Hello, hello, and welcome to another coordinating call of the M25, the movement for Europe, featuring progressive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Merron Khalili, and today we're discussing France, we're continuing our series of sessions of discussing any one country so we can talk about political state of play in that country and what the M25 could potentially do there. We'll start with Janice to set the scene and then we'll hand over for some interventions from our colleagues from the M25 in France and you out there if you've got anything to say any comments any questions for anyone that you see in tonight's call, then please put them in the YouTube chat and we may be reading them out between the interventions or try to keep our interventions reasonably short and let's kick it off over to you Janice. Thank you, Merron. Welcome to this CC call. It's a very difficult task to sum up such a large and significant countries political scene in such a short space of time. So what I will do is I will just concentrate on our experiences the M25 from 2016 when we set up the M25. It was always clear to us that France had to be a frontline state. The Troika that was doing so much damage in Greece. It was clear to me and I didn't need to even interpret it on my own. The German finance minister told me so. The Troika and Troi were causing a massive humanitarian crisis in Greece to send a message to Paris that you folks cannot have the Deutsche Mark as he called the Euro. He called the Euro, not me. While having national sovereignty, deciding what you're going to do with your budget. So France was always going to be central to what the aim is about. And we tried very hard. We reached a point where we exhausted all possibilities, every single possibility for an alliance with progressives in France. Let me remind those of you who don't know or who do know about you forgotten and inform those of you who don't know that we had countless meeting with the French Greens, with Mélenchon's party, many very fraternal and loving meetings with the French Communist Party, with various movements. In the end, we ended up having an alliance with Benoît Amon's Generation. Because they were the only ones who were in the end capable and interested in sitting around the table and coming up with a common program with DiEM25. I won't say more about that, you know exactly what happened. It was an interesting relationship, it was a difficult relationship. But unfortunately, Généracion imploded as a result of having failed to make the mark in the European Parliament elections. Ever since we had that first encounter with the ballot box in France, as DiEM25, as the European Spring, with Généracion, working as closely together as we could with anyone who would work with us, anyone who wanted a pan-European, transnational European Green Union, because the rest didn't. And that includes the French, right? We were far more interested in being bureaucratically and institutionally linked with the German Greens, that they were interested in having a Green New Deal that made sense even to them. I know this is a very strong statement to make, but I think it's an accurate statement. The result, of course, was that the two authoritarianisms, on the one hand the authoritarianism of Emmanuel Macron, of the radical center and of Le Pen, of the neo-fascists, win when progressives are failing to put together a common program and a common front. Tragically, after the European Parliament elections in 2019, our own organization imploded. Some comrades were very keen to maintain the link with Généracion. Généracion were imploding anyway. Others were far more interested in the internal processes of DiEM25, and they expended huge quantities of money, huge quantities of energy in fighting regarding the precise manner in which we do stuff in DiEM25. The fact that in the end the movement decided to have a very open system of internal governance where anyone could come up with DiEM members assembly in order to change everything with DiEM, even though we did come up with that process, in the end those who were fighting the internal wars didn't use it, and they went to ground. So it's clear to me that, like the rest of Europe, but much more pressingly in the case of France, if you look at the situation now where you've got Macron trying to encircle Le Pen from the right, by attacking some mythical alliance between Islamists and the left. Le Pen presenting herself more of a centrist, the Republicans trying to mind their own shop. The socialist and various other socialist groupings simply caring about their own jobs. The Greens having absolutely nothing to say about anything that is of significance, except that they want to get elected and they want to be together with the German Greens who are, or the liberals, deep down. And not particularly green these days. This is my conclusion. DiEM 25 has never been more necessary and at the same time never have we been so weak in a country as significant as France. As the CC, the Coordinated Collective, the only thing we care about is to enable you to take a lead in France and to do things. And to come up with a narrative about France, which is consistent with our manifesto, with our policies, with our Green New Deal, with the document that we recently approved of what Europe must do in the 2020s. We're here to support you. We're here to listen to you as to what needs to be done, what you can do and how we can help you do it in France. We have to build from scratch, but that's fine. DiEM 25 is a young movement. We've done a lot. And in the end, all that matters is, do we still believe that we have the right idea about France and Europe? I do. I believe that. We are all ears. Thanks, Janis. Let's hand it over to Laura. Hi, everyone. I'm really glad to be here with you. There are obviously a lot of things to say, but I will focus on maybe what irritates me the most actually nowadays in France and with the coming election. A few things are, I agree with Janis, some other less, but maybe I don't know the people too much to be able to talk about them. But for me, the main issue is the left being unable to unite, of course. We have a lot of left parties and they are really disappointing and it's really outrageous how in this situation, they're really only thinking about themselves and it's actually stupid because without uniting, there is no way they can actually win something and even pass the first round. So for me, it's maybe the first problem. I have another issue that really irritates me a lot and I think is a deep problem that we cannot solve quite easily. It's that way of voting useful, which means that according to some polls and some people voting for the one that might maybe have more chance to pass, they actually don't vote for the real mind. So we end up with some votes that it's actually undemocratic and we don't know what people really think. It's for me it's a big issue. And on what we can do, well, I have actually now two, I'm struggling with two options personally on what I am going to do. Either I play by the book and I do have to vote for someone on the next election, even though with that behavior, I really don't want to vote for any of them, but if I want to be consistent and think of a program that is the most Well, for me, the Green Party, at least the Green transition that they are holding for a few decades now is really the cornerstone of all other struggles. And in France in the last municipal elections, they had a lot of weight, they've been elected in really big cities. So it's, I think it's a message that people can hear that we have to do this big change and the Green Party is really the one we can refer to on that. For me, it makes sense to say it's the main priority, let's vote Green. That's if I'm being quite optimistic, if I'm being more realistic, I think that none of the left parties can be really past the first round if they don't unite. So I have, I'm thinking of a more disobedient action, collective action. I'm kind of dreaming that all the left voters would go vote for the first round with their own ticket saying Union of the Left and leaving behind all the other left parties. And I think it could give a big message on what what the people really stands for and what we can actually do. But maybe it's only a dream. And that's it for what I wanted to say. Thank you Laura seems we have a debate already. Hello. I guess in some ways, I would agree with Laura. I'm not from France I'm from Turkey but I've been living here for quite a while now so. So, like, if you ask how I see things. Of course, as Laura said there is the on unity problem I mean it's not like in Italy or in Germany where there is a lack of a popular firmly anti-Austrian left. This is like there's a bit too much too fragmented and which should not be. This is not in itself a problem but it becomes a problem within the French presidential system. And of course, because the way the party splits from the Socialist Party, Macron's party and the France and Sumi's and the way how the presidential system kind of really forces the parties to have like a standoff if you want. It's a problem. It's a big problem. And there is also sometimes big animosity between the parties and like more partisan, like unnecessary partisanship by some people that I don't understand. Of course, each party's have differing opinions, but not so fundamentally so to explain the animosity that currently exists. In my opinion again. So, what scan DM 25 doing this under these circumstances. I mean, I personally think there's already on the local and national level already enough. I get these parties are already well established. There's already enough tension, so I don't see really what DM, electorally could do anything. I mean, I think he shouldn't. I think it would be very counterproductive. But I also think that because that we see ourselves as a transnational party, it has the freedom most parties, for example, or political organizations wouldn't have is to like pick and choose campaigns around across party lines to support. That agrees with the 25 agenda so that's always good. And also, another thing that's DM 25 can back is coalitions and unity based campaigns which we had lots of coalition building on the local level already between parties which is new which is has given success to the left in the local elections. I think there's a growing appetite for that and also campaigns like the primary popular, which is like a citizen that campaign that is trying to do a citizen's primary to come up with a left candidates because of the frustrations of the parties to unite and to be able to do so themselves. So to really, we have to break this macro in the pan duo. I mean, obviously, and that that can only mathematically just logically be this way. So having said all this for me, it's really imperative for me that the does what it does and engages on a European project, like, because I can most countries in France, left parties, like truly anti-Australian left parties are reluctant to have any kind of ambitions for European elections because their constituencies are mixed, you know, there's the your skeptics, the exit years, those who have renounced completely you and then or those are that are not sufficiently you're a skeptical or that are pro-EU and they all these groups almost exist in all parties. So this is also a source, in my opinion, of growing frustration for those that are more international lists minded that they feel let down by their party. So it is a golden opportunity for DM to really speak to those people that say, okay, like here we have we have a very ambitious economic project, the European economic project. What is what is your party doing? You know, so I think this is a very good opportunity for DM and when more than now with the pandemic. Like when has it become more important for us to have international, I mean, when has people been so aware that we need international cooperation, when have we become so aware as societies that this economic system has, whether we want it or not has connected us all. So I think it's really time to boldly demand an economic project, a European economic project and not shy away from it. And I think this alone, because there's so many frustrated people, if we just really go on that, I think we can have a good future. And we just because not that we should have that the less should have an economic project is just like, we have to have it. I mean, thank you definitely sorry to hurry you, but we've got some other people that we have to get in as well no problem. Next up, Bernard, please try and keep your speech to about three minutes max if you can. Hello, everybody. I introduce myself Bernard Blondin, member of GM 25 for two years. Not very active, I admit. I have some difficulty with info to follow in English. And I am also active in a new well done, a small party with a very good idea, often the same as GM 25. Pierre La Routureau is a leader. He is a reporter for the European budgets. He recently went on a hunger strike for the taxation of financial transaction. In Europe, we support the Green New Deal.  I would not expand in short, we are fighting against neoliberalism, the financial capitalism, the source of all disturbances. We show this fight with other left force, each with a strategy, a poster and not yet a censor rally. While we are a whole show of one thing, whether the force of the left, a political and socialist, in which GM 25 has its place, do not unit and do not present a single candidacy, neoliberalism will continue on its way or ever, even more. I think to the pain. It's their force to the activists that we are, but also to the citizens concerned about their future. That is the ups to pressure so that this union is done. That a single candidacy appraise on a common base of measure, a program which is discussed. It's under this condition that we will win in 2022. This structure exists. It's the popular, the popular primary. We talk about which brings together many movements and party on the left. And since the subject is the purpose, the positioning of GM 25 for the presidential election of 2022 in French, I suggest and submit and submit for your approval. Our movement, GM 25 gets involved more, more strongly in this process of union, and that our activists and sympathies integrate the local committee, which carries these projects. Thank you for it for your attention. Excuse me for the accent. I hope you answered me. Thank you. That was very clear. Thank you, Ben. Now, Julia. Thank you, Miran. Hello. Good evening, everybody. To my French colleagues. Hello there. I'm speaking from the zero six Alps Maritime area, the packet area to give you an idea of location and a couple of things that I'd like observations. I want to make about French system without talking too much about the politics because I am not qualified to speak in such depths as my colleagues. Going back to what Janice was saying at the top of the meeting, when the European elections were on, it was deeply satisfying, despite what happened with the generation, it was deeply satisfying to go out into the public spaces and see the GM 25 logo on those posters. And I think that was an exciting step forward, irrespective of actually what happened. And my adopted, I would like to participate in helping my adopted country in certainly building the membership, the DM 25 membership, which is my interest for attending these meetings. And I would like to make the suggestion in collaboration with the agreement of the UK PNC, that if our French colleagues would like to join in with our very rapidly growing project with the Green New Deal, which is gaining some purchase in the UK. And the people's gathering, which I'm about to launch in the UK with the approval of the CC, if they think that's a good idea, I would invite our French colleagues to sit in on our meetings, come in and join us. Do not be concerned about your language because I'm going to be struggling in a second language as well. And we do have some French speakers on the UK team as well. So I just wanted to take an opportunity of my presence this evening to say if we can work together collaboratively, France is such a strategically important player in the DM movement that it needs to raise its profile. And I think with the Alliance movement that DM 25 is now being its reputation is growing in the UK for its alliance movement. I think if something like it appropriate to the French system could be repeated. I think that we're on the brink of something very big in France and I would like to just push forward with that possible project. So that's, I think I'll stop there. Thanks, Miran. I think you have the message. Thank you. Thanks Julia, Gabrielle. Hi, everyone. Thanks, Miran. And I think I'll go forward with those hopeful, with this hopeful call that Julia just said, with speaking about how much DM is an opportunity in France right now. Because the way I see it, I think DM really brings in a really rigid political landscape, this bottom up opportunity for people to get organized for the progressive left to get organized at the grassroot level to open those spontaneous to meet up to come together around campaigns, whether at the local level or, you know, at the international European level. And this is super relevant to the French context. And here I'll, I'll talk about something that has been talked about a lot, and I'll put my grain of salt in the conversation but I think the yellow vest movement to me the one main thing that I take out of, of what I mean is that people want to get organized people do, and people want to be part of this change and they're just tired of waiting for an outside power to come and and make the change that I want to see. And this is really what DM 25 is meeting the needs of French people and obviously of people in Europe as well. I'm really answering this need. And for example, with people's gatherings to mention this project. You know, DM 25 is here giving a voice to everyone even beyond the DM members membership, giving opportunity for people to come together and talk about, you know, build policies together shape our own policies. And this is super important at the moment and I think this is also what people are waiting for. And lastly, this, this, this bottom up perspective on politics is going against this reactionary politics that the left has taken and has been stuck in for the last decade. And it's instead, you know, it's getting people together to ask the question, what do we want to see instead of what do we rise up against. What do we want to build and what's next for us. So it's kind of rebuilding this utopia that so many people have lost along the way. And I think I'll, I'll stop on these kind of hopeful notes. Thank you. David. Thanks. Thank you for everyone. It was really nice to listen to you talk about the political situation in France. Look, let me be perfectly honest with you. The Greens are not the saviors of Europe, and they never will be not in France, not in Belgium, not in Italy, and most definitely not in Germany. And I'm not speaking just from political and personal experience with this over the last couple of years, especially with European elections. I'm also talking about given the assessment that we've made as the M25 on the political path, not only of the Greens, but of other so called left parties. And for example, I know that in France there are huge amounts of progressive citizen lists are fighting for power at the original level these are groups of people who are tired of the deception of the left of the so called French left. They're tired of the forced economy between the extreme centrists and the far right they're tired of being in a political system that basically and essentially and absolutely does not represent them. Our job I think is to get to those people. And the only way, the only way that I think we'll get to those people is by growing our membership in France going out there into the communities knocking on doors telling them why the M25 ideas are winning ideas and why our ideas actually address and tackle their concerns on the daily on the day to day life that they live. That's the only way that I see of us becoming politically relevant in France. And in order to do this, obviously we need you that are here with us tonight. We need those of you are watching us maybe you live in France. We need all the other members of the M25 in France to get active. And that I think by doing that will you will help us to raise our profile and become the alternative voice that I think so many people in France are desperately crying out for. Remember, these are people looking for a political home. You know, let's provide them with one and they will join us and we will achieve the things that we need to achieve just look what's going on in Greece with Meta, the amount of thousands of people we've captured. Thousands of people that have come on our side now it's we can do this everywhere else it's not just in Greece will do it in Germany and France wherever it needs to happen. Thanks David and the magic URL to join is dm25.org slash join rosemary. I want to ask a question of our French fellow members of the M25 who have spoken. I'm just thinking of Gabrielle's citing of the Gilles Joan as an inspiration. By the way, my French is not very good but I have learned that she's Gilles Joan. So I'm proud of myself on that front. That wasn't extraordinary movement is probably still is an extraordinary movement. But one of the really interesting things is that we weren't told anything about it. It was never reported in our news over in the UK. It was almost as if a message got out to the media. Don't touch this with a barge pill. And indeed we don't hear very much about the extraordinary amounts of activism on the ground in France. There are trade union demos, their meetings and theaters all over France, talking about how can we build that better after college. The Gilles Joan thousands of citizens and millions of citizens actually wrote hundreds of proposals and took them to their local methi that they wanted to see France change in a progressive direction. What we have to ask ourselves is why did not a single left wing party confidently go and and involve themselves commit themselves to that movement. Why did the trade unions come and are about whether they're going to support the Gilles Joan. You know, most of the discussion that we got and when we get it at all is about just how many far right people there are in the Gilles Joan. And yes, of course there are. They will be everywhere because they are everywhere in Europe. But there are a lot of other people as well and there were not movements that really worked with them. So it's all very well saying GM25 is going to do it. But what exactly has GM25 got to offer. I think we have to think this through very carefully. And I think we have to think it through carefully on the basis of being this dual creature is hybrid creature, which is both a movement and potentially a party. Because there's a lot of work for an active movement to do on the ground, actually going and talking to people who want to protest. But who are not active. There is more voter suppression, voter people who don't vote in France than practically any other country and 40% of the sort of manual workers don't vote at all. Quite a lot of citizens in France are not deemed to be citizens, so they can't vote. And another 10% simply don't vote. And there are more and more trade unions where trade union members are not voting. There are more and more elections all over France where people can't be bothered because they don't believe anything is going to happen. And there I mean I think Julia's idea is quite an interesting one of getting English people and French people to compare notes. Because the one thing that we have is an enormous enthusiasm now for Boris Johnson and what he's done for us. And we don't have any people out on the streets. We have absolutely no protest going on. Well I mean I'm probably getting that wrong but we have very very little I'm sure I've heard French people living in the UK say how on earth can you put up with this government and not want to go and demonstrate in the streets. There's a curious difference there that we ought to be discussing because I feel that in the UK we are equally stuck. We're equally stuck with coming up with precisely the kind of leadership, the sort of political party, the sorts of movements that could involve people who have frankly given up. They don't believe in the politicians. And that's the discussion I would like to hear as a hat. Thanks Rosemary and does anyone like to respond to that. And it's also in the chat to opposing views. Bernard's proposal to ask the M25 members in France to support primary popular and David wondering if they're really well, suggesting that there is no space for another political party in France that's willing to do was no start again. I misread it. Do we believe that there is another political party in France right now willing to do what's necessary. I don't think so. So yes there is. Anyone that wants to reply? Yanis. Very briefly. I don't think we are ready to answer the question. But this is a question that we must pose. We've got two major questions to address. One is what kind of campaigns do we want to do in France. Because only through campaigning on the ground, can we gain legitimacy for having an answer or any contribution to the second question, which is what do we do electorally? Whom do we support? In the European Parliament elections, we did not stand on our own. Of course, we are the very small movement and we're even smaller now. To do this, we supported the only party, actually two parties. You're very right Bernard. It was a Nouvelle-Donne as well as the generation. Of course Nouvelle-Donne is tiny, but they were also part of the European Spring. And we supported them because they were willing to sit around the table, not accept our own manifesto, but work with us to come up with the manifesto. So I think that that should be our approach once we have worked out what kind of campaigning we want to do in France. Personally, Bernard, I am in favor of the popular primaries. This would be a wonderful thing to be able to organize and to be part of it. And to have debates before the primaries, not just voting, but also having a debate amongst progressives as to what needs to happen. And that's where DM25 could play a very significant role in those debates. So this is just the first meeting that we're having with DM France. I think it's a very good foundation to start building up towards answering those two fundamental questions. Now I need to apologize because I need to go because I have to be on a BBC debate very, very soon. I'm very stressful and partly boring and disheartening, but I have to do it. It's a dirty job, somebody has to do it. So I have to bid you farewell and I'm very much looking forward to continue this discussion about France very soon. Thanks Janice, good luck in the debate. We've got a couple of comments and questions coming in from the outside. The first is the big logical mistake with uniting the left is that you get one lazy self-interested party plus one lazy self-interested party equals two lazy self-interested parties and not one big great party for the people. Another comment what gives me some hope is that some Green Party politicians around Europe are supporting the Green New Deal described by DM. So that's our Green New Deal for Europe instead of the quote new innovation spheres for the corporations and a question from George Turner, perhaps some colleagues in France might like to answer. Given the inadequacy of so-called leftist parties in France, where have leftist voters directed their energy towards? Is it apathy or a shift to the right or are they still within nominally left parties? Anyone want to take any of these comments to respond to or questions? I know Julia would like to get a word in. Okay, Julia first and then anyone else? It was really just to make another observation as an interloper as a doctored country. I think there's huge scope here in France, given the different structure that we obviously we are familiar with in the UK, the national regional and local municipality in that there's more awareness. Because of the concentration of the population, the demographic around these key cities in France means that people are more aware and they are much more engaged and know how to work with their local municipality bureaucracy. Then I am aware of in the way that people connect in the UK with their local authority and I think DiEM25 has great scope with that working horizontally and with people's knowledge of the political system here. So that was just one observation. And but also the issue related to that is the obligation to connect with the rural communities because along with the concentration across the six or seven major cities in France, there are obviously hundreds and thousands of smaller communities that need to be linked as well. And I do believe in the past that France had a very good weekly Archipel system that tried to connect people obviously online and I think that would be a new incarnation of that would be a good suggestion as well. So again, it's not a I'm not commenting specifically on the political parties in the connection of voting, more the way that we can connect to the membership with each other because I think there is a huge DiEM25 potential across there. And to decide on that campaign as Yanis was saying. Thanks, Miriam. Thank you, Julia. Another comment from Jean. I think a big issue is that most people believe they have no real power and that their voices will not be heard. There need to be small successes that people experience as acts of empowerment. Good point. Anyone want to chime in? Floor is open. Johannes. Yes. Unfortunately, I cannot provide very good answers to voter movements in France someone from the French comrades has to do that. I wanted to say exactly on the quickly on the last point empowerment is a good example we have for example in the 25 a project called campaign accelerator where we empowered people recently also quite successfully in Portugal for example to protect a small piece of land from fencing it off from the public and actually a real impact on the ground, helping the local community to gain that access or regain that access that they should have to their beautiful nature over there. And I think a lot of other things are possible around Europe and we will be working on that. That's why what I wanted to let you know the other just little remark on all those little parties that are maybe coming up or not, you know, we have a little bit of a similar situation in Germany as well where I'm speaking from. One good thing about DM 25 is and I can tell you since I was last weekend on the matter 25 party Congress the first ever in Greece, which was a very inspirational and very good experience to see how much you can build if you put in a lot of hard work and a lot of consistent work continuous work, gathering people trying to make them understand each other, let them work together and build something that we could, I think also after we lay a certain foundation on the ground with movement work first. Because what we in DM provide is if you're, if you're starting a party in France, potentially maybe, then you wouldn't be just a tiny party in France, you would be from the beginning, a little party in France that is part of a European movement and European project. So something quite big. So that's just what I wanted to to let you know in terms of thinking ahead and thinking big maybe thinking about something you topic to change politics in France. Thanks Johannes Judith. Yeah, I think what Johannes just said is so important for us to have these transnational ties and to learn from each other and to visit each other. And because I remember when I got interested, I guess the, the starting point for me that brought me in a direction similar to DM 25 was the Greek crisis 2015.  And so I wrenched out I didn't just be German newspapers. I started reading American ones I started reading French ones I started reading Greek ones once I got enough knowledge of Greek. And it was striking, really, especially comparing German and French ones because my Greek was not immediately that good but at the beginning I was just comparing the headlines in Germany and in France. And it was very often that in Germany, the newspapers had big like headline with a countdown. In the days that they grease must accept the new contract a new, the new treaty, the new conditions. Otherwise they'll be out of the euro and it will be all over and they would constantly every single day, or at least once a week, they were creating this kind of kind of reporting. And I look in the French newspapers online, of course, and there was not a squeak, not a squeak that today was in any way important for for Greece's membership in the euro. And there was something fishy going on that, you know, you cannot, it cannot be a big, big date if France is not even writing about this negotiation and veld has a countdown with like latest updates. So it's, we need this perspective, we need to talk to each other and to convey to each other what is going on, what our media are trying to pretend is going on, and then to compare notes and figure out what is actually going on and how can we best influence the world. Thanks Judith, and being based in Greece I concur with everything you said. I have a question from the chat. See who wants to take it. Another problem I see with the n25 winning ground is basically in basically any country is reliability basically any populist party will discredit DM as anti national as an anti national communist party. How can we counter this. I would like to offer the alternative you, or should we just let that, let that stand. Nobody is everyone just speechless. Anyone. Definitely. You put you go. I don't have an answer to this but I have, I agree with the statement somewhat, but this is why I think it is important to have not only a passing relationship but more access to people. Because trust is a big issue. And I think with the disengagement of people from politics, there are certain trigger issues where people, some people or the majority of working people maybe very present also in the gilet jaune. They've seen as like the they see your skepticism as a emblem of trust. The moment you're talking about a European project yes there is this problem, but I think it's just if we can. I think this is why the pandemic is very good to show people how things are connected and we can't just have national solutions and each nation for itself raised to the bottom won't do anymore, because not because there are any social or idealistic reasons but just for because of very solid material and economic reasons so yes, that would be my answer to that I guess, not really an answer but my two, my two cents. Thank you definitely. Anyone else we've got eight minutes before the the hour is over. Any sort of last comments or thoughts, responses to things you've heard. David. Yeah, thanks. Look, just just a little answer based on that from the question that you just put. I think having confidence confidence in our ideas knowing that our ideas as I said earlier are winning ideas and that they can indeed be ideas that people would agree with if only they knew if only we have the capacity to to reach people in a way that perhaps other political parties with a bigger organization bigger structure do, and obviously more money. I think our that confidence is super important to overcome the kind of propaganda that undoubtedly there would be to discredit them I mean we're talking about politics here so it won't be easy obviously but we need to talk to people even to those people who might disagree with us might not know anything about what we're proposing for for their country or what we're proposing for Europe or what we're proposing for the kind of restructuring of the world governance system that we're talking about is really far away from their reality, but we need to talk to to them you know we need to talk to people and and not be afraid to to have discussions and debates you know that at the end of the day that's the only way. I think we can try to overcome that that propaganda. I think that the person who put the question of being challenged that we were a sort of communist party that was against nationalism. I mean, it did have a core truth to it in that we are up against various kinds of nationalism. I think both some left nationalism. And, of course predominantly right nationalism. And I do think that we've already mentioned the answer as we've discussed things tonight because I do think these small impalments are what we have to offer, not the identification with the strong man, not the identification with you know where the real people and this is our country. And then you get into terrible conflict with everyone else who are not the real people, but enabling people, particularly locally to get things done that they want to do together and enabling them to debate things where they differ without the roof falling in. And I think that if we can be a kind of party and the kind of movement that offers that deeper democracy. And then I think we'll show very quickly that if they want to call it communism. So be it. But actually, we have something to offer that people will will enjoy and will empower them. That's the crux. And we've got a lot of work to do, because most people who are looking for the alternative are in despair, as we've been said, many times. Thank you Rosemary. And since we don't have any other speakers, I think that's a nice point to end on so work will continue on the M25 in France you just witnessing early discussions now will continue the work in that's been mentioned in this call on people's projects, our Green New Deal campaign in France and campaign accelerator of course which is both that and people's gatherings are DM 25 wide projects. So, that's it. See you in two weeks, same time, same place where we will be discussing the refresh of our manifesto, which our membership is currently debating. Thank you.


Okay, cool, so we'll be starting and Hi, my name is Tomak and today I will talk to you about the tips for marathon performance So I'm working at Allegro, which is one of the biggest e-commerce solution in Central Europe and we are located in Poland and we started using Marathon in fall 2014 and This actually is our my first pull request to Marathon When we started using it on a production with the production load So with the couple of years, we've got some insights on a performance issue and I want to share it with you Allegro is built on the top of our big monolith and also we've got switched to microservices currently on our production we have about 500 microservices and Depending on the environment, we've got on 3000 tasks running So first thing when we talk about performance We should talk about metrics without metrics. You are blind and we don't know what happened in our Cluster or in our product So first thing is to enable metrics in Marathon They are not enabled by default because we Marathon don't know where you want to store that metrics Metrics appeared in Marathon in a reversal of 0.13 and from the beginning it started to support All major players in a market. This means they were supporting graphite There's a dog studs D and there's also port to support prometheus there is a github repo with a prometheus adapter cause I don't expose the metrics in a Jason way and prometheus needs some different schema to read Metrics So to enable metrics we need to add Something like this to our configuration By default metrics are gathered by every 10 seconds What does it mean that on a big installation? Metrics gathering could take about 20 percent of your CPU time. This is a flame graph that's was gathered Profiling tour for Java and if you are not familiar with flame graphs Basically here on the bottom there is 100% of your CPU time that application in music and the stack on the flame graph is like a function call and Each call is stuck on the another. So here's a whole stack trace of Metrics gathering because Marathon is written in Scala The flame graph does not look like flame. It's more like a firewall with many small fire bridge So how we can fix this and this problem with the CPU that is taking put that We need to Decrease the or increase metrics gathering interval. So after increasing it to 55 seconds, which is Okay, I hope that will be better So after switching it to 55 seconds Which is more sensible in our infrastructure because our metrics resolution in metric store that we are using currently It's graphite is about one minute. We reduced the metrics gathering time to two percent of the CPU so it is Big deal to have a sensible configuration and do not rely on defaults because they may not work for you If you are interested this part this small block is a mess of native library, you should also monitor that because When there are some problems with lib messos, which is a native binding for messos used by Marathon You could see here the increased CPU time or some memory leaks. So you should monitor that Marathon at the beginning is to use use the cold hail A kadrop wizard metrics, but in 1.4. They switch to come on which is Another metrics solution for scala that is designed for application that are written with actors and more reactive way Why it's important Because the rule of thumb is that you should know dependencies of your system. So in our case once they we change the configuration of load balancer behind before our graphite solution and It turns out that we lost every second metrics And that was because our the drop wizard version used in Marathon has a bug And we need to that was fixed in the next release even minor release and we need to update it and deploy and everything works I'm sorry My company wants me to be very free Okay Next thing as I said Marathon is written in Java So you should and rule of thumb is to Monitor your dependencies and the Java is a big deal in terms of performance. There are many talks about Java performance And I will only show you the tip like a slides tip how to fix the JVM issues first thing in JVM when you heard about Java you should think about garbage collection and To monitor garbage collection in Marathon you need to add this Piece of code that will create the GC log file that contains information about what happened in a garbage in garbage collection when it happened what it What the garbage? collector does and how much memory was moved freed and everything that happened during GC time Once you got the GC log you should parse it or if you have some experience maybe you can see what happened just looking at the Exhibition of it by I recommend using some tools like Samsung and Samsung will print you Pretty nice information what happened and what should be done in order to Get a better performance. So like here. This is an example from our Marathon instance that I take in a summer and We got any information that there is problem with two small heap and premature promotion So the objects were created on a heap once again. Yeah question Ten zoom yeah, I will provide the slides and there is clickable link in here. So So There is hip to small indicator so that means you may increase a heap or change some configuration about promoting the Objects in on a heap so like GC is a big topic. There are dedicated conferences for it. So I will leave it here and Everything depends when we are talking in a heap it depends on your usage and it depends on the hardware that you can provide here the visualisation of the garbage collection times from our Servers so as you can see this is Pretty big time wasted on the garbage collection and it is young to see this means this could be stop the world situation and young garbage collection means that the objects from a young space in a heap are moved to old space and then It's generally not good thing if you move objects from young space to old space and then clean up them in a full GC from From old space Next thing when we are talking about Java is a kaka is a Actor model for a scala and I think it could be used with Java too That is strongly influenced by Erlang The the inspiration is so great. So the when you read the akka documentation you often get Note about that. Oh, this is copied from Erlang. So when we talk about akka and there is Couple of Config change a config that could be changed to get some different behavior. For example, there is a throughput that is a Number of messages that could be read by an actor and processing at one batch by default It's set for for five and if we set it to one this means that each actor will be spawn take one message process it and Will be released and the next actor could proceed so To change this value you need to add this configuration line to your Java code in our production we switch it to increase it four times to get 20 and It was just manual Detection that we see how it looks like it performed better but It really depends on your use case. We are heavily Using the events and that might be our issue was because the events was not dispatched in a proper time because the batches Were too small so you can do it, but check with the metrics if that really helped Third tip is the zookeeper zookeeper is a state store for Marathon And this is a strong consistency key value database so zookeeper is Great store, but it has a problem when we try it even you try to store two big elements so Sometimes in Marathon you could get error like this this means that When you want to deploy a really important app To a production There is a problem with storing an object because in Marathon priority 1.4 Marathon used to store The whole state of an application in one element this means if you have hundreds of applications the note stored in a Zookeeper will have the whole state and when you create a deploy Deploy element was Generated by having a previews and then you Configuration so this means if your whole state takes half of the megabytes The deploy element will take about one megabyte. So this is pretty big. It was fixed in a 1.4 1.4 changed the completely changed the layout of the zookeeper data. So this should not happen but if you get that error in releases priority 1.4 You need to do What is advice here? So increased Maximal node size in our production. We have a double it and What's the problem? because the changing the Marathon configuration is not enough You should also Change the configuration of the zookeeper because if you take a look at the zookeeper documentation And the max buffer which is a buffer for incoming Data must be set on all servers and client and Second thing is that you should keep in mind that the keeper is designed to store data on the order of kilobytes in size So if you are changing this element, you are probably have something wrong in your infrastructure We did this and what happens to us Was that the zookeeper writes take more and more time because when the zookeeper need to negotiate the state The bigger elements takes longer to generate checksum and stuff like this and also they need to be Passed through the network. So this smaller elements are in generally better Yeah, as I said Marathon stores a group only with references So this looks like the better solution But the problem with storing only references in a key value store is that you are creating a Transactions in No-SQL database What does it mean when there is some problem with a zookeeper? For example, one note could not be written to the zookeeper. You've got an outage of the whole Marathon cluster But don't worry. This also happened in a 1.3 12, but less often First thing when we are talking about zookeeper is latency So this is pretty easy if the notes are closer to each other and the network Latency is smaller. They perform faster and the data and the transaction happens quicker so you should keep the Zookeeper notes as close to each other as possible remembering that they should be probably in a different availability zones just in case one zone goes off and They could be they should be stored on a different machines than Marathon and messes because in other ways there will be small latency between the Marathon master and the zookeeper Master data when they are on the same machines, but they will compete on the resources that Because they were on one machine For tip is to update to at least 1.3 point 13 and Here's a little star. I will describe what I mean later First thing threats Marathon code has Two place when they are configuring the threat pools that are using by Marathon. He is first that configure Scala concurrent context, so the actors that are used by Akka So here you can see there only maximal value is 64 threads for the whole actor pool to use The second thing is a number of threads for For For IO operation and it's set to 100 So a little bit of math 64 plus 100 Means that Marathon could spawn up to 2,000 threads Why does it happen? Oh in fact, it's a Big o notation from the number of tasks Why does it happen because when you have an actor and you call a blocking request in that actor Akka will spawn a new thread for you and It cannot be configured to behave differently because that's how the actor model is designed to not block at any time Where I advise you to update to 1.3 13 with a star because there is a patch That isn't It's not that much. I think the 1.3 point seven was patched. So when you deploy it you will get a this is the before we deploy 1.3 point seven and he's after so we still get them more threads than configured because in mind point is Nearly 200 threads, but we are not killing cover machines with thousands of threads Next thing There is something called no no optimization so the fastest code you can possibly write is no code at all And we can rephrase it so the no optimization is the fastest operation you can possibly perform is no person at all So what does it mean? there are health checks health checks in Marathon were introduced from early beginning and in the beginning they were performed by a single Marathon instance and It was working for us until sometime why because the single Marathon instance was querying for every task It has to detect if it's healthy like this or unhealthy and store this value and present them To a user in a nice UI, but what happened when we scale? There is no way to perform health checks from a single instance without taking time outs or Getting some other issues When I said that we Should not perform operation at all. This means that we can move the operation we want to do to some Other so in this case we could ask messos to perform health checks for Marathon The tasks are not running in a void. They are grouped by a messos agents and Every task is running by an executor that could perform health checks for us so when executor perform a health checks It detects if the task is healthy and inform Marathon about this so the when Marathon get notification only when the health check state change and Task is killed not by Marathon, but by the health checks. There will be probes in a probably I think the messos 1.4 There's currently not support by Marathon, but I think they will be supported in 1.5 1.6 So if you read the Gaston-Cleiman blog post he did a Test so it turns out that single Marathon instance He didn't say what instance he spawned Could handle up to nearly 4,000 tasks with TCP health checks and up to 2,000 tasks in HTTP health checks and we were hit by this we've got Over 2,000 tasks on our production cluster and tasks get randomly killed by Marathon because the health checks timeouts so what we did we just Ported Marathon health checks from 1.4 to 1.3 which we are using and switched every task to messos health checks and this solved the problem with the task killed even if they are healthy and also help us with the Marathon issues Here's a comparison because we've got a Marathon 1.3.10 and we've got a problem with health checks So we see that 1.4 introduces messos health checks messos native health checks But after upgrading It was not working for us. So there was constantly timeouts people cannot deploy anything and then we decide to port messos health checks from 1.4 to 1.3.10 and Everything get more stable even than before and the health checks starts passing again What you see here is a problem that was seen That started in a Marathon 1.4. There was an issue for this and finally it gets resolved in 1.4.7 Actually, we haven't still updated yet because we started on a different topics. I will cover later Five tip is to do not use an event bus for Marathon. Marathon provides two ways of getting notification from Marathon so there you can subscribe for a callback. So Marathon will send you a post with an event in JSON and This is the deprecated format but the problem with this was that it sends every event and Even that Some events are pretty big like over 10 megabytes It's deprecated and there is some weird policy of retrying and it was totally resource consuming. So I don't You should not use the callbacks. Instead you should use servers and events Which is working in a quite opposite way So Marathon is no longer sending an events to a client But you are connecting to a Marathon with a persistent connection and Marathon is sending a data on one connection to one client What's more Marathon Support event filtering from 1.3.7 and this means that you can filter out the big events So your application do not to filter them on on their site These are the metrics from our solution to register tasks from Marathon into a console called Marathon console It's fork of a Cisco cloud Marathon console and we used to have a configuration that relies on a callbacks and with callbacks we've got the Seven minutes of delay between a Time stamp that was sourcing the event and the timestamp And the time on a machine when the event was received So in our case this means like a huge outage because the application will respond in seven minutes and killed and they For the seven minutes our state in our config Service discovery solution console was totally invalid. So after switch to a server-scient event with filtering We reduced our Delay to less than 30 seconds. So about milliseconds But still this means that sometimes we have invalid state in a configuration service and this probably is not the best way of registering in a distributed world Another thing I mentioned before that some events has are pretty big like over 10 megabytes Usually there are the deployments event and there is a pull request. I think it's yeah, it's from today So it's still open that will that will use introduce lightweight SSA flags so the events will be smaller without unnecessary information about what have been deployed or stuff like this Six tip is using a custom executor. I will talk about it more tomorrow Why I think it's important because when you see that we've got a five milliseconds delay between Event that the application is created and actually Registering it in a console. This means that the application is created or killed this means and with executor we can Register our application in a configuration service cover solution When it start be healthy for example because executor is the actual thing that is Taking care of Whole application or instance lifecycle and this is the way how the aurora works for example Seventy is to prefer budget deployments instead of many single ones when you create a budget deployment. This means that Each of your users create a Request to a marathon and deploy one application marathon don't like Many deployments at once because it means every each every deployment needs to be stored in the zookeeper and this increase the zookeeper usage So we can use a facade that will gather the deployments into bigger ones and deploy them in a batch This is something that we haven't introduced But we were considering instead of these we start starting our marathon installation That's why the everything I showed you and that's not I don't do not test the latest marathon version because right now we have Sharded marathon so the load of each instance is slower than we have before and how it's how it looks so we just got a facade before marathon and In that facade we are taking care of Authentication and authorization users to deploy something to marathon So in fact, this is the better solution than plugins because plugins work in a single threat and Need to check for every for example when user want to query marathon to see all instances the plug in need to ask if if that particular user heaven Is Authorized to see that application. So with thousands of applications. This starts to be a problem and When there is a sharding we just keep the simple facade and without user noticing it We are moving its instances between different marathon installation using consistent hashing cover application name so That will be all here's a Summary of what we should do. So just enable metrics to see what happened tune JVM and remember to tune JVM also for a zookeeper Using the same tools like you use for marathon. Remember that the zookeeper is has pretty different Responsibilities and works in a different way. So they need a special care will update marathon to 1.14 and Use messes health checks if you can so the best it was you can do right now is to use marathon 1.4 0.7 or 1.5, but I haven't used it and can't really recommend it Do not use the event bus instead of use an executor that will take care of care of application lifecycle Prefer batching when talking to marathon and and sharded if you need it If you take a hit the wall Hit the roof and Martin is no longer working for you. So think about sharding so That's all and if you have any question, we'll be happy to answer Yep, so we are not you no longer using marathon UI. We are using it for the back Purpose and Martin UIs no longer supported by a major sphere and there are no commits on their side and there were there was some movement to update the martin you are but the Initiative died. So we have our custom solution here Where is it's called up engine and when the user can see? It's his own application. They stayed databases that he's using Configure load balancer Caches and stuff like this So yep, the problem is that in our case this facade also take Prepare an API. So the UI is pretty simple. We just ask the facade and all magic and Routing keys done here. Okay. So I think there are no more questions. So Thank you. If you have any more if you got any question, I will be here today and tomorrow and Even on the town hall So, thank you


Piti Uomo 97 wrapped up last Friday. I'm assuming everyone here knows what Piti Uomo is, but if not, it is a menswear trade show that happens in Florence, Italy twice a year. It's known more for classic men's style and tailoring. Over the years it has become the gathering place for well-dressed and stylish gentlemen from all over the world and gained a little bit of a reputation for those attention seekers, also known as the Piti Peacocks. So last year I did a reaction video to some of the Piti Street Style roundups that you see across the internet from various publications and I was considering doing the same thing this year, but instead I've decided to do something a little different and that is to just curate some of my favorite looks that I saw as a spectator from my phone. And one of the reasons I decided to do it this way as opposed to the way I did it last year is that in preparing for this video I started looking online in all the usual places that one would find Street Style Roundups and I started to notice something which honestly totally makes sense. You know, depending on the publication you're reading, you are going to get a particular slant on the Street Style coverage from that event. So Vogue, for example, is going to have more of an eye towards the fashion side of things, GQ, maybe a little more urban and focused on trends. And the conclusion I came to is that this is very much like the coverage of politics. You know, we all have our preferences and our way of thinking and we tend to gravitate towards news outlets that share our point of view. Now if I learned anything from last year's reaction video it's that you all tune in here because we tend to share the same view in general of men's style and I also learned that I did not enjoy being negative about some of the looks that I necessarily didn't like and I also didn't like the negativity that sort of spawned in the comments. So this year as I said I'm going to curate my 10 favorite looks from Pity and tell you what it is that I like about them. Let's get to it. Up first my man Shuhei Nishiguchi.  I love it because it's this perfect mix of dressy and casual and then there's also just this really interesting surprise kind of layered on top of everything that totally works. We're talking about the sweater here. Not only does it totally work but it kind of makes the outfit in my opinion. If you take it away still a good outfit but adding the sweater with the shapes and the colors over the top of a perfectly fine outfit just a brilliant move and it looks so fresh. Here is Jake Muser from Jay Muser Bespoke. I always love Jake's style. He has such an easy kind of casual way that he carries off a suit. It always looks like it's part of him. Never feels affected. It's just very natural and very comfortable. Here I love what he's doing with the earth tones. The kind of dark green herring bone jacket paired with the brown turtleneck. Perfect accessories too. The scarf and pocket square complement the jacket and turtleneck so well. This is exactly how you do it. Definitely have to mention the watch also looks like a day date super classy all around. This is Alessandro Squarzy. Some things in general that I like about his style is the way he combines dressing and casual elements as well as the way he uses vintage pieces in his style. This look is textbook and an absolute masterclass in how to style a statement piece. The big red coat with the awesome plaid in this case and that is to keep the rest of the outfit simple. We've got white jeans, denim shirt, navy cardigan and navy blazer. Just allows the coat to be the focal point of the outfit. Also want to point out the suede tassel loafers here. Really nice touch keeping it casual. Here we've got my buddy Matt Hranek, editor of William Brown Project Magazine and former guest on HSS Live. Underneath he's got a really monochromatic kind of cream thing going on that's broken up and contrasted really nicely by the belted jacket. Belted jackets seem to be a little bit of a theme at pity 97. We'll see if it catches on. Underneath Matt's jacket you can see that he's added in a little bit of pattern and color with the scarf. I love the subtlety of it and how it's just peeking out and then really great coordinated accessories with the tote, sunglasses and suede loafers. Now while I like the look on the left I want to focus on the look to the right. If you know me you know I'm a sucker for brown so obviously I'm digging the monochromatic brown thing here. Not everyone can pull off a beret but this is something that's sort of a hallmark of this guy's style. Great example here of monochromatic done right which is using various different textures throughout the whole look. If you look closely there is a little bit of a pile on the jacket. The collar is contrasting, sweater I believe is cable knit and even the beard adds a little bit of texture into this one. Not a full look here but a great detail shot of pretty much everything you need to see. First obviously the coat is absolutely fantastic. Love the big houndstooth and also the belt is a great touch. Cool pattern mixing too. The suit also houndstooth but small enough that there's a contrast between the two sizes between the coat and the suit. That's kind of pattern mixing 101 and then we have a really great unexpected and muted pop of color with the plum turtleneck. Another great example of how to style a statement piece. So I know I just said that not everyone can pull off a beret but I think this guy does it really well also. It takes this look into a completely other dimension and I love the symmetry and balance it creates between the beret and the suit. Great execution here of pattern and also kind of subtly making a statement. We've got the stripe of the shirt, the check of the tie and the plaid of the scarf. It's all within the same color family but it pops off in such a great way. This looks so simple but there is so much more to it. This is Carl Edwin Gehr better known as at Gehrisms. Dude can really do it all and I love the understated elegance of this look. Love the color palette of the gray and the plum. Again we have the one statement piece being the scarf here doing a great job of kind of focusing your attention up to his face. Great jewelry too. Not everyone can pull that off but it just looks so effortless here and people who ask whether you need to match metals or not you have your answer. Japanese guys do traditional American style just so well. Seeing certain guys do it it almost like kind of unlocks a whole new realm of possibilities and things you never thought of that just seems so perfect. Like here the yellow shirt with the button down collar that's not buttoned. Want to point out the trousers here also which are wider leg. If there were a few trends that I saw wider leg trousers were one of them. These aren't so wide to be eye catching but they're definitely leaning towards that way. And then perfect coordination there with the suede jacket and the leather tote bag. Finally a little bit of a wild card but I really dug this look. Everything about this is just super cool to me with the exception possibly of the fur on the shoes. It's a perfectly executed badass cool casual look. You can never go wrong with the sheepskin bomber. The military theme continued in the pants and the black watch cap and then a really interesting contrast in the pattern of the shirt which I'm assuming is tied off at the bottom unless that's a separate belt or scarf tied there. Hard to tell but really cohesive look and very cool. So those are the 10 looks that caught my eye at the most recent Pity Uomo. Let me know which ones that you guys liked. If you have favorites that you saw leave links to them down below in the comments so everyone can go check them out. Give a thumbs up if you liked this video don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell so you get notified each time we publish a new video. That's all for now until next time thanks for watching and stay tailored.