Trash trade
We need to talk about trash, specifically your trash problem. Your problem is our problem and our problem is your problem. No country is an island when it comes to plastic pollution and trash, even if it’s an island country.
On May 29, 2019, Malaysia announced it will send back unrecyclable trash to rich countries. The second Southeast Asian country to do so after the Philippines.
For the past 3 decades, China has imported half of the world’s traded plastic waste. That changed in 2018. A plastic ban was imposed and China stopped importing plastic waste. China imported between 7 and 9 million tonnes of plastic waste annually over the period from 2010 to 2016. In 2017 it was 1.2 million tonnes. It was further reduced to 30,000 tonnes per month in 2018. All the trash China did not want, found its way to Southeast Asian countries. It came to Vietnam, Thailand and most of all, Malaysia.
Malaysia’s plastic imports spiked to almost a million tonnes. A threefold increase compared to 2015. Too much for a small country! Malaysia is an ideal place for Chinese recyclers because the two countries already trade a lot and there’s a large Mandarin-speaking local community. It was easy for them to set up shop in a burgeoning plastic recycling industry. The trash imports were smuggled or shipping manifest deliberately mislabelled. Most of the plastic waste was household waste, which is dirty and difficult to sort. Illegal recyclers burnt to get rid of unrecyclable plastics.
A small town in Malaysia has 17 million kg of plastic waste. Illegal plastic recycling sites were sprouting up around the town. The water and air are polluted. It’s so polluted, that residents are getting rashes, asthma and coughing blood out.
The plastic waste found all over Malaysia came from developed countries. Based on a Greenpeace report it came from: the US, the UK, Japan, Spain, Germany, Canada, Australia etc. It is a colonial attitude for rich countries to export trash to poor countries. Do we, people of the Global South, not have the right to clean air, clean water and a clean environment? You would think your trash is going to be recycled. Europe has a recycling rate of 40% and even lower elsewhere. The trash that isn’t recycled is dumped in landfills or incinerated. The Chinese ban exacerbated the trash problem. Developed countries have no idea to deal with the China ban, that the trash has to be exported to poor countries like mine.
Dr Seuss’ the Lorax tells us of the dangers of short-termism, corporate greed and capitalism causing environmental catastrophes. We have not heeded his warnings. I implore you please do what you can to reduce single-plastic use. We need to declare war on want and mass consumerism.
Jacob Lim, Member of thematic DSC Peace and International Policy
They shall not pass
In late April, the Saudi freighter Bahri Yanbu set sail from the US carrying a lethal cargo of arms. It was heading to Europe to load more weapons before returning to Jeddah. In early May it docked in Antwerp, Belgium, where several containers with ammunition were loaded.
Its next port of call was Le Havre, France. Here, however, dockworker trade unions and activists from human rights organisations ACAT and ASER prevented it from docking to load a weapons cargo including 8 Caesar self-propelled cannons. This was despite the Paris Administrative Tribunal’s rejection of a suit filed by ACAT/ASER that says the shipment violates the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The ATT forbids a country from authorising the transfer of weapons to another if it has knowledge that these weapons may be used to commit war crimes. Leaked military intelligence published by Disclose had shown that French weapons were being used for waging Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen. Unfortunately this weapons cargo was later transported by train to the Italian military arsenal at La Spezia, where the ship picked it up.
On 13th May the Bahri Yanbu was in Santander harbour, Spain, where more weapons were loaded despite protests. On May 20 its docking in Genoa, Italy, led dockworkers to go on strike, blockading the port and refusing to load arms and related equipment – an action locally hailed as a historic act of solidarity and working-class internationalism. As part of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), they released this statement:
We believe this resistance is our small contribution to resolve a big problem for a population that is killed daily in wars…we will not become accomplices in this arms trade. We expect the government and institutions to respect international agreements. We continue to think that Italian ports must be open for people and closed to weapons.
Another Saudi freighter, the Bahri Tabuk, docked in Marseille on May 28. Based on the Disclose revelations, local dockworkers and trade union CGT had already refused to load any weapons. Whilst allegedly only civilian supplies were loaded, local activists pointed out that the ship was already carrying Canadian armoured vehicles. Its docking was thus in violation of the ATT, which extends beyond the provision of weapons to include their transit.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest arms importer. After the US, the UK is its second largest supplier (€5.5 billion worth since the Yemen war erupted four years ago), France third largest (€3 billion worth between 2015 and 2017), Spain not far behind (€1.2 billion between 2015 and 2017), and tiny Belgium its sixth largest supplier. In October 2018, Germany temporarily suspended weapons’ sales to SA in protest against the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. And yet, the Saudi-led war in Yemen – which has taken over 70,000 lives, left 22 million in destitution, and brought Yemen to the brink of famine – does not constitute sufficient grounds for a ban on weapons sales by these countries?
Whilst politicians and masters of war (Black Sabbath’s war pigs) massacre thousands overseas to protect commercial interests, our “well-educated” elite could not be bothered. But workers have shown true internationalist spirit and awareness by transcending local and national politics to defend lives in distant lands. The 1974 Scottish workers’ strikes boycotting the Pinochet regime set an inspiring precedent, Nae Pasaran! However, recent protests remain unreported by mainstream media, and journalists who exposed French involvement in the Yemen conflict now face potential incarceration.
At DiEM25 we salute the courage, vision and solidarity of the dockworkers of Genoa, Le Havre and Marseille, and all others refusing complicity in this murder industry. We appeal to our DSCs throughout Europe, especially near major ports, to contact each other and local trade unions towards enabling concerted Europe-wide civil disobedience. We cannot allow these sinister vessels of death to dock in our ports.
Sona Prakash is a member of the DiEM25 thematic DSC Peace and International Policy
DSC Belgrade 1: We strongly protest the unlawful and inhumane incarceration of Julian Assange
We strongly protest the unlawful and inhumane incarceration of Julian Assange (founder of Wikileaks, journalist, and member of DiEM25 Advisory Panel), by British authorities, as well as his intended extradition to the US.
We are certain that Assange will have an unfair trial in the USA. It is shameful to charge with espionage the journalist who uncovered war atrocities committed by the US Army and their allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, shed light on machinations and misdemeanors of great corporations, and shared these facts for free with the entire world. The same forces of empire exposed by this journalist are now putting him on trial. The injustice is already evident.
Assange has spent seven years in the embassy of the Republic of Ecuador in London. He spent the last two years in one room, under constant surveillance, without heating, cut off from any connection to the outside world. On April 11th Assange was denied political asylum by the puppet regime of the Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno. The whole world has seen the disturbing images of Assange being brutally dragged from the embassy.
By arresting and extraditing Assange, Great Britain betrays the democratic and humanist traditions it claims to upuhold. The USA, by insisting on the extradition of Assange, is breaching the first Amendment of the US Constitution according to which “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.
Assange’s arrest and extradition to the USA would be a serious precedent that would make it possible for every independent journalist to end up in court and tried as a spy. Every crime, theft or treachery can be labeled as espionage, leading to life sentences or worse.
Assange’s persecution is therefore not his alone. It is all of ours. We call upon all the free-thinking people who believe in solidarity, truth, justice and the free flow of information to raise their voice for the only possible righteous verdict: Freedom for Assange! Free him now!
Defend Assange – defend freedom of speech!
In Serbia, we are very familiar with the persecution that journalists face if they expose the wrongdoings of the powerful: misuse of public goods, corruption, criminal privatizations, and war crimes.
But this attack stretches well beyond the Balkans. Julian Assange, one of the founders and a member of DiEM25 Advisory Panel, has become a symbol of the free flow of information, as well as of systematic persecution of those who fight for it.
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has warned that the “collective persecution” of Julian Assange must end. Assange exposed war crimes, and for that he faces a hearing on June 14 about his extradition to the US, where he might face up to 175 years in prison! If we allow the extradition of Julian Assange, we will extradite our own freedom of speech with him.
So join us on Wednesday, June 12 at 6PM on Đlato Đoke Vještice to fight for free speech. Unfreedom of one of us is unfreedom of all!
Germany is about to invest millions of euros to support fracking and the destruction of the planet
This Friday, June 7, the German Bundesrat will vote to allow American fracking gas to be imported into Germany by investing 130 million euros to build 3 LNG terminals to process it, an extremely dangerous infrastructure to be built in densely populated areas.
Germany has been under intense pressure from Trump to start buying the US fracking gas, turning all German gas consumers into unknowing supporters of one the world’s most contaminating industries and leading contributors to global warming.
At a time when we should be divesting from fossil fuels and moving toward renewable energies, it is absolutely unacceptable for the German government to do the exact opposite, and use taxpayers’ money to finance infrastructure for the consumption of a product that will support and expand fracking operations around the globe.
Students from Fridays for Future have launched a campaign to stop this suicidal decision, and we must all support them!
Please sign the petition and join us on Friday, June 7, outside of the Bundesrat to protest this move.
Green New Deal gathers more than 1.4 million votes across Europe!
More than 1.4 million citizens backed our Green New Deal with their votes in the European Parliament elections.
While this wasn’t enough to elect candidates in the countries where we were contesting elections, it has set a historic precedent for a new, transformative way of doing politics!
This was achieved without the machinery that the establishment forces boast, powered by volunteers, and funded only with small donations.
We showed Europeans how a common agenda can be put together collaboratively by many political actors from all over Europe. How a common list of candidates, supporting this agenda, can emerge and how we can campaign across Europe, together, under the banner of this agenda.
In Greece, we brought hope back to a country left despondent by the Syriza government after their U-turn following the referendum result in 2015. Our party in Greece, MeRA25 — a political startup — is now firmly established as a force in Greek politics. Even if it missed the threshold to enter the European Parliament by just 0.01% of the vote (!).
And now with the Greek national election coming up on July 7, our activists will be back on the streets campaigning to bring our message of a progressive alternative to the failed policies of the establishment and those of the racist far-right. Stay tuned!
Join us!
Today, DiEM25 has every reason to celebrate. Tomorrow we get down to work, again – message to our magnificent activists
Dear DiEM25 members, dear European Spring activists, dear fellow progressive Europeanists,
Today is a day to celebrate, while taking stock of our remarkable achievement.
Today is also a day to lament Europe’s downward spiral, while planning the next phase of our paneuropean effort to bring hope back to the hundreds of millions who have lost it.
When in late 2017 we decided to take our Green New Deal for Europe to a ballot box across Europe, friends feared for us and cynics laughed at us. What neither our worried friends nor the cynics understood was the nature of our collective endeavour.
Our task was not to maximise our seats in this European election. Our task was not to demonstrate that another Europe is possible. No, our task was to show that another Europe is already here – inside a single paneuropean movement dedicated to a single progressive policy agenda for all Europeans.
DiEM25 was born of a radical idea: We are not simply Greeks or Germans or Italians or whatever nationality, ethnicity we carry with us. We are all that but we are also Europeans determined to oppose the internationalism of the bankers and its mirror image: the internationalism of the racists. And to do so with a single, internationalist, European agenda that is realistic, immediately implementable and radical.
We worked long and hard to put together that progressive agenda. We are proud of our Green New Deal for Europe that is the only antidote to the logic that, in this EU, there is no alternative to socialism for the bankers, austerity for the many and catastrophe for the environment. Our Green New Deal for Europe can uniquely bind together Europe’s progressives, as a counterpoint of the nasty xenophobia that binds together the nationalists.
From the outset, we had a choice: We could form coalitions of convenience. For instance, we could have easily gained many seats in these European elections provided we were prepared to run together with existing political actors who were committed to not having an agenda for Europe or who disagreed with our radical Europeanism. Or we could stick to our principles, to our fascinating Green New Deal for Europe, and run on our own – with no funding or institutional backing. We chose the second option not simply because it was hard but because it was the only way we could continue our struggle happily, in good conscience, true to our principles and goals.
Our strategy and our tactic coincided: Stand behind DiEM25’s agenda, nurture our political ethos, do justice to it — and never betray the future generations whose future depends on the implementation of our Green New Deal across Europe, indeed even beyond Europe.
This decision came with a cost — but not an unpredictable one. We always knew that our road would be long and stony. But we also knew that this European Parliament election was about so much more than seats won and lost. It was about putting forward a new vision for Europe, about demanding a Green New Deal, about inspiring people across the continent to think beyond the narrow confines of their nation. It was about demonstrating in practice what another Europe would look like.
And on this, my friends, we have won: We showed Europeans how a common agenda can be put together collaboratively by many political actors coalescing from all over Europe. How a common list of candidates, in support of this common agenda, can emerge. How we can campaign across Europe, together, under the banner of this agenda.
In the months and weeks leading to 26th May, I have had the distinct privilege of campaigning with all of you in Paris, in Brussels, across Italy and the UK, in Denmark, in Portugal and, of course, in Greece and in Germany. In every one of these places I saw the way in which you brought the best out of each other and out of your communities. You led with brilliant ideas, you demonstrated what principled, transnational, humanist politics looks like. You worked tirelessly without optimism but with bundles of hope. You were a joy to behold and to treasure. Your dedication, sense of fun, friendship, wisdom and kindness made everyone around you feel hopeful again about our Europe, its politics, its civilisation.
In the end, the quantity of votes we received fell short of our expectations – even though about 1 million Europeans honoured us at the ballot box and in Greece, the Ground Zero of Europe’s economic and democratic crisis, MeRA25 rose from zero into parliamentary contention – a result that augurs well for the soon-to-come national elections.
Comrades, friends, DiEMers,
We have planted a beautiful, radical idea in the minds of Europeans. Our task is now to help this seed of hope grow. Feel proud for what you have achieved. Rest for a day or two. After that, we shall all get back to work, planning for the next steps that must surely include a paneuropean DiEM25 get-together where we shall spend days and nights mapping out the road ahead.
Carpe DiEM25!
Yanis Varoufakis
Who to trust more – Greens or DiEM25? – on climate?
In late April, DiEM25 founder Yanis Varoufakis participated in a debate with Sven Giegold, lead candidate of the German Greens. After two very close first rounds, Giegold used the third to attempt to nail his opponent on our Green New Deal. But Varoufakis had all the answers. Watch here or read a summary below.
The main difference between the Green Party’s proposal and DiEM25’s Green New Deal is the amount of the money involved and where it must come from. Sven Giegold pointed out that DiEM25’s Green New Deal is to be financed through green bonds issued by the European Investment Bank, and he argued that this idea was toxic in Germany. That is why for their part, the German Greens and the European Greens want to end the tax competition game and use the money from a common company taxation to finance the Green New Deal.
DiEM25 agrees that we should have a common company taxation in Europe, but explains why the money for the Green New Deal cannot come from taxation. The Fridays for Future are right to point the finger at us and say, “You are not doing enough”. So what is enough? What is the minimum we need for the green transition in energy, transport, industry and agriculture? 5% of the Eurozone GDP is the minimum, that is ca. 500 billion Euros per year. If we go down the taxation route, not only will it take years – time we don’t have – till every country agrees to collect a European tax, but even then this would raise no more than 50 billion Euros over a period of 3-5 years. Really not enough.
Right now there is around 2.5-3 trillion Euros in the financial circuits of the European Union that is doing nothing but harm: bidding up house prices, bidding up share values. DiEM25 suggests that the European Investment Bank should issue green bonds worth 500 billion every year and the ECB should make an announcement that if necessary it will buy up those bonds, if there is a need to prop up their price. By making that announcement, it will not have to buy them. Suddenly we will have 500 billion to invest in the green energy union, to stop countries from relying on lignite and to create good quality jobs all across Europe. And this is all within the rules and treaties of the EU.
Sven Giegold responded that he had asked progressive lawyers whether this was legal. They answered that when politicians pass a law committing the ECB to a 5-year buying program, it would be illegal under European law (because the ECB is nominally independent). Therefore, he believes it best to pursue economic programs that allow investments in the green transition to happen, but without creating a new financing program. He advocates instead for a policy that would make environmental destruction unprofitable and green investment profitable.
Yanis Varoufakis countered that DiEM25’s proposal is entirely legal. He didn’t ask any lawyer. He was a governor of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in 2015 and he put the proposal to the board of governors of the European Investment Bank, and not a single voice said that it was illegal. Indeed Werner Hoyer, the president of the EIB, was very much in favour of it! But they need the green light from the European Council. Varoufakis admits that Giegold is right that if there were a formal directive to the ECB to buy those bonds, then it would violate the fake posture of independence of the ECB. But the ECB is already buying those bonds! And Mario Draghi, Benoît Cœuré and everybody else would LOVE to have more EIB bonds to buy. They don’t have good quality green bonds to purchase and so have ended up buying rubbish bonds, even McDonalds bonds, Volkswagen diesel bonds, for lack of green bonds. They would love to buy green bonds, but so far there aren’t any.
Pamela Anderson supports democracy in Europe – DiEM25
Together with Srećko Horvat, the Croatian philosopher in third place on the transnational list of democracy in Europe – DiEM25, Pamela Anderson presented her election poster last week in Berlin. Nationwide there will be about 1000 posters on which Pamela Anderson advertises for the Green New Deal.
Pamela Anderson and Srećko Horvat for the New Green Deal of Democracy in Europe DiEM25 for the European Election 2019
++ on 08.05.2019 in Berlin (Berlin).
(c) Andi Weiland | Democracy in Europe DiEM25
The Green New Deal stipulates that 500 billion euros will be invested annually in climate protection over 5 years via the European Investment Bank. It will change Europe’s infrastructure and economy in such a way that the ambitious climate targets can still be met. It will support the development of renewable energy, the transformation of the transport sector, research into green technologies and the creation of sustainable jobs across Europe.
Green, social, and provocative: Pamela Anderson has been an activist for social and ecological issues for years and fights for animal rights, freedom of the press and against the clearing of the rain-forest. She supports the yellow vests – protests in France and above all she supports climate protection. She supports the pan-European movement (DiEM25) of Yanis Varoufakis, who himself is the leading candidate for democracy in Europe – DiEM25 – in the European elections.
Quote Pamela Anderson:
“I am committed to DiEM25 because these European elections are crucial and this movement, with its various national parties, is the only one to put forward a comprehensive and inspiring Green New Deal for Europe. And I also support this peaceful, progressive and effective movement because it consists of real grassroots activists. I trust people who have given up everything for the good of others.
I know this election poster is a little unusual. But it’s time to go out and do whatever it takes to get people’s attention. Your own voice can make a difference. For me this is a living democracy. The Green New Deal has to be implemented globally, we have to recapture the planet! Let’s rethink many things and have fun!”
Demokratie in Europa – DiEM25
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