Britain’s COVID-19 housing crisis
“The sight of an enormous crane crushing ex-council properties and their residents is a potent emblem of the betrayal of working class communities in London, and the relentless greed inherent in property developers in the capital.”
Britain is currently facing its worst housing crisis in living memory, and with virtually no new social housing being built, those reliant on private accommodation are facing an insecure future without the right kind of government intervention. In response to COVID-19 Boris Johnson’s hard-right Brexiteers have been forced to implement stimulus packages totalling billions of pounds, in stark contrast to the previous decade of austerity. The “magic money tree” has well and truly been found, and housing policy has become a central issue in recent months, with a planning regulations bonfire looming on the agenda this summer, alongside Robert Jenrick’s ongoing Printworks scandal embodying the inherent corruption of British neoliberal politics.
With the government shouting “build, build, build” to try and kick the issue of Britain’s housing crisis into the long grass, and with targets dating as far back as 2015 as yet unfulfilled, it’s difficult not to be sceptical about the current government’s ability to deliver on these targets. Issues of poor quality, small and unaffordable properties for sale were highlighted by a government review, as well as a report by the Greater London Authority which found just 0.4% of new builds between 2013 and 2019 were deemed “affordable”, a problematic term meaning rents set at 80% of market value (hardly affordable to many in the capital). With the major economic impact of the pandemic likely to be felt when the furlough scheme draws to a close later in the year, we will see many more people in the UK abandon their ambitions of home ownership.
Whilst the experience of the lockdown was unevenly felt — from frontline workers, through those on furlough and those made redundant — the fact that most of the country was housebound for months highlighted the disparity in housing quality between the haves and have-nots. Earlier this year private rents skyrocketed to an all-time average high of £700 per month in England, and £1,425 in London. The experience of many such as myself, spending months cramped in a one-bedroom flat with no outside space could prove unbearable at times, especially for those living alone. The misery of many tenants living in rented accommodation has been exacerbated by inflexible and cruel landlords unwilling to make exceptions for long-term tenants who might be experiencing financial difficulties.
A ban on evictions has been extended until 20th September, along with a mortgage holiday for many, and a ban on home repossessions until 31st October. However, these measures are all timed to expire within weeks of each other, with many warning of a new “homelessness crisis” to be unleashed just before winter. In truth, the “previous” homelessness crisis never actually ended, but was merely put on hiatus as the government rushed rough sleepers off the streets, but soon kicked them back out as soon as the lockdown was eased.
The precarious nature of private rented accommodation was brought to bear for me in the tragic crane collapse that took place in Bow on 8th July, causing the death of June Harvey, a long-time resident.
The shoddy installation of a 65ft crane on a construction site for a block of medium rise apartments is still under investigation by the police, leaving the family of Mrs Harvey without answers for the time being. The sight of an enormous crane crushing ex-council properties and their residents is a potent emblem of the betrayal of working class communities in London, and the relentless greed inherent in property developers in the capital.
Close to 100 have been evacuated from the surrounding flats and terraced houses, myself included, with some residents being told they will not be able to return for at least six months, others closer to a year. Tower Hamlets Council have provided emergency funding to residents to pay for food and clothing, as well as a freeze/refund for Council Tax, but temporary accommodation costs will have to be met by loss adjusters and insurance companies, meaning that residents have to pay costs up front and wait weeks for reimbursement. My own lettings agent had the audacity to ask for my rent to be paid in full with the possibility of a discount being applied in the future. Despite flying in the face of all common sense and logic, my contract has a clause stating that tenants won’t have to pay for the property when it isn’t fit for habitation, so I’ve been able to withhold rent payments for the time being.
Up and down the country, tenants are going through financial difficulties, either directly due to COVID-19 redundancies, or a radical loss of income for the self-employed or those on furlough.
For some, the lockdown has empowered a new kind of tenant action, like those in university accommodation, organised by Rent Strike, who have effectively used Zoom, online forms and social media to garner wide support for their demands. Renter’s Unions in London, Scotland and across the UK are able to defend their members through fundraising, eviction resistance and rent negotiation.
Tenant actions can lead to some inspiring success stories, such as earlier this month when hundreds of tenants in Newham secured massive rent reductions — in some cases up to 60% — through collective action against their negligent landlords, and after four years of campaigning forced Newham council to take ownership of the properties. To secure genuinely affordable housing it is clear that more must be done by the government to end our housing crisis. There are a number of levers that can be pulled, from rapidly scaling the construction of social housing, through to the introduction of a universal basic income, as DiEM25’s Universal Basic Dividend (UBD) proposal has been calling for.
Housing has to be enshrined as a human right, rather than treated as a commodity or an investment. In the short term, rent controls would weaken the profit mechanism that motivates developers to build shoddy housing and rent it out at extortionate prices, and we have seen this policy work well in Berlin. Ultimately, DiEM25’s Green New Deal for Europe offers the blueprint for ensuring quality housing that will be affordable for all, granting dignity and a sustainable future for all of us and entrenching equality. To do so, we need to take action at every level of society, and we need to do it today.
What can you do if you’re unable to pay your rent?
- Financial advice from Shelter (UK)
- Join your local renter’s union – for example Acorn have coverage across the UK and Londoners should join the London Renter’s Union
- Read ‘Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay’ by Rent Strike
- Read the ‘Tenant Power Toolkit’ developed by KC Tenants and the Progressive International
Photo from Reuters.
Something remarkable just happened this August: How the pandemic has sped up the passage to postcapitalism
Two days ago, something extraordinary happened. Something that has never happened before in the history of capitalism.
Lannan Foundation virtual talk
In Britain, the news came out that the economy had suffered its greatest slump ever – more than 22% down during the first 7 months of 2020. Remarkably, on the same day, the London Stock Exchange, the FTSE100 index, rose by more than 2%. On the same day, during a time America has ground to a halt and is beginning to look like not just as an economy in deep trouble but also, ominously, as a failed state, Wall Street’s SP500 index hit an all-time record.
Unable to contain myself, I tweeted the following:
Financial capitalism has decoupled from the capitalist economy, skyrocketing out of Earth's orbit, leaving behind it broken lives & dreams. As the UK sinks into the worst recession ever, & US edges toward failed state status, FTSE100 goes up 2% & S&P500 breaks all time record!
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) August 12, 2020
Before 2008, the money markets also behaved in a manner that defied humanism.
News of mass firings of workers would be routinely followed by sharp rises in the share price of the companies “letting their workers go” — as if they were concerned with their liberation… But at least, there was a capitalist logic to that correlation between firings and share prices. That disagreeable causality was anchored in expectations regarding a company’s actual profits. More precisely, the prediction that a reduction in the company’s wage bill might, to the extent that the loss of personnel lead to lower proportional reductions in output, lead to a rise in profits and, thus, dividends. The mere belief that there were enough speculators out there thinking that there were enough speculators out there who might form that particular expectation was enough to occasion a boost in the share price of companies firing workers.
That was then, prior to 2008. Today, this link between profit forecasts and share prices has disappeared and, as a consequence, the share market’s misanthropy has entered a new, post-capitalist phase. This is not as controversial a claim as it may sound at first. In the midst of our current pandemic not one person in their right mind imagines that there are speculators out there who believe that there are enough speculators out there who may believe that company profits in the UK or in the US will rise any time soon. And yet they buy shares with enthusiasm.
The pandemic’s effect on our post-2008 world is now creating forces hitherto unfathomable.
In today’s world, it would be a mistake to try to find any correlation between what is going on in the real world (of wages, profits, output and sales) and in the money markets. Today, there is no need for a correlation between ‘news’ (e.g. a newsflash that some large multinational fired tens of thousands) and share price hikes. As we watch stock exchanges rise at a time of tanking economies, it would be a mistake to think that speculators hear that the UK economy, or the US economy, have tanked and think to themselves: Great, let’s buy shares. No, the situation is far, far worse!
In the post-2008 world, speculators — for the first time in history — don’t actually give a damn about the economy. They, like you and me, can see that COVID-19 has put capitalism in suspended animation. That it is crushing corporate profit margins while also the destroying lives and livelihoods of the many. That it is causing a new tsunami of poverty with long-term effects on aggregate demand. That it demonstrates in every country and every town the pre-existing deep class and race divides, as some of us were privileged enough to keep social distance rules while an army of people out there laboured for a pittance and at risk of infection to cater to our needs.
No, what we are living through now is not your typical capitalist disregard for human needs, the standard tendency of the capitalist system to be motivated solely by the needs of profit-maximisation or, as we lefties say, capital accumulation.
No, capitalism is now in a new, strange phase: Socialism for the very, very few (courtesy of central banks and governments catering to a tiny oligarchy) and stringent austerity, coupled with cruel competition in an environment of industrial, and technologically advanced, feudalism for almost everyone else.
This week’s events in Wall Street and the City of London mark this turning point — the historic moment that future historians will undoubtedly pick to say: It was in the summer of 2020 when financial capitalism finally broke with the world of real people, including capitalists antiquated enough to try to profit from producing goods and services.
But let us begin at the beginning. How did it all begin?
Before capitalism, debt appeared at the very end of the economic cycle; a mere reflection of the power to accumulate already produced surpluses. Under feudalism:
- Production came first with the peasants working the land to plant and harvest crops.
- Distribution followed the harvest, as the sheriff collected the lord’s share. Part of this share was later monetised when the lord’s men sold it at some market.
- Debt only emerged at the very last stage of the cycle when the lord would lend his money to debtors, the King often amongst them.
Capitalism reversed the order. Once labour and land had been commodified, debt was necessary before production even began. Landless capitalists had to borrow to lease workers, land and machines. Only then could production begin, yielding revenues whose residual claimant were the capitalists. Thus, debt powered capitalism’s early oeuvre. However, it took the second industrial revolution before capitalism could re-shape the world in its image.
The invention of electromagnetism, on the back of James Clerk Maxwell’s famous equations, gave rise to the first networked company, Edison for example that produced everything from the power generation stations and the electricity grid to the light bulb in every house. The funding needed to build these megafirms was, naturally, beyond the limits of the small banks of the 19th century. Thus, the megabank was born, as a result of mergers and acquisitions, along with a remarkable capacity to create money out of thin air. The agglomeration of these megafirms and megabanks created a new Technostructure that usurped markets, democracies and the mass media. The roaring 1920s, leading to the crash of 1929, was the result.
From 1933 to 1971, global capitalism was centrally managed and planned under different versions of the New Deal, that included the War Economy and the Bretton Woods system. Following the demise of Bretton Woods in the early 1970s, capitalism returned to a version of the 1920s: Under the ideological guise of neoliberalism (which was neither new nor liberal), the Technostructure again took over from governments. Our generation’s 1929, that happened in 2008 was the result.
Following the crash of 2008, capitalism changed drastically. In their attempt to re-float the crashed financial system, central banks channelled rivers of cheap debt-money to the financial sector, in exchange for universal fiscal austerity that limited the middle and lower classes’ demand for goods and services.
Unable to profit from austerity-hit consumers, corporations and financiers were hooked up to the central banks’ constant drip-feed of fictitious debt.
Every time the Fed or the European Central Bank or the Bank of England pumped more money into the commercial banks, in the hope that these monies would be lent to companies which would in turn create new jobs and product lines, the birth of the strange world we now live in came a little closer. How?
As an example, consider the following chain reaction:
The European Central Bank extended new liquidity to Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank could only profit from it if it found someone to borrow this money. Dedicated to the banker’s mantra “never lend to someone who needs the money”, Deutsche Bank would never lend it to the “little people”, whose circumstances were increasingly diminished (along with their ability to repay any substantial loans), it preferred to lend it to, say, Volkswagen. But, in turn, Volkswagen executives looked at the “little people” out there and thought to themselves: “Their circumstances are diminishing, they won’t be able to afford new, high quality electric cars.” And so Volkswagen postponed crucial investments in new technologies and in new high quality jobs. But, Volkswagen executives would have been remiss not to take the dirt-cheap loans offered by Deutsche Bank. So, they took it. And what did they do with the freshly minted ECB-monies? They used it to buy Volkswagen shares in the stock exchange. The more of those shares they bought the higher Volkswagen’s share value. And since the Volkswagen executives’ salary bonuses were linked to the company’s share value, they profited personally — while, at once, the ECB’s firepower was well and truly wasted from society’s, and indeed from the point of view of industrial capitalism.
This was the process by which, from 2008 to 2020, the policies to re-float the banking sector from 2009 onwards resulted in the almost complete zombification of corporations.
COVID-19 found capitalism in this zombified state. With consumption and production hit massively and at once, governments were forced to step into the void to replace all incomes to a gargantuan extent at a time the real capitalist economy has the least capacity to generate real wealth. The decoupling of the financial markets from the real economy, that was the trigger for this talk, is a sure sign that something we may defensibly label postcapitalism is already underway.
My difference with fellow lefties is that I do not believe there is any guarantee that what follows capitalism — let’s call it, for want of a better term, postcapitalism — will be better.
It may well be utterly dystopic, judging by present phenomena. In the short term, to avoid the worst, the minimum necessary change that we need is an International Green New Deal that, beginning with a massive restructuring of public and private debts, uses public financial tools to press the oodles of existing liquidity (e.g. funds driving up money markets) into public service (e.g. a green energy revolution).
The problem we face is not merely that our oligarchic regimes will fight tooth and nail against any such program. An even harder-to-crack problem is that an International Green New Deal, of the sort alluded to above, may be a necessary condition but is, most certainly, not a sufficient condition to create a future for humanity worth striving for. Can we imagine what may prove sufficient? My controversial parting shot is that, for postcapitalism to be both genuine and humanist, we need to deny private banks their raison d’être, and to terminate, with one move, two markets: the market for labour and the share market.
Fully aware of how difficult it is to imagine a technologically advanced economy lacking share and labour markets, I wrote my forthcoming book Another Now — in which I lay out the argument that terminating labour and share markets, along with the type of commercial banking taken for granted today, is a prerequisite for a postcapitalist society with functioning markets, authentic democracy and personal liberty.
Lebanon: How to speak to Macron
On 4 August an explosion presumably set off around 2.700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in the Port of Beirut, killing at least 180 people and wounding 5.000. It is yet another painful reminder of the critical state of Lebanon.
It comes at a time when many thought the country had hit rock-bottom, after 10 months of mass protests aimed at the corruption, cronyism and incompetence of the political elite, and a devastating financial crisis and currency crash crippled the country, leaving 50% of the population below the poverty line. A painful 4-month COVID-19 lockdown brought the remaining bits of livelihood to a complete grind.
The era of explosions had become a thing of the past in Beirut, and usually targeted politicians. But this explosion was different. It was personal. It destroyed some of Beirut’s few remaining historic neighbourhoods and their diverse social and cultural fabric. It took with it the homes and creative spaces which for many people had become places of escape from the tumultuous reality of daily life in Lebanon.
The dominant political entities were quick to deny any responsibility, even though they were made aware of the dangers of storing large amounts of the highly explosive material so close to the city. It is symptomatic of the deep shortcomings, incompetence and criminal negligence that grew out of a political system that was agreed upon under the pretext of putting an end to the violence of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). It is this system that led to the 3rd largest explosion in recorded history.
To add insult to injury, it was private citizens who took matters into their own hands. In the days following the blast, armed with shovels and helmets, they pulled people from under the debris and cleared streets and homes from rubble. Although the government declared a State of Emergency, not one soldier was mobilised for any relief work in the affected areas. Instead, the army and security forces were deployed in impressive numbers to violently confront protesters, in some cases using live rounds. Protesters had once again come out in large numbers demanding a complete overhaul of the confessional power-sharing system and political elite governing the country.
While the message remained the same as during the first street protests in October 2019, the tone had changed. Frustration had turned into anger, echoing a sense of emergency and despair, and a widely shared distrust of all state institutions and the political elite. The message was clear: “prepare the gallows”.
As the dust settles over Beirut, a thick fog of uncertainty is moving in over the country. At the time of writing, little over two weeks have passed since the explosion. In those two weeks, nearly a dozen of foreign dignitaries have made their acte de presence at the blast site, French and British warships are patrolling the coast, the 9-month old government has resigned, a state of emergency was declared, regional tensions are at an all-time high, and the country is entering its 3rd COVID-19 lockdown.
The cost of stability over transparency.
The cascade of events in Lebanese politics leaves many to wonder what’s next for this small nation. Because it is rarely the Lebanese who decide over their own fate; such decisions are made somewhere between Washington and Tehran, with stops in Paris and Riyadh, and most recently Ankara.
The visit of high-ranking foreign officials pledging relief aid and voicing support for popular demands for change may be heart-warming. But it is them who, for decades, aided Lebanon in return for stability in a region where tensions regularly run high. All too often stability came at the cost of turning a blind eye to the endemic corruption, cronyism and embezzlement of public funds, including EU funds.
A report published in 2019 “unearthed that the EU blithely plows millions of dollars into environmental schemes without the slightest interest in how the money is spent – effectively encouraging big business and public officials to gorge themselves on the easy cash available.”. The report prompted the European Parliament to launch an official probe into embezzlement of EU funding in Lebanon. Ironically, the 38 million Euro the EU may claim back from Lebanon are most likely to come out of the bankrupted state budget rather than the pockets of the officials who cashed the cheques.
On a political level too, the EU has regularly favoured stability over transparency and democracy. In 2018, amid video evidence of politicians paying off voters and ballot boxes being emptied in parking lots, the European Union’s chief electoral observer declared that the elections were “well-conducted, but calls for action to improve women’s access to political power”, without a single reference to the alleged vote rigging.
The port explosion has unleashed an international propaganda machine on the Lebanese population, trying to win over their hearts and minds. For the first time, foreign officials have publicly come out in support of the popular demand for system and regime change. Most notably French President Macron and US under-secretary of State David Hale have underscored the need for reforms in return for structural foreign aid, in a rare public shaming of Lebanese officials.
However, while calling for transparency and reforms, it is the same international community that continues to acknowledge the discredited political elite by negotiating the formation of a new government with them, under the pretext of lifting Lebanon out of its economic and political crises. As Lebanon tilts closer towards chaos the urgency for change is unlikely to outweigh the need for stability so often pursued by the countries with shared interests in the wider region.
The 6-headed monster’s chokehold over Lebanon.
On the streets nobody believes that a new government made up of the same political forces will be able to bring about any change. These six dominant political entities are the same as those who ran the country into its 15-year Civil War. Under the pretext of ending the war, they agreed on sharing the spoils of the country, rather than fighting over them. The deal was sealed with a power-sharing political system that has ruled the country since the end of the war, with the endorsement of the international community. The system has allowed for cronyism and corruption to run its roots deep into state institutions, rewarding those who pledge allegiance to their cronies, while keeping the rest of the population as far as possible from the spoils of the country’s post-war recovery.
State institutions have become the means to protect the system and confine power within the dominant political entities. They can issue the electoral laws that limit the chances of the independent opposition. And they command numerous security services to quell protests, limit press freedom and curb judiciary independence as needed. In particular Nabih Berri, the unchallenged Speaker of Parliament for nearly 3 decades, enjoys exclusive command over one of the most violent police forces. It has been credited with using unwarranted brutality against protesters even far beyond the Parliament’s current security perimeter.
Aided by a media landscape largely owned by, or aligned with, the dominant political entities, the system ensures no other party or popular movement can ever reach the status of a true independent opposition to the dominant political entities. The line between protecting the state and protecting the private interests of the political elite has become very, very thin.
While France, the US, Iran and a handful of other countries are working behind the scenes on a new political deal with the same dominant political elite, it is clear that any new government resulting from these negotiations will be mere window-dressing protecting the existing system and underlying interests. Real change can only come about when the independent opposition parties and popular movements are invited to the negotiating table as part of a solution. But so far, they have only been invited as representatives of the ‘civil society’, further undermining their political legitimacy and the democratic process that should underpin the formation of any new government.
Similarly, calls for early elections are unlikely to lift independent opposition voices into Parliament, with an electoral law written by, and catering to, the dominant political entities. Even if alternative voices manage to secure a majority, their job will meet stark opposition from a system of allegiances that has run its tentacles deep into state institutions and the country’s alliances.
The only hope for change relies on the establishment of an independent transitional government, limited in time and with a clear mandate and legislative powers to govern on an agenda of reforms and immediate relief, and organise new elections based on a new electoral law. The idea is formally being proposed by protest movements and a number of non-sectarian opposition parties, but it seems very unlikely the current political establishment and its international allies are capable of taking such a step. Even if rewarded with immunity for past crimes. Instead, the dominant political elite continues to discredit and silence alternative voices, and the international community plays along.
An eerie sense of calm settles over Beirut.
As the political string-pulling has been taken behind the scenes of the emergency rescue work, an eerie sense of calm has settled over Beirut. The State of Emergency declared in the days following the explosion has quelled the last remaining street protests, once again silencing popular movements in independent opposition parties.
But the explosion that rocked Beirut on 4 August has ignited a sense of urgency among the protest movements to gather around a clear shared political platform. It was the absence of such a platform that provided the political elite with arguments to dismiss protest movements as unrepresentative and unrealistic. However, in the days following the port explosions, a handful of united fronts have come forward with shared statements and the beginnings of clear political demands and propositions.
The challenge now is to gain momentum and win over the hearts and minds of a population that has for too long relied on the protection of their cronies. Cracks have started to emerge as a result of the economic crisis, as it is eating away the benefits distributed through the system of allegiances. But more needs to be done to build a large popular base on an agenda of reform, transparency, accountability and justice. The EU bears a responsibility at this critical juncture, in supporting a system that brings true stability instead of a morally questionable system that only buys precarious stability with foreign money.
It took the 3rd largest explosion in recorded history for Macron and other foreign dignitaries to acknowledge the demands of the popular protest movements and independent opposition. But it turned out to be only a pretext for staging their comeback into Lebanese politics. If Macron and others want to actually lift Lebanon out of its multiple crises, then what more will it take to invite the alternative voices to the negotiating table as part of a political solution towards true stability for Lebanon and its population?
Against “de-platforming” and other stunts
Polemics after the “Harper’s Letter”
The military-industrial complex of the country that takes the entire world hostage — hint, this does not refer to Iran — has also recently signed up to the polemical “culture wars”, joining the media and cultural establishment.
In an annual defence bill of $740 billion in military funding for the 2021 fiscal year, the US included one important caveat, predictably protested from the pulpit of the Trump entourage: military bases named after Confederates must undergo a name-change.
Iraq-invader David Petraeus had, after all, long pointed out the “absurdity” of bases named after Confederates. Such gestural politics have had their ripple effects in Europe.
Signs indicate that the war-machine is playing catch-up with the art world and with journalism (of the variety that Intercept editor Glenn Greenwald derisively calls “Resistance journalism”).
The renaming of military bases spread over the planet, pays tribute, for example, to HBO’s temporary deletion of the 1939 historic film “Gone with the Wind” and other elite rites of atonement — such as the ban on the phrase “master bedroom” by real-estate dealers. Rehabilitation of the very weapons of state violence by simply removing Confederate names, only adds to the grotesqueness of the state-sponsored violence which sparked the protests.
Stunts should not distract from the danger of militarised police, who for example arrested black CNN journalist Omar Gimenez on camera, as he covered the Minneapolis riots.
But when progressives protesting in solidarity with victims also begin to act like the cops and censors, we know it cannot pave the way towards real change.
While hotly debated, many in DiEM25 already acknowledge the gravity of the situation that made a seemingly innocuous statement like Harper’s “Letter On Justice and Open Debate” necessity. They include professor Noam Chomsky (who proudly forms part of DiEM25’s Advisory Panel). His signature joins that of exiled Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud, among a host of other fellow travellers on the left as well as our adversaries in “the extreme center”.
This happened shortly after UCLA authorities placed a researcher “under investigation” for allegedly undermining the movement after he read Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham jail”. Such reactionary instances of censorship are now affecting journalism, and not only the usual suspects in academia.
Investigative journalist Lee Fang, for example, recently faced accusations from his mostly-white colleagues at The Intercept, who campaign online to have Fang fired–because he retweeted this interview of Max, a black BLM supporter at a protest, who said “I always question, why does a black life matter only when a white man takes it?… If a white man takes my life tonight, it’s national news, but if a black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of ”.
Fang’s interviewee perhaps calls for a radical next-step: towards a socio-economic understanding of racism, and an end to the world’s indifference towards the circumstances of many or most black people. Max’s understanding should resonate in Europe as well — would white Europeans so casually dismiss the results of Europe’s unbridled trade of weapons in Africa, were it not for post-colonial indifference at the non-news of one African killing another?
At The Intercept, however, Fang’s co-workers reached the opposite interpretation — American journalist Matt Taibbi reports campaigns involving HR going after Fang, on a mission to have him sacked for having undermined the BLM movement.
New paradigms, new understandings of the other, and new cultural forms can only be attained by exchange and discussions without penalties for wrong opinions — and never by inquisitions or exorcisms. We see an important difference between the just struggle to transform the way the police receive financing, and to reverse the militarisation of police in the Western World, from the United States to Latin America to France.
But protesters who toppled statues of anti-slavery abolitionists like Ulysses Grant, or Victor Shoechler in Martinique, and even statues of Gandhi — like those who lobby behind Democratic politicians to remove a Lincoln Emancipation Memorial in Washington DC, like those who attacked images of the former slave and anti-authoritarian Miguel de Cervantes, all participate in rites of exorcism, rather than in forces of lasting political change.
Historical-revisionists today struggle to scrub and comb the past clean of its demons, by removing sculptures, or in the older campaign to destroy murals by the artist Victor Arnautoff — a committed socialist and apprentice of Mexican painter Diego Riviera — in San Francisco; as others typically cheerlead the removal of paintings of female nudes from museums or even the removal of a mildly erotic Bolivian poem from a mural in Berlin.
Those who lobby to delete words from the dictionary, and to neuter and destroy the grammar of Latin languages because of the “inherent sexism of Spanish” cannot understand why progressive Elizabeth Warren lost popularity among the Latino voters whom she addressed as “LatinX”.
We cannot allow the stifling of criticism, so that a few media activists insist on describing the current, desperate protests in strictly cultural terms.
Among many perceptions shared between centre-right and fashionable progressive pundits, we see a prevalent notion that riots in the US erupted from a socio-economic vacuum, and had nothing to do with the absence of an emergency system of provisions to help populations weather a mass-quarantine and epidemic shutdown of economies. Hunger and despair, caused by life in limbo under an oddly managed quarantine, lacked channels of support and basic aid — let alone a Universal Basic Dividend — during the emergency.
Inevitably, predictably, in a time of forced unemployment and shutdown, bread riots broke out. Leftist broadcaster Michael Brooks, who left us too soon this July, aptly observed that while anger at police murderousness and discrimination sparked the riots in the US today, in a less formal way these are “the first bread-riots of the Trump era”.
DiEM25 believes in a common political project of economic transformation to permanently exit the current economic and ecological crises — to be achieved not only through a Green New Deal for Europe, but also by shutting down the war-machine.
Today’s progressive elites capitalise on clichéd relics of the then-transgressive achievements of the late 1960s counter-cultural revolution, contemporaneously reduced to background music for advertising and hip liberal anti-Russia activism.
In the 1960s, a greatly diverse range of Western social movements, with contrasting and conflicting visions of life and expression, during their most successful moments shared certain unifying common goals: to stop the Vietnam war, towards the utopian goal of ending militarism, poverty and imperialism. In these latter, essential projects, many anti-war religious conservatives also joined forces, despite having a radically different vision of life to hedonist students or black revolutionaries.
By contrast, present-day 21st century tribal rivalries in what was once the left, owe mostly to the abandonment of any common project, let alone the combined goals of anti-imperialism, anti-war and economic transformation. All of this, we must now recover.
As the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno — rumoured to have been one of the first anarchists — believed, everything heterogenous (diversity) can only exist thanks to a base in shared qualities, just as the branches of a tree sprawl outward in different directions. Difference within the left can exist in concert and effectively, provided we share a common basic project underlying it all.
Arturo Desimone is an Aruban-Argentinean writer and visual artist, currently based between Argentina and the Netherlands (www.arturoblogito.wordpress.com). He’s also member of DiEM25’s Thematic group on Peace and International Policy.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.
Lebanon: What happens when a ruling class goes unchecked
The recent explosion in Beirut, Lebanon — which killed more than 150 people, injured more than 5,000, affected the livelihoods of more than 300,000, and caused material damage of over $15 billion — is no accident.
Rather, this is the consequence of corruption; of power-mongering games, and a clientelist mentality rooted in a sectarian ruling structure that has constantly been awarded re-legitimisation by the international community since the French ’mandate’ after WWI. The combustion of Beirut’s port — the most vital commercial gate to an economy that imports more than 70% of what it consumes — burdens the devastated Lebanese society, which is already struggling with the worst financial crisis since Lebanon’s establishment.
The current financial crisis and political crisis were predicted back in 2018 by Charbel Nahas, former minister and current General Secretary of the vibrant young movement ”Citizens within a State”. Nahas tried to warn “our” heads of state and the ruling class, to no avail.
Today, Lebanon pays for our elites’ ignorance and incompetence.
Insultingly, the Israeli regime has chosen this critical moment of failure to show unprecedented gestures of support for Lebanon and the Lebanese. Israel’s regime has, on multiple occasions, vowed to demolish Lebanon’s infrastructure (and partly accomplished this in 2006) while the Israeli military continuously breaches Lebanese airspace and maritime territory on a regular basis.
The “international community” (in this case the US, EU and their client-regimes in the Middle East) responded to the calamity in a manner that is even more worrying to those who care about the future of Lebanese society. All at once, they are competing to broaden their influence in Lebanese affairs — either through carrot-and-stick offers of conditional financial aid, or by singling out Hezbollah as the sole responsible party. That singling-out of the Hezbollah party as “prime suspect” of course results from the Lebanese organisation’s rather unique record in having stood up to continuous Israeli aggression, and from Hezbollah’s guerrilla involvement in the Syrian war when it allied itself with official enemies of the West.
The international community prefers focussing on the General Secretary of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, rather than on the whole political structure of Lebanon, in the hope of expanding and further inflaming ongoing tensions between Washington’s and Tehran’s regional allies.
What can we do to support the Lebanese during this time?
Certainly, donations and sentimental support help to overcome grievances and to rebuild. This, however, will not affect the root of the country’s problems, which are entrenched in a sectarian political-social-economical structure. That fragmentation can only be solved by the Lebanese.
For those of us in the Western countries (and outside of Lebanon), our share in the task of solidarity involves pushing our governments to stop their speculative policies towards Lebanon specifically, and towards the Middle East, in general. Until now, Western policies have officially stated their aim of ”stabilising” the MENA region in order to maintain global business interests; ensuring a steady flow of cheap fossil fuel, and the liberalisation of markets in the Arab world, simply for the benefit of multinationals and the local financiers and cartels.
The above should give clear insights as to how our struggles (against oligarchy and global finance) in Europe interconnect with those of Middle Easterners.
One example of how European interference — whether deliberate or not — further entrenches Lebanon’s ruling class, was when France called for the CEDRE conference in 2018 weeks before the 2018 Lebanese parliamentary elections to provide the Lebanese oligarchies with another ’foreign legitimizing’ act in front of their constituents by pledging financial support of approximately $ 11 billion in loans and grants to the State. Another example is the World Bank-funded Bisri dam project, that would bring about an enormously damaging environmental impact. The currently halted construction — due to public pressure — of the Bisri dam is meant to be carried out in clear collusion between local oligarchs and international investors, who profit on the back of mother nature and society.
Within 48 hours following the devastating explosion, French president Macron — dodging the “yellow-vest” anti-austerity and anti-Macron protests which have only momentarily subsided due to the lockdown — visited Lebanon to confer with the ruling class, admonishing them to ”pull their act together”.
Such paternalistic sounds from Macron towards his Lebanese associates, breaks with every notion of interstate cooperation, reducing French-Lebanese relations back to a retrograde patronage reminiscent of past French colonial forms. This, clearly, also exemplifies how our struggles relate, and that the fight in Europe for a better world requires working together.
The recent tragedy has given a wake-up call jolting the middle classes, who on one hand form part of the problem, as well as part of the potential solution.
Part of the problem, because the current configuration has allowed Lebanon’s middle class to accumulate its affluence by way of speculations and savings. This has created a corrupted sense of progress that has slowly but steadily lost its value. This middle class, however, can also become part of the solution if and when they acknowledge that our current political and socio-economic imbalance cannot sustain itself. It must be confronted, before hopefully pulling out the rug from underneath the oligarchs.
To stand in solidarity with Lebanon beyond mere gasps and sentimental gestures requires us to push the EU to summon enough backbone to finally iterate a common EU foreign policy: one that stands up to US aggression, while rejecting the imperial policies that have so far fragmented the Middle East. All too often, our societies in the Middle East are left alone to deal with the blowback of an imperial superstructure that helps feed and entrench our rotten ruling elites.
The current political and socio-economic situation in Lebanon is dire. The short-lived government fell last Monday, in addition to the resignations of various members of the façade Parliament — those who declared an unnecessary emergency state of martial law. These events further emphasise that the political and socio-economic structure in place after the end of the civil war in 1990 (the result of the intersection of foreign interests of the US, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) is broken and bankrupt. Rather than reform, Lebanon needs a total overhaul. But we cannot accomplish this without external solidarity movements exerting pressure and support from abroad.
Mohammad Khair Nahhas is a member of DiEM25 and its thematic DSC Peace and International Policy 1.
The author extends his warm gratitude to the thematic DSC Peace and International Policy 1, especially Arturo Desimone and Robert Wittkuhn for their valuable support and feedback.
Photo (c) Mehr News Agency, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92996957
Bulgaria protests: exclusive interview with the coordinators of the on-going anti-corruption uprising
Day 33 of the protests, Sofia, Bulgaria: Interview with Nikolay Hadjigenov and Arman Babikyan
On August 10, 2020, members of DiEM25’s Sofia1 DSC sat down with Nikolay Hadjigenov and Arman Babikyan from the “Poisoning Trio”, widely considered the initiators and coordinators of the anti-totalitarian and pro-democratic protests of 2020 in Bulgaria.
Below is the exclusive detailed interview:
On July 9, 2020, you used social media to call for a gathering in front of the Presidency building in defence of democracy. Why did you do it? What were your motives?
Image 1: The “Poisoning Trio” in front of the Presidency building, Sofia. From left to right: Arman Babikyan, prof. Svetoslav Minekov, Nikolay Hadjigenov
NH: First of all, we have never had democracy. What we have is an imitation of democracy. On July 3 it became clear that this imitation looks more like Putin’s Russia. A squad of the newly-established security unit at the Attorney General’s office, which has no policing clearance, recently entered the Presidency building fully armed — which is absolutely against the law — in order to conduct a search in two offices and to arrest a secretary of the President. This action infringes every law in Bulgaria. My reproach towards the then (and now former) head of the National Security Service was not in vain. I asserted that if I was in charge of the service, no armed persons would enter the building. Such actions can be accomplished by a clerk bearing a paper folder under his arm. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
AB: That was the formal justification. What Mr. Hadjigenov mentioned was just the spark that ignited the protests. The cause, however — the underlying reason — was an anti-corruption rebellion. It is an anti-corruption uprising that belongs to all the citizens, because they got tired of being the sickest in Europe, the poorest in Europe, under the governance of a state that uses its institutions to crack down on opponents, instead of serving the people.
People pay taxes and are persecuted when they disagree with the powers that be. They are submitted to power not as citizens but as vassals. In this sense the anti-corruption rebellion that literally poured out on the streets is carried by way more serious and deep societal reasons. And that is why the protest is still on-going.
Thousands of Bulgarians within the country and abroad responded to your call. What people do you see at the protests? What do you think has kept them together for more than 30 days? Do the protesters have any specific demands and objectives?
Image 2: Protesters on Nezavisimost (independence) square in Sofia, also called the “Triangle of Power”
NH: In the initial call we said that now is the time for us to gather all together, which has never happened in our country. And probably for the first time in all of our history so far, it makes no difference what ethnicity you are (there are multiple ethnicities in Bulgaria), who you support or who you oppose. None of that matters. We all gathered together to fight for our freedom. The demands are simple: resignation of the Borisov government because of corruption. The only issue where Bulgaria holds the 1st place in the EU is corruption. We are last on everything else.
The second demand is the resignation of the Attorney General because he is being used like a bat by the politicians in power for crackdowns. And the third demand is a change to prevent this from happening again. We need a change in the system and the fundamental principles of governance, or the Constitution. We demand true democracy, freedom, justice, no corruption. This is a long shot but that was the way to show the people that we won’t stop at resignations. We want fundamental change.
AB: These are the goals, yes. I have nothing to add. Some of them are quickly attainable, and we are on the streets because of them. The others are subject to a process and work of different nature, of expertise and political representation. And we are ready to walk all the way, until the end.
Apart from initiating the protests, some say you are also coordinating them. What does it mean for you to be on the streets every day?
Image 3: The “Poisoning Trio” and protesters on the Nezavisimost square, Sofia
NH: Well, let me deride the Attorney General. We are instigators of the protest, which is a type of complicity in a crime. For one reason or another we have lit the fire which has been burning for some time. What we have been fighting for 33 consecutive days is to keep the protest entirely civic. Like everywhere else, there is a plethora of interests involved in the protest. There are party interests, business interests. All kinds of interests you can imagine. Keeping the protest civic is our humble victory and I am exceptionally happy for that because this is one more thing which has never happened here before.
Yes, we invited all parties. All the political spectrum is represented, everybody is here. Nobody intrudes, nobody takes the mic, but everybody is here, all together, which is a brilliant example of unification. Someday, I don’t know whether we’ll be still alive by then, there will be United Europe, European citizens, American citizens…and someday there will be just Earth citizens. But this is too far off.
AB: Yes, this is the great success of this protest. We happened to be a trio providing exceptional discomfort to power. If we were representatives of a party, regardless of its position in the political spectrum, we would be rather quickly “wrapped up” in defending left, right, green, centrist, or any other ideas. We’ve shown to be an exceptionally uncomfortable proposition to power because we were unsuitable for “wrapping up”. Of course, as in every dictatorship, a defamation campaign was launched against us. We expected it. We are moderately intelligent. But what was hard for them to recover from is precisely the fact that all Bulgarians are on the streets independently of their beliefs. The last time this happened was during the World Cup in the United States in 1994.
The President has met with the protesters a few times. How do you interpret his call “Mutri out!”? Who are these “mutri” (mafia)?
Image 4: The President of Bulgaria meets protesters in front of the Presidency building, Nezavisimost square, Sofia
NH: This is a purely emotional appeal, which is not entirely untrue. It is corresponding to the current situation because the actions of the Attorney General are precisely “mutra”-like. Essentially outright banditry.
This explains the reaction of the President calling “Mutri out!”. It was an extreme reaction to an extreme action. A forceful and extremely illegal action which even the President understood, because our President is more like the German President – he does not confront anyone. His call brought some type of specific charge to the protest initially, since there is no Bulgarian that has not suffered from the “mutri” in power over the last decade. So this phrase was totally understood by the people.
AB: This is how the mafia is popularly called among the Bulgarians. “Mutri” were those who stole people’s cars in the beginning of the transition period that started about 30 years ago. They were impersonating insurers, gluing stickers and collecting money from everybody. That was something like the old bashi-bazouk tax during the Ottoman Empire, but in present times it has turned into a racket: ordinary racketeering. Now these people have become wiser, got rich enough and bought the country. We now vote in a country that was bought a long time ago and its Prime Minister is a high-ranking representative of such an association of “mutri”.
Hence, everybody understands what and whom this is about. The denotation is simple and the addressee precise. The Prime Minister behaves exactly in this way. If you go out to a protest, he would take hostages on the other side and release them only if you gave up demanding power from him. You will see that today or tomorrow at the very latest, he will get in touch with – or negotiate — with crime syndicates distributing drugs, who will probably occupy junctions throughout the city and demand the resignation of the President. They may demand that the President resigns as a precondition to clearing the junctions. Or ask for an exchange – a resignation for a resignation. In other words, the mockery with democracy will go on and on until this person (Borisov) is in power.
Parliamentary opposition, including other parties and movements, called on their members and supporters to join the protests. After participating in an evening talk show, however, the leader of the parliamentary opposition was whistled at by protesters. What does this signify to you?
NH: This is — in fact — a splendid sign because our country only has parliamentary opposition on paper. And that was the reason Kornelia Ninova, the leader of BSP [the Bulgarian Socialist Party], was whistled at. Because throughout all the years of ruling together with Borisov, they reached political deals, known from his previous mandate as “historical compromises” that represent an historical defecation on the people, their political rights, the law, etc. And people don’t buy this.
In fact, three of us asked political parties and syndicates, who are the “third leg” of every government in our country, to call their supporters to join the protest. This didn’t work out. As expected, those who responded were the leaders of a civic movement, a former politician from the left of the political spectrum, and a very small, extra-parliamentary party, with one of its co-leaders half-heartedly calling their supporters to join the protest. It’s good that they are both here. But they are not part of the parliamentary opposition in any way. The opposition came out of the Parliament and said “yes, we are going out on the streets to join the protesters”, and 30 MPs arrived.
AB: To a larger extent this is a protest of citizens. A protest of the unorganised but worthy citizens who value their personal and civil rights. That is why the majority of people at the protests are citizens, and not organised groups of people. The strength of the protest is in the personal realisation of each Bulgarian that a state is needed that serves them, not a state that terrorises them, impoverishes them, robs them and turns them into vassals.
How would you interpret the calling “Everybody out!”?
NH: “Mutri out!” has escalated to “Everybody out!” because people realised that all politicians who are in Parliament are there in order to pursue their own agendas rather than serve their voters. They are not there for the people. At one point the protest evolved from “Mutri out!” to “Everybody out!”. This will most likely be the next move but we need to take over the “mutri” first, anyway.
AB: We are aware that there are honourable politicians as well. But the call “Everybody out!” is more about changing the system, a call for its replacement with genuine democracy, real justice, rule of law and fairness that function naturally in the framework of the social contract. Right now, there’s nothing like that here. Therefore, “Everybody out!” is not a call designating specific people, because corruption has corroded not only those in power.
Corruption has riddled the whole system regardless of whether you are in power or in opposition (or whatever one should call it). Corruption has no colour, it is exceptionally flexible. It is soft like butter. It uses all niches in order to pass through the social tissue. In this sense “Everybody out!” is more like a call to remove a system rather than a specific person.
How do you anticipate the actions of those in power, and the government, since the beginning of the protest (e.g. the change of ministers, emergency subsidisation of pensions) together with the fact that the Parliament went on summer holiday while so many people are on the streets in Bulgaria and abroad?
Image 5: Bulgarian seasonal workers taking part in the protests
NH: The “mutri” here and the mafia in general are attempting to work in the only way they know – through corruption. They try to buy us, to buy the opposition, and in general to buy everything and everybody. It didn’t work, it won’t work. The banner that appeared the day after Borisov promised 50 lv (approx. 25 Euro) to each Bulgarian pensioner is symptomatic. A distinguished gentleman appeared carrying a huge banner on which it was written: “Borisov, you can shove my 25 Euro up your @ss!”. The poster brilliantly shows the attitude of the people. And this is what even the Bulgarian pensioners — who have been bought so primitively for generations — have understood.
Meanwhile, we opened a donation account last week, and every evening since then there are 3 to 4 pensioners attempting to offer us their 25 Euro. And because we don’t get cash, we are being forced to ask them to make a bank transfer. But this is an additional example of extremes. You can see the change of attitude now. These are not just frustrated citizens, offering us their 25 Euro. This is a trend. The people finally understood that they shouldn’t be bought despite being offered 25, 50 or 100 Euro.
AB: We are again speaking about actions of mafiosi. They are trying to redeem themselves with our money. This is the way they act during elections. They bribe voters with 25 Euro, 10 Euro or 50 Euro and expect a vote. This one-time “investment” through bribery achieves a 10- or 20-fold return from each taxpayer. And now they are attempting the same trickery because of the protests.
How do you perceive the declaration of full support and confidence of the European People’s Party (EPP) in Borisov’s government on the one hand, and the Bulgarian President’s appeal that the EU should not turn a blind eye to what is happening in the country?
Image 6: Manfred Weber (EPP) and Boyko Borisov, the leader of the ruling party (GERB/EPP) and PM of Bulgaria
NH: The EPP included nothing in their statement other than a call to support their own. We keep an eye on the German media who are on the streets here since day 3. All large German media are here, and they direct horrifying criticisms not only to Boyko Borisov but straight to Merkel. Because, in essence, the corrupted governance of Borisov, albeit “soft” – and that is the reason he is not disturbing Europe – manifests a huge defect in the Union. This is an issue of Europe! First, European taxpayers’ money gets stolen. Second, this behaviour makes us look more like Erdogan’s Turkey or Putin’s Russia. Or in other words — and let me put it softly — it makes us look like non-democratic states, rather than a EU member-state. I mean, this is absurd! Is it possible for an EU member-state to be pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, or generally pro-the-other-shore? There is nothing in common with democracy.
And now this is a problem for the EU. Such criticisms being directed by large French and other European media to their authorities are not in vain. Speaking to some of the large European media, I was calling for our funding to be stopped and sanctions to be imposed on Bulgaria. Because the EU funds that are absorbed here are just a few billion euros per year. Compared to the GDP of the country such an amount is negligible. But the budget that gets stolen here, the Bulgarian budget, is 10 times that. There is an issue here that concerns the whole Union, and maybe for the first time European politicians realised that this is not an issue internal-only to Bulgaria. Yes, we are a sovereign country and yes, this is an internal problem. But this wound is sticking out of the EU’s back. It needs to be removed otherwise it will turn into a tumour which will practically corrode the whole union.
AB: When GERB joined the EPP, they were an unknown heap of people that promised to the leaders of EPP that they would provide them with 5-6 seats from Bulgaria for their parliamentary group in Brussels. That worked for the EPP. They quickly agreed. But this shows a huge issue also of European political families. The same applies to PES by the way. These people were confident they could dictate Borisov’s moves regardless of the warnings that this person has no established European values. They quickly shut their eyes and swallowed this for more than 11 years. And as it appears, they swallowed it willingly. They got what they needed. Namely, the votes for their European family in the Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. They couldn’t care less about European values.
The battle between Germany and France for the leadership of Europe shows that we have no Brussels. Instead, we have something else. During the protests in Bulgaria the first that reacted were the USA, not the EU. So far we have a single statement by the European Commission spokesperson that — in diplomatic fashion — said that the protests are legitimate and to please preserve tolerance because there is a budget to be allocated in the autumn. In other words, this is a hint that Bulgaria might be sanctioned if power acts harshly towards the protesters.
And this is one more example where the EU shows that the non-existence of a European government, but just a common Minister of Foreign Affairs who reacts slowly — regardless whether it is about the war in Syria or the protests in Bulgaria — is a model that doesn’t work well. Federal Europe is the answer to what the USA usually asks – “excuse me, whom should I actually call in the EU?” And they don’t know the phone number. We in Bulgaria don’t know it either. Even if we know remarkably well the role Konrad Adenauer and Hanns Seidel foundations play in terms of the existence of GERB on the European political scene, we also know which officers of BND and the other German services operate under the cover of these otherwise respected foundations, which by the way are funded by the German state and not by private donors.
So, we are not just some well rebelled protesting citizens on the streets of Sofia. We are well-informed, and if this behaviour of Berlin and the other passive European capitals continues, we can tell even more stories which I suspect won’t be quite pleasant to hear.
You call for radicalisation of the protest. What do you mean? How would you respond to the accusations of people in power that you are pushing for violence and terrorism?
Image 7: The Orlov Most square in Sofia being occupied by protesters
NH: Well, this is complete nonsense. Similar protests haven’t been seen here, nor elsewhere in Europe. These are the most peaceful protests in Bulgaria over the last 30 years or more. Europe has never seen such peaceful protests. Our protest would compare to something like a protest of three-year-old kids in the streets of Berlin. What we are doing is creating a civil society here. We woke them up, we lit the fire, we are winding it up, we are explaining and teaching the people not only how, but what it means to be citizens. And we escalate for these same reasons. We started with whistles and vuvuzelas. Then continued with throwing small tomatoes. Next we escalated to throwing quail eggs, now we throw chicken eggs. We are literally creating a civil society here.
We guide it hand in hand, step by step, in order to match other countries in Europe. Because the protests in Europe now are extremely peaceful. However, for Europe to have reached such peaceful protests, it had to come a long way. It burns every time, and has burned throughout the ages.
For example, while I was in Rome recently, there was some misunderstanding between the students and the government. Within two hours the students dug the paving stones out of the central square of Rome, burned out cars, turned everything, broke shop windows and the issue got solved that same evening. The next day the paving stones were set back in order, the trash was taken out and they all moved on. Such situations we have seen on TV and read in books only. We are now teaching the people that this is the way things should happen. The Magna Carta was written about 800 years ago. And Europe has come a long way since then. We, on the other hand, have somehow missed this path. We do this and that, and you could look at it like schooling. We are going forward. This is what we do.
The accusations of terrorism are entertaining. Our governors are idiots not only in their legal competence, but in general. It is widely known, everywhere in the world for centuries already, what terrorism is. Apparently, we don’t fall in any of the categories and accusations of terrorism. Such accusations are typical of totalitarian countries – North Korea, China, Erdogan’s Turkey is an example closer to Europe, and Putin’s Russia. So, are we terrorists? No, right? Propaganda!
AB: Terror is a special kind of action and presently it is the state which terrorises its citizens. The answer they usually provide is that they have come to power through lawful elections. Well, Hitler came to power through lawful elections as well. But that doesn’t make the crimes against the Jewish, the syndicates, the trade unions and ultimately all German citizens less terroristic on behalf of the lawfully elected German power. The fact that someone has been legally elected, even through vote buying while Europe is keeping its eyes shut, doesn’t make the behaviour of their government any different.
Look, one of the most-beautiful things that has happened to us is our entry into the EU. We have no illusions about this. But for us, the EU is not just excursions and guest work. The EU is the place where we share common visions of development, of our development together. We were accepted on the one hand due to our willingness to join the EU somewhere back in 2007, and this will is definite until today. And on the other hand because of the fact that after the war in the former Yugoslavia and the conflict in Kosovo, the EU urgently needed to fortify the southeastern flank of NATO.
Thankfully, these two tendencies coincided and we became a EU member-state. But the civic growth which Nikolay talked about didn’t happen. And this is what is happening now. If the country became a EU member-state back then, the citizens are becoming Europeans today.
On a few occasions people wearing face masks conducted actions that could be qualified as provocations and violence towards protesters and journalists. How would you explain that?
Image 8: Journalist from the Bulgarian section of RFE/RL (left) attacked by by a person wearing a face mask at a conference organised by GERB/EPP, which is the current ruling party of Bulgaria
NH: Totalitarian trickery. There is one and only explanation. We have totalitarianism here, even if it is qualified as “soft”. However, everyone who has personally experienced it with the lower part of his back can tell you how soft it is. Erdogan started in the same way, softly, with accusations of terrorism first. Then he started to beat them, asserting that the law would be upheld, and then he began using the law as a stick. Erdogan has been learning from Putin for many years already. This is what is happening here as well.
A week ago, at the conference of GERB, where everybody swore allegiance to the tribal chief, journalists got purposefully beaten. That hasn’t happened here so far. Ever. Journalists got beaten, their cameras and smartphones were taken away, and people that protested got beaten as well. That’s it.
The time has come for Europe to understand that the mafia has a government in Bulgaria. And this is not just some empty talk. This is the sad truth. The Mafia doesn’t get bothered by the cameras. Hell, the first ones that suffered were the journalists from the Bulgarian section of RFE/RL! This is not some regional newspaper from the countryside. These are the three RFE/RL journalists in Bulgaria that are well-known for many years. That was a well-planned action. And the first message that appeared in the media was that it had nothing to do with GERB. Like, we have paid these people to go to the conference of GERB, to brand themselves with the symbols of the party and to beat journalists.
Welcome to Russia or the Soviet Union, as you wish, the choice is yours.
AB: Power is in a difficult situation. They have already lost more than 30% of their own supporters. Berlin is falling, if we need a comparison. Right at this moment they are gathering the last remains of the 16-year-olds of Hitlerjugend in order to defend the capital. Something similar is happening to GERB. Many people who support this leader and this party are turning their heads away with discomfort, and leave. That can be observed even by the naked eye. All allies of Borisov are retreating diplomatically and looking the other way. The same people from Berlin that insist on building Nord Stream keep silent when he builds South Stream, in order for more Russian influence to enter the EU.
The psalms that we are people who want to stop the pro-European development of Bulgaria, and that’s what we also heard, is complete rubbish. On the contrary, the person that conducts Putin’s interests is precisely Prime Minister Borisov. The person that returned to Erdogan’s regime illegally persecuted Gulenists was Boiko Borisov. And Brussels kept silent.
NH: And they got kidnapped. Note that they have been subject to kidnapping off the streets of Sofia. Kidnapped without due process, without court order, contrary to Bulgarian and European law. They were kidnapped by uniformed militiamen of ours and handed over at the border. These guys disappeared. We don’t know whether they are alive. Probably not anymore. This has to be kept in mind every time Borisov says he shares European values. He doesn’t.
How do you assess the actions of the police on protecting the protesters and ensuring internal order?
Image 9: Protester being dragged by police forces towards the columns of the Council of Ministers building, Sofia
NH: The police are not protecting protesters and the public order. Since day 1 we have established a means to prevent provocations, to keep us away from the police and protect the people, however inefficient this mechanism could have been in the beginning. What the police did during the night of day 3 was that they cut into the crowd of peacefully protesting people, literally snatched whomever they could and dragged them behind the columns of the Council of Ministers building and beat them, etc. This is an old technique used against protesters by any government here.
Fortunately, this case was recorded by security cameras, and for the first time in more than 10 years while I have been working pro-bono on police violence cases, we have some evidence. I officially asked for the recordings made by the cameras of the National Security Service regarding the case, and my request was officially rejected. Fortunately, nobody died, people were sent to the hospital, they told their story. What has happened can be also seen on the smartphone recordings even at lower quality. So here are the provocations and violence.
From that moment onwards, we haven’t had any issue. Our protest is peaceful, and as much as I would want it, if we were like Greece, Italy, Spain or any other European country, everything would end on the second day. Unfortunately, as I said in the beginning, we are creating citizens right now. We teach them how and why. Obviously, we are not ready yet.
AB: Please note, two-day protests of a few thousand Lebanese people, but not tens of thousands like in Sofia, caused the resignation of the government of Beirut. The resignation will be submitted tonight, while 3 or 4 ministers already submitted their resignations independently, without asking the padishah. Looks like there are more Europeans in Lebanon than in Sofia.
And finally, what would you say as a conclusion?
NH: Well, in order to be a dignified member-state of the EU and not only a member on paper, as well as to be true Europeans, it’s about time for us to build democracy of citizens which are not only free, but also enjoy the rule of law. We need to win on corruption as much as possible and throw the mafia out. This is it, there’s nothing else.
AB: The generation that comes to Bulgaria, the generation that enters maturity, does not want to live this way, in a country governed in such a twisted way. These are tens of thousands of people graduated by respected universities in Western Europe and the United States, and they know remarkably well what democracy looks like. And it doesn’t look like the way their parents experience it in Bulgaria. We are fighting this battle also for our children. Looks like we have left something unfinished in our lives so far, and it is imperative to bring it to an end. We are still alive, healthy and standing, and will go forward.
Nikolay Hadjigenov is a lawyer and public figure, and a graduate of New Bulgarian University. Arman Babikyan is a journalist and public figure, and a graduate of Sofia University.
DiEM25’s Coordinating Collective is up for renewal – it’s your time to vote!
Make your voice heard!
Last month we kicked off our Coordinating Collective’s (CC) renewal process. Candidates from across the EU — and beyond! — have posted their personal statements and videos here.
These candidates are all committed DiEMers ready to step up and get hands on so our movement can move forward, expand and accomplish its goals.
And now it’s your turn to participate in this very important democratic process for DiEM25: vote the CC candidates you feel will best guide us over the coming months.
You can cast your vote from now until August 28 at 23:59 CEST here.
The European gas conflict is heating up a New Cold War between US and Russia
How Europe became a battleground in the New Cold War, and DiEM25’s proposal to avoid it.
Late last month, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that exemptions from financial sanctions would end for European companies constructing Nord Stream II, a Russian gas pipeline.
While the news made little impact in the United States, the announcement exposed the brewing tensions between the Trump administration and Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin over Europe’s gas market.
Nord Stream: “Putin’s pipeline”.
The Nord Stream gas pipeline serves as Russia’s connection, literally, to Europe.
Nord Stream transports gas underwater (through the Nord stream) from Vyborg in Russia to Griesfwald, Germany. Nord Stream II, when complete, will bring additional energy from the Russian city Ust-Luga to Grieswald.
Nord Stream I currently provides 39% of gas usage in the EU. The Nord Stream II pipeline is projected to “double” this capacity.
Leading the construction of the pipeline is Gazprom, an energy company owned by the Russian state. Alignment between Gazprom and the government is publicly discussed — Nord Stream II has even earned the nickname “Putin’s Pipeline”.
Gazprom is the largest energy company in the world — and serves as the “lynchpin” of the Russian economy.
Nord Stream II and Europe.
Russia is not the only country that benefits from Nord Stream. Building contracts for Nord Stream I were shared between European partners France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany. United Kingdom companies also contributed to the Russian pipeline: Rolls Royce, for example, supplied turbines.
Germany, providing the end terminal for gas from Russia, acted as the largest European partner in the Nord Stream project. So much so that German energy firms BASF and E.on split ownership of the pipeline with Gazprom.
Nord Stream II ownership includes these partners, as well as Netherland’s Royal Dutch Shell and French energy company Engie.
Eastern Europe has a different view of Nord Stream — specifically the idea of being dependent on Russia for their energy.
Poland and Ukraine have come out as the strongest opponents of the pipeline, while neighbors Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania, and Lithuania have signed a joint letter objecting to further Nord Stream II construction.
There are suspicions among these countries that any disagreement with Russia could lead to preferential treatment when it comes to sharing energy from Nord Stream II. Many cite the 2006 payment disputes that led to Russia “turning off” Ukrainian gas.
US “Freedom Gas”.
The US has sought to encourage European concerns over Nord Stream II.
Publicly, Trump has framed Nord Stream II as “very bad for NATO” because it makes Europe — specifically Germany — “hostage” to Russian energy. Trump even called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “captive” to Russia in 2018.
Simultaneously, the Trump administration has highlighted the availability of liquefied natural gas(LNG) from the United States as an “alternative” to Russian energy.
Then-Secretary of State Rick Perry, in Brussels announcing the 2018 LNG deal with Poland, portrayed United States LNG as “freedom gas” liberating Europe.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has threatened sanctions as ”punishment” against European companies building Nord Stream II. However these companies were given an exemption when the sanctions were used as a “bargaining chip” during 2017 US-EU trade deal negotiations.
As mentioned, Pompeo announced on July 15th that exemptions are over and that companies should “get out now” or face sanctions.
Gas is heating up a new Cold War.
The actions of the Trump administration toward Russia go beyond words — and Nord Stream II.
Militarily, the Trump administration has been supplying US troops to Poland as a way to “bolster” NATO’s Eastern flank against Russia. This coincides with the lapsing of Cold War treaties limiting weapons arsenals between the two countries.
Cyberattacks, often seen as the 21st-century battleground between nations, have escalated against Russia since Trump came into office; including against the Russian power grid.
These moves, along with the Trump administration enacting 52 sanctions against Russia since inauguration in early 2017, raises the question: is this a new Cold War?
Time for a Green New Deal.
To prevent Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin from bringing the world to the brink of another Cold War nuclear standoff, DiEM25 is committed to a Green New Deal for Europe.
A Green New Deal would not only bear employment from investment in climate-conscious industry. It would also, if not primarily, mean a democratic approach to sharing European energy, and not having to choose between the Russian state nor US private corporations.
Indeed, tensions have been rising over the search for energy resources, such as between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean Sea.
The time is now for a Green New Deal for Europe.
Last Month in DiEM25: July 2020
External Actions
This month:
Several DiEM25 National Collectives, including in France, Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg, have worked towards a European Rent Action, preparing a set of EU-wide demands ‘Free low-income Europeans from rent burden’ during COVID-19. The EU campaign includes a letter to the EU Parliament as well as national actions and demands. Coordinated demonstrations on the rent issue and its relevance during the COVID-19 crisis are expected to take place in September. Join the first wave of demonstrations!
Happening:
We celebrated the election of Možemo to the Croatian Parliament, the Left party that DiEM25 supported in the elections. They are committed to radical change in the political and economic system!
DiEM25 NC Greece, DiEM25 PNC Turkey and DiEM25 NC Germany released a joint statement on the Greek-Turkey tensions in the Aegean Sea.
DiEM25 condemned Aleksandar Vučić’s violent takedown of Serbian protesters.
Celebrated Julian Assange’s birthday, and held the opening of the “We Are Millions” exhibition in Leipzig, which sheds light on the Julian Assange Case.
Highlighted the #GreekFiles that expose the weaponisation of the ECB against European democracy.
DiEM25’s newly formed Turkish PNC launched the first issue of their monthly review on Turkey’s social, economic, and cultural state of affairs.
The Progressive International (PI) emitted an urgent call to respond to the “escalating assault on the democratic institutions of Ecuador.” Read more about the unfolding situation in their statement.
Internal Actions
This month we:
Received applications for the Coordinating Collective of DiEM25! We will be conducting interviews of candidates this month. If you would like to endorse candidates that you know and appreciate, you can do so in our members’ area!
Launched our citizen engagement campaign that sets out to build national programmes in collaboration with Europeans for DiEM25! Throughout July and August, DiEMers are asked to submit the questions they believe anyone should be able to answer in order to be politically relevant in their city, region and country. They will be the foundation for the questionnaire we will use to go out as of September and inspire citizens to engage with our project.
MeRA25’s new statutes (which will act as the blueprint for all EW statutes) were voted through by DiEM25 members. The party is now taking the first steps to establish the governance structure outlined in the new statutes, starting with the creation of its first Central Committee!
Continued to hold transparent live-recorded CC meetings open to the public on YouTube.
Next Month in DiEM25: August!
Our movement will engage in the implementation of the results of the Prague Assembly (member proposals for actions and campaign, and the CC vision) based on the results of AMVs.
We will continue developing our citizen engagement campaign in line with our working plan. Get involved by submitting a response to this questionnaire!
Our National Collectives continue to work on a Rent Action campaign! If you wish to get involved, you can reach out to our volunteer coordinator [email protected].
If you wish to send a point to be included in the next newsletter, or want to help to draft it, please contact us at [email protected].