Hello, hello, hello, and welcome. I'm Merron Kilili, and we are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe, and this is our regular live coordinating call, except this call is something quite special because it's our birthday. Yes, DM25 turns six today, and over the next hour, 90 minutes or so, we're going to take a look back with our panel here at the last six years of the movement's campaigns and activities, its successes and failures, and crucially, what we've learned from them. And then we're going to have a look forward at our future plans from DM25's radical new manifesto and positioning to elections we're going to be competing in and everything in between. And of course, since this is live, you out there watching us on YouTube, please put your questions, comments, rants, concerns, anything you want to throw at us in the YouTube chat and we'll get to it. But first, unlike our regular call, we're going to start out with something quite different. We're going to hear from the people who power DM25, who fund DM25, who take the key decisions at DM25, and of course, I'm talking about our members. That's over 130,000 people across the world, offering their time, resources, energy and passion to join our rebellion against Europe's oligarchy and our mission to put the demos back in democracy. So what we did was we sent out a call to ask our members, what do they hope DM25 could achieve in 2022 for their countries and beyond? And here's a compilation of some of the videos that we received. So grab yourself a beverage, sit back and hear what our members have to say for the next few minutes. I think we all have the opportunity to confront ourselves with our opponents, so we can finally mask the oligarchy and their hypocrisy. From the DM in 2022, I expect that the reason why I came to the DM is that it's to use all the alternative in current politics and here in Serbia and everywhere in the world. I've done all of this, I've done the same narrative. Basically, for 2022, what I hope is that Europe, both as a European Union and as a Spain, are capable of giving a coherent discourse, a discourse really on the basis of sound, on what people need, because with this post-pandemic, many civil rights have been cut off and this, the people are integrating it and it will continue to adapt it. What I want from DM25 in 2022 is to strengthen more people. In 2022, I hope that DM25 will be able to protect more people. It will make them understand the problems that they have to face, the rights that are lost, the rights that have been cut off from the previous generations and it will give them back the dream and hope. With the help of more open courts, with the help of more access to health care and mainly by using their weapons, like Facebook and Instagram, I hope that DM25, in 2022, will be able to strengthen even more the European Union of Pesticides with the help of the citizens of New York. We have to make sure that the people are in a very good situation, not the end. We have created the world as it is, so we have the power to change it. DM25 must become much bigger and be the movement of all people. If that happens, we will have the necessary influence on the political debate. I am firmly convinced that DM25 can achieve its radical and progressive or realistic goals. In Portugal, I hope that we will continue to work on fundamental issues. Access to the environment, the access to the laboratory, the rights of more precarious workers and the production of a non-contactable, non-conditional, allows those who live in the most extreme forms of poverty to take it into their own situation. In addition, we have now come out of a re-election cycle with results quite disappointing for the progressive camp. For me, it reveals the anxiety of every major who has left the European Union to change the way they message and the way they work with the population. DM25 in France in 2002. It is a political alternative founded on an ideal progressive and democratic. In France and Europe, marked by the rise of fascism, DM25 is key to help us build the solidarity of the police and the population and all of them. The fact that it is difficult to unite in a small party is usually a solution for the problem of the community. But it is also a solution that cannot be solved with the task that is now in place. That is why I support the right to unite in this long-term and real solution and that all of us are involved in the creation of the revolution. The idea of Turkey is that all political authorities are building a democratic Turkey that has been created by the people of the Republic of Turkey. All decisions are made for a pure Turkey with the information of its citizens and for a Turkey with the democracy of the European Union as far as its own races are concerned. It is a real Turkey that puts its own radical and only successful democratic reforms on its own. It is a real Turkey that puts its own democratic reforms on its own. It is a call for all citizens who believe in democracy and want to fight for it. Let us support the DM25 and let us unite with the DM25 and let us make our country a democratic country. In 2025, in 2022, it is shown to the leaders that solidarity is our weapon and our power. Finally, in 2022, I would like DM25 to be more and more beautiful every day, without fear of saying things as they are. We will put our hands in the canvass so that when we meet people, during the meeting, we will put our feet on political, French, inspiring and radical campaigns. Carpe diem. Carpe diem. Carpe diem. Carpe diem. Great, and thank you to all the DM25 members who sent in their videos. That was fantastic and some very important messages there. OK, let's jump straight into our retrospective and Sretko is going to kick us off setting the scene, listing the political challenges over the last couple of years. Over to you, Sretko. Sretko and Roger and Dan, all is good at some good what's that. Happy birthday, DMers and not only DMers, but also Ivana among us from the coordinating collective, who also has birthday today.  So I will first say that life is beautiful. Of course, you could say, you know, it comes from a privileged position but I'm really happy today that for the last six years, we have been building this movement that I was thinking about it today. Almost half of our life age was characterized now by the pandemic. And I think it's a big success that after two years of organizing mainly online, we are more powerful than ever that we are coming back to streets, coming back to theaters, joining protests, developing further campaigns, policy papers. We entered one parliament. We will enter hopefully more parliaments. And I think it's a big, big day today. It's also if you think about it, the age when children start to go to school, which is also very important. And also in that perspective, it shows that all of these six years have been a long period for us. It really passed like very quickly in a blink of an eye. As they say in Star Trek. And we are still here. As I said, we are more powerful than ever. Unfortunately, most of our predictions came true. Things are even worse than we have predicted. Remember that at the launch of DM at Volksbühne in Berlin in 2016, we were warning that unless there is more democracy, unless there is more transparency, unless there is more investment into public infrastructure, Europe will continue to implode. Unless there is a different immigration policy, Europe will continue to slide towards more fascism and authoritarianism. If you look at Europe today, you will see that unfortunately we are in that situation. And also the situation in the rest of the world doesn't look better. But luckily in the meantime, we have also founded the Progressive International. You know, one of the first attempts in the 21st century, I would say, which is not just trying to build something like the World Social Forum or the usual gathering, gatherings of the usual suspects, but also build an infrastructure. Which I think is the most important thing DM 25 has built in the last six years. Besides the friendships, besides the love, the joy and the struggle which we are taking together, we have built a very powerful, resistant infrastructure. And I think this is the most important thing. You have seen it in the introductory videos, you know, how many languages are people speak, how many members we have across Europe. How important it is actually that in this time, when everyone is returning to the nation state, that we are fighting for transnationalism, which was the beginning of DM, which I still think is one of the most important ideas that across Europe we work together. And let me end and then open the floor to my dear comrades with a quote, which Jean-Paul Sartre gave in 1944, when he wrote after the Second World War for the newspaper Atlantic. He said, never were we freer than during the occupation. And it's an interesting quote. And I think he's completely right. For instance, the citizens of Sarajevo under another siege, the longest siege in modern history, were also never happier than under the occupation.  And I think, luckily today, we are not under an occupation, but never have we been luckier than during the last six years in DM. I know maybe for some people it wasn't like that. We also had our troubles, we had our failures. We will speak about it tonight very openly. But I think what is important is precisely this togetherness, this collective organizing, which I think under a new occupation, which is coming, which in some parts of the world is already there, is so important. So Sretan Rogendan, happy birthday and thanks everyone for being with us today. Thanks, Sretko. And for any of you out there who want to add your comments into the chat, I'm told that the chat is now open. Sorry, it wasn't open earlier. Okay, Eric, Edmund, go for it. Thank you, Matt, and thank you, Sretko. Hello from a very cold Yatobori in Sweden, where I've just arrived after being to Rome, which makes it even colder. I'll be meeting a few of our local members here in half an hour. So I apologize if you can hear a bossa nova soundtrack in the background. That's because I'm basically in the public space.  And maybe we weren't idiots in the past, maybe that's too strong a word, but I think it's equally important for us to look back and take note of our successes, to take heart and at the same time, talk about the things that didn't work as well. So that we can learn from those, well, let's call them mistakes. So I'd like to latch on to a couple of those really basic cornerstones of the DM25 project. One of them is this idea of uniting progressives, of uniting the left. Now, when we went in that direction, we realized with hindsight that we put the cart in front of the levels. And what do I mean by that? The idea of uniting progressives is not something that will happen by uniting sort of progressive institutions. It's not something that will happen by uniting political parties. That part of the political spectrum is not united because it doesn't want to be united. Everybody has their own political program, their own supporters. And first and foremost, their focus is based on those people. So if you really want to unite progressives, we need to unite progressive people. We need to unite the people that make up the left. And once we have that sort of critical mass of members of people with us, convinced by our program and the direction that we want to take our project, then we will realize that we have been uniting progressives and the uniting the left from the ground up. And this is one of the important lessons to learn from the past. Another point is that we have had many European campaigns. We've been supporting a Julian Assange from a time when supporting Julian was not the most popular thing one could do. We've been under attack in the past and still are in many cases for supporting Julian. And it's heartening to see how the discourse has changed in later years around this topic. And we've had other European level campaigns on a variety of issues from refugees and migrants to transparency and so on. However, tackling political topics from a European perspective means that we fall for the usual European trap, which is that not that many people care about Europe. So when you frame a political topic through the European spectrum, that means that you are talking about a political issue that a lot of people don't identify with, even if what you're trying to achieve is something that many, many people would like to see. In order to be able to convince people about our European ideas, our European policies, our European projects, we first need to become a political voice that feels relevant to their day-to-day life, to the things that make up their understanding of politics, which is very often local, national, municipal and so on before we can have a relevant voice in those terms, people will not be ready to listen to what we have to say about things that are further removed from that reality because we just will sound like we're out of touch with what they're going through. So that's another important lesson, I think. And that also has to do with something that we've often had, this academic and intellectual identity, a lot of focus on policy, speaking a certain academic language that sometimes might put some people off or attract a certain sort of subgroup of society that doesn't represent the social whole. So at the same time, when you look at our past, you will see that our greatest successes have come from those cases where we've really focused like Sretko was saying, on our members, on our infrastructure, on our local groups, on our organisers, and we invested in them and gave them what they needed in order to push the DM ideas and push the DM vision into their own communities, into their own societies. And I think that really summarises the main area in which I hope we will continue to work in 2022 and in many more years from today onwards. Thank you, Eric, Julia, Julia Moore from the UK. Hi, thank you, Mirren. Happy birthday, everybody. It's my microphone, okay, Mirren? Yeah, we hear you now. Thank you. Hi, hello, hello, everybody. We wanted to flag up for our celebratory video this evening, our live stream this evening, of the fact that DM 25, mainly UK, but from the central team as well, have been involved in a very successful Your NHS Needs You campaign, which hit the digital sphere just before Christmas. It's focused and highlighted the, what we will know is the final stage of the breaking up of the national health system. Now, I'm aware that we have non-UK viewers this evening without wishing to turn this into a lecture. In simplicity, we have a national health system in this country, which is free at the point of delivery based on health need alone, and that has been under attack systematically since the 1970s, since the Thatcher era. We're all aware of those politics. The first attempt at breaking up was in 2012 when, to their shame, many Labour MPs voted for the systematic breaking up of the NHS. And the bill that is going through Parliament at the moment is what we know to be the final stage when the NHS will be handed over to the private sector and run as a not-for-profit service. And DM25 have leapt upon this opportunity as a case study for a policy going through government by stealth, by lack of scrutiny, by MPs being admitted to us and to many agencies that the bill is so complex that they'll probably vote it through anyway. So DM25 put together an impressive campaign. Please look, catch it, it's still a live campaign. It's on our website. We should be giving you a link fairly soon. The bill was not prevented at the end of last year from going to the Lords. That means it goes to our unelected chamber, but the pressure that we have applied by this has been legion. The campaign team reports that Labour MPs and the front bench of Labour MPs were impressed and influenced by the work that the team put in, so it's had an impact. And we'd like to flag up the activism. This is the important aspect of this campaign. Over 100,000 petitions signatures went into the government website, which has an impact because MPs have to take notice of that. We had a membership increase of over 1,500 members during the process of the first phase of the campaign. A considerable amount of money raised as a result of the campaign. A celebrity video profile, which is impressive, is not the right word. Again, please take a look at those heads and shoulders shots from many, many actors, sector, musicians, influences, many that you will be recognised internationally, not just from the UK. So please have a look at those videos. There will be names that you recognise, all in defence of this National Health Service. And over 30,000 emails to MPs targeted at the point when they were taking the vote. So this is impressive digital activism, and the IT team need to be complemented on specifically the template letter that they designed, which made it incredibly easy for anybody to be able to trace who their MP is and then to be able to send a letter, depending on how their track of voting. So this is digital activism in process and was impressive. So please take a look at the ongoing NHS campaign. The bill is now in the Lords, our unelected chamber, and we are applying continuing pressure to stop the bill or at least to ameliorate and modify some of the technical points of it. So in short, for the UK, this has been a fantastic case study of partnership working with leading unions and health lobbying agencies, raising the profile of the parliamentary processes, its weaknesses as far as democracy is concerned, and crucially, for the NHS, watching assets stripping in motion and where will DM25 UK be placing itself in the future for a clear steer on renationalising and bringing the NHS back into a governance which is not run for profit? Is that okay, Miran? Great, thank you, Julia, for giving us a showcase of the NHS campaign, just referencing some celebrity videos there that we received from that, from people like Russell Brand, Stephen Fry. So please go and check that out. If you're interested, the website addresses your NHSneedsu.com, one word. You did, you did, Maya. Yeah, hello. I would like to elaborate a bit more on our digital tools. We have the capacity at DM25 to develop these kind of really specific tools for one particular campaign, like for the NHS campaign, the ability to email a random member of the House of Lords or even one's personal MP with integrated with the track record, specialized letter for each member of parliament and so on and so on, to code this kind of tool, but also in general, DM25 has been at the avant-garde of creating its own custom tools for activists and for our policy development. It was basically inevitable for us to do it this way rather than just rely on ready-made tools that often sell activist data to the US and that cannot really be adapted very much. We had to do it differently because of our need to support many languages. It's simply not possible to reach a lot of people on the street in Europe if all the information we provide is in English. So in DM, we don't just have a website that's available in 12 languages. We also make all ongoing newsletters and all internal democracy available in seven languages and we try to subtitle and translate as many videos as we can. Of course, this ongoing work is only possible to do a large number of volunteer translators and I think they're really amazing and a really, really good team. But also since I'm the IT coordinator, let's look a bit more closely at the tools that we use. So when DM started out in 2010, I did a survey of all the available tools that allow a large number of people to securely vote in online referenda such as we wanted to have in DM 25 and none of the tools that I looked at were able to support referenda texts in more than one language. They were all built for monolingual communities but we weren't going to be a monolingual community. So at that point, having already five years of experience as a Ruby on Rails developer, I decided to create our own voting platform, a bespoke tool for DM 25 and we use this platform in order to make all major policy decisions. The principle here is transnational, one member, one vote. It doesn't matter where you live. You don't have to bring your concerns to the local level to some local group and then work up to the regional level and then the national level until they get heard by the international level. Instead, we all interact directly with each other transnationally and with the various organs of the organization and all members can suggest policy issues that we should have a vote on. For example, nuclear power is the latest one. Is it green like the EU claims or is there something more? So the discussion will yield one or several proposed texts and after some attempts to create some kind of consensus to bridge some of the divides, all members will cast their votes on what our common stance should be. And we do this even for national topics. For example, DM 25 has some MPs in the Greek parliament and they wanted to know what our stance should be on marijuana. So clearly they cannot have one stance in Greece while the international stance is different. This division into national silos is precisely what DM was created to avoid because it's the default among so many parties and movements of the left, they cannot achieve anything on the European or international level because so many of the national stances contradict each other. So all members of the DM 25, independent of nationality, independent of country of residence, even members outside of Europe voted on our stance on marijuana and then our Greek MPs represented the stance in the Greek parliament. And this is how it shall be wherever we create parties. Of course, we cannot have international votes on every single bill that enters the Greek parliament. There will be way too many and too fast and it would also be too hard for everyone to inform themselves adequately. It would lead to a tyranny of those who have a lot of free time and disadvantage those who have to work two jobs. Something I didn't like in the German pirate party. It had votes upon votes upon votes. Each line of each text was voted. So in DM 25, we don't have votes every week but we have votes on all the things that matter like Brexit, Israel and Palestine, nuclear power and so on, but also political alliances and endorsements must all be approved by all member vote. We elect our leaders and representatives in the same way. The coordinating collective is elected transnationally through our digital platform with one member, one vote and any member can be a candidate. But our digital platform is not just for voting. It was built to empower our activists in many ways. For example, our members can host petitions on there. So we're independent of evil companies like change.org and the like which only promote you if you pay. Members can have surveys and questionnaires. They can host and promote events. They can use the platform to crowdfund for their local projects. They can find members nearby. They can send their own newsletters to everyone in their city and so on. And the most recent addition to this set of tools is something we call crowd editing. So in a lot of cases DM's manifesto already provides a basic moral compass, but the devil is in the details. So it's not enough to give members a yes or no vote on a particular text. We want to include their ideas in the details of the text. For this, we first have questionnaires, calls and forum discussions. And once there is a draft, we use a crowd editing tool in order to do the final work. So with this tool, every member can edit the text just as if it was in Word. Adding a sentence here, removing some words there. And then the tool creates a section by section summary of all the changes that were proposed this way. Sometimes by thousands of members and our policy team can easily work through all of these suggested changes and produce a final draft for voting. If you want to experience this, we're currently out crowd editing two of the core texts of the movement, the new manifesto and the updated organizing principles. So just log into the members area and you should see an invitation to participate. I really think you'll like it. Now, not all of this was available from the start. And especially in the early years, we had too few coordinators and tools to enable everyone to contribute to the fullest. But by now I think there's no other movement that has such a large array of bespoke tools for activists. Thank you, you did. Couldn't agree more. Janis. Let me cast your mind, your thought back to the Foxburn Theater, where six years to this moment, we inaugurated the M25. It was a momentous event. At least for those of us who were there and for many who followed us from home. Europe was in the midst of a massive crisis of legitimation, economic crisis. Millions and millions of Europeans were confined to the dustbin of history. Their homes were possessed in Barcelona, in Athens, in Ireland. An air of discontent was poisoning the lands of all Europeans, almost all Europeans, with the exception of the very, very, very few. It was in the midst of that gigantic manifestation of the crisis. Not the crisis, the crisis has been ongoing, but this was the moment when everybody felt it from Sweden to Portugal, from Ireland to Cyprus. The M25 stood up and confronted with our manifesto, with the very transnationality that you just mentioned. We confronted the lazy account that many had of what was going on. Remember, the account was a clash between the North and the South, the Germans of Europe and the Greeks of Europe, the Dutch of Europe and the Italians of Europe. And you could see the wave of Euroscepticism on the one hand and fascism, just completely overwhelming the defenses of any progressive kind of thinking. There was a lot of lazy thinking and the worst enemy of civilization at that time and to this day was this view that this was a clash between different people, between different nationalities, between the ants of the North and the grasshoppers of the South. And it was at that time that our manifesto, the one that we put our seal of approval on six years ago at the Foxburner Theater, began with a completely different narrative, a liberating narrative, a narrative of hope and a narrative of activism. I shall read a few lines right on the top of the manifesto. For all their concerns with global competitiveness, migration and terrorism, today we would put in there the pandemic. Only one prospect truly terrifies the powers of Europe, democracy. They speak in democracy's name, but only to deny, exercise and suppress it in practice. For rule by Europe's peoples, for rule by Europe's peoples, government by the demons is their nightmare. This is how we began. And we continued. And I think that was an important analysis. At the heart of our disintegrating European Union, there lies a guilty deceit. A highly political, top-down, opaque decision-making process is presented as apolitical, technical, procedural and neutral. Their purpose is to prevent Europeans from exercising democratic control over their money, finance, working conditions and environment. You see what we did six years ago today with our manifesto with DIMM, DIMM 25. What we did was to just stop on our tracks as Greeks, Germans, Italians, Brits, French men and women and to realize that the bankers after the 2008 financial crash were uniting across borders to secure more bailouts, more bailouts from the weak, from the percolate, from the proletariat. And Europe's political rulers were conspiring. They were in cahoots with one another. The Greek ones and the Germans and the British ones and the German and the French ones they were conspiring to make the many pay for the bailouts of the very, very few. Fascists were really the ugly heads because they were the only, if you think about it, the only real opposition to this concentrated power of the bourgeoisie across Europe. The left had simply disappeared as a result of the surrender of Syriza in the summer of 2015. And it was clear to us that what was named the European party of the left in the European parliament was all over the place. They were our comrades, our friends, but they disagreed with one another on everything. And none of them were interested in doing that which the fascists and the bankers did, which is to transnationalize, to internationalize, to unite across borders. This is why we created the M25. At first comrades, let me remind you that we invited all of them. We had representatives of Podemos, of the Linke, of the French communists, the Greens, the Social Democrats, the Social Democratic Party in Germany as well as members of the Social Democratic Party in Germany who were sitting on the boards of trade unions like Aigi Metall. We tried to bring them all together to say to them, this is the moment in history when we have to come up with a pan-European manifesto which is the opposite, both of the Troikas and of the fascists. They paid lip service to this. You will recall that six years ago, we did not set up political parties. We invited political parties. We invited trade unions. We invited all sorts of civil society organizations, individuals, people representing their neighborhoods, activists to join us to put together a manifesto for a progressive Europe. We called it the Green New Deal for Europe. They paid lip service to them. A lot of them came around and they all contributed their ideas and we might produced after one, one and a half years of very hard work, a magnificent document, the Green New Deal for Europe and anybody who hasn't read it, take a look at it. It inspires with its radicality and its common sense and its technocratic efficiency all wrapped up in one. But let me also remind those who remember or who knew the process at the time and informed those who don't, that as we were moving towards 2018, a year before the European Parliament election, all those comrades and colleagues of ours from Linke, from Podemos and so on, disappeared. They were not interested in a common agenda. Why? Because they were in disagreement with one another, within their own parties. In Linke they were completely split. Half of them wanted to leave the Europe, the others didn't. They didn't want a common European agenda. Podemos had a policy of not having a policy on Europe which was catastrophic. There isn't a way Podemos is becoming relevant is because they refused to take us up on the offer of providing them with a machinery that was necessary to come up with a Podemos policy on Europe. At that point, we realized that since without a progressive left-wing socialist, green liberal in the good sense of liberal of pro-freedom, liberational agenda for Europe, the left-wing simply disappeared, which is exactly what happened in the European Parliament election. So in the end, at the last moment, we decided, okay, we will throw caution to the wind. And we will run elections. And we created the European Spring together with very small parties around Europe that saw the importance of what we were attempting. And we run in seven, eight countries under the banner of the European Spring. It was a DM25 initiative. In the end, we gathered around one and a half million votes, which is very small in one sense, compared to the size of the European electorate, but on the other hand, it's a major achievement. Think of the fact that we, I think that the total budget we had for running the European Parliament election was something like 60,000 euros, less than what a candidate for a local government election usually spends. We spent that across Europe and we got one and a half million votes. So yes, it's a double-edged sword. It's a glass, which is half full, half empty. It was a failure and a major success once. A month later, we managed to enter with Meta25, our political party here in Greece, Greece's parliament. But the one message, I think, that the last six years is sending to each one of us and to Europeans at large is this. Our policy of constructive disobedience and transnationalism is the only way forward. Transnationalism, you did explain it perfectly. We run in local elections, in regional elections, national elections, in European elections, but we run as one across Europe. We do not have a Greek party and an Italian party and the German party, we have one movement that has parties in order to contest these elections and together whether we are Germans, Slovak, Swedes, Irish, Brits, and we care about Brexit. By the way, small parenthesis here, we fought very hard and very well across Britain against Brexit, but without falling prey to the divisions between the Remainers and Brexiteers. We were the ones, we were the voice of reason in that attempt to stop on the one hand the hard Remainers, the Blairites from portraying Europe as the best thing since sliced bread and of the Brexiteers who wanted to weaponize racism and nativism and Trumpism in the United Kingdom who claimed that the European Union was the worst thing in the world and independent from the European Union, Britain would be the best thing in the world. We run a fantastic campaign across Britain and we played a very unifying role after we lost the referendum. I closed the parenthesis. So transnationalism and constructive disobedience, what does constructive disobedience mean? And this is how I end. Constructive disobedience means to say no to the oligarchy. It means to say no to the Troika. It means to say no to big business, to big tech, to the powers that be in Brussels, in Frankfurt, in Berlin, in Paris, in Athens and so on who are conspiring to keep bailing out the very few by exploiting the very, very many to keep saying no to them, but at the same time to present realistic alternatives to what policies are being introduced. Polices and alternatives that could be introduced tomorrow morning under the existing system, not because we believe that the existing system is reformable but because in order to be able to grab the attention of apolitical people out there who are too desperate and too apathetic to care about politics because politics has been emptied of all meaning for them. The way to grab their attention to say, look, this is what you're worried about. You're about to lose your home, right? Your home is about to be repossessed by some bank.   This is what we could do tomorrow morning. This is what could happen within the existing structures and institutions of the European Union. It could happen. It's legal, they could do it, but they're not doing it because they only do things on behalf of the very, very few. This is how to attract their attention. We're not putting forward these proposals, not even the green new deal for Europe. Did we put forward? Because we believed that the power of our arguments would convince the oligarchy and Brussels and Frankfurt and so on to adopt it. No, we wanted to show what could be done in order to radicalize people by pointing out to them that there is an alternative, astonishingly, there is an alternative which the ruling class, the united ruling class without frontiers in Europe are choosing not to adopt because they only bail out their very own. This is how you radicalize Europeans. So far, we have failed, but we succeeded in existing in being the candle that maintains the fire, that maintains the spark so that when the inevitable reanimation of the crisis comes, it can catch fire. The fire of progress, the fire of rational, radical, rebellious politics that only the M25 can provide across Europe. Thank you, Yannis. Okay, let's open the floor now and take a couple of questions from the chat. Well, the comment first, Huckleberry Palmer says, watching this stuff is my version of church. Thank you for that, Huckleberry. And George Turner has a question for us. Winning reforms is good, says George, but why waste time with elections within oligarchic systems? Juliane, would you like to have a stab at responding to George? Yes, thank you, Michal.  I think that partly Yannis just answered the question, but I think there's a bit to add to it. First of all, it was never in Diem's initial thought to have electoral wings, but I think it comes from the experience that if there is no party anywhere that would take policies that change something, there is also nobody to convince for us as a movement. And there comes a thought that people still need to have a choice in elections to choose the right thing over and over the same thing. And this is, I think, a very important step to take if you see that the other way isn't working. So I think it's an evolutionary step in a way. But also it's totally true that many people, especially those who suffer the most under the system, are not engaged in politics and they don't have the time to engage in movements and parties and so on. So their intention span for politics is mostly active during elections and before elections in the time period of one or two months where they can process what's happening. And if we don't exist in this period, then we don't exist for the people. And this is why it's so important that we are engaging in local elections if we can and if it would make sense for us and if we have the prospect of helping locally with ideas that we have. And I mean, I will talk about it a bit later about also our Meta 25 in Germany and so on. But yeah, this is a part of it. And the last thing I want to add is that it's also about empowering people locally. So there are many examples of little changes that were made through petitions locally. People can change something in their area if they engage together in their community in solidarity. But solidarity is really rare in these times because everyone is so loaded with their own problems. So I think it's also a way for us to be there as an alternative as a party, but also to help people to understand that there are solutions which they can choose and we can offer and which can help them locally or nationally and so on. Thanks, Juliena. Quick question from Joe. Does DM 25 have any plans in Norway? Eric is doing a tour of Scandinavia now but he's just had to go for a member meeting. Johannes, perhaps, would you like to respond? I can quickly jump in. Not very prepared for Norway. I've recently heard of a small exciting party that it's called Rat or Hød that entered parliament there. Nice little example also to look into what other little forces are doing around the continent. For us, I think we had active local groups in Norway before and we would be happy for everyone watching us from Norway to join DM 25, reach out to us, set up a local group, maybe starting in Oslo and then take it from there as we are always doing in DM 25, building from the ground and yeah, volunteer at DM 25.org if someone is in need of help on how to do that. Let's do it. Great, thanks. So Joe, write to volunteer at DM 25.org and we can move it forward. Okay, lots of other questions coming in but we'll come back to them at the end of the next section. Ivana Nenadovic whose birthday it also is today is gonna have a few words to close this section. Go on, Ivana. Thank you and happy anniversary and thank you for the birthday wishes which was one of the reasons why I paid attention when DM was founded on my birthday at the theater and I'm coming from a theater background. And when I read the manifesto, I thought this is like somebody wrote what I always thought and because I'm coming from Serbia, a non-EU country, this gave me a perspective that if potentially by 2025, there were many DM parties in EU parliament, now that would be the EU to join versus dysfunctional European Union that we have now and this transnationality in DM's DNA is something that draw me to it. Since I was there from the beginning, first as a grassroots member from a Belgrade local collective and then I started to navigate my way through DM's organizational and democratic structure. I think that one of the lessons learned that we were talking about at the beginning was that DM was a little bit difficult to navigate when once you enter and you want to get engaged and volunteer. So over the past year, especially, we have simplified the ways that our members can get engaged that can join areas of work that are now well supported and coordinated by the Pan-European team. We have amazing volunteers that are helping us with all of translations to European languages that we use in DM. People like forum moderators, translators, graphic designers, IT team and so on. We are also organizing and supporting campaigns that you can join or you can come up with your own. Some local issue that outrages you and apply for our campaign accelerator, for example, and we would support your campaign. So as our procedures to get engaged are being simplified, we are also being or wanting to be more active on the ground. So I would invite you all to figure out how you can make impact on the ground. What is it that you can do to help us bring the hope and vision with the compassion that DM is offering? Carpe diem. Thanks, Yirvana. Okay, let's move to the next part of this now where we're going to look forward and see what's happening over the coming year and what our goals are now. We'll kick off with Amir Kiyai, our policy coordinator. Go for it, Amir. Thanks so much, Mehran, and quite inspiring already this past hour or so of talks and looking back on where we've come from and how we're going to move forward from here on. And the Transnational Policy Development, of course, is part of our core infrastructure of the movement and it provides the support towards mobilization and also organization of our members and the general public in seeing the systematic alternatives that do exist out there. So we are, in a sense, fighting on a day-to-day basis the notion of there is no alternative. So Tina does not exist according to us, of course. And these policy proposals and policy documents are a composition of stances that are developed from a gross point of view by the members. And of course we have some experts that create the blueprint towards the just and radical transformation of our society. So public has already seen our program on social environmental program Green Deal for Europe as well as our proposals to fight the technological legopily and loss of privacy in our technological sovereignty papers. And adding to this this year will be our policies on migration, peace and international policy, which also deals with disarmament and colonialism, as well as a liberating narrative on our post-capitalist future. So do look out for that hopefully if the war works goes up according to our plans and the thousands of hours of labor taken by a volunteers team and that's always thanks to them that this is all happening. But these are not the only topics that we, of course, are working on as a policy team. These other topics include gender, health, education, arts and culture, et cetera. And to get involved members as a very first step are encouraged to complete the short form and there'll be a link as well coming to you thanks to our David and the rest of the team here. And as Eric mentioned, certain issues hold weight more at the national and regional and municipal levels. And once again, using grassroots-based approach, we've developed the People's Gathering Project and everyone is invited to participate on this platform to imagine and organize new ways of dealing with housing shortages, local service delivery, child welfare issues, student debt and so on. And the outcomes from these gatherings are then used to create national programs and of course they inform the transnational program wherever possible. There's also a link coming for you now. And as Judith mentioned, we're in the midst of deciding our stance on nuclear energy. In fact, tonight after this call, we're hosting an internal meeting and debate on nuclear energy and if it's green as the European Commission believes it to be. And as we determine our stances, it helps pave the way for our campaign team to push for the changes that the movement has made a decision on. And maybe that's a good segue to Dushan, perhaps, Mehran. Great, thank you, Amir. Yes, Dushan Paevich, our campaign coordinator. Go for it. Thank you both. First, let me be clear. Yes, BM has incredible policies but we are not a think tank. Yes, we have electoral wings but we are not a party.  That's why we need you who are listening to this. Our members, our supporters, our comrades to join us in our fight to bring down European oligarchy. We need you to join us in the campaigning. Of course, through digital activism but also on the streets. There are various ways in which you can get involved and we expect you to do that, actually. Ranging from the community work to leafletting and our new concept called DM's activity circle all the way through the local and international campaigning with concrete goals. If you have something that outrages you in your local or national community, reach out to us and we are going to help you to set up a campaign to our campaign accelerator process. In the near future, we will do that with our comrades in Netherlands to form an anti-fascist campaign and with our comrades in Portugal to form anti-green receipts campaign. As you heard twice before, when Amir said that and when Judith said that, when it comes to international and pan-European campaigning we are preparing something big. European Commission wants to claim gas and nuclear as green energy sources and I am deeply against that but we need to hear your voice and your vote. Are we going to campaign just against gas or against both nuclear and gas? That's why we are having a debate on nuclear today after this call with our internal members and next week on our live stream and please join us and then decide through our all member vote. Bottom line, if you are truly an activist who wants to do some grassroots work, join us and help us bring down the oligarchy. We have monthly activist calls first Wednesday of the month and campaigning calls last Wednesday of the month, Wednesday of the month and I truly hope to see you there. Also, let me just send big regards to the members of the team that's behind me, the campaigning team, Amir and Lukas who are already here but also Antonia, Daphne and Mikal. We definitely couldn't have done that without them and without our volunteers who appear on regular calls like Zoya, Hugo, George and many others. Sorry for those who I didn't name, we don't have time for that but we are with you in our hearts. Happy anniversary all and have a happy birthday once again. Thanks, Dushan. Juliana, our German electoral bid and what we're going to be up to. Yes, thank you. So the party in Germany is made up 25 as founded since last November but it actually wasn't the first party in Germany because we already participated in the European elections in 2019 and Jan has already explained that we had the European spring back then but now this is a completely new chapter and of course after three months there is still a foundation that needs to be built. I think we are almost finished that but there are still structures that we need to build and we are welcoming new members every month slowly but surely and I'm very excited because I think the really important news for everyone is that we all see that once people get in contact with us once they see content from us or they meet us on the street, most people are very, very positive. Of course, there's always this question of does it really make sense because small parties and have little chances but I think that with lots of motivation we can convince other people and we can convince also each other and ourselves that there has to be a way where we can start to change something and that's what democracy is for. So if I'm not able to change something in the area I live then there's something wrong with and we know that in DM as well, that's why DM exists is that democracy at this point doesn't work well for the many. And so it's really about getting the power back and empowering people who join the party. This is, I think as a group, we decided that we want this to be our DNA, to be a party about, yes, about having a great program and great policies but not being disconnected from the reason why we exist and from the reason why these policies exist. So now for us, the biggest task is really to get to people who are really tired of politics and who don't believe either in movements or in elections who think we are just doomed to suffer forever. And it's a lot of work that has much more to do with being a human being and understanding that there are ways where we can fight for our own struggle which is also a big part of what we're trying to do with our first campaign, little campaign and not trying with failure in the next weeks. We are trying to really find local issues where we can help also to change something locally with the people that have the issues and not just, as Lucien said, we are not a think thank that just thinks we know better what's good for the people locally but we're really trying to find ways to make it possible for people to join the party to be candidates and to fight for their own struggle. So ideally, we invite everyone to, of course on DM but also to join the electoral structures and to not be scared of it. And we are all professional politicians. What we all want in the party is to really take, to have the foot in the door to be able to show that there are people who care about what's going wrong especially in Germany politically. And this will be a huge task of us is to convince people much more than to build the structures. Of course, we are not very resourceful. We are very small. Also an area where we need a lots of help and also a part why we at some point need to win at small elections is also out of financial reasons to be able to build the party, to be able to include much more people and to build the party that it's democratic and that it's not top down and not just any other party that exists out there who's just led by a few people and the rest is just doing what gets produced top down. And so it's a slow process but hopefully we have a few campaigns that we are preparing this year. And it's really about getting to know people. It's really about spreading the message that Meta 25 is also existing in Germany and that people have a vehicle if they're interested to get active politically. And also for them, there isn't any other party out there that is of interest. I mean, it's safe to say for me still after three or four years after a joint I would still join GM 25. This is still the only option for me out there. And the only organization I believe has the right tools and the right mindset to really change something because I think European identity is something that's missing all over the place in Europe. Many people are very much about their own country very much about their own little universe but we have many common struggles and with the electoral wings we try on pan-European level we're trying to identify the common struggles but we also have different struggles. And this is what we as Meta 25 are doing is to identify also the individual struggles and to bring that all together. And this is what we're trying to explain to people out there and to give them hope. And I can say that I have the feeling that we are reaching that goal already from the reactions of people who get to know us. Also to add, we have good news on the side that we will have a third Meta 25, hopefully very, very soon. We will have an election for a coordination team in Italy. Italy has done a lot of work the past years to build towards having a party. And I think we're very close to the goal and now it's really about wrapping up what comrades have already done amazingly in Italy. And then we have also there an electoral wing and then it's about building up also in Italy. So we, I don't know how many electoral wings we will have in the next few years but I think we'll three now, we have a lot of work and I'm very excited and happy to see new members joining every day and yes, hopefully next year we will have even more news to share. Thanks, Juliana. And for anyone who's confused with the acronyms and buzzwords that are flying around if you're new to all this, Mera 25 is the name of our, what we call our electoral wings. In other words, the electoral structures that become parties as they have in Greece. We've got, well, we will have after the Italian parties founded we will have three in Greece, in Germany and in Italy. And if you are in Germany, especially and like what you hear, looking for a political home and think that this could be it then please get to Mera25.de and sign up if you'd like to be a candidate or be involved in making that party a success. Okay, next we've got David Adler from our sister organization the Progressive International. David are you in India at the moment? I am, it's 11.40 PM and I'm tuning in and I'm delighted to be here in part because as you will remember as Luis will remember in particular I think my first assignment for DM 25 was writing up accomplishments and prospects at our two-year anniversary. So it feels relevant to be tuning in four years later on this momentous occasion and I celebrate you all in all the parts of the continent and beyond for the many accomplishments in the electoral wings and in building the movement and seeing the Green New Deal for Europe flourish. It was of course not long after the celebration of that two-year anniversary that Yanis and I found ourselves in the bitter cold of a November night in Vermont huddling up and thinking together about how in the world we were going to move from the ambition of organizing a transnational movement a transnational party to building a global movement and a global infrastructure to facilitate transformation democratization at the global scale. And yet in the time since in those three and a half years we've seen the Progressive International flourish alongside DM 25 moving from just a crazy idea to over 120 members representing over 200 million people around the world with a tremendous advisory council of 80 intellectuals, political figures, representatives, trade unionists who represent incredible movements and parties, trade unions across all continents around the world. I think we've done so many exciting things together in the past whether that's defending Julian Assange whether that's launching shared delegations to observe a horrendous political persecution in Erdogan's Turkey to ensuring a free and fair elections across Latin America. And it's that work that we're taking into this new year 2022 together where we have a lot of exciting work between DM 25 and the Progressive International campaigns that will be rolling out in the coming days and weeks that I wanna get ahead of ourselves but campaigns that are deeply relevant to some of the core priorities in DM 25 whether that's defending the rights of refugees and ending the genocide on the Mediterranean to ensuring that these issues of democratization and authoritarianism inside the European Union are confronted head on, not solely from inside the Brussels bubble but people across the continent with the support of so many millions around the world. So I feel very lucky and fortunate myself and very proud of what we've built together. We're very excited about what DM represents around the world, and part of my capacity working as general coordinator of the PI, I have a chance to be here in India and other places around the world where I get asked really often about what is DM and how they can learn from this really innovative transnational movement. So many of these actors we work with have deep experience organizing at local levels at national, at state levels at national levels but there's deep in experience and a kind of fear of what it might mean to go beyond the nation state, to think courageously, to build the kind of internationalist vision and plan of action that comes so naturally to this incredible group here in the CC and all the people who are watching on our live stream. So I think I'm here to transmit the admiration and the hope of so many people around the world who looked at DM as an example of what it might mean to break free from traditional shackles of political organizing and think beyond the nation state, the scale at which we confront our crises but also to express them from a personal capacity and on behalf of the progressive international a real excitement about the work that we can do that we need to do. Not only in Europe in the shared campaigns that we're planning to launch in the coming weeks and days but also the importance of your solidarities and DM's courage and standing up for the causes that are important to our members, our partners, our allies and friends in the global south for whom your tweets and statements, banners and marches are really critical and mean a lot in their daily lives and as well to the struggles that are important in their parliaments and on their streets. So with that, I thank you personally. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have worked with you all not only inside DM 25 but as a sister organization, as Mary mentioned and express my profound enthusiasm and excitement for the days and weeks ahead when I think we'll be rolling out stuff that is exciting for all DM 25 members and a real opportunity to get even more involved in the work of the PI as friends and members of both of these sister organizations. So congratulations on the sixth anniversary and carbidium. Thanks, David. And if you're interested in the Progressive International check it out, progressive.international is the website address. Let's take some questions from the chat now. Arctic Taz has a question. I love the idea that art can be an important part of activism but how do you do art that is radically democratic? Who would like to speak to this question perhaps someone who's connected to DM voice or meta to talk about how DM 25 merges art and activism? Perhaps, no, shall I start calling on people, Maya? Would you like to speak about that? Yes, I would happily speak a little bit. I'll be short. Well, a good thing that happened when we met when we had this coordinating met in Athens with the meta team is that we decided in a way because DM voice was in a way, we can say art and culture program that focused on bringing arts and politics together. And we had a show called DM voice which has been running now for I think a year. I'm not a good, but kids can maybe tell me if it was longer than a year. And we had a lot of interesting guests. And now our vision is that meta would be in a way as all the other things in DM, it would be transnational. So we would have a program concerning arts and cultures in a way, artivism as we like to call it, which would of course have their own little, as we can say, the parties will have parts of it in the countries, but at the end, it will be a thing that will be, I can say, international. And during the next few months, we will do a merging of meta and voice. We will introduce a new show, which will be at the end of this month for the beginning of the next month, where we will talk more about it. We will have a lot of interesting programs, of course. And maybe about meta, maybe kid can say something more about the whole project, no? Okay, well, I think this can be enough for the beginning, but we will talk a little bit more on our first meta show, which will be on, and you will of course all be informed about it. Thanks, Maya. Another question, even if DM gets in office, the system has perfected the art of neutralization. Why not focus on direct action, strikes, building existing alternatives? I think that's what we're doing, but perhaps Dushan, you want to take this campaign coordinator. Absolutely. Yeah, the thing is that we see electoral wings only as one of our tools. It's not the tool that we are using. We will do all of the other actions that you expect from us and we expect from our members. So civil disobedience, direct action, people's assemblies, pressure campaigns, and electoral fight. One doesn't go without the other. Of course, for that we need members, as I said in my speech before. So if you are willing to do such actions, please join us and directly contact me and we will think of something. We are in the process of really developing our strategy and tactics for effective activism. That counts civil disobedience and that counts pressure campaign as well. We are closely collaborating between movement part of our movement of the M25 and our Wings Mera 25s. So we are in some kind of synergy going to produce the best result we can get. Thank you, Dushan. I hope that answered your question. Ooh, okay, this is a bit, this one's a bit technical, but why not? Let's go there. It's our birthday. Scordo, does DM 25 embrace MMT as an economic theoretical frame to support its political proposals? It's a reference there to modern monetary theory, a controversial school of thought. I can't think of anyone better than Yanis to answer this. Perhaps you'd like to take a stab at it. Happy layman. My answer to our friend is I consider myself to be MMT friendly. If you know what that means, it means that I sympathize a lot with some of their understanding of money, which has the same understanding of money, but MMT is very American centric and it can't be anything other than American centric. Your concerns only comes where you have the exorbitant privilege of the American dollar, which you can print without any concern regarding bankruptcy. I come from a place, Europe, where we have given up on our central banks and we have a central bank in Frankfurt that has absolutely no correspondence with any state. There's no such thing as a Eurozone in the state. So to answer a technical question politically and philosophically, we have eclectic. We take the best from Karl Marx, from Keynes, from MMT. We even borrow some of the good ideas of libertarians like Haggag and we press all these ideas into the service of the many. Thanks, Yanis. Okay, let me hand it over to Johannes, who wanted to say a couple of quick words, Johannes. Yes, very quickly wanted to remind us all of the beginning of this call, where our members voiced their hopes and thoughts for what's to come for the M25 and 2022. And to remind everyone that you can also become a member like one of those members and fight for our goals together. For example, Michaela was mentioning that the fight for the rights so hard won by the older generations should now be taken on by the younger generation. Ismael was speaking about democracy in the workplaces. David about decent housing and workers rights. Valeria was speaking about the systemic solution to bring all these things together in one big proposal, which Diem was always also about to not think about one single issues, although of course we care very much, but to bring them together in one common program. And then finally Gabrielle, who was wishing that we were going to be more rebellious every day and Federico who was saying that we should come face to face with our opponents. I think those were some really inspiring messages and those members have joined Diem25 as so can you on Diem25.org slash join. And also our movement is completely funded by our members and small donations from everyone. So also a small donation can make a difference. Diem25.org slash donate. It is sometimes we have to remind everyone since money is very important also to bring forward our causes. And it would be even helpful, very helpful for us if someone can chip in like a five-year-old donation a month, it already brings us forward a lot. Thank you. Thank you, Johannes.  These calls normally last now we've gone over because it's a special birthday call. But yeah, floor is yours. Well, thanks, Marilyn. Thank you for sharing so brilliantly, not just this meeting but all the other, the previous ones. A big thanks to everybody watching, to our members, to our activists, to our organizers over the years. The task has been enormous and you have been magnificent in pursuing it. I will also, like Johannes, encourage those who think that what Diem25 is striving for matters to contribute, to contribute their work, their ideas, but also financially because we are a movement that accepts euros, dollars, cents and so on from none of the enemies of the majority, from the oligarchs. It's only from our members. So, please join in and have some fun with us because it's been fun. It's been hard, but it's been fun over the last six years. Now, Marilyn, let me wrap up by reminding everyone of the slogan with which we launched six years ago tonight, Diem25. You will call the slogan was Europe will either be democratized or it will disintegrate. Democracy for us was important because it has been so depleted as a meaning, as a word. The whole point about democracy is a government by the poor because the poor are the majority and we've had exactly the opposite. We've had oligarchy with periodic elections. So when we were talking about democracy, we're not doing it in the way that Joe Biden does in the way that from the lion or Mangel America or Mario Draghi does, we meant democracy as a radical project, a radical project that has never, ever been realized and which is furthest away than almost ever at the moment. Europe was in the clasps of a major crisis of its own making, of its own ruling class, a crisis that continues to this very day, worsening and manifesting itself in a variety of ways. The pandemic is going to be a footnote in the history of Europe, folks. It's going to be forgotten, but the crisis that gave rise to Diem25 is continuing and will continue to continue. Our new manifesto, which is in the making, must have a different slogan. The one that the CCA is proposing is that Europe will be democratized once its oligarchy is overthrown. It's already disintegrated. We can see that. We used to have a North-South divide. Now we have a West-East divide with divisions everywhere within our own countries. The important juxtaposition is between democracy and oligarchy. The oligarchy has been getting stronger. The fact that the left has completely disappeared from the scene, the greens have become brown. Diem25 is here as a candle, but we have not lit up Europe yet. We have not succeeded in doing that. This is the sign of the oligarchy's success, which of course means the success of the bankers on the one hand and the fascists on the other. It's our responsibility has been from day one to forge a transnational alliance across Europe and beyond the progressive international that can potentially overthrow the oligarchy. So to democratize Europe, we have to overthrow the oligarchy. The crisis is a crisis of the oligarchy, which the oligarchy weaponizes in order to enhance its own power, extractive power over nature and over society. The European Central Bank at the moment is the only thing that keeps Europe together. But it is a machine that simply cannot provide European oligarchy capitalism, which I call techno feudalism, doesn't really matter what we call it. It cannot provide it with the demand for the goods and services that it could produce. It cannot provide it with the investment in the things that Europe needs, either green energy or good quality jobs. It is simply a continent that is falling behind China. It is falling behind the United States. The crisis that gave rise to the M25 don't let anyone tell you that it is subsiding. It is getting worse. And the result is a combination of post-democracy and post-fascist. But I think that Italy is a fantastic example. Look at Italy. Italy has a prime minister that is simultaneously the most popular prime minister in the history of Italy. And somebody who if he stood as prime minister tomorrow would not be elected. This is a contradiction that captures the meaning of post-democracy. In Germany we have a new government that is already unpopular. Angela Merkel at least was a leader with a certain degree of authority. Europe is completely leaderless. The only thing that leads Europe now is the interest of an oligarchy whose interests are in complete opposition to the viability of the European Union, to the viability of European markets, European societies, European communities. This is what we need to do. Now, a green new deal for Europe was indeed a fantastic program of transition. It was not safe Europe. It would be a stepping stone towards a progressive agenda towards post-capitalism. We already live in post-capitalist times. This is what we have now is really not capitalism. It depends on state money, European central bank money, and on platforms that have taken over the markets like Amazon and so on, Deliveroo and precarious and all that. So we are already in post-capitalism. The question is, can we present the world with two projects, two plans? One, what we are striving for. What kind of decentralized post-capitalist cooperative participatory economies we want, because without democratizing the economic realm, the workplace, there will be no democracy. And a second plan for how to get there. The green new deal is a plan for getting there. It is not a plan for saving capitalism so that we can have more capitalist crisis like the ones that have jeopardized society and nature. Now, to do this, Dm25 is going to be very flexible. You can see that in countries like the United Kingdom, we're not setting up a political party, but Dm25 is bringing together progressives from within the Labour Party, the ones who survive this awful leadership of Keir Starmer, with Labour members that left the party, people who were never in the Labour Party, the Green Party, socialists, ecologists, feminists and so on. We are doing a remarkable job, and Julia mentioned before the Save the National Health Service campaign, where we need to operate as a movement, we shall operate only as a movement, like in the United Kingdom. In other places like Germany, Greece, Italy, we are setting up political parties. In Greece, we are very advanced in this. In Germany, we are advanced. In Italy, we're getting there. These are the different tools within our toolkit for creating a agenda, both for the transition, the Green New Deal, and where the transition must lead to a kind of, let me put it this way, a liberal, in the good sense of the word, liberal, in the sense of freedom, combining freedom with sustainability, a green, high investment in technologies that liberate and not simply are used for the purposes of creating very, very rich people that are paying everybody else, a kind of liberal, green socialism, communism, we call it what you make. This must be our plan. We haven't developed it. We have developed the Green New Deal. We need to develop a plan for a seriously progressive, radical, rebellious post-capitalism. And remember comrades, traditional parties of the left, the ones that exist today, traditional green parties, especially the ones within government in Germany, limit themselves to tampering with the prevailing oligarchic system. We're saying, we'll make some improvements here and some improvements there. We'll give a little bit more money to pensioners than here, a little bit more money to the national health service. But these formerly radical parties, because they used to be radical parties, even the German greens wear a radical party once upon a time, they're no longer. Today these parties make a virtue of avoiding grand visions, like the one that I just referred to, the idea of a progressive democratized economic space post-capitalism. And they're concentrating instead on providing, of proving, of offering themselves to the oligarchy as better managers of the oligarchy. And before they get into government, you know what they need to do. They need to convince the oligarchy that there are no threats to the oligarchy. DM25, we are not in this business. We are going to be the nightmare of the oligarchy. So copy DM. Thank you, Yanis. And if you'd like to join us and be part of the nightmare of the oligarchy, join us to be part of a nightmare. That doesn't sound great. Let's refrain. If you'd like to join us. It sounds pretty good to me. Anything that gives the oligarchy and the fascists a nightmare, it's a dream. It's a dream for humanity. Okay, if you'd like to join us and be part of the nightmare and the other side of the coin. The dream, please join us. It's DM25.org is the address. And once again, as Johannes and Yanis said, we're not in the pocket of a shadowy group of oligarchs. We answer to no one but our members who fund us 100%. We're 100% funded by small donors, people giving us five euros a month and upwards. So if you can't get involved, then please help us that way. It goes a long way. And the address in that case is DM25.org slash donate. So we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us. You guys out there and for all your comments and questions. The next call will be on the 15th. So that's next Tuesday. We'll be back to our Tuesday evening schedule at 6pm CET, where we'll be talking about nuclear energy. Until then, take care.


So we had a nano-technology conference and hi, so who are you? Hi, so thank you very much for giving possibility to make this interview. So I am Professor Tiber Yonik from Komenius University in Bragistola. And for this year, by the way, we celebrate 100 years of Komenius University, which was established in 1999. My background is physics and more specifically biophysics. So I finish Moscow, Lubanosev State University and also doing PhD and Doctor of Science there. Currently I am professor at Department of Nuclear Physics and Biophysics at Komenius University. And my current primary interest are biosensors for medical purposes, medical diagnostics, and also for food quality and safety. So what can be maybe interesting for the people is application of biosensors in medical diagnostics, like we are using the specific receptors which are called DNA aptamers, which are single-stranded DNA, which can recognize specific cancer markers at the cancer cells, for example in leukemic cells or in breast cancer cells. And we attach these aptamers to the surface of the electrodes and can recognize by these aptamers the cells in the blood, for example leukemic cells. So in this case it is possible to apply this technology for early diagnostic of the cancers, which is always a big problem, especially for diagnostic of leukemia or breast cancer. So what is the aptamers? The aptamers are artificial nucleic acid, also they are called artificial antibodies. Like artificial antibodies. But in contrast with antibodies which are usually isolated from the animals, the aptamers can be selected by specific chemistry process in the laboratory. So they need not animals and they can be selected in principle against any compounds, for example toxic materials, proteins, cells, etc. So it is quite a new direction in the science which has been started in 1989, but the biosensor technology started actually in 2004-2005. So there was a first biosensors which appears and now this technology is widespread very rapidly, especially for biosensing purpose and also for so-called targeted drug delivery. Especially for treatment of the cancer it is important that the drug, for example some hemotherapeutic drug, is delivered directly to the cancer cells. And for this purpose it should be encapsulated in some nanoparticles, but these nanoparticles can recognize the cancer cells. And for this purpose the aptamers are the perfect object, because if we cover the nanoparticle by aptamers specific to some cancer markers, aptamers can recognize the cancer cells and go inside with these nanoparticles into the cell cytoplasm, which are degraded then, and the chemotherapeutics is released from the nanoparticle and can make direct effect on the cancer cells. So this is new direction. So it's possible to design the aptamer to find only the specific cancer cells? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And this is established science? This is established science. It works very well in laboratory conditions. There start to be some trials on animals. And there is even already the aptamer, the name is macogen, which is used for treatment some problems with eye diseases, like a growing of the vessels in the eye, which cause big problems in the vision. So this is mushroom, macogen is already in the market and it use for treatment of some problems with growing the vessels. So you mentioned 1989, you mentioned just before, were you involved with all this DNA stuff since when? Yes, we started just in 2003, we started with aptamers and we started, it was just first work, focused on using aptamers in biosensors. So it was among the first who developed electrochemical and acoustic biosensor using aptamers for detection of thrombin. So thrombin is very important protease which is in the blood and it is responsible for cleavage of fibrinogen and to form fibrin clots. But if the activity of thrombin, of the concentration is very high, then this is making big problems and thrombosis appear. So it is important to detect the thrombin. So we start with the thrombin detection, then we use the aptamers for example for detection of the prions, proteins, then toxins for example, some mycotoxin in the food. So there is many, many directions which is now using, there is now like an explosion of the papers focusing on using aptamers in biosensing purposes. Were you involved with the DNA sequencing stuff? Is this related? So currently there exist some companies which select aptamers or also there is some groups in the world which select aptamers against different compounds. So in principle you can order aptamers for any drugs you would like or any compounds you would like. So for us it is important to have the sequence and having this sequence you can order these aptamers just for synthesis. There is many companies who synthesize oligonucleotides. What is also possible and what is important is that you should modify these aptamers by some chemical compounds first for making the stability of these aptamers because as soon as aptamers is going in the body, in the blood it is destroyed by endonucleases. But if this is modified by some chemical compounds, for example this can be like amino groups or this can be some thiogrups, this table. Also for detection it is necessary to use some modification. For example if you use electrical sensors you need to modify by some electrically sensitive markers. Whatever you use for example optical detection there should be some specific label which has fluorescence or absorption properties. So this is the interesting direction in the science which is presented particularly also in this conference. So what is the status? There was a lot of talk about DNA sequencing like 20 years ago, 10 years ago. Since when are you involved in this stuff? Is it DNA stuff, everything you talk about? So look, there are two separate topics. One is using these aptamers for diagnostic. Second one is using DNA for making some prognosis of diseases. So as you know the genome project started really about 20 years ago. Now there is a nice technology that in principle each person can have their personal genetic maps which give possibility to predict what DCS is this person can receive and what he should avoid or she should avoid. So it is quite interesting topic which I think has a very nice future because it is so called personalism medicine connected directly with genomic structure and information which is included in DNA. So how far are we from having these cancer treatments that just work? I believe that at this moment mostly there is trials on the animals but I believe that very soon maybe 3-4 years we will have this technology in clinical trials and in direct using. At this moment there is nanoparticles which are used for example magnetic nanoparticles but we are covering by aptamers maybe with antibodies but this is aptamers I think there is a good future for this maybe 3-4 years we will have this technology. And here you had a presentation today? Yes, the second direction of our research is a relation between the academician industry focused on detection of activity of proteins in the milk in general. So I am coordinator of a European project which is the name is Four Milk. And this project is conducting in framework of so called rice coal. This means research and innovation stuff exchange which is supported by the Horizon 2020 program of European Union which is very interesting program which is focused on close collaboration between academia and industry in some practical applications and also on stuff exchange between academic and between industrial partners. So this project is focused on detection of two proteases. One is the plasmin and second is lactase. The plasmin is very important protease which is in milk. This is protein which cleave the caseins. So this is the picture. So this is the typical example of the biosensor. So we have the short peptides at the surface of the gold. And this short peptide has specific cleavage site for the plasmin. So if the plasmin is added, the short peptide is removed and this is observed like decrease of the signal which comes from the ferrocene. This is the specific electrochemical markers. But first let me know a little bit about the plasmin. So plasmin is in the milk and it is quite a complicated system of activation and deactivation of the plasmin. But if the plasmin is very active, then it cleave the casein which is most important proteins in the milk and the plasmin and casein can be observed like the most observed components in the milk. So if the plasmin is very active, the activity is very high, then the plasmin cleave the casein for the short parts and this makes the milk bitter or even cause gallation of the milk which is not desirable for milk producer. But is it okay for cheese? But it's okay for cheese because this can give some specific taste to the cheese. So currently doesn't exist some standard procedure in the milk industry for detection plasmin in the milk. There exist some methods like chromatography for example, but they are very costly and need very specifically educated stuff. So there is necessary to develop some easy method for detection plasmin which can be used for example by small milk dairy companies which can detect the plasmin in daily. So every milk producer needs this, right? Every one. It seems that yes because for example we collaborate we collaborate with some small milk companies so this is another possibility how to detect plasmin using acoustic sensors. So for example in this case the short peptides is immobilized on quartz crystal transducer and cleavage of the plasmin resulted in changes of the resonant frequency of this transducer. So this means if we remove the short peptides by plasmin which cleavage these short peptides then there is decreasing of the mass of the sensing layer and this goes also in increasing of the frequency of oscillations. So it's a very simple approach which can be used directly in milk industry and so we have collaboration with Milk Institute in Hungary together with which we developed the exact method how to now very easily and precisely detect the plasmin. So it's a big deal if you can make it work. Yes. It can change a lot for the dairy industry. Yes, yes, yes. And this is some more information about this. So in principle we already have several publications about this using various methods. So we approve this in laboratory conditions. We also approve this using standard tests like Elyse and it works very well. So now we developed the method how to extract the plasmin from the milk with almost 97% success and it quite works. So now we are in first year of the project. In this project there is several groups. Totally there is 10 partners which working together on this project there is partners from academic field like Restart Center of Natural Science in Budapest, Hungary. There is University College Dublin, Comenius University. We are the coordinators. And then there is two universities in Canada and the United States. So in Toronto University there is a nice laboratory of Professor Mike Thompson who is pitch focus on acoustic sensors. And then there is a nice laboratory for electrochemistry of Professor Joe Wang in University of California, San Diego. And there is excellent Oak Ridge National Laboratory Center for Nanotechnology which help a lot for education of our students and researchers in new nanotechnology methods. And there are companies. There is a small company in Bratislava, Povertec which is focus on construction of small devices for detection of the plasmin using electrochemical methods. Then there is a company in Motion Magyarovar which is focus on the testing of the milk samples and also on education of the people, especially students in the milk, which is making the standard methods of determination of some compounds in the milk. There is also two companies in Ireland. One is focus on development of high-precision ultrasonic spectroscopy for detection proteins in the milk, especially it is focus on detection activity of lactase. So lactase is the enzyme which cleaves lactose. And it is very important because at this moment about 70% of the population is intolerant to lactose which make serious health problems. So it is necessary to find the methods how to prepare lactose-free products, lactose-free milk, like how to optimize this process. And this company is involved in this research. Together with UCD in Dublin. There is also an industrial partner from Dublin. The name is CrossCare. CrossCare is a company which produces lactose-free milk and lactose-free products for infants. And this is directly involved in this project. So we know exactly thanks to this relation between industry and academia. We know what industry needs and industry take from us some new technology like biosensor technology like technical equipment for analysis of the milk in much faster way than this is doing by standard methods. So many students working on this. Yes, yes, many students are involved. So mostly there are PhD students which can participate on these secondments, on these visits. And many young researchers. And this is nanotechnology? So in principle it is nanotechnology because for example by fabrication of the sensor for example plasmin, you need to attach short proteins or cousin on the surface. And it is interesting that you can use various nano-fabrication of the surfaces. For example you can use graphene oxide. You can use for example some dendrimers in order to make the surface much more stable, much more reliable for detection. So nanotechnology is in fabrication of surfaces and the mobilization of some molecules. Alright, thanks a lot. So I guess we could talk a lot about all kinds of stuff with nanotechnology. But thanks for this discussion. Thank you very much Nicolet.