Wealthy Arabs buy up Sarajevo
By Pieter Stockmans
Sarajevo is etched in the collective memory as a city of war. Twenty years after the peace agreement for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the green hills around the city are changing into gated communities for Arab tourists. Public space is either neglected or privatised, then commercialised. A new generation is sowing the seeds of change.
Written on a monument on the square in front of the new city mall are the names of 1601 children. They were killed during the siege of Sarajevo in the early nineties, together with 9940 others. After the war the city was developed according to the model of privatisations and foreign investments.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is a democratic constitutional state only on paper. In reality it is an oligarchy where the politicians enrich themselves. 18% of the population lives below the poverty line. Only 1% of the GDP goes to social security expenses – the EU-average is 30% – while 62% of youth is unemployed.
Nature and city combined
For five euro’s and in ten minutes a cab brings you from the busy centre of one of the most highly polluted cities in Europe to an unspoilt natural environment, with green valleys, flowers, fruit trees and clean air. In this postcard there is an Audi with a Kuwaiti license plate.
The driver, wearing a suit and sunglasses, stands guard. A man gets out of the car and looks out over the valley, the view the Bosnian Serbs must have had when they fired an average of 329 bombs and mortars a day at Sarajevo.
‘The future lies ahead of us’, the man says. ‘In Sarajevo one finds peace, nature and the city in one.’
An investor from Kuwait takes a look at the lands where Saraya Resort will be built, today unspoilt nature. © Pieter Stockmans
As soon as the construction workers finish their job, Saraya Resort will be prohibited territory for them. No one will be allowed to enter the territory without a special pass. Caphy’s customers won’t shop at the local supermarkets, but in a shopping mall in the resort. They will be able to order drivers, cleaning ladies and housekeepers at a reception, just as they do in the Gulf.
Villagers are surprised when they see the car with blinded windows drive down the narrow mountain roads. The property is located in the municipality of Stari Grad – Old City – that reaches from the city centre down in the valley all the way up to the green hills with only a few charming homes here and there.
Within a few years, 64.000 square metres of this unspoilt grassland will transform into the capitalist dream, with 90 villas and flats, closed off from the environment.
“Where nature and living come together”, a presentation reads in the showroom of the company. Real estate companies from the Gulf States attract customers with the promise of idyllic nature around Sarajevo. ‘For every tree we cut down, we plant two’, says Dunja Jerković, office manager of the company in Sarajevo.
But that is not the end of it, according to Rijad Tikvesa, director of the environmental NGO Ekotim: ‘I saw many building licences, but not one environmental impact assessment report. How much earth will be moved, with the risk of mudflows during tempests?’
‘Two years ago roads disappeared in the land subsidence. Will the rainwater still fill up our groundwater stocks when asphalt covers the land? Where will the pipelines dump the waste water? A big part of the city’s waste water already flows into the river Bosna. Will they use tax money to connect these gated communities to public infrastructure?’
Caphy Contracting is part of the first rush. These start-ups have just discovered Sarajevo’s gold, the empty showroom testifies. The long-term effects on the city are not yet visible, but in a country notorious for it’s entanglement of politics and business, it looks like the hills around Sarajevo are going to change beyond recognition.
Jerković herself is concerned: ‘According to the city’s spatial planning we are at the edge of building space. I hope, for the future of our children, that our government won’t change the plans.’
According to Tikvesa that is idle hope: ‘Small municipalities are authorised to grant building licenses to big Arab companies. The temptation to change the destination of natural- or agricultural lands into building space, is great.’
Cleaning hills
Dunja Jerković herself has two children. When she was looking for and found a job, she couldn’t afford sustainability thinking. Also Jasmina, an architect at Al-Diyar, the Kuwaiti company that will help building Saraya Resort, was thrilled when the company hired her. ‘I was looking for a job for five years’, she says. ‘Now I have a decent salary and a higher level of social protection compared to employees from Bosnian companies.’
Director Abdullah al-Kulaib, a flamboyant man of 34, looks out over his resort Ilidža Pearl, barely two years after he settled in Sarajevo.
Al-Diyar employs about a hundred Bosnians. ‘We design and build our landscapes, houses and furniture ourselves’, says al-Kulaib. ‘In that house over there we will lodge three poor Bosnian families. They will get jobs as cleaners, guardians and gardeners.’
It’s mealtime on the construction site: builders in dusty work clothes are standing in line at the food distribution. Jasmina comes running from the PVC workshop. ‘Abdullah, I want to show you something’, she yells enthusiastically. ‘They have delivered the ceramic tiles, a combination of modern and traditional Bosnian elements.’ Al-Kulaib finds it all fantastic.
The labour costs in Bosnia are low and the land is cheap. Al-Diyar bought parcels of different Bosnian families. ‘Some owners gave me a headache’, Al-Kulaib laughs. ‘Sons who sold the lands of their deceased parents lived spread out across Serbia, Austria and Bosnia. And when we had finally gathered them, they couldn’t agree.’
The Foreign Investment Promotion Agency (FIPA) of the federal state helps investors in their contacts with the municipalities, who help finding the landowners. ‘We also guide them through the labyrinth of the Bosnian bureaucracy’, says Slavica Korica of the FIPA.
That labyrinth is hindering the freedom of young Bosnians of doing business: the country is ranked 175th in the World Bank’s list ease of doing business-list.
‘Wealthy investors can speed up the process by paying money under the table to local politicians’, says Lejla Ibranović, director of Transparency International in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ‘The representatives of the Bosnian state are involved in business. There is a total absence of a regulating state. Political parties are the most corrupt institutions of this country. High-ranking politicians abuse their positions to give benefits to family, friends, party members, investors, and so on. The public prosecutor barely prosecutes corruption offenses within the government, because the parties control the judiciary.’
Elmedin Konaković, the prime minister of the canton of Sarajevo, refused to speak to us.
President Bakir Izetbegović has good ties to several investors. ‘A few weeks ago a group of investors from Europe and the Gulf met the president’, says Al-Kulaib. ‘We proposed to open a direct airline between Kuwait and Sarajevo.’
Every week 29 direct flights depart from the Emirates to Sarajevo, but Kuwait can only be reached through Istanbul.
‘Up until five years ago Bosnia was unknown to most Gulf Arabs’, says analyst Asja Hadziefendić in her smoky office in the Bureau of Tourism. ‘Since the beginning of the Arab uprisings they are looking for new destinations.’
According to Hadziefendić a lot is happening in the grey zone, because according to Bosnian law, Gulf Arabs are not allowed to own property in Bosnia.
‘So we conclude a 99 year-lease with our customers’, says Al-Kulaib. ‘I asked the Bosnian ambassador in Kuwait to allow Kuwaitis to own property in Bosnia. Since last week we also market our real estate to the Bosnian diaspora.’ On the rooftop terrace of one of the luxury apartments, Rijad Sinyora, Al-Kulaib’s assistant, lets his imagination go free: ‘Imagine sitting here at sunset with a cup of coffee and the water pipe. In winter you can ski in the morning, swim in the thermal bath by noon and have a delicious dinner in the evening.’
As a teenager, Sinyora lived under the siege of Sarajevo. During the same time Al-Kulaib was raising funds for Sarajevo at the university. Today their life paths cross.
The traumatised Bosnian employee jumps on the ark to protect himself from the storm that crushes the weakest; he knows that in this country only the strong survive. The jolly Arab employer does what he does best: speculate, invest and build. ‘Some customers buy a house and keep it until prices rise, to resell it afterwards. An investment’, he says.
Down the hill lies the Bosnian village of Blazuj. A woman pushes her sheep towards the fields. Her livelihood costs about twice as much as the average Bosnian monthly salary of 300 euro’s. She looks up at the U-shaped ring of luxury apartments, which Al-Diyar launches for people with a monthly salary of 3500 euro, the Gulf’s lower middle class.
She also sees a fence. Later come the cameras and alarm systems, connected to Ilidža’s local police.
This report was published by MO* magazine. Continue reading here.
Nicola Fratoianni Joins DiEM25
Nicola Fratoianni is a member of the Italian Parliament and a leader of the Italian Left coalition. In the below email he sent to our Coordinating Committee, Nicola outlines why he’s joining DiEM25, and reflects on the challenge of building a new Left in Italy.
I accept with pleasure your invitation to join DiEM25, sharing in your conviction that it is both urgent and necessary to reopen debates about the strict links between neoliberalism, austerity policies and growing inequalities. The downhill to “disintegration” of Europe (as as it was sadly but effectively described by Jan Zielonka) seems to be steeper and steeper than ever.
Even the recent outcomes of the intergovernmental summit in Bratislava show this very blatantly: with the reaffirmation of a Franco-German axis that sees most social democracies prone in front of the suicidal rigidity of austerity policies and is condescending towards the inhuman and irrational policies of the closure of borders against those women, men and children seeking in Europe protection and opportunities for their futures.
The economic-financial, media and political elites, those leading our continent, are acting as did the command on the bridge of the Titanic: they very well see the iceberg ahead, but they are too stubborn to do anything different, but to continue to steam “full speed” at it.
In doing this, they fuel even more irresponsibly the fire of self-interest and identitarian politics, of nationalism and racism, which flares at the four corners of Europe.
Furthermore, Europe is less and less relevant on the global stage, at the very time when what we need instead is that Europe be represented with a single voice, as a strong force for peace and cooperative policies, able to act on those theaters of war which, in the Middle East, as in the Mediterranean basin, now surround our continent.
As you know, with many others we are engaged in the construction process of a new left-wing political force in Italy, united and plural, which has as its primary tasks the fight against poverty and inequality and the for democracy.
A Left that would be capable of encountering the claims for change of so many, who today are resigned or discouraged, and of all those, who do not want to surrender the two variants, dominant today, of “there is no alternative”: the one that defends the neoliberal status quo and the one that results in an ambiguous and resentful populism, lacking perspective.
We’re trying to do this knowing that this Left, also in developing the social and political power necessary to change Italy, can only have the whole of Europe as its horizon of analyses and practices.
Ours is not a “naively idealistic Europeanism”: to reverse the current disruptive trends, we do not think that it is sufficient to repeat mechanically the slogan “United States of Europe” or to hope for a deeper integration process, perhaps enriched with some more attention to social needs.
There is, instead, the need to produce acts of breaking the current austerity and exclusion policies, to open in these cracks the political spaces for change.
We need – as Yanis recently said, recalling an idea that is a fundamental part of my history and of our history – to multiply the “constructive disobediences” in order to build an alternative.
This is the reason why our Europeanism is aware that any struggle for social justice, rights and freedoms of the many will not achieve any effective and long-lasting result, if it is not able to establish itself at least on a continental scale. Nothing will change if we are not able to break and overcome the too narrow national boundaries, without waiting for any unlikely top-down initiative by those elites who drove us to this point of European “existential crisis”.
But on one point we must be clear: not everyone, in the Left and in the various European countries, thinks so. Some of our comrades and fellows indicate that a return to the past of national States is a possible way out of the disaster.
We must continue to confront with them and try to change their minds.
With the arguments of critical reason, first of all: today’s small national sovereignties would be “paper boats” at the mercy of currents and storms, unleashed by the dominant financial capitalism in the ocean of global economy. Financial capitalism has created a Marxist masterpiece: it took advantage of the economic crisis to restructure itself on an international basis and to attribute to itself new tools for control and domination over people’s lives. A “revolution from above”, which the social opposition movement has witnessed passively.
With the passion of ideas: we need a new and different “internationalism”, based on the struggle for democracy and the struggle to reconquer the dignity of people, regardless of where they were born and where they live.
With the intelligence of politics: the old and new right-wing already occupy firmly the terrain of each political discourse focused on the selfish defense of national borders.
For these reasons, dear comrades and friends of DiEM25, please count on the commitment of myself and many others, who are involved in the adventure of building a new Left in Italy: we are available for a joint venture in a broader and transversal movement that rightly put in the foreground the reconquering of democracy in Europe.
Solidarity greetings,
Nicola Fratoianni
member of the Italian Parliament,
former national coordinator of SEL (Left Ecology and Freedom)
promoter and member of the Executive board of SI Sinistra Italiana (Italian Left)
Rome, September 20th, 2016
The Future of Europe – The Europe of the Future?
In co-operation with the European Greens and DiEM25, we are holding an international conference titled ‘The Future of Europe – The Europe of Future?’ in Budapest on 19 September 2016. Six roundtable discussions featuring over 20 speakers, including Greece’s former minister of Finance and DiEM25 co founder, Yanis Varoufakis, and co-chair of the European Greens, Philippe Lamberts.
Livestream (English-Hungarian simultaneous translation between 09:00-18:00 CET): http://mmaa.hu/2016/09/17/livestream/ Or watch here:
In Support of Alena and our Friends in Central and Eastern Europe
We have just learned that Alena Krempaská, a friend, fellow DiEM25 member and activist with the Human Rights Institute in Bratislava, was brutally attacked by neo-fascists last week as she left her office.
Alena spoke at DiEM25’s launch last February, making the case that our movement should reach out to Central and Eastern Europe. A month later, she wrote a wonderful article suggesting how to best calibrate our movement’s focus in that region. “There is no Podemos here, no Syriza,” she wrote. “Those who really score the points are the xenophobes, islamophobes, religious ‘conservatives’ and other far right groupings keen to leave the EU.”
We are appalled and saddened that supporters of those groupings would do this to Alena.
Alena is fortunately recovering from her injuries. Next week, I will meet her in Budapest at the “Future of Europe – Europe of the Future?” conference, where I will bring her the warmest greetings from her fellow DiEMers.
And I will say this to our activist friends in Central and Eastern Europe who, like Alena, have the courage to step up: We are with you. And we are working to be more present alongside you.
-Yanis
Letter to supporters of Another Europe Is Possible
DiEM25 and Another Europe is Possible campaigned hand in hand during the Brexit referendum for a radical IN: stay to change. The results of that referendum are not what we wished for. But DiEM25’s work in the United Kingdom does not stop here: on the contrary, it becomes more relevant than ever. We need to redouble our efforts, expand our membership and play a key role during and after the Brexit negotiations. And this is why we have just written the letter below to members of Another Europe is Possible inviting them to join our growing transnational movement. Bringing together pro-Europeans in the UK will make us a force to be reckoned with, as the UK and EU establishment clash over the terms of the exit. Together we must continue our fight for another Europe of which Britain will, and must, be an inextricable part.
Dear friends,
Before the referendum we worked together to convince the people of Britain that another Europe is possible. We traversed the country arguing the IN and AGAINST line. In town hall meetings, on the streets, on television and radio, in newspaper interviews, op-eds, etc. we proclaimed that, as long as we banded together to form a pan-European progressive movement, it was possible to oppose the EU’s neoliberal, austerian, anti-democratic oeuvre, while defending the EU’s achievements (e.g. free movement, environmental protection).
In the end, we failed to convince enough voters. But, we did convince many, against the better efforts of the establishment’s official ‘remain’ campaign – Brexit’s best allies. Those whom we convinced before 23rd June now feel bereft, flirting with resignation and defeatism. We have a duty to revive their spirit just as we have a duty to continue our fight for another Europe of which Britain will, and must, be an inextricable part.
To revive the spirit of those who believed that another Europe is possible it is essential that a pan-European movement (which this belief demands to turn into a realistic prospect) comes into being. Thankfully, such a movement is already in place and burgeoning daily: It is DiEM25, the Democracy in Europe Movement that your organisation has already worked harmoniously with prior to the referendum.
In essence, DiEM25, since its formation on 9thFebruary in Berlin, is doing in every European country what Another Europe Is Possible is doing in the UK: forging an alliance of progressives keen to democratise the EU and to press it into servicing the many rather than catering for the few. For Another Europe Is Possible to join forces with DiEM25 would be a natural next step, one made even more pertinent after Brexit.
On the morning after the referendum, DiEM25 received many agonising emails from UK residents asking us, amongst other questions, whether they can still be part of DiEM25 “now that the UK is out of the EU”. We responded that DiEM25 has never discriminated between EU and non-EU countries. That we have admitted, from Day One, members from Switzerland, Serbia, Iceland, Turkey, indeed even from Latin America, the US and Australia. Europe is broader than the EU and our movement is determined to remain pan-European, eschewing all borders and divisions. This outlook, we believe, makes a coming-together between DiEM25 and Another Europe Is Possible even more advantageous for both organisations – especially so after Brexit.
Finally, DiEM25 is a young movement taking shape now. By joining us, you will play a central role in giving DiEM25 its shape, form and content – along with many European progressives that are joining every week. DiEM25’s organisational structure (as outlined in our Organisational Principles) favours horizontality and involves only a minimal degree of central coordination, in the spirit of ‘open-source’ social movements that sprang out in Europe over the past decade or so in response to European capitalism’s major crisis.
DiEM25 already has more than three thousand members in Britain, of whom at least one thousand are active and energised. Bringing together Another Europe Is Possible with our existing UK members would make DiEM25 UK a major force in shaping the progressive agenda in Britain but also in shaping DiEM25 throughout Europe. This is so because DiEM25 refuses to be a confederacy of national organisations or chapters. We demonstrate our disrespect toward borders by traversing them. In this context, we would like to encourage you to interpret our coming-together as an opportunity for Another Europe Is Possible to spread its wings to the rest of Europe.
It would be remiss of us to disregard the emotional attachment that we all have with the labels, logos, slogans and aesthetics of a movement that has been built up with our energy and commitment. Another Europe Is Possible is a phrase that DiEM25 wishes to project across Europe. Indeed, the best (and perhaps only) way of convincing Britons, post-Brexit, that another Europe is possible is if together, as the Democracy in Europe Movement, we convince all Europeans that another Europe is possible.
So, let’s join forces. We have a continent to win.
Join us next October 8, as we continue this conversation with Another Europe Is Possible, in an event organised in collaboration with openDemocracy and the LSE Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit – click here for more info.
Joining forces! In reply to Stefano Fassina
Stefano Fassina points out that in my article ‘Europe’s Left After Brexit’ I did not discuss his preferred option for Eurozone member-states: Stay in the EU but leave the euro. Of course the reason my article did not discuss that position is that it was focusing on Brexit and addressing Lexiteers like Tariq Ali and Stathis Kouvelakis who are arguing, from a left-wing position, for leaving the EU altogether – i.e. Brexit-like moves. But I am more than happy to comment on Stefano’s preferred option (In the EU, Out of the Euro).
An ‘amicable divorce’ for the Eurozone?
Stefano invokes Joe Stiglitz who, in his recent book on the euro, recommends an ‘amicable divorce’ that would lead to the creation of at least two new currencies (one for the deficit and one for the surplus countries). Since I have recently discussed this with Joe Stiglitz it is perhaps useful to share the gist of our discussion with Stefano and our readers.
In my email to Joe, I expressed scepticism that an ‘amicable divorce’ is at all possible. The moment it becomes public that a ‘divorce’ is under discussion, a wall of money will leave the banks of the countries destined for devaluation, heading for Frankfurt. At that point, the banks of the deficit member-states will collapse (as they run out of ECB-acceptable collateral) and the member-states will impose stringent currency and capital controls – complete with officials at airports checking suitcases and/or harsh limits in cash withdrawals. This would spell the end not only of monetary union but also of (the already injured) Schengen Treaty.
Meanwhile, as bank deposits are being redenominated, huge assets belonging to the Bundesbank and the central banks of other surplus countries (e.g. the Netherlands), which are the liabilities of the deficit countries, will disappear, causing an uproar of indignation in Germany and the Netherlands. Under such circumstances, and given the already advanced stage of the EU’s disintegration, it is almost certain that the dissolution of the Eurozone will be anything but amicable.
Joe Stiglitz responded to me thus: “You are absolutely right that the moment any country contemplated leaving, capital controls would have to be imposed… The rush out will occur presumably before–when a party advocating a referendum looks like it might win. So the hard decisions about imposing capital controls are likely to be faced ironically by a pro-Euro government. If it delays, by the time the election occurs, the country may be in shambles. The picture ahead for Europe is not a pretty one.”
In conclusion, it is a fantasy to think that the EU can oversee an amicable disintegration of the Eurozone. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the EU surviving a Eurozone breakdown.
Is DiEM25’s strategy of Constructive Disobedience a mere bluff for a Eurozone country?
Stefano Fassina writes: “While the strategy of “wilful disobedience”… can be effective in an EU country still controlling its currency and its national central bank, it’s unfortunately a bluff for a euro zone country under severe economic, social and financial stress, as the Greek case made dramatically clear.”
What the crushing of the Athens Spring made clear was not that I had been bluffing. It demonstrates simply that the defeat of a stressed government is inescapable if it is divided. Speaking as the finance minister of that period, I can assure the reader, and Stefano, that I was not bluffing. A bluff means that you are pretending to have a card, or preferences, that you lack – or that you will do something which you do not intend to do. When I was saying that I was not willing to sign the 3rd ‘Bailout’ Agreement, I meant every word. Why? Because I had ranked potential outcomes in the following order: (1) A viable agreement with the troika; (2) Being expelled from the Eurozone; (3) Signing the 3rd ‘Bailout’ Agreement. While option 1 was by far the preferred one, and Grexit was hugely costly both for Greece and for rest of Europe, the 3rd ‘Bailout’ Agreement was the worst outcome possible for everyone. In short, no bluff was involved when I proclaimed that I would not sign any agreement not based on (i) substantial debt relief, (ii) a primary surplus target of no more than 1.5%, and (iii) deep reforms that tackled the oligarchs (instead of the weakest of the citizens).
If my government had been united in this, our original, assessment, we would not have backed down and, as a result, either the troika would have relented or we would have had to create our own euro-denominated liquidity (that would, naturally, have an exchange rate with paper euros – as is, in fact the case today, under the ECB-imposed capital controls). At that point, Brussels-Frankfurt-Berlin would have had to make their choice: Step back from the brink or push us out of the euro by violating many of the EU’s own rules. I have little doubt that they would have opted for the former (as Grexit would have cost the Eurozone around a trillion euros). But I would have remained unperturbed if they did not.
Stefano asks correctly: “What national government could negotiate relevant violations of the rules without a workable alternative on the table?” This is why, well before I took office, I had begun working on two plans: First, a Deterrence Plan by which to give pause to the ECB before it shut our banks down. Secondly, a Plan X to be activated when and if the troika chose to expel us from the Eurozone. However, it must be said that the idea that these plans could become operational before the rupture is just as much of a fantasy as that of an amicable disintegration of the Eurozone – see above. Put simply, any attempt to make these plans operational would trigger instant exit from the Eurozone – an exit that would happen well before they had become operational. Which means that the short-term cost of a rupture is bound to be large. Nevertheless, this was a cost that the majority of the people of Greece had instructed us to disregard in the pursuit of emancipation from debt bondage.
False consciousness
Stefano has a good point when reminding us that the euro is not simply the darling of large business but has broad support from many quarters: German trades unions that have been co-opted in the country’s mercantilist model, well meaning middle class people from both North and South etc. This is so, for reasons that I have laid down in my recent book “And the Weak Suffer What They Must?” But this is, it seems to me, an excellent reason to avoid turning the disintegration of the Eurozone into our objective (given that an ‘amicable divorce’ is an impossibility – and Europeans understand it to be so) and, rather, set our sights on a strategy of proposing sensible policies which convince even those who remain loyal to the idea of the euro that they are a good idea. Then, if the troika decides in its usual authoritarian and violent manner to threaten the democratically elected government with bank closures and liquidity squeezes, then even those who were in favour of the euro will come out on the streets to defend their government. Is this not what happened in Greece on the 5th of July 2015?
Conclusion
Stefano Fassina concludes by calling for unity amongst Europe’s progressives: “My point is to join forces,” he wrote. This is DiEM25’s raison d’ être – joining forces from across national borders and political party lines.
Like Stefano I too think that the Eurozone is disintegrating, probably in a manner that will also bring about the EU’s effective demise. However, my difference with Stefano is that I see no reason why we must adopt the Eurozone’s disintegration as our objective. Indeed, I see such an adoption as a major political error. Our joint task, as DiEM25 suggests, is to design a Progressive Agenda for Europe, one that points to:
• At the national level, progressive national governments offering their people a comprehensive Plan A – a glimpse of how, under the current system, hope can return to their country. At the same time, in Eurozone countries, they must have a Deterrence Plan in place for when the ECB and the troika respond to the progressive government’s Plan A with threats of bank closures, liquidity squeezes etc. And, lastly, they must have a third plan (Plan X, I called it) for when/if the ‘centre’ engineers their expulsion from the Eurozone.
• At the pan-Europen level, we need to offer Europeans a Plan A for Europe or a European New Deal as DiEM25 calls it – a glimpse of how, in a few weeks, under the current Treaties, hope, development and democracy could make a comeback across Europe. This Plan A must include a blueprint for managing (as well and as smoothly as it is possible) the painful disintegration of the Eurozone and of the EU.
To this end, a DiEM25 committee of experts has already begun work to produce comprehensive policies both at the national and the pan-European levels. At the same time DiEM25’s members will conduct similar work at the grassroots level. The issues covered include currencies, the banking system, public debt, investment and fighting poverty. The remit is to produce a European New Deal Policy Framework to be tabled by the beginning of February 2017 so that it can be debated, in a special two-day event, in Paris on the last week of that month, just before the French Presidential election campaign commences officially.
There is little time to lose. Europe is disintegrating without a plan either to stem its disintegration or to manage it. DiEM25 invites all European progressives to join in the massive undertaking of developing this plan – the European New Deal Policy Framework within the context of a broader Progressive Agenda for Europe.
Yanis Varoufakis: "It is time for Europe’s humanists to reclaim Europe"
Last year, I came to La Fete with a message from Greece. The Athens Spring had just been crushed by the Troika because Europe’s Establishment was planning to bring the Troika to Paris.
Since then, the Troika has come to Paris. Labour Laws have been passed by Presidential decree. Civil liberties have been diminished. And the magnificent people of Paris responded with Nuit Debout.
Yes, it’s true, Greece was the laboratory of misanthropy. And France must be the battleground where misanthropy is defeated.
Why are we here? We are here because we are humanists in an age of misanthropy.
We are here because the French are asphyxiating. The Greeks are asphyxiating. The Austrians, the Germans, the Spanish, the Portuguese are asphyxiating. All of Europe is asphyxiating.
We are here because our people are asphyxiating in a Europe that is disintegrating.
And our people will go on asphyxiating as long as Europe is disintegrating. And Europe will go on disintegrating as long as our people are asphyxiating.
So, we are here to stop the asphyxiation of our people, to stop the disintegration of Europe. A disintegration that feeds the beast of our era’s Great Deflation which, as in the 1930s, breeds xenophobia, racism, and nationalism.
We are here to minimise the human cost from the idiotic handling of this Europe’s inevitable crisis. It is only this that brings us here: An Urge. A Duty: To minimise the cost of human suffering. Our task is simple: Our duty is to do whatever it takes for people’s faces to lose their worry lines.
Let’s have no illusions. We are faced with determined, well-organised adversaries who do not put the good of humanity first. Who want only one thing: business as usual and a world that allows them to make endless amounts of money using the rest of humanity as a tool for doing so.
They are not persuaded by rational argument. They are not sensitive to ethical example. They loathe democracy. They know they can intimidate a large majority of humanity. But in their arrogance, like a stupid virus, their business as usual is destroying the organism they depend on.
Their business-as-usual is responsible for Europe’s disintegration.
Their business-as-usual is responsible for planet Earth’s slow ecological death.
Their business-as-usual is responsible for the fear and the hatred that is becoming again, like in the 1930s, the dominant political force on this planet.
So, this is why we are here. DiEM25, the movement that began with the crushing of the Athens Spring, before spreading all over Europe, is here. We are here determined to pay any price, bear any burden, oppose any enemy of humanity’s hopes. We are here to defend the French ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality and add to them hope, rationality, diversity, tolerance and, of course, democracy.
But, we must not be complacent. We must not fall in love with ourselves. We are nowhere near success. We are in the middle of capitalism’s worst crisis since 1929. And yet the forces of progress, the Left, genuine liberals, Greens, are defeated everywhere.
The defeat of our Athens Spring was globally significant. Podemos has lost momentum in Spain. The misanthropic Right is rising everywhere. New electrified fences are popping up across the continent. Hope’s candle is trembling in the cold wind of nationalism. In 2017, unless we perform a miracle, France will have a President even more reactionary than the sad Mr Hollande.
Why is this? Why have Europeans not turned to Progressives at the time of crisis? My answer: It is OUR fault. It is the fault of the Progressives, of the Left, of democrats, liberals and Greens alike.
Think about it: As capitalism is going through a major spasm, the Right is becoming passionate, vibrating with an anti-Establishment fervour that was, until recently, the preserve of the Left. Trump turns against TTIP, British Tories and Hungary’s Orban against the EU’s antidemocratic practices, Le Pen in defence of a working class abandoned by a failing euro and an absent Left.
Politics is undergoing a shake-up that the world has not seen since the 1930s. A Great Deflation is now gripping both sides of the Atlantic, re-kindling political forces that had been dormant for eight decades.
Passion is returning to politics – but not in the way we had hoped. Passion is now fuelling misanthropy. And it is our job to stop this. It is our job to harness passion for the benefit of humanism.
To do this we must first understand what is happening. Yes, the Left versus Right, labour versus capital distinction, is always relevant. BUT, Europe is now split into two blocs that have nothing to do with Left or Right.
One bloc represents the old Troika of globalization, financialization and neoliberalism. It is still in power, although its power is fading fast – as Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel, and David Cameron can confirm. The post-surrender Greek government, who are now serving the same Troika, can confirm this too. The European Commission. They are in office, but they are losing their power and legitimacy.
The other bloc, opposing the Global Troika of globalization, financialization and neoliberalism, is what I call the Nationalist International. Britain’s Brexiters, Poland’s and Hungary’s governments, the Alternativ für Deutschland, the despicable crypto-fascist that may become Austria’s next president and, of course, Marine Le Pen – a Wall of Xenophobic Nationalism is rising up against the global Troika riding on the coat-tails of our Great Deflation.
The trouble with the clash between the Global Troika and the Nationalist International is that it is both real and misleading. Brexit showed that it is real. Yet it is misleading because the Global Troika and the Nationalist International are accomplices, not enemies.
The Global Troika and the Nationalist International are just reflections of our Great Deflation – of the deep crisis of European capitalism.
To break this Unholy Alliance, we need a Progressive Internationalism. It is this Progressive International that DiEM25 is building in Europe.
DiEM25 is here with a solid agenda for progressive change.
DiEM25 is here to oppose business as usual – like we did in Athens, like we do at Nuit Debout – in every village and every city throughout Europe.
DiEM25 is here to oppose the social democrats’ calls for ‘more Europe’. Under the present EU regime and institutions, ‘more Europe’ and gradual reforms, will result into the legalisation of Europe’s Austerity Union.
What Hollande and his people are calling for is, essentially, a speeding up of the Schäuble Plan for a fake federation that turns Europe into a permanent iron cage.
DiEM25 is here ALSO to oppose those on the Left who want us to adopt the Nationalist International’s objective of dismantling the European Union
DiEM25 offers the only genuine antidote to those who claim, falsely, that in the European Union there is no alternative – the euro-TINA dogma:
- At the national level, a progressive French, Greek, Spanish, Italian government should offer the people a comprehensive Plan A – a glimpse of how, under the current system, hope can return to the nation.
- At the same time, a progressive national government must have a Deterrence Plan in place for when the ECB and the troika respond to the progressive government’s Plan A with threats of bank closures, liquidity squeezes etc.
- And, lastly, a progressive national government must have a plan in place for when/if the ‘centre’ engineers an expulsion from the Eurozone.
These are the three Plans that I had when in Greece’s finance ministry – Plans A,B&X my team used to refer to them. Now we need governments everywhere willing to stick to them.
This is what DiEM25 proposes at the national level.
At the pan-Europen level, DiEM25 believes that we must offer Europeans a European Plan A for Europe. A Progressive Agenda for Europe. A European New Deal – a glimpse of how, in a few weeks, under the current Treaties, hope, development and democracy can make a comeback.
At the same time, DiEM25 is preparing a Plan for managing as well and as smoothly as it is possible the disintegration of the Eurozone and of the EU.
To summarise, DiEM25 is adamant that:
- We lead with a Plan A everywhere, at the national level and the pan-European level: A Plan A, or European New Deal
- That we prepare a Deterrence Plan to confront the Troika’s threats
- And that we prepare a pan-European plan for managing the disintegration of Europe that will surely come if the Deep Establishment manages to reject our Plan.
Friends, Comrades,
The EU will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate!
We, the members of the Democracy in Europe Movement, will bombard them with rationality – with constructive proposals – with economic plans that are modest, practical and can be implemented tomorrow.
We will shower them with moderation.
But we will also look at them in the eye, ready to say to them when they threaten us like the troika threatened me in 2015:
No pasaran!
Bring it on!
We shall not retreat!
Europe’s future depends on us resisting your incompetent authoritarianism.
If they say to us “You must accept business-as-usual or leave the European Union, leave the euro”, we answer: “We are not going anywhere!” “YOU LEAVE!”
To their business-as-usual we respond with CONSTRUCTIVE DISOBEDIENCE. WITH A COMBINATION OF MODEST PROPOSALS AND DISOBEDIENCE. This is what humanism demands of us today.
To our comrades who urge us to adopt EXIT as an objective, I ask them:
Do you truly believe that, today, the Left can win the battle for hegemony against the xenophobic Right by endorsing the Right’s call for building new fences and ending free movement?
But enough for now. It is now time to get down to work!
DiEM25 has already began work on compiling a Progressive Agenda for Europe, a Green New Deal for Europe.
A committee of top economists is already at work. Next week, on our website, we shall announce our work on the euro, investment, banks, fighting poverty, dealing with debt. And YOU will be invited to participate.
By February 2017, our Green New Deal for Europe Policy Paper will be ready in draft form. And then all of us will come back to Paris, in the last week of February.
- To present our pragmatic, radical and comprehensive economic policy proposals to the people of France.
- To put our New Deal for Europe Policy Paper to the Presidential candidates.
- And to ask them: Will you adopt it? And if not, why not?
- This is how DiEM25 will work in every European country.
- This is how DiEM25 works toward a Progressive International. Towards a Pan-European Alliance of democrats, socialists, liberals, Greens, feminists, utopians who understand that the only alternative is a dystopia.
Friends, comrades:
For too long we have allowed, France, Greece, Germany, all of Europe to be governed by “accident and force”, rather than by “reflection and choice.”
For too long we have allowed what was once the Enlightenment to fade “into darkness.”
It is time for Europe’s humanists to reclaim Europe.
Carpe DiEM25
PARIS, 10th September 2016
The summer of 'Pokemon GO'
The summer of 2016 has marked a new step in the rush towards annihilation. There is the string of suicidal terrorist acts in France and in Germany, as well as and the fragmentary wars in the Middle East. There is the wave of migration from the Mediterranean, and the unrelenting rejection of it from the governments of Europe, and even from the European population, which is becoming more and more xenophobic and fearful. There is also the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, and the transformation of Turkey into a nationalist dictatorship with Islamist undertones. There is the soft golpe in Brazil, and, last but not least, there is the breath taking ascent of Trump on the American scene. “Madamina il catalogo è questo”.
This is the reality that has been produced by forty years of worldwide Neoliberal Reformation. Competition and privatization have prevailed and now the result is impoverishment, inequality and global civil war.
All of a sudden, at the high point of the summer, the newspapers and television stations focused on the launch of Pokémon Go. People of all ages went around waving their smartphones in an attempt to capture metaphysical insects in the open air.
One may argue that the launch of Pokémon Go reveals that the process of infantilisation is taking the upper hand in the world psycho-scape. The refusal to attend this show of barbarisation may lead to a part of the population taking shelter in secluded and gated communities of simulation. I want to go beyond this first sight consideration, and I want to imagine a future (indeed many futures) of the new big thing that is emerging in the sphere of technology and cultural mutation: immersion.
Pokémon Go is a game that may be categorised as ‘Augmented Reality’: meaning that the simulation not only concerns the screen of your smartphone but the surrounding reality into which the simulated objects (Pokémon) are projected.
But this new ‘augmented reality’ is only one step in a long-lasting stream of technological invention.
At the end of the ’80s I read a text entitled ‘Communication without symbols’ written by Jaron Lanier, the visionary engineer who was building one of the first devices for Virtual Reality.
Following the visionary intuitions of the Californian psychedelic culture (Timothy Leary and his friends), Lanier translated psychedelia into engineering, and in doing so paved the way for the possibility of techno-stimulation of our nervous centres, and for the transmission and sharing of images, sounds, perceptions: simulated experience. Lanier’s post-symbolic communication fundamentally implies the total immersion of the human body within its computational matrix.
Language is made of symbols that one has to be able to decipher in order to comprehend, but the sharing of a cognitive experience can also happen without symbols, without language, so that emotion, sensuousness and fear (for example) can be raised through a direct stimulating simulation, a technical simulation that stimulates designed neural reactions of the organism. Data Gloves, Computer aided Virtual Environments (Caves) were the first applications that came out from the Lanier’s project.
Later on, at the dawn of the ‘90s, all the energy of the searchers and tech-innovators was directed towards the formation of the Internet, and the focus on immersive technology was abandoned. Up to a certain point, because the Internet can be viewed as an immense immersive space that we have learned to inhabit and to interact inside. Recently the mobile Internet has enabled the interfacing of the nervous system with the automatic machine of connection and the wiring of the social cognitive system.
Meanwhile, the technical features of the immersive machines have enormously improved, and the simulation of the surrounding environment is now almost perfect.
What direction is taking this trend?
A direction for the future might be the Virtual Gate Community: a mental space that disconnects from the real world and recreates a dimension of expanded second life in second planet. According to the 1999 movie of Larry Andy Wachowksi:
“Matrix is everywhere. It is what you see when you go to work, to the church and you pay your taxes. It’s the world that has been placed in front of your eyes in order to conceal the truth.”
Can we imagine small communities migrating to this space of shared imagination, then growing in number, and finally seceding from the post-apocalyptic planet?
As for now, the urgent question is: who is going to build myths, software and interfaces of this second planet and of this this expanded second life? Who will create this expanded dimension for experience?
I’ve seen the appalling picture of Mark Zuckerberg (Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, February 2016), walking beside a seating army of zombies who are wearing oculus devices, blinded by the dazzling emotion of inhabiting the Eden of simulation while God is smiling beside and looking all along at his Creation.
According to Zuckerberg, immersive technology is the next step in the evolution of the Ultimate Automaton: headsets that provide “immersive 3-D experiences”—movies and television, naturally, but also games, lectures, and business meetings. These headsets would eventually scan our brains, before transmitting our thoughts to our friends in just the same way that we share baby pictures on Facebook today.
“Eventually we’re going to have technology where we can communicate our full sensory experience and emotions to someone through thought,” (Interview with Zuckerberg by Max Chafkin, Vanity Fair, Oct 2015).
Empathy and anaesthetisation play together in the dimension of Immersive technology. You are led to feel the experience of the others (I think of experiments of The Machine to be Another).
Facebook has marked a leap in the history of network evolution. Language and affection have been reduced to a formatted alphabet of icons replacing emotions and thoughts: emoticons, likes, formatted friendship, and so on. Now, as the world’s environment is decaying, are we heading towards the ultimate substitution? Will the newly simulated shared environment replace the experience that once upon a time we used to call: the world?
However, the evolution of technology is not linear, because those who create technology (programmers, designers, hackers and all the cognitarian workers of the world) have the power to change the direction of research and invention.
New pathways and new bifurcations can be invented in the process of construction of the technical line of escape.
We cannot say the future of the immersive technology.
Neuro-totalitarianism or lines of escape? May be both.
Committing Geocide: Climate Change and Corporate Capture
By Susan George
DiEM25 Signatory, Advisor and Member
Extract from a lecture delivered in Buenos Aires (1-2 September 2016) organised by the International Centre for the Promotion of Human Rights and UNESCO.
It strikes me that all religions have their pilgrimages, whether to Mecca, Saint Jacques de Compostelle, the place in India of the Buddha’s Enlightenment, the holy Hindu cities of India or the sacred sites of Jerusalem. The people who set out on these pilgrimages of faith are usually seeking forgiveness or salvation, enlightenment, healing or perhaps the granting of a special wish.
Our common pilgrimage is of a different nature. We do not seek personal blessings but salvation and hope for all peoples and for our home, the earth. All are under tremendous threat. We have embarked on this journey because we recognise that humanity has never been in greater danger than at this moment.
I try not to speak of “saving the planet”. Whatever human beings may do, the planet will continue to rotate on its axis and to orbit the sun as it has done for some four and a half billion years. Planet earth, which we think of as “ours”, is not really “ours” at all. It could perfectly well continue, utterly changed, to move along its prescribed path without us. Indeed, one could easily argue, as the so-called “deep ecologists” do, that the planet would be far better off without us, since they stress that we humans are the most predatory, wasteful and destructive species ever to have lived on earth in those four and a half billion years.
I am not here to promote the deep ecology view. I am here rather to introduce and define what I see as a new phenomenon in the history of humankind. I call it Geocide. Geocide is the collective action of a single species among millions of other species which is changing planet Earth to the point that it can become unrecognisable and unfit for life. This species is committing geocide against all components of nature, whether microscopic organisms, plants, animals or against itself, homo sapiens, humankind.
Homo sapiens has only existed for roughly 200.000 years. The time we’ve spent one this planet compared to its total age is infinitesimally short, just the tiniest sliver of geological time. It amounts to a mere 0.00004 percent of earth’s existence. And although any given species of plant or animal–vertebrate or invertebrate– tends to last on average about ten million years, our species seems determined to cause its own extinction, along with the rest of creation, long before it allotted time. The death of an entire species is, geologically speaking, a common occurrence. Some extinctions are spectacular—think of the dinosaurs—most are quiet disappearances that leave few traces. Several species will have disappeared forever between the time we arrived and the time we leave this seminar. Scientists tell us that the “background rate” of extinction is approximately a thousand times greater than average and some have begun to call our era the “sixth great extinction”. The previous one, the Permian extinction, occurred about 250 million years ago. Some 95 percent of all species then on earth were wiped out, probably because of volcanic activity and warming causing huge releases of methane from the oceans.
Species disappear massively because they cannot adapt fast enough to rapidly changing conditions. Some, humans included, can adapt to a broad set of environments and wide divergence of temperature, from Siberia or Greenland to Pakistan or the Sahel, but no species is infinitely adaptable and all have their limits.
Ours is the only species among millions that has been gifted with language, tool-making skills, and above all consciousness, the capacity for imagination, thought and spirituality. And yet, the end of our own existence seems beyond our collective comprehension: too terrible and too definitive to contemplate. Extinction can’t possibly happen to us—we humans are too technologically brilliant, we can find the solution to any problem, we are the lords of creation and we cannot fail, much less disappear. We have witnessed horrible episodes of mass murder in our own lifetimes and, because we have recognised this horror, we are able to name it. All languages have been obliged to add this terrible word, genocide, to their vocabularies.
Are we even capable of imagining, much less recognising that we are also capable of committing geocide? In my mind, this term goes beyond “ecocide” which so far seems limited to specific environments or geographic locations such as the razing of a forest or the massive pollution of, say, the Gulf of Mexico. Geocide is alas more general: it is a massive assault against nature of which we are only a part, against all earthly life and against Creation as well as the complete denial of human rights; I submit that this ultimate act of destruction is underway and that we need a name for it. Without a name, we have no concept and without a concept we cannot combat it. This is why I searched for a new word.
Perhaps you find me alarmist. Let me give you a few of the most recent findings of scientists concerning the speed and advancement of climate change. Most are derived from the recent State of the Climate Report led by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. It draws on the input of hundreds of scientists from 62 countries.
In 2015, new records were once again set for temperatures, sea level rise and extreme weather events. Like 2014, 2015 was the warmest on record and 2016 is likely to break that record too. Oceans cannot absorb all the greenhouse gasses we are producing and they are rapidly warming. Last year the Eastern Pacific was two degrees warmer and the Arctic Ocean reached a peak of fully eight degrees more than historic averages. Arctic sea ice-cover was the lowest since satellites started measuring it 37 years ago. Ocean warming is causing huge toxic algae blooms to spread in the Pacific North West and off the coast of Australia, killing corals, fish, birds and mammals. Scientists and journalists have coined the term “marine heatwaves”. Arctic marine species are struggling to adapt to huge migrations of competitors attracted by the warmer waters and eating the limited food supply. If the Greenland ice sheet melts completely, its disappearance would raise sea levels by a stunning seven meters. Last year it showed melting over half its surface.
We must also expect heavy human death tolls due to more floods, more droughts, more forest fires and more violent storms as well as more displaced persons and more climate refugees seeking a liveable home. Food and water shortages, especially for the tens of millions dependent on glaciers for their water supply, will also be more common. Less discussed but very much present in the thinking of military strategists such as those in the Pentagon, are the expected increases in political instability, hostilities, so-called “failed states” and outright warfare. Experts now acknowledge that the war in Syria was partly caused by the long drought in its wheat-growing regions.
Climate change is not arithmetic—in other words, 1+ 1+1 does not necessarily make a nice straight line on a graph. Change is exponential, meaning that each increase in heat can provoke further increases. This is called “positive feedback” and it can continue until “run-away” climate change takes over and becomes unstoppable. Among the most frightening examples right now is the permafrost meltdown in Siberia and Alaska. An estimated 1400 billion tonnes of methane are imprisoned in this permafrost and methane gas is twenty times more powerful than CO2. Depending on how fast the permafrost thaws, this colossal reservoir of greenhouse gasses could provoke irreversible climate change and geocide would take over. Even the rich, who tend to think of themselves as completely exempt from the laws of nature, could not escape the consequences.
Maybe we are already beyond the danger point. But since nobody knows for sure, we must act as if we still have a chance to halt and reverse climate change. The people present in this seminar are extremely diverse but all of us are serious and well informed, profoundly concerned with climate change, human rights and frequently with the spiritual dimensions of life. Therefore we have also chosen to stand against the odds and to do our best to make sure that the human adventure can continue.
But it strikes me that precisely because serious, thoughtful and ethical people have themselves made this choice, they may have particular difficulty accepting that not everyone shares their ethics or their commitment. Ask yourself this question: Do you tend to believe that the risks of climate change are so glaringly obvious and so universal that all normal people must necessarily support the same objectives that you do? Do you think, for example, that since we have the technology, the knowledge and the money to make the great transition to a fossil-fuel free world based on renewable energy, those who do not share our sense of urgency are simply misinformed? that they need only more information and better explanations?
If you think that, then I have to take the risk of offending you. To be blunt, I fear that such a view is dead wrong. Undoubtedly people unaware of the dangers of climate change still exist, but they are certainly not the people in charge of world affairs.
No. The real problem is that we are faced with determined, well-organised adversaries who care nothing about human rights or climate change; who would probably laugh at the very mention of geocide. They want only one thing: business as usual and a world in which they can make endless amounts of money using any and all available resources, no matter what the costs to nature and to human life. Unless we can accept this reality and confront these adversaries, as well as the public and private organisations they serve, I’m afraid we have no hope of ultimately preventing geocide.
Real enemies exist.They will not be changed by rational argument, exhortation, prayer or moral example. Confronting them is made more difficult because they occupy prestigious, powerful positions and can intimidate those who try to stop them. Here it may be useful to cite the words of the 19th century British historian Lord Acton. He memorably wrote, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, adding that “great men are almost always bad men…” Power corrupts because it allows persons, institutions or governments to impose their will and to shape the world to fit their immediate interests. In the past, this was often done through warfare and here another great 19th century thinker the military strategist Karl von Clausewitz defines war as “an act of violence to force the adversary to do our will”.
Combine Clausewitz and Acton, place them in the 21st century and you can define power as the capacity to impose the will of whatever system that powerful person serves. Today the powerful in both the public and private spheres, particularly in the still-dominant Western countries, serve the interests of an advanced capitalist system in which giant transnational corporations are major political actors. Often these huge petroleum, gas or coal companies as well as their banks are richer and more powerful than many dozens of States.Their goal, as Clausewitz put it, is to force everyone else to “do their will”. Corporations neither want nor need to use open warfare or brutal methods. They are staffed with people who are extremely well paid and highly rewarded for serving their aims. Anyone who refuses to sacrifice personal ethics in order to meet the goal of increased profits and influence will not remain employed for long.
These executives are content to live in a short-term world and today all of us are also forced to live in it, even though we know that the longer-term perspective is vital for grasping concepts such as “runaway climate change” or “geocide”. The leadership of huge fossil-fuel corporations and banks is chosen because it is prepared to sacrifice whatever values may be necessary to attain the goal of higher profits. No corporation president has the power to change this. They all know that their individual positions depend on following the rules; they serve their institutions which our national governments all too often protect, nurture and often obey. Denouncing, removing and replacing individuals is not the point. For them, the future of humanity and the fate of the earth are unfortunately not the point either.
We have to fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground and the only force that can restrain the corporations is the force of the law. The law will only change under the influence of strong, well-organised public opinion. We need the commitment of people like you, who are leaders and can influence large segments of public opinion to create pressure. We desperately need pressure on governments to oblige them to act forcefully and stand up to corporate power.
Perhaps you think I am making blanket accusations. To conclude this talk, let me speak briefly about a few of the corporate strategies aimed at gaining even greater freedom and profits. The effect of these examples is to accelerate climate change. Because we have little time left, I’m leaving out the specifics on the power of the largest and richest companies in the world. I will also leave out the road and air transport sectors, as well as the companies, located especially in the South, involved in massive deforestation. The corporations involved may be public or private. Here is my short selection of less well-known corporate influences on increased climate change.
–Lobbies
–Subsidies
–Bilateral and multilateral trade treaties
1. LOBBIES: Corporate use of lobbies has grown exponentially over the past several decades. Lobbies are now a major, multi-billion dollar service industry. One can distinguish three kinds: The first is simplest and most straightforward: individual companies hire in-house advertising, communications and public relations staff to present its best face and its viewpoint not just to improve sales but also to influence public opinion, opinion leaders, the media and government. Example: a major oil company such as BP decides to re-brand itself as an “energy company” even though 98 per cent of its activities remain in fossil fuels and renewable sources of energy have only a tiny share.
2. Second, corporations promote climate change denial. For example, Exxon-Mobil learned almost forty years ago from its own scientists that climate change is a dangerous reality has nonetheless spent millions financing so-called “think-tanks” and corrupt scientists whose only job is to provide arguments and propaganda, supposedly proving that climate change is non-existent or is nothing to worry about. The more climate denialists they can create, the longer they can obstruct legislation to control their behaviour. Lobbyists know that it is usually enough to create doubt and they have succeeded brilliantly the United States. Here, according to recent surveys, one in four people doubts or negates the reality of climate change. No Republican candidate for political office, including Donald Trump, will risk saying in public that climate change exists—we are talking about the country which as you know is by far the world’s largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gasses.
Finally, these companies also invariably belong to industry-wide lobbying organisations whose role is to defend the interests of the whole sector—for example fighting any decision of the United States Environmental Protection Agency or European regulations. The countries where the petroleum industry is a key part of the government itself, as in China or Saudi Arabia, present specific problems which citizens are usually ill-equipped to deal with.
In such cases, the only feasible strategy is to reduce the demand for fossil fuels overall.
2. SUBSIDIES: The following information is drawn from a 2013 International Monetary Fund Report—a sign of progress since climate change was not previously addressed by the IMF. Subsidies to fossil fuels are a worldwide phenomenon. Some allow consumers to pay less than the cost of supply; others allow the corporations to offload the costs of the environmental damage they cause. Economists call these damages “externalities”, such as pollution, contamination of water supplies or clean-up of extraction sites and these costs must be paid by governments—or not paid at all, which results in higher costs for public health, etc. According to the IMF, the total cost of subsidies to fossil fuels comes to an astonishing $1.900.000.000.000, (nineteen hundred billion dollars). If all these unjustified government handouts were eliminated and the companies were made to pay for their own externalities, the Fund calculates that a decline of 13 per cent of all global CO2 emissions would ensue.
Not only do subsidies make fossil fuels unrealistically cheap and make it harder for renewable energy sources to compete; they also reduce government spending for far more important purposes. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, governments are spending an average of three percent of their budgets on subsidies—the same amount as their expenditures for public health. Most of those subsidies benefit people who are already better off—poor Africans don’t have cars and aren’t even on the electricity grid. However you look at them, fossil fuel energy subsidies are unnecessary, costly and harmful.
So I was happy to learn from our Moroccan friends here that Morocco has already successfully phased out all fossil-fuels so as to invest heavily in renewables. What’s more, they did it in just 18 months, proving that you can make major changes quickly. So bravo to Morocco which should be a model for all countries.
3. BILATERAL AND MULTILATERAL TRADE TREATIES: These treaties invariably include a clause called “Investor to State Dispute Settlement” or ISDS which allows foreign, and only foreign, corporate investors to sue sovereign governments before private arbitration tribunals made up of three private lawyer-arbitrators for any new legislation which the company judges may harm its present or even its future profits. For example, elimination of subsidies would surely be seen as a threat and foreign companies receiving them would doubtless sue the government. A few current cases include Occidental Petroleum suing (and winning) against Ecuador for refusing to allow drilling in an ecologically protected area. The tribunal awarded Occidental compensation of $1.7 billion. The Lone Pine company is suing the Province of Quebec for $250 million because it denied permission for fracking in the Saint Lawrence river basin. As soon as President Obama vetoed the Keystone pipeline intended to transport particularly dirty tar-sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, the Canadian Company Transcanada brought a lawsuit against the US demanding $15 billion. Often it’s enough to threaten ISDS legal action to make a country think twice before passing a law to protect its people or the environment. A government may “win” against the corporation—as it has in 35 percent of the cases so far–but it can never really win because it signed the treaty, can’t refuse the lawsuit and the costs of private arbitration run to millions of dollars. Fossil fuel and petroleum services companies may also sue one government in order to scare off others from making any similar changes.
To conclude in just a few words, let me say that my fervent hope is that every person here will leave our seminar understanding that a corporate takeover is underway and that it will make a deadly contribution to geocide. I also hope that in addition to all your present professional or volunteer engagements you will accept the additional responsibility of making known and fighting against geocide. Despite the efforts of good people everywhere to reduce their individual carbon footprints, it will not be enough unless we can oblige the present structures promoting fossil fuels to change or disappear.
I am often asked if I am optimistic or pessimistic. I am neither. I don’t know the future. But I have hope. I believe that we still have a chance; that human beings can overcome even threats as terrifying as geocide. Many can be spurred to action by human rights activists and religious leaders. Let us make sure together that our common pilgrimage leads us to that outcome.