but it's the movie made by full fighters so if you like that band you will like it for sure. Something that is also a political as long as it can be for those people who are just listening to this I'm just putting quote-unquote War of Warcraft is back so I played it as a teen you can play Wrath of the Lich King again also the new expansion Dragon Flight you can put your mind to rest there and finally my book recommendation is Anomalia by Andrei Nikolaidis Montenegren writer of Greek Descent Anomali is in English I'm not sure if it's translated already but if you like the work of Srećko Horvat you are going to love Andrei Nikolaidis as well really really similar writing their friends so you can assume that we can assume they influence each other this book is a novel about apocalypse where nine different stories happen at the same time where the time and space collapses due to some kind of glitch in the universe I won't spoil it anymore so that's it from me Thank you Dushan very detailed list of recommendations there and last time we did this like a year ago we did discover that many of you guys are actually secret gamers so please also include your gaming recommendations if you're not still playing the same stuff you were playing a year ago so thank you thank you thank you so well I believe that all these difficulties that we have been facing for the last year all the ones that the previous speakers have talked about make us more radical it's a clear path that we need to become and we are becoming much more radical in our positions and I think this is a good thing because it makes us more sure that this is the right way and we need to be to remain with our convictions and continue in this path I see that we are gaining the trust of many young people and this makes me hopeful in Greece maybe we're doing really well with people from like 1617 to 25 and we're gaining momentum in all ages but having the young people follow us and joining us in May 25 in DiEM in Greece is great recently we went with Eric to Cyprus and other members of DiEM and we saw that also the young people there are becoming energized they want to there is a need for our progressive movement and this this is very very hopeful for me that people are May 25 and DiEM is expanding we're having more like in Italy we founded the new DiEM and all this is great as far as the we have done a lot of activities with Meta which is the artistic platform of both Meta DiEM and the Progressive International and we see that there as well we have many many new people joining us to our events that the combination of politics and art is really it makes sense at this point for the young people we'll have many people who would never go to clearly political events but they are interested in this dialogue between the arts and the politics in joining us it's a lot when we show movies and we have the directors in a Q&A we have like queues of people who want to follow our events recently we had an event with Janisks and Naikis which is the it was a hundred years this year is a hundred years from his birth and so again we're talking about that because he was an extremely he was a fighter he was in a terrible I mean they destroyed he was destroyed by a bomb and by the you know the radical protests back then and with the hundan before the hundan grace which of course led to his extortion and he was in France for all the years and now his music which was extremely progressive and radical back then is again being discussed and reinvented and played by younger people in different ways so all this shows that there is a need for action we must not give in and stop what we're doing I think we're doing a good job and we should continue in this path and just keep growing as far as the books another thing I'm proud of and I have to say that it's addressed to the Greek audience but I have to say it is we recently started a collaboration with Topos publishing house in Greece and we have already published two books that I'm proud to invite people to buy in Greece and it is the no bosses of Michael Albert of course the Precariat in Greek for the first time even though so many years it's been I think more than 15 years when it was published in England and in Europe and internationally Guy Standings Precariat is now also available in Greek so that's from me and I hope next year will be more equally interesting but more positive than this one thank you for that Danai and if you'll allow me to just tap your artistic brain for a second has there been any art that you've consumed over the last year or books or movies you've seen that have really blown you away other people's work I mean I have seen a movie that did an inspiring and it was very moving it was a new movie and I will find the name and get back to you on this because you know you surprised me by asking but it is her new movie which just came out and it did really well in the festivals it was in Tribeca it was in Venice let me just check I'll get back to you with the name okay we'll find it and we'll put the name in the chat and you guys out there in YouTube chat recommendations to share please do put them in the YouTube chat things that you've seen, experienced content that you've consumed this year that you'd like to share please do read it out I need to clarify something because I keep getting these messages asking me why I'm in the shower I'm not in the shower it might look like a shower curtain but I'm actually cowering in my parents bedroom in Luxembourg I don't know why they've got like a curtain that looks a bit like a shower curtain in the shower okay Eric, Eric Edmund our political director we've all been there we've all cowered in our parents bedrooms during the Christmas period hi everybody look I'll say one thing on politics and then I'll move on to the really interesting and fun stuff which is all the artistic things we're talking about all these things that are going wrong and they are going horrifically wrong in 2022 even more so than in the previous years which is impressive how every year seems to be getting worse but at the same time I was thinking now while listening to everything it kind of feels good in a really twisted way nothing is working for us for the left so we don't really need to conserve anything it's not like we found a trick it's not like we have found an angle it's not like we know exactly what it is that we need to do in a given circumstance and we just need to push on and win so the fact that things are constantly changing means that we have constant opportunities to try and find that angle that works for us and I think what Yanis mentioned and some of the other members of the CEC as well is indicative of that the fact that we are improving in certain circumstances as things are getting worse and worse is a silver lining and I don't want to say that it's good because I know that we're all suffering as a result of what is going on in the world right now but it is maybe a small positive element is the fact that it might be giving us a chance as a left a chance that wasn't there in the past so maybe we should be focusing on that and as things get progressively worse to use that to really iron our resolve to do something about it and to engage with these kind of radical alternatives that I feel like our movement represents and as the situation becomes worse and worse I think it becomes clearer to ever more people that what DiEM was saying in the past and sounded a bit radical and a bit over the top to some is actually common sense especially as things change so that's that on politics. Now first of all Dushan, I didn't know that you were on World of Warcraft I'm also a World of Warcraft I was a World of Warcraft before I even finished primary school I think so I'm going to claim primacy there I'm still on the same server I was back when I was 13 so I had stopped for many years but now this new expansion came out like Dushan said Shadowlands and I'm back on there with my best mate from back in the day and yeah we're playing so let's chat about that I doubt we're on the same server but maybe we can create characters and I definitely recommended it's got all the magic that the old WoW used to have very fun and another shout I'd like to give although I haven't played this in a while I think I'll probably jump back in because a patch or rather an expansion has come out called Missland for it that we've been waiting for for many months is Valheim which is an open world sandbox game survival game cooperative so if you're into cooperative online games this is a game where basically you're different Vikings and you're just thrown into this empty very hostile world and you need to survive in it by building a house eventually building a boat exploring the other islands around finding more resources building weapons, armor it's a lot of fun and it's our terrifying time sink so if you don't have that much time or if you're sensitive to gaming addiction be careful with it but it's very entertaining on music I want to give a little coin to a band that I was very frustrated with until very recently called Ghost and for David is actually wearing a t-shirt of the band I just noticed so when he speaks later you'll see him so they had this weird turn they were becoming more and more popular I'm one of those annoying people who say like I like them before they will cool you know and they've gotten more popular and their music adapted to that popularity a little bit became a bit more pop they were a heavy battle band but they brought out a new album called Impera which really bridges this approach that they've taken which was a bit more poppy a bit more arena operatic rock stuff and connected it with the edginess that they used to have in the early years so Impera by Ghost for me is a must um on books there was one really really good book this year by Hilary Mantel who in fact died this year fairly young she was in her 50s unfortunately because I think she was one of the best British authors right now her book was called is called The Mirror and the Light and it's the third of a trilogy so the final book about the life of Thomas Cromwell who was the chief minister under Henry VIII in the 16th century in England and he basically was raised to become a knight and you know I was the most powerful man in the kingdom of England under Henry VIII but he was in fact the son of a butcher which for the 16th century is absolutely unheard of and the kind of challenges that he faced in that kind of very hierarchical and classist world is the ways brought to life by Hilary Mantel in this trilogy is really top notch and the reflections on power and the connection between people and this relationship between people of different classes and the intermixings it's brought to life in a completely different and very empathetic way that I haven't come across before and I'm a big reader of historical fiction so this trilogy by Hilary Mantel Wolf Hall is the first book so you need to start with Wolf Hall, really recommended and about the movies I'm going to mention two movies that I haven't watched but I'm looking forward to watching because they haven't come out yet one's called Corsage and it's an alternative take on the life of Empress Sissy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire it's Austrian production I believe directed and starred by the same person and the other is called Pale Blue Eye which is starred by what is his name the guy who played Batman back in the day Michael Keaton Christian Bale you just gave away your age Mechran Christian Bale No Christian Bale and he plays a detective who tries to uncover this Mr's true story and cover a mystery a murder in West Point back in the 19th century and he recruits a local cadet from West Point to help him and that cadet is in fact Edgar Allan Poe the poet, the Gothic poet and it's a true story and it's how Edgar Allan Poe sort of got into all this dark weird Gothic stuff through the investigation of this murder so that's coming out this Christmas and I'm really looking forward to watching it that's it for me Thank you Eric and in defence of the original Batman movie from 1989 or 1990 of course we're already like that because of Jack Nicholson's incredible performance of Prince's brilliant soundtrack not because of Michael Keaton he was a cracked Batman but yes I am giving away my age just quickly for you guys out there in the chat you've got a couple of minutes left to enter our prize giveaway we've only done this well we've never done this before so this is the only time we're ever doing this maybe we'll never do it again so if you want to win some DM25 merchandise please click that link that's pinned in the chat and enter your name and email address some recommendations from you guys in the chat out there but of course I can't vouch for it I'm just repeating what you say someone recommends Billy Woods rap music someone else recommends the film Triangle of Sadness in terms of books Horizon by Barry Lopez that they found super inspiring about our world and our environment and I'm surprised actually just to bring it back to film that no one's mentioned Avatar have you guys all seen Avatar you don't want to see Avatar no no one's into that I don't know I'd love to get on a pair of fantastic 3D glasses and live in another world for three hours now I'm talking about the new avatar not the old one because it's on here at the cinema in Luxembourg anyway okay fair enough each to their own Amir our policy coordinator what have you got for us Hi good evening everybody thanks Marilyn I've tried to also cover different age groups and so on with some recommendations and some ideas and also slightly reflecting back a little bit on the year from what we've been up to in our various policy teams of course in the movement and there's a link as well coming right up from Davideve folks other can get access to what we've been published already and what's coming up and so on so please have a look at that and if you want to get involved please join us so some of the highlights from the year on this has of course been our second green paper on migration our stance on Ukraine the peace proposal on the nuclear energy issue and just recently last week we sent out a survey questionnaire to our members to gather views on our upcoming policy on post capitalism so those are just some quick highlights from the year and this year in 2023 just around the corner we've got our updated policy on peace and international politics coming up, updated migration policy energy housing, extension to the green needle for Europe so it's going to be a busy year ahead for the various amazing volunteers out there who are doing the incredible task of getting all these papers together so also big shout out to all our members and volunteers who are involved on our activist teams and our campaign teams on helping with the social media and so on goes without saying always right so just I had some books to show you books I haven't I've been getting I got this year but I haven't read I've only started reading one of them because you've sometimes seen my children and they hardly have time this year of course Iran has been on the public mind a lot more than as it is normally the case and there's an interesting book about Iran a slightly different angle of course from the topic itself that we have at the moment but the author itself is also recommended it's Hamid Dabashi the book is called Iran Without Borders you know viewers might find it interesting to also look him up and look at his other works then my other home South Africa which is also on the news because our president I'm opposed to just survived one might say virtual confidence if you like however the criticism is still there about what happened after the transition in 1994 is an interesting book by Ciswe and Pufu Walsh the new apartheid as well it's worth looking at that book as we're also looking at other countries in transition that we hope to see transition out but what happens also was of course the issue then of course the year of war in Europe is another book to sort of for folks to have a look at it's called the global security system an alternative to war and you can find it in world beyond war very interesting publication it's more of a guide and a reference book if you like so we can start imagining peace systems without the need for huge militaries and huge defense budgets quote on quote defense budgets then slightly more lighter getting the more lighter stage for folks who are interested maybe in this is also a classic of course people who know it know it and those that don't will be interesting to have a look at sort of ancient Chinese poetry Tao Te Ching classic work of Chinese poetry then if you have children and you're looking for parents always find it difficult to find cool books in a sort of early years stage when they're older they can give them the illustrative work of Karl Marx but for now for younger children there's a book called Arabic folk tales and I'm going to show you the author now here and as the author actually says and if Mehran allows me one minute to five seconds to read this he says I've traveled a long way some of them were originally Russian but when I heard them in Iraq they became Iraqi and Ivan turned into Murat and it also reminds us of the universality of stories and our humanity so it's always a good one to look at some viewers might know I had an honor of visiting the Sahara refugee camps and this is sort of the music from the Sahrawi Sahrawi music is really talks to the heart straight away definitely worth your time on what other music service you subscribe to the other music that I found this year was a Norwegian band Wardruna which I found amazing just by random and I showed my kids and they love it and film recommendation also again more classics because I don't get to watch movies as much as I would love to is the trilogy by Nasser Hamir Wanderers of the Desert the Doves Lost Necklace and Bob Iziz the Prince who contemplated his soul I'm going to give it to David and he will do the honors in the chat and just the last thing is Tomorrow Night in Solstice which is also traditionally the Night of Yalda in Iran when to source the celebrations throughout the world and what Yanis also mentioned earlier about the flame and the darkness holds true from tomorrow as well because the day starts getting longer so we do what we can and please the only thing we can do is to get involved and to struggle together thanks Thank you Amir and just to follow up to the clarification I gave you earlier to show you how responsive communications meme making team are they've already produced something relating to what I said earlier I sincerely hope that's not going out anywhere but I don't mind sharing it with you guys you did my thank you so some of you may know that I joined DM25 mainly because of 2015 because I was following the Greek crisis very closely and I even learned Greek in order to be able to better follow the news because in Germany the reporting had become very one sided or maybe it became more obvious that the reporting was very one sided I think this always happens in years where a lot of things happen they're saying there are decades where nothing happens and there are years where decades happen so in those years where decades happen the the onus is really on reporters to try to convey everything that's happening to the masses and they're recently they're failing more and more often in just letting us know what is going on just the important bits and they're being very selective so I believe that in 2015 and again now a lot of time is accelerating again the onus is more on us to find these different sources to educate ourselves through different viewpoints different sources and try to find everything that is not being reported by our national media and it's also in that sense that I'm worried about the developments around Twitter because Twitter used to be this place where you could find out if the Nazis were demonstrating in Berlin today they could also find out if the guerrillas workers are organizing another strike you could find out anything that is going on and now it seems to become a way more one sided and if you want to find out any bottom up activism and organizing you can maybe no longer find it on this one place and you have to get out further and look at other sources again and try to compile it from different websites and different streams but that is work that I think we all have to learn again for the next year and the coming year probably there will be a lot to absorb and I really don't trust our national media to keep us informed in the way that they should be so in that sense my recommendations will be well I'm sad to say that it's still not available in English but maybe you're lucky and speak one of the languages it's an author a Swedish Finnish author called Kalik Nivile and in 2014-2015 he wrote books about Putin and Crimea and I've been rereading them now with the start of the war in Ukraine and it's really fascinating what he writes because he is really a source for the people to see what different groups are saying and in his books he really doesn't give much of an own opinion he's just reporting the interviews that he has with people on the ground and giving very very wide ranging views of what he hears from different groups including in Crimea there's one book that he wrote specifically about every group that claims Crimea it's called Crimea is ours where he doesn't specify who it is but he talks to all people who think that Crimea belongs to them in Esperanto you can read it in Swedish it's also available in Russian and Ukrainian so far and then he wrote another book called Putin's People Putin in Vakera Putin's Folk so you can read it in Swedish or Esperanto and basically he travels the breadth of Russia and talks to the people that don't really get featured on the media like the average employee somewhere far from Moscow who believes that Putin is the best leader Russia has ever had and just tries to get a sense or even the people who are not supporters but somehow wound up voting for him it's quite fascinating I really learned a lot from these books and from re-reading them this year Thank you, Judith and we've already had a very animated debate on Twitter and Elon Musk two weeks ago but since Judith just mentioned him I feel rather triggered so allow me to update some of my views on what happened recently I don't know what that guy's doing but he's really making a mess of Twitter I approved the general direction but these latest things like banning links to other social media sites he's kind of losing support fast and it seems like unfortunately deservedly so so let's hold out and see what happens with Musk but not looking good couple of recommendations from the chat appear are gone these are these are books so appear are gone by Colin McCann a novel on the impact of the Israel-Palestine conflict through the lives of two parents thank you for that Elisabeth recommends the history of the Peloponnesian war by Thucydides heavy stuff and someone else recommends caps lock how capitalism took hold of graphic design and how to escape from it that sounds like a really interesting book I'm definitely going to look that up thank you Lucas I'll come to director so this is not going to be a recommendation but I just wanted to tell you about a personal journey I embarked on this year so I had never watched the Marvel movie other than the original Iron Man when it came out in 2008 and even then when I was 17 years old I thought that you know this is something that's weird going on politically here and I'm not sure I'm into it so I decided that I wasn't going to watch any more movies anymore and in this year because I was a bit bored during the summer I decided to watch all of them in sequence over the course of a few weeks you know not on the same day or anything but still it's like 27 or 28 movies and look I hate to be that guy but oh my god they're terrible it's just I just could not it's one of the most unpleasant experience I've ever had in my life but I wanted to stick to it you know because I set out the goal and I really wanted to do it but look I'm here to tell you that I was defeated after the I believe like the second Thor movie or something I just decided I couldn't do it anymore and again I hate to be that guy I don't like this like popular things just because they're popular but it really is first of all they're terrible and they look pretty bad and the scripts are bad but also it's just military propaganda it's incredible how blatant it is and I'm horrified that they're so popular and that so many people are watching them I think you know this will be a dark chapter in the in the cultural history of humanity that will be talked about in schools with you know very solemnly a few decades from now hopefully if things go well so I just wanted to share that so my anti-recommendation is don't watch, don't do what I did because it might impair your mental capacities but also if because I didn't get very far if any of you have any recommendations for a Marvel movie that isn't actually garbage I should jump forward and watch just to be able to say that I watched something that wasn't completely terrible then I'm all yours as well and other than that's just very quickly in terms of books I just wanted to say that I just finished reading for the first time how Europe and developed Africa by Walter and it's worth a bit of praise that it's gotten since it came out 30 or 40 years ago in my opinion and I recommend anyone who hasn't read it yet or even if you did read it but it was a while ago to revisit it because it really isn't an astonishing book and since I just finished reading that you got me so excited that I just bought this book as well which is a collection of lectures by Rodney on the Russian Revolution that were compiled into a book a couple of years ago and it looks very promising as well just to leave those to actual recommendations as well Thank you for that, Lucas Ah, Juliana Juliana has some things you would like to add Yes, I've thought of two things I would recommend and Lucas I completely feel you, I did the same thing during Covid and I watched the ball in sequence and I thought like I cannot even imagine why somebody would spend money on producing those but anyways since that's popular Yes, I have a Spanish funny movie actually that I've watched it's called The Good Boss with Javier Badem It's a story about a little company that's supposed to get an award and the jury will come to see the company and he's invested in making sure his employees get everything right and it's very funny so I'm not going to spoil anything and the other thing is that since nobody mentioned it I think that the newest Star Trek series actually is very good The Strange New Worlds with Captain Pike in the series I mean it's going back to the original storytelling of it and I really really enjoyed it and one last recommendation also would be to what I found for me this year, the last few months was it's really good for the sleep to sometimes also switch off everything and just not be in front of the computer or a TV and it has improved my sleep very much to turn off everything after 10 or 11 o'clock to be honest so this is my last recommendation Well taken Juliana, I can go with that although I don't always have the discipline to do it okay we're at the top of the hour and I'm going to hand the floor briefly to Davide who's going to draw a name out of a hat is that a real hat you've got there? Davide what is that thing? It is a real hat actually made by my mum and I was just I was looking for a nice container that would pass on the Christmas spirit over and this is what I found is that you've been the people that you guys have been watching at home, you've been writing your names in the form submitting your information I've put them all in little pieces of paper and they're all inside this beautiful hat and I will draw them in a minute just to one winner and then Nathan will let you know exactly how we'll get in touch with you to tell you exactly what how to redeem your prize but I also wanted to give you a couple of recommendations going on to the draw if that's okay because I've been listening attentively and now you're all kind of just to build up the momentum and the suspense a bit regarding books basically anything that José Saramago has written is a Nobel laureate very interesting writer if you don't know and look it up I'm a huge fan regarding some of the TV series I'm re-watching Twin Peaks David Lynch is a very peculiar very artistic kind of filmmaker and he makes very interesting work so do look it up if you're interested he's made a lot of other very cool films kind of a little bit twisted in the mind but very cool and also a series that I just finished watching this year is called Better Call Saul which is a prequel to Breaking Bad which in my opinion is even better than Breaking Bad this is a huge discussion that's going on Vince Gilligan is a brilliant writer and one of the main people behind the show and also Picky Blinders the British show about how do I call them well it's kind of a gangster it's kind of a British, Birmingham gangster series very interesting as well very political so yeah, look that up if that sounds good to you and then in terms of music I'm really into metal and prog rock I think Eric earlier mentioned ghost, I'm indeed wearing the t-shirt we went to the concert in Brussels together that was a blast but my heart really sits with progressive rock so like Porcupine Tree and bands like that but also I also like other things like folk kind of duos and road and many others so that's it from me now can somebody do like a drum roll I feel like this is necessary maybe I can do it with one hand but here we go we're gonna draw the name of the hat and let's see who's gonna be the lucky winner I'm gonna shake it first okay here we go let me really move my hand around okay here's the piece of paper hopefully you will be able to see the piece of the name, I'm gonna unwrap it like so and the name is Mark C alright, so Mark C whoever you are, thank you for watching and we will be in touch with you to let you know how you can redeem your prize so back to you Mehan thank you Davy, congratulations Mark C okay, a couple of last recommendations from you guys on the chat KP recommends Easy Rider Pacheco recommends Gabor Mattes the myth of normal Dennis Hopper movies again, Easy Rider the last movie he was in I don't know what that is and out of the blue and someone else recommends the office ah good, I love a bit of Ricky Gervais in the office, well done um a couple of little additional things, Thomas Mann's reflection of an unpolitical manner that must be a book recommendation I'm guessing not that I don't know okay, thank you very much you guys out there for watching us throughout the whole year but especially I would like to give a special thank you to our volunteers and especially our translating team and countless hours translating the well, the text but also the transcripts of conversations like this one enabling us to reach more audiences across Europe it's a long tough job but we really appreciate your work and it's very very central to us being able to spread the word about our movement guys, thank you very much again, our thank you to our panel and we will be back after the Christmas break January 17th is the date for the next live stream take care, happy holidays all the best to you and yours