(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
He wants a lot. And he needs money. Already the 14. In May I wrote an email to the Volksbühne theater in Berlin to get a press accreditation for the DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 25) conference. No answer. 23. May I called the theater to leek and got a new email address. This time I got a snap: "Sehr gut!" Two days later I went to Volksbühne to get the press ticket. The man at the checkout said I had to ask someone in the DiEM25 booth outside. I ran out and met the man who had emailed me "Sehr gut". He had reserved the ticket, just got it – so back to the box office it was. Yes, I could get the ticket, but had to pay eight euros; they do not give free tickets to journalists, he had been told from higher levels. This should be a kind of support for the new movement DiEM25. Okay, I thought, eight euros is nothing, I buy and support the transnational and pan-European democracy movement of Yanis Varoufakis – Greece's former finance minister who withdrew from the post because of the growing EU tax troika demands on Greece.
Democracy in Europe. DiEM25 was founded here in the Volksbühne a little over a year ago by Yanis Varoufakis and the Croatian activist philosopher Srecko Horvat. Now the two are back in Berlin with over 60 new members from all over Europe, and a bunch of committed famous supporters and comrades: Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Julian Assange; economists, politicians and ordinary European citizens, even from Serbia and Turkey who are not EU members. In addition, DiEM000 has established connections with grassroots movements and political parties such as Die Linke in Germany, British Labor, the Greens in Italy and Hungary, Blockupy Germany, the Polish Party Razem, Spanish Podemos. DiEM25 will democratize Europe from the ground up. But how?
Christian Democrats. First and foremost with courage, boldness and optimism. This is what is needed to break up the coal-and-steel cartel that has governed the EU apparatus since the 1950s: multinational large corporations and companies that pursue professional capital lobbying extensively. Those who supply the Brussels technocrats with fresh profit blood.
DiEM25 will democratize Europe from the ground up. But how?
A David-and-Goliath battle between former Finance Minister Varoufakis and the current German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. In Varoufakis' book Euro paradox The author says that Schäuble refused to shake hands when he visited him for the first time in Berlin as the new Minister of Finance of Greece – something that is common practice among most Europeans. Schäuble himself had carried around a suitcase with black grease money (100 German marks) for former Chancellor Kohl. The money came from the German arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber in 000. Helmut Kohl used black money from shadow accounts in banks (several million German marks placed in the tax havens of Switzerland and Liech, among other places).
tenstein) to bribe people in the east and west, in a good old-fashioned Prussian way. This scandal ensured that Schäuble could never become German Chancellor, and the "European" Kohl lost the honorary title of German Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In the wake of this, Merkel took over from Kohl and thus took over the throne from the CDU. Oddly enough, Wolfgang Schäuble later became the powerful finance minister of Merkel and Germany – who thus refused to shake hands with a popularly elected finance minister from Greece in a reunited Germany. By the way, the Federal Republic never paid war compensation to Greece for the Nazi occupation. Enough about that.
No to the EU. After the press conference in the Volksbühne at At 10.00:XNUMX I personally shook hands on Varoufakis and asked for an interview. He politely replied that he does not give individual interviews. I understood that. A busy day lay ahead of him.
It went from strength to strength all Thursday until kl. 20.00:25 in the evening. Several workshops were held, discussions and exchanges of views on strategies and the European democratic future were put on the agenda. Of course, the time was too short to really get anywhere. People from France, Poland, Belgium, Ireland, Slovenia, Spain, England, Portugal, Hungary, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Serbia and Berlin were among those present. Even a representative from the Norwegian organization No to the EU sat in the Rotary Salon in the Volksbühne. He aroused astonishment and disbelief among young Europeans when he claimed that true democracy could not be achieved without a state being sovereign, independent and autonomous, ie outside the EU – like Norway. He was still met with respect. In a way, it was liberating to see that the young Europeans had overcome the national boundaries in their minds, at least theoretically. They were on the chopping block. They wanted something more, something bigger. They have a vision. And the tool for realizing the vision is clearly Greek Varoufakis and his recent organization DiEM25. Varoufakis itself presented an analysis and eight specific points on which DiEM2019 will go to the polls in Europe in XNUMX, with a so-called New Deal (see separate box, editor's note).
The coal-and-steel cartel has ruled the EU apparatus since the 1950s.
After stabilizing the economy in Europe, DiEM25 will embark on the work of drafting a new European constitution that will abolish all undemocratic agreements in the EU.
What about the dominance of Google and Silicon Valley? What about the influence of the data analysis company Cambridge Analytica, which has probably influenced both Brexit and the US election? These are questions that Varoufakis wants to do something about. The goal of DiEM's European New Deal program is to change current European economic practices. The main challenge is the large discrepancy between savings and lack of investment; investment today is at its lowest since the 1950s. This leads to a declining centrifugal force in the European social economy, with the danger of a complete division of the EU. At the same time, we face major humanistic challenges when it comes to international / European foreign policy. Trump and Putin are the two largest arms exporters in the world, Varoufakis and partner Horvat point out.
logos. It was past 23. I had a beer and one pretzel in the theater bar that was closing. On the way home, I took out 50 euros from an ATM near the theater on Rosa Luxemburg Plass. The amount was deducted from my account – I saw that afterwards. The machine worked hard. But the paper money never came out of the machine. The only thing that sarcastically shone on me was: Out of order. I took the subway instead of the taxi.
Thoroughbred economist Yanis Varoufakis has set himself the radical goal of democratizing Europe by the year 2025. Therefore DiEM25. In a 2016 interview, he stated: "Any approach to a problem that separates logos from pathos, such as business from politics, logic from ethics, will lead to a weakening of human experience."
also read A modest proposal.
