Yanis Varoufakis and the Coming Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM)

First, Greece:

THE PARTHENON AT NIGHT ATHENS, GREECE

THE PARTHENON AT NIGHT ATHENS, GREECE

Yanis Varoufakis: How The Greek People’s Magnificent “No” Against Austerity Became “Yes”

(this is the transcript)

‘VoE: Yanis Varoufakis on the need for the democratization of Europe’

(You may remember that one of Alexis Tsipras’s keen desires was to change Europe.)

‘DiEM and the movements: Varoufakis replies to open letter by John Malamatinas’, January 18, 2016

(DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement) will be launched in Berlin on 9th February, at the Volksbuehne Theatre in Berlin.)

The intro:

“The Athens Spring, and the ruthlessness with which ‘official’ Europe crushed it, shook millions of Europeans out of their complacency. Suddenly, it was impossible for decent folks to carry on pretending that all is well in the best of all feasible Europes. Suddenly, good people who had been lulled into a false sense of TINA (“there is no alternative”) began to realise that the present power structures in Europe are not an option (as they are crumbling all around us) and that, if they continue to do nothing, they will be complicit in the emergence of a postmodern 1930s.

DiEM is being conceived as a movement that will connect these good, recently enraged, Europeans, with the movements that you so eloquently described in your open letter. Of course it would have been absurd to think that I was the first one to come up with the idea of starting a pan-European movement. Civilised Europe has been shaped by cross-border movements for centuries. No, the idea behind DiEM is to provide an opportunity for this new, hopeful coalescence between (A) the movements and (B) the recently energised/enraged/awakened silent majority. The aim is to use the Athens Spring as a springboard for a new coalition of democrats demanding that the demos, the people, is put back into democracy.”

Yani’s Twitter account

(cross-posted at Café Babylon)

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wendy davis's picture

https://twitter.com/Policy_Dialogue/status/692884587421143040

Given (in the US alone): ‘Office of Financial Research Warns of Corporate Debt Defaults, Particularly Related to Energy Loans, as Stability Risk’, January 28, 2016 by Yves Smith

(Sorry, I can't embed the Tweetie. I tried sticking the url into the Insert hyperlink thingie.)

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Anti-austerity parties have upset the mainstream balance in both countries.

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wendy davis's picture

I've read differing accounts as to whether Podemos/Iglesias has or hasn't formed a unity coalition, but I do remember reading at wsws.org (trotskyites, n the main) that Podemos is a fraud. I don't subscribe to that point of view. (smile) The struggles are mighty in Europe, and sadly, Tsipras offered such a cautionary tale to others.

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hecate's picture

the European versions of The Hairball are meeting in a two-day confab in Milan, where they're all gettin' jiggy with their racist xenophobic populist atavist nationalist retroversion. Representatives of United Russia are there as well, as well they should be, since Russia supports these far-right parties financially and ideologically, sharing, as they do, the same purity-of-the-volk disease, and sad Jesus disability.

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wendy davis's picture

But that's the thing; continued austerity immiseration has led to some right-wing electoral victories. Now the Harding piece I'd call yellow journalism all the way, myownself, but the media for the Imperium and its lackeys are constantly blaming Putin! China! for stuff that just ain't so. So...we'll just have to disagree on that, okay? Consider that most say that 'Putin stole the Crimea', and waged war in the Donbass, for instance.

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hecate's picture

simply a fact that Russia supports these far-right parties financially and ideologically. What source would you accept? ; )

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Pluto's Republic's picture

…in foreign nations where they want to gain influence. The US, of course, pushes the most NGO dough, generally seeking regime change or resource control.

But there has been a backlash. Currently, Israel is making headlines trying to stop foreign funding for NGOs in their country, particularly Human Rights NGOs. (Worth a Google.) The trend was noted here:

Azerbaijan, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan and Venezuela have all passed laws in the past two years affecting NGOs that receive foreign funds. Around a dozen more countries plan to do so, including Bangladesh, Egypt, Malaysia and Nigeria. NGOs focused on democracy-building or human rights are the most affected, but the crackdown is also hitting those active in other areas, such as public health.

In the years following the cold war, some autocratic governments saw welcoming foreign support and cash for NGOs as an easy way to win favour with America and its allies. But the role played in Ukraine’s 2004 Orange revolution by NGOs, including some that had received money from the Open Society Institute, which was founded by George Soros, an American billionaire, led to a change in attitude.

Most European nations restrict foreign funding in the political or electoral spheres. This is often declared constitutionally. Perhaps the Netherlands decided to buck the global trend and embrace their Foreign Overlords. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, lists 50 countries that place some restrictions on overseas funding of NGOs. [2014] But that number surely has grown substantially since the recent Ukraine overthrow.

In the past two years USAID has been thrown out of Russia and Bolivia. The number of organisations working on political and social issues in Uzbekistan is dramatically lower than a decade ago. Recent reports of an intelligence dossier claiming that the activities of foreign-funded NGOs had cut India’s growth rate have sparked fears that Narendra Modi, the nationalistic new prime minister, will tighten the rules further.

According to the Closing Space report, Western governments and foundations that fund NGOs abroad did not take the backlash seriously enough at first, perhaps because they mistook a lasting trend for a temporary reaction against the muscular foreign policy and democracy-promoting “freedom agenda” of George W. Bush. Instead, the authors argue, it “should be understood as the ‘new normal’, the result of underlying shifts in international politics that are bound to last for some time.”

Conversely, the US might be the only developed nation that allows foreign funding in its domestic political sphere. In fact, a number of the most influential DC think tanks [War Party Neocons] are foreign funded. (Israel, Qatar, and the Saudis dump a fortune into them.)

I blame either Obama or Putin for this rotten state of affairs.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Pluto's Republic's picture

The Netherlands, as Hecate suggests, does not ban foreign money contributions that directly influence their election processes.

"The Netherlands is one of 12 countries that do not impose limits on foreign donations.‌"

So, Russia may be contributing directly to the Dutch anti-immigration right-wing Party. They are certainly free to do so.

Also, the United states does have a ban on direct foreign contributions in connection with a Federal, State, or local election.

Likewise, Russia rejects all foreign contributions to their elections:

It is forbidden to accept donations to a political party and its regional branches from: a) foreign states and foreign legal entities; b) foreign citizens; c) stateless persons; f) international organizations and international public movements.

In any case, foreign organizations that directly influence the people's political attitudes seems open ended, except in Israel, where new laws are being proposed to restrict foreign "cultural" influence, as well.

Found an great link to a dynamic chart with this information.

Sorry for the misinformation.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
mimi's picture

just checked Benin and Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea and Democratic Republic of Congo. Somehow made me chuckle. The laws apparently don't help much against corruption, right? But then, better have a law than nothing.

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wendy davis's picture

But the article at the link included VZ as an autocratic government (Chavez, then Maduro), and at least implied that the nations on their list didn't *like* democracy. ack! It's been completely known how much NGO money has been pumped into the opposition parties for years due to WikiLeaks. Eva Golinger has written about it here and there. And hell, yeah, after two coups and an ugly attempt to discredit the government by violence, burning schools, stealing commodities, Maduro said get on your horse and ride on outta here. I'm sure it gets in through other means, of course, it's so simple to disguise money.

But I did discover that the self-same George Soros is very bullish on Putin trying to destroy the EU, and repeated it at Davos, so mebbe that's where the notion was born. FWIW, he also funds HRW and the other one I can't recall, but they were large on showing why R2P libya was sooooo necessary. But anyhoo, it just makes no sense to me that he would want to.

Thanks for the interactive chart thingie below.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

…that exists largely in my own bicameral mind. It should not have printed in my comment.

Yes! on the NGOitariats. It was a real adventure opening the door wide on that world before narrowing my search. If I had seen all that when I was 18, my career path would have been set. But mostly, to the mature me, it describes the "dark matter" that composes the invisible hand in geopolitics. I got lost in there for a long time plugging in new insights. That's why I had to come back and make several corrections, something I've rarely done before.

That is to say, I understand what NGOs did in South America, the Arab Spring, Africa, Ukraine, etc. But I never fully understood who funded them and how. I used to think state-funded NGOs were the bad guys, but now I've looked into the frightening abyss of private funding. And, you're right: George Soros was staring back at one point.
::

And is that charting page great or what? It is the ultimate global election law guru.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
wendy davis's picture

But I have a word document kicking around for a diary on NED and USAID I'd intended to do at My.Fdl back in the day. The incentive was due to a JP Sottile post that was essentially about 'Pierre' and First Look'. I'd already dug into some of his asshattery re: his Wikileaks PayPal blockade, and was shocked to my core that some very smart people there seemed to believe that those organizations were The Good Guys, wtf?

Most sensible folks seem to get that both organizations are essentially fronts for CIA, and are quite invested in destabilizing governments ahead of (tada!) NATO or Africom to come to their rescue. Then...the rape of shock doctrine 'help', and tra la la. But yes: deep state hides in the weeds. Avaaz is another con job, pimps for war. Now I have no idea about what's truly afoot in Burundi, for instance, but there is a major push for an R2P mission there still.

Well, anyway, sleep well, dream well, and imagine a better world.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

I just read the Avaaz essay on your site. Freakin' Neocons. It's been alarming to watch the White House fill up with them, especially since day one of the Obama Administration. Insidious bastards. They even have the Far Left believing up is down, and mainstream Dems believing war is peace.

In terms of 2016:

Bernie will easily bend to the rod,
but Trump is walking dead if he gets the nod.

I've been paying a lot of attention to the Aficom golem and the current US deployment throughout Africa. My angle is the US war on China — seizing Africa to block China's access to the remaining resource treasure chest on the planet, thus ending the rise of Eurasia and beginning the era of global depopulation.

Onward.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
wendy davis's picture

But that's just it: so many of the NGOs aren't at all what they pretend to be. National Endowment for Democracy?

NED funding, for example, was used in all of the “color revolutions” in Eastern Europe and, I expect, currently in the Ukraine as well as elsewhere.
How do they operate? They have four “institutes” through which they work: the International Republican Institute (currently headed by US Senator John McCain), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (currently headed by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), the Center for International Private Enterprise (the international wing of the US Chamber of Commerce), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), the foreign policy operation of the AFL-CIO, with Richard Trumka the head of its Board of Directors.
“The NED and its institutes continue to actively fund projects in Venezuela today. From the 2012 NED Annual Report (the latest available), we see they have provided $1,338,331 to organizations and projects in Venezuela that year alone: $120,125 for projects for “accountability”; $470,870 for “civic education”; $96,400 for “democratic ideas and values”; $105,000 for “freedom of information”; $92,265 for “human rights”; $216,063 for “political processes”; $34,962 for “rule of law”; $45,000 for “strengthening political institutions”; and $153,646 for Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).”
Democracy’s philanthropists, lovely categories."

You're likely just right about Africom, that organization flips my zoris off. Ha, I have a whole category devoted to it, although not all of my posts made it there. And of course those sub-Saharan nations are the recipients of war by other means constantly, killing citizens slowly by bio-wrecking while profiteering.

Please feel free to comment at the Café sometimes; ain't it purdy? And ooof, almost no one's there just lately.

Well, bother; this is the only diary that made it into the category, but it is fairly illustrative of their mission and their...methods.

According to Dave Swanson, even the Carnegie Institute isn't really about...peace, iirc.

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wendy davis's picture

of the first line of your couplet, Pluto.

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enhydra lutris's picture

Everybody was quite happy with him until he began to negotiate with Russia regarding a terminus for Georgia's chunk of pipelineistan under Russian control, and then the shit hit the fan, stirred up by NGOs funded mostly by US sources. Soros played a role in this too.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

wendy davis's picture

I'm googling now for more. (Crap memory here.)

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wendy davis's picture

But I do trust Russian scholar Stephen Cohen, who writes with a sane view of Russia. His main contention is that the west is still fighting the cold war, and for a time reckoned Ukraine might end up being the spark that could start a nuclear war. Of course that original putsch against Yanukovitch was funded by the US and loads of NGOs; Pierre Omidyar's money included. You can hear him at DN in his own words, although I can't imagine he's ever weighed in on facts that say Russia itself is funding Golden Dawn in Greece, too, etc., or mot importantly, doing so to unravel the EU experiment. Why would they when they are trading partners to this degree?

And there’s also Russia and the New Silk Road and the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank, and that's clearly one of the developments that has the West seriously aggravated. Think Obama's 'Pivot to the East' or whatever he called it. China is being blamed for the trillions in implied wealth (is that the term) of stock market losses over the past seven months. Now Russia is signaling it will slow down oil production, and bing: Mr. Market rallies a bit. Ah, it's all a game, and it's all about power, and not just military power, but financial power, imo.

The Le Pens must have had a political aim in announcing the loans, though, yes? Now I grant you, Putin is a hideous homophobe, an oligarch in his own right, former KGB of course, but the US hated him even more after he saved the West's bacon over Iran's (alleged) nuclear bomb program. But no way are the charges that he is a revanchist close to the truth.

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gulfgal98's picture

The economic problems in many of the southern European countries are so great and those are the same countries that are being subjected to the refugee crisis. If the EU and the troika do not listen and respond, Europe will erupt into revolutions and the end result will not be pretty for even the economically stable countries. Sadly the bankers world wide are running our countries and they are sucking the life blood out of humanity.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

wendy davis's picture

There are reports that there may actually be a vote soon in the EU over discarding or reauthorizing (?) the Schengen agreement, the open borders rule. Greece is said to being ring-walled as we speak so that refugees landing there by water (on Lesbos, iirc?) can't leave. Just hideous, all of it. Crikey, one of the huge *global risks* noted at Davos was the refugee crisis, and those Elites were the ones that caused it to begin with, just like climate change, *financial inequality*, yada, yada. Soros of course is blaming Putin for the refugee crisis, as if the Western World weren't bombing Syria as well. Oh, but only allying with the 'moderate al Qaeda groups. I swear, the hypocrisy.

Nope, NATO's allies didn't cause ISIS, from Iraq to R2P Libya and beyond. Impossible. Is the German economy still stable? I've lost track. But ha, Cameron said at Davos that the UK sure is, lol. Oh, and eep, I tore up my WEF diary and am starting over...

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mimi's picture

First, I am homesick and would love to be in Berlin on February 9th at the Volksbuehne. It's my old neighborhood of my student years way back. Helas. Jumping over the Atlantic or Pacific isn't as easily done these days anymore for me. Sniff.

Second, I have given up telling the remainder of my family back in Germany, consisting just of two persons in their seventies and both slightly ... oh well ... not living in the real world, to make them undestand, that in the US the middle class is suffering, but at the same time the USians think we EUians have it very bad in ol' Europe.

Apparently they don't feel it's very bad over there, at least when it comes to Germany. Well, you know, I need to get my teeth fixed and as it would cost between 8,000.00 to 10,000.00 dollars here in the US, I fly over to Germany and get it there for a humane price, if not for free. So, the middle class in Europe, imo, is still much more secure in the northern European countries (but not in Greece, Portugal and I don't know enough of Spain and Italy).

Can't help it. Life for the little people here in the US with insecure jobs or no jobs or underpaid part time and temp jobs, lousy health insurance, overpriced rental prices with no tenant rights and securities etc. and going to college to be a life-threatening debt burden, life here is much harder than over there.

Just saying. Just my two cents of whining and spewing miffed thoughts. I wonder, if you know how it feels for a European, who is not completely an idiot, to listen to the Republican debate. I hope you can change your system to work more democratically and don't allow hairballs and other hairy little critters of boy-ish behavior take power.

That's all for my blah blah.

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wendy davis's picture

No, I can't imagine your sorrow, and I wish you could transport there to visit your old ones. Just typing that made my eyes well up with tears; I feel the same just seeing our grand-chirren so seldom, though seldom is not 'probably never again'. Yeppers, more and more USians are living in poverty, fear, insecurity, and without access to affordable health and dental care, decent food and clean water. And when the next bubble/s burst, it will of course get worse for more. My stars we are a passive nation! I just pictured the hundreds of billions of the (publicly acknowledged) military budget, and imagined again what en half of it could go to: Life, not Death of 'our enemies'...and to fix your poor teeth, bless your heart.

I haven't watch a debate yet, and I won't. What an exercise in futility it all is. Emma Goldman had it right.

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mimi's picture

with reading the comments. Your exchange with Pluto makes my head spin. But it's very good for starting to research all of it myself. Thanks for that as well.

Considering Europe and gg's comment, yes, I am really scared what will happen. Right wing shit is bubbling up almost in all countries now, even the Scandinavian ones. It's just unbelievable to watch. And at the same time that apparently the average Joe over in the EU doesn't seem to think it's "for real".

I didn't watch the debate for more than a couple of clips and soundbites on the radio. Was enough to just turn it off. At the same time I ask myself how much I am "pulled into it" by reading stuff. How would I feel if I were not to read what I do read online? Less scared, more naive and uninformed? Well I hope I can still keep "my head straight" and my emotions "under control". Smile

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wendy davis's picture

we feel stymied about what we can do to change things for the better, as in: more just societies with equal power shared among all. On a recent diary that Popular Resistance had sent in their newsletter about The Fake Left, not a few comments reflected the notion that....well, those at the top of the heap should arguably make more than...worker X. Ay yi yi. Same with 'privilege' of all kinds, imo. It blinds one to alternatives in fairness and justice. And the Imperium does not want the socialist nations in the south to survive, ergo...they pump money into the opposition parties to make it so.

Did you know that some time ago Obama had declared Venezuela 'a threat to Amurrican National Security'? Heh, yeppers, except he should have said 'to Oligarchic Amurricans'. But anyway, given the habitually declared 'helplessness' and TINA, a lot turn to electoral politics, where little has ever changed for the better save for incrementally, or as in FDR's time, under duress by them thar filthy Commie strikers...

But at least there are some signs of affiliate groups kicking back against the status quo, and I often try to support them, like this DiEM, even though I don't always care for Yani's framing of 'where to go', etc. Blogging in small venues may not be all that valuable, but as I can't physically get out in the street to participate, it's what I have. Maybe what you hav, as well.

Wish there were comfort for your grief over your being so far away from your old ones, but some grief just stays, and acts as those 'little deaths' kubler-ross says prepares us for the larger one.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

I'm sure that I'll learn a lot from your series.

I'll refrain from further comment (at this time), since I didn't follow this movement very closely from its inception, and am quite ignorant of the many of the facets of it.

Heck, I've had my hands full trying to keep up with attempts to strike a 'Grand Bargain'--US austerity plan/measures--here.

Wink

Have a good one!

Mollie
elinkarlsson@WordPress


“If a dog won’t come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.”-- Woodrow Wilson
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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

wendy davis's picture

Your Wilson dog quote made me remember our big, beautiful black and white Springer Spaniel. He only hated three people in all of the years I had the honor to know him, and he was correct every time, as it turned out.

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gulfgal98's picture

My husband and I are owned by three dogs, two of which are liver and white English springer spaniels. Gidget (female) and Roux (male) came to us via the English springer rescue association. Both were rescued out of Louisiana. They are numbers four and five English springers for us. We also have a 24 pound Pomeranian, Willie Bear. He is four times the size of the show dogs, but looks every bit like them, only in a larger package.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

wendy davis's picture

What a passel of pups, I swear. Do you all travel together in a car at times? Do you walk them all at once? (You have me thinking of the grandfather on 'Moonstruck'. "Howl, dogs; howwwwl at la luna bella!"

Speaking of which (me, not thee) did you realize that la luna bella rises almost a full 50 minutes later each night? Mr. wd dug out that fact when I was overly-exercised waiting for the moon to rise around the full moon this month.

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