Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
following Alexander's post concerning the DiEM25 launch in Berlin, pls find my reflections on the Rome launch of last week best dona Last week I entered the Acquario Romano, a historic gorgeous building in the surroundings of the main train station in Rome, eager to breath some fresh air in the lately very depressing hallways of politics. Yannis Varoufakis was there to launch his newborn movement, DiEM25: an ambitious name that stands for “Democracy in Europe Movement” while the 25 sets in the year 2025 the deadline for the dream to come true. Young activists in their thirties had gathered there from all across Italy to meet the former Greek minister of Finance and volunteer to make the movement come to life. I heard a group of Danish young professionals telling their Italian peers how they would book a cheap airline flight and AirB&B a few nights in Rome just to be there and help out. I saw the familiar faces of long time activists and political theorists Toni Negri and Franco Berardi BIFO standing next to an energetic and casually dressed Varoufakis, ready to speak to the crowds about this Europe of us, that “will either be democratized or it will disintegrate”, as the movement motto states. The gorgeous hall of the building was full of energy and great expectations when, to my greatest disappointment, Varoufakis – who professes to be a marxist – clarifies that DiEM25 is not a left-wing movement, but a movement that aims at reaching out to the entire political spectrum, including liberals, right-wing: literally anyone. Being a long time leftist activist I have to confess that I shivered once heard the sentence. Dear Varoufakis, you such a brilliant, cultivated man, the former hope of European left-wing movements who celebrated you when you walked out the bankers' meeting on your motorbike: now that you can choose your own path, start your own movement, you, despite professing to be a marxist, decide that anyone should be included in it? Feeling very uncomfortable I ask myself: does democratizing ultimately mean including everyone into something? Does the erasing of legitimate political differences and identities naturally imply to be democratic? I am horrified by this idea of one-size-fits-all democracy which, in my view, turns into a populistic version of a *“DemoCrazy”* instead. Yet, being a very curious – and, generally, optimistic – person and a patient ethnographer, I decide to stay, regardless of my poor little leftist self being very frustrated by the idea of the one-size-fits-all *DemoCrazy* circulating around the gorgeous building. So, when the plenary assembly with Varoufakis is over and it's time for splitting into smaller groups to discuss crucial issues for the future of Europe with fellow activists peers, I sit with the “democracy” group. The group has a 30 something people, sitting in a circle, and is moderated by a young blu-eyed guy who speaks in English, being the crowd a truly European crowd. Somebody sitting in the middle of the circle holds a huge piece of white paper and, with a red marker, writes some key words on it. “How will democracy look like in 2025”, that's the main question that the group needs to answer to: a creative, imaginative effort whose results will be translated into key words to be written on the poster, which will be later hung on the walls for public contemplation. “Imagine yourself in ten years from now” is a familiar question to anyone who has sat, at least once in a lifetime, in a job interview with an American employer. After working for five years for a Silicon-Valley based organization the white piece of paper , with colored sticky notes progressively mushrooming on it as everybody at the table engaged in the imaginative effort, was also a familiar scenario. I might sound quite an old-fashioned leftist activist, but I don't see anything particularly European or particularly democratic in the sticky notes; and not even in the one-minute imaginative effort of seeing yourself – together with democracy-- projected in a ten years time. I understand that this might be an ice-breaker for a crowd who has just met; I understand that there is a time issue when five or more round table discussions have to wrap up and present their “results” in a plenary. Yet I question the form as it hints to a very specific substance: the mere idea that democracy should be debated in a sort of “unconference” format which would give it enough coolness, openness, and horizontality not to be considered a topic heavy to digest. Is the precarious flexibility of the sticky notes; the time-sensitive creativity of key words; the coolness of geek formats *à la* Silicon-Valley a good answer to our thirst for democracy? Cause there is, indeed, a craving for a more fair, democratic politics: and that's why Varoufakis' meeting was crowded and filled with hopes. But also with disappointment, as I heard a young man with a southern Italian accent saying in the plenary: “this seems l
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Just a quick catch-up note to keep you posted on DiEM25's launch in Rome and, crucially, on the Transparancy in Europe Now! campaign which is a crucial part of our Manifesto's three-stage agenda for democratising the European Union. Please sign the petition: https://you.wemove.eu/campaigns/transparency. The good news is that, already, our campaign is bearing fruit. The President of the Eurogroup announced that some documents will be made available to the public while the European Commission has published some of the TTIP negotiation documents - two central demands of our petition. Of course, these are cosmetic changes that do very little to achieve proper transparency in EU decision-making. But it is a good start - as it shows that our campaign, even before it has begun properly, has managed to worry the powers-that-be sufficiently to motivate them to make some moves in the right direction. Turning now to the Rome event that launched DiEM25 in Italy, you can watch the whole event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da7uqxjO-0c to get a flavour of the excitement and of DiEM25's capacity to build bridges between all sorts of democrats and movements. Meanwhile, DiEM25 groups and spontaneous collectives are emerging throughout Europe. From Finland and Hungary to Portugal and Austria. Let's exploit together this great, natural force that runs throughout the continent. And let's add to its dynamism through our own actions. Please remember that DiEM25 is your movement, our movement. Encourage everyone to take initiatives at will to promote our common values and aspirations, the aims and spirit of our Manifesto. Self-organisation is our motto. Carpe DiEM25! Yanis Varoufakis PS. Very soon we shall send you details of the next DiEM25 events across Europe - and invite you to plan events of your own choosing and design YANIS VAROUFAKIS Professor of Economics - Division of Political Economy, Department of Economics, University of Athens,14 Evripidou Street, Athens 10559, Greece # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
It would be really interesting to get a report on the gathering in Rome. I wrote a report on the Berlin gathering in German, luckily someone translated it into English and republished it here: https://opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/alexander-karschnia/we-are-building-strange-left-towards-democratic-modernity An important topic that came up in the discussions here was the economic question. How to combine the economic with the democratic question. The latest books of the Berlin-based theorist Joseph Vogl is called „The Sovereignity-effect“. It deals with the institution of central banks. In his genealogy of central banks it is striking to see how they are deliberately designed to be intransparent and undemocratic. How they have become a sovereign of their own. Vogl tells their fascinating story, focussing on the Bank of England (as opponent to the French revolutionary government), and the founding of the Fed 100 years ago – but it really becomes explosive when he describes how the German Bundesbank was founded after the war and how the ECB was modelled after it. The peculiar cirumstances about the foundation of the German Bundesbank is that it was founded before any other political institution came into existance in Western Germany: it existed prior to the government or parliament! This tells a lot about how it is conceived: it is intended to be isolated or „immunised“ from the democratic sovereign. It is really worthwhile to compare the description of the eurogroup by Varoufakis with the analysis of Vogl: informal networks that form exclaves or islands within the governments, a club of central bankers who become the highest authority in all question related to money. With no democratic mandate whatsover! Now in this context it is interesting to re-read Foucaults lecture on the „birth of bio-politics“: in depth he describes the rise of neoliberalism with respect to German and Austrian liberals, the so-called „Ordoliberals“ from Freiburg. If we want to discuss neoliberalism, we should start with them, for example Hayek who inspired the anarcho-capitalists from the US. (It was Hayek after all who came up with the idea of a „denationalization of money“.) If we want to discuss the „deficit of democracy“ in Europe, we have to discuss how it is a structural requirement of the working of the ECB. Democracy in Europe has been re-defined after WW II in this way: as „market-confirm democracy“. This term is younger, it is product of the ongoing crisis. It was put in Merkel's mouth by her opponent and now partner from the social-democrats. But it is much older – from 1948: the founding of the Bundesbank that put „price-stability“ as highest value: much higher than the unstable will of the people. If we want to discuss the situation in Europe, we should start here, looking back on 1948. Since the EZB started working in 1998, it is 1948 all over Europe. It is the realization and radicalization of the „ideal of a market liberated from politics by politics“. If it continues to work this way, maybe soon it will be 1933. 2016-03-24 11:47 GMT+01:00 Geert Lovink : > > Dear nettimers, below is a digest of a few recent messages sent to the > DiEM members, which might be of interest for the discussion on this list. I > promise not to forward everything. Was anyone there last night in Rome? > Best, Geert # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Dear nettimers, below is a digest of a few recent messages sent to the DiEM members, which might be of interest for the discussion on this list. I promise not to forward everything. Was anyone there last night in Rome? Best, Geert -- On March 23 2016 something special happened. Something big. Our movement truly started to take form with our first assembly in Rome. There, we shared our first action plans - plans that you, as one of the first to join DiEM25, are part of. Europe is now at a crucial point: the EU either embraces democracy or it disintegrates. Without transparency, democracy fails. When there’s too much secrecy, governments can make dodgy deals, never held to account because their citizens don’t know what’s happening before it’s too late. But together, we can change that. And we can start by calling on EU institutions to make their meetings public. We should know when they are going to make decisions, which ways our representatives vote, and which lobby groups they meet with. If we all demand transparency together, the EU institutions will not be able to ignore us. Let’s tear off the cloak of secrecy from the EU. Sign the petition here: https://you.wemove.eu/campaigns/transparency. DiEM25’s discussion Forum is online. Yanis kicked it off with a post addressing crucial concerns (which have also been floating in various places on the Internet): Who is getting things done at DiEM25. How can everyone who signed the Manifesto and shares DiEM25's goals get more involved? Is there a democratic deficit in DiEM25? How can we avoid such a deficit from taking hold? As you will see from this debate, DiEM25 is determined to make the transition from its infant or initiation phase (where some, self-selected individuals, by necessity, took early decisions) to its open source phase. But to make this transition, by definition, you need to participate. So go ahead, register at the forum and take part on that conversation as well. We need you to be there however you can. In person. Online. Full transparency in decision-making in Europe is our first “battleground.” We must make it a success. We must score a victory against the forces that rely on secrecy and opacity to impose upon Europeans policies that are bound to undermine the Europe Europeans are entitled to hope for. You can help spread the word in various ways: Organise with other DiEM25 members in your area through the Forum Book your local cinema or Town Hall to get together in ‘offline’ gatherings to debate your next steps and ours and to reach out to others who may not like being online. Write about it on your blog, on social networks, in your local newspaper Record yourself on video with a brief statement saying why we need more transparency in Europe and what your thoughts are. Upload this on Youtube with #let_light_in in the title and we will promote the most powerful statements as part of the campaign. The DiEM Volunteer Guidelines are available online: http://diem25.org/volunteer-guidelines/. This a rather complex organizational setup. Read them if you are interested. There is also a summary: DiEM25 members lead by example and by inspiring others. Don’t expect anyone to tap you on the shoulder and make you a leader. The only way to become a leader in a horizontal organisation is by inspiring others, by convincing them that your idea for promoting DiEM25 is more exciting or more worthwhile than whatever else they were planning to do today. This goes for every volunteer and every member of DiEM25: Nobody has the authority to order you to do anything. Everyone from Yanis down to the guy who just joined can try to inspire you to do something. There is one danger in all this that, together, we should avert: Attention-seeking activists should not be allowed to subvert DiEM25’s purpose or to ‘crowd out’ members who care more about the substance than their own image. Attention-seekers will maximise whatever behaviour can get them attention. Therefore, if you see people who are being provocative for the sake of it, just to draw attention to themselves, do not give them the gift of your attention. Instead, immediately turn to other people who are quietly doing something good and encourage them. This way, we shall build a culture that selects against self-seeking behaviour and in favour of activities that promote our common, Manifesto, goals. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
On Tue, 22 Mar 2016 10:47:05 +0100, sebast...@rolux.org said: > Then I went to the website. It plays music without asking > me... "personalise content and ads, to provide social media > features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information > about your use of our site with our social media, advertising > and analytics partners. [More info] [Accept]" I really don't > know. I just don't think that this is a first impression that > anyone would ever want to make. You got farther than I did. I've never seen their website or read their manifesto. Not for lack of trying, but they use Cloudflare's Man-in-the-Middle-as-a-Service (MITMaaS) to prevent users of Tor from visiting. I even tried telling them about it, but they either didn't care or didn't understand. It's a shame that they exclude in this way. -w # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
I wasn't in Europe at the time, so I didn't attend the DiEM25 launch. From afar, it sounded like a typical Volksb??hne event (1). But I wasn't there, and so I forgot about it again. Reading about it now though, it all sounds a bit like a joke. Lets start with the name. I have no idea what it stands for, and I didn't look it up. "D" and "E" could be Democracy and Europe, but what do I know. At least once, they're using the term as part of "carpe diem" (YOLO avant la lettre), which is, to put it mildly, a truism. What makes it look fraudulent is the bizarre capitaliztion. And what makes it look scary is the 25. I assume it refers to the year 2025 - and not to the 25th century, or the young generation. But I have no idea why (2). All I know is that for those whose ears are still ringing with Agenda 2010 or Stuttgart 21, this is one of the most annoying names they could have come up with. Then I went to the website. It plays music without asking me. Not immediately, but once it's done loading wp-emoji and font-awesome and jQuery and ThemePunch Revolution and handlebars and flexslider and nanoscroller and prettySocial, followed by backbone and underscore and some more wordpress junk, music will begin to autoplay. Apparently Brian Eno made it. It's pretty bad though. The first actual content that loads says: "We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. [More info] [Accept]" I really don't know. I just don't think that this is a first impression that anyone would ever want to make. But the website also has the manifesto. Long version or short version? Turns out the long version is too short and the short version is too long. I didn't bother to do a proper diff, but some of the changes, like the variations in what's bold and what's not, struck me as a little odd. Anyway. Both begin with a statement that I think is important to make. It says: "For all their concerns with global competitiveness, migration and terrorism, only one prospect truly terrifies the Powers of Europe: Democracy!" And both end with the same list of 19 aspirational mottos that many people will share, in spirit, but which, in writing, are really painful to digest. Somewhere in between, the terror promised in the opening must have gotten lost. Lets be clear: I don't think this movement should be judged by what it writes, but by what it does. The problem however, at least up to now, is that a lot of what it does is write. Of course, collaborative writing can fail, and that doesn't always have to reflect badly on the character of the collaborators. Even though, admittedly, it usually does. So. I'm done with "a historically-minded Europe that seeks a bright future without hiding from its past". If my adblocker was just a tiny bit better, it would have yelped at this. If my spam filter was just a tiny bit better, I would never hear from this movement again. I'm also done with "recognising fences and borders". Europe doesn't need more of this. It's about abolishing them, plain and simple. Because they're not "signs of weakness and sources of insecurity" (3). They kill. And even though this is a hard sell, at a time when fences are being constructed all over Europe, there is no other option. Part of the program of the radical Left in Europe must be the abolishment of the Mediterranean Sea. That's at least one thing whose existence you cannot blame on weak or insecure border politics. And I'm done with "a peaceful Europe de-escalating tensions in its neighbourhood and beyond". This is precisely, word by word, the mode of perception that Deleuze rightfully identified as the Right. And it wouldn't be complete without adding insult to injury. Among the many names that Europe has come up with for the plantations, mines, battlefields, dumping grounds, deserts, jungles, death camps and exotic beaches that lie outside its borders, "neighborhood" is the single most preposterous one. Because it suggests reciprocity. It's truly obscene (4), unlike "defending our freedom at the Hindu Kush" and such, since the latter at least doesn't make it sound as if anyone from out there or beyond was invited to defend their own freedom at the Harz in return (5). But I'm getting carried away here. Initially, none of this was my concern. And as hinted at above, bad manifestos don't automatically make for bad politics. The thing that I thought sounded like a joke was in the March 17 "update", as posted on nettime: "Every initiative needs initiators - even initiatives that seek to embrace a flat management, spontaneous order, horizontal organisation way of doing 'stuff'. We were hoping to be able to move quickly from the initiation phase (during which a number of us would get DiEM25 together) to the open source phase (where
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
No, you are totally right, this is also my problem with the approach, a problem which goes down much deeper??? I think the roots are in the idea that economists can only talk about the economy and the rest listens, resulting in the focus on celeb speakers, big halls, tickets that need to be sold bought and sold out events. Maybe one section of society really believes in the spectacle as the vehicle for public debate. Those with a background in grass roots initiatives and autonomous movements have made other experiences??? This split is becoming quite clear. For the time being within DIEM25 this is not a contradiction. Soon it might when we will start to speak about strategy and move on from debate to action. Best, Geert On 20 Mar 2016, at 6:00 pm, Michael Gurstein wrote: > Geert, > > Thanks for this... Regrettably this looks like more of the top down 10 > leaders in search of a movement initiative... > > Am I wrong? > > M # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Dear nettimers, perhaps it is good to give an update where DIEM25 stands at the moment. I can by no means claim that I have an overview. There is a core group around Yanis Varoufakis and they have been busy with setting up a website including a separate forum for discussions: http://www.diem25.org/forum/ The next milestone is the DIEM25 event in Rome on March 23, 2016: https://democracyineurope.eu/ There is also an event in Amsterdam called the G-10 of the Economy: http://www.g10vandeeconomie.nl/programEN.php Here are more articles and news snippets: http://diem25.org/news/. Best, Geert -- This is the update from March 17 by Yanis Varoufakis: Hello everyone. I feel a certain trepidation posting my first comment on our brand new Forum. So, let me go straight into the one aspect of DiEM25 that has been at the top of everyone's mind: How to kick start our Transparency in Europe Now! campaign in a manner that is not only effective 'externally' (i.e. making the Rome event a success, helping attract numerous signatories to our petition etc.) but also in a manner reflecting our capacity to bring transparency to DiEM25's internal operations. I have followed with interest some criticisms waged at the way members have been observing "things happening in DiEM25 out of nowhere" (the very announcement of the Rome event, the choice of stuff that appears on the site etc.) and without feeling they have a say in any of this. Undoubtedly, this smacks of hypocrisy for any movement that places transparency at the top of its list of priorities. But, let me assure everyone, that this is also the view of those of us who have been working behind the scenes. Every initiative needs initiators - even initiatives that seek to embrace a flat management, spontaneous order, horizontal organisation way of doing 'stuff'. We were hoping to be able to move quickly from the initiation phase (during which a number of us would get DiEM25 together) to the open source phase (where the rest of you would take over and run with it). Unfortunately, our digital platform proved unequal to the task immediately after Berlin. So, we spent a great deal longer than we wanted at the initiation phase. We are now close to the moment of the Great Transition (to the open source phase). To the moment when DiEM25 will be able to practise that which it preaches regarding transparency. But before we get there, perhaps it is pertinent to ask everyone: HOW DO YOU SUGGEST WE GO TO THE OPEN SOURCE PHASE? WHAT WOULD THIS PHASE BE LIKE IN TERMS OF ORGANISING DIEM25 PER LANGUAGE, PER EUROPEAN COUNTRY, AND EUROPE-WISE? Let's talk about this, shall we? Yanis Varoufakis # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
> On 25 Feb 2016, at 07:09, Brian Holmes wrote: > > It has to start by admitting that there is no cultural/ > artistic solution when people are trapped in poverty and isolated > by racism. Thank you Brian for your usual clarity. As an individual and as a member of a media collective I always resisted to being labeled as an artist, although acting in that field and through that languages. Arts and culture are powerful means for transformative action, but as long as they become an end in themselves, and, as you say, are “professionalized”, they can only maintain the status quo, to be subsumed into the system. lorenzo # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
On 02/24/2016 09:20 PM, Research Unit in Public Cultures wrote: Transversal Cultural Spheres and the Future of Europe -- Nikos Papastergiadis This text is interesting but it's not getting to the heart of things. What's missing are the core questions: racialized class, generational time, and professionalized culture (i.e. art). Europe 1.0 staked a lot on the existing forms of professionalized culture (from classical music to contemporary art) while ignoring the racialization of class altogether. Professionalized culture was somehow supposed to overcome an almost absolute color line that confined non-white people to low paid jobs and zero political representation. At the same time, the same culture was supposed to magically "open the minds" of racist whites who were stuck in dead-end jobs or outright unemployment while opportunistic people around them caught the escalator of the cognitive economy and moved upward where all the high-end art was. Meanwhile, the kinds of colloquial cultural practices that come out of deep generational time - childhood and childrearing, rootedness or long wandering, lingering dialects and cross-language experience, aging and inter-generational caregiving, and don't forget religion - were basically abandoned by professionalized culture in favor of packaged mono-heritage or ultramodern hybrid transnationalism. There were exceptions to this abandonment - in the communist cultural centers of the Parisian banlieue, for example, or in the Black Arts movements in the UK, and surely many others - but they were grassroots exceptions on scant resources. Billions of cultural euros were spent for the upwardly mobile middle classes and the already-rich. The deep time of communities all across the color spectrum and the geographical map was not elaborated into complex art. How could that situation be transformed? I would love to hear some ideas. It has to start by admitting that there is no cultural/ artistic solution when people are trapped in poverty and isolated by racism. Cross-cultural art needs the explicit demand for social justice. There's also a big question about what kind of professionalized culture to make and to promote. Is it possible to interest people in the pleasures of each other's problems? Comedy does that, hip hop does that, activist art does it when it's community oriented. How to support experimental practices that aim for popular audiences and interactions, rather than producing vanguard artefacts for cosmopolitan neoliberals? I don't see how to do it except in the context of a real struggle against the bankers and the bureaucrats, so maybe DIEM25 is a good place to talk about it. But there's no use talking if the table is all white, and it's no use attacking racism if you don't propose to change some very basic things about the society that creates it. What does equality mean in a society of radical difference, where some people's stake is based on the centuries their family lived there, and other's is based on the need to migrate because the economic and military system of those long-rooted societies has sown war and desperation all across the earth? It's gonna take a tremendous political-philosophical shift for white people in Europe to say: Everyone in the EU has a right to be here, and everyone on the EU borders has a right not to be exploited to the point of societal breakdown. Culture and its concentrated artistic expressions can be part of that shift, but they can't bring it about on their own. We need an egalitarian ideal that's willing to build a thousand cultural bridges to a society where everyone has a job and some respect just for existing. The whole concept of what art is, and what it's good for, will have to change on the way down that path. so here's to another world! Brian # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Transversal Cultural Spheres and the Future of Europe -- Nikos Papastergiadis In the context of growing frustration over the techno-financial determinism in the European political landscape that has cast veil upon veil over executive functions and facilitated the normalization of neo-liberal regimes, a new cosmopolitical movement was launched in Berlin - DiEM 25. This movement provides us with a platform to rethink both the priorities of transnational systems of government and the possibilities for widening the frameworks for social emancipation. It is also a crucial moment to reflect on the existing cultural landscape and propose alternative ways for organizing cultural relations. The European Union began as an economic project that sought political agreement. The idea of shared cultural interests was always in the background but too often just left behind as an afterthought. Leaving culture to the last is a mistake that Europe cannot afford to repeat. At the heart of the democratization of Europe is the recognition of both the diversity of cultures and the positive force of cultural interaction. The question of culture in Europe is often posed in the framework of the preservation of national heritage and the facilitation of exchange between discrete cultural entities. The prevailing cultural anxieties in Europe are the threats associated with cultural segregation. This approach overlooks fundamental contradictions in the dynamics of mobility and immobility. Let us consider two kinds of scenarios. In the suburbs of Paris, the derelict streets in central Athens and the camps near Calais, there are people who are trapped. They cannot move. To many people from the outside they live in No Go zones, but for those on the inside these places are also No Go Out zones. Young people are forging baffling identities and producing disturbing images of their sense of belonging to this 'no mans land'. Children of immigrants declare: "I don't belong here and I have not come from anywhere else." Protestors in the heat of fire and accusations pronounce: "I am a dog! I bite at anything." A boy is asked about his future and he reveals that: "I want to become a migrant." They are stuck and they dream of movement. They see cages and become animal. They do not feel as if they are segregated. Such a fate presumes separation with the possibility of passage and interconnection. On the contrary they see themselves as merely existing in limbo and the dominant self-image is that of a zombie. These are people who can see that they in Europe but they are neither from nor of Europe. By contrast there are the images that emphasize the hyper-diversity and mobility that is shaping Europe. Artists are increasingly moving from festival to biennale. Community groups may establish themselves in local neighborhoods but they also have extensive diasporic networks for collaboration and transnational distribution systems. In everyday settings migrants enjoy the benefits of civic participation and cross-cultural interaction. For instance, in the UK, migrants show above average rates in out-marriage, charitable donations, neighborly relations and upward residential mobility. These are not people who suffer from segregation. They are on the move and happy to be in the flow. What sort of framework can make sense of these contradictions? Does this current predicament fit with the prevailing cultural visions of Europe? Multiculturalism has been a key heading for administering these principles. However, multiculturalism was designed in response to the post second world war patterns of migration. During this period assimilationist policies were weak and the agency of the migrants was more vigorous. It also occurred at the time when diversity was promoted as an ideal that could enhance and strengthen society. Multiculturalism was proposed as a solution to the question of how different people can co-exist in the nation state. In the UK, France and Germany almost every political leader in Europe has attacked multiculturalism as if it was the cause for social polarization and cultural disengagement. We hear calls that hark back towards the idylls of a unified nation: one that has at its centre either 'muscular liberalism', a 'defiant republicanism', or the rebirth of 'lietkultur'. Cultural commentators have also warned of the dangers of a looming "civic deficit" and the perils of "sleep walking into segregation". With the outburst of terrorist attacks ethnic ghettoes were targeted as the hotspots for 'grooming' disaffected youth. The new consensus from centre-right is that multiculturalism is no longer a practical source of mutual benefit and a pragmatic political compromise that secured social cohesion, but is at best, a utopian ideal that was gifted to ungrateful minorities who exploited it to gain unfair advantages, and at worst, a divisive ideology with which the 'enemies of Europe' can ab
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Hi everyone - As I wasn't present and have been only following the DIEM25 launch through bits and pieces online (and from down under). However, on the not of transparency, I came across one correspondence between German Eu politician Sven Giegold (The Greens) and Janis Varoufakis (http://www.sven-giegold.de/2016/letter-to-janis-varoufakis/). Besides the wherever one sits in regards to the different strategies argued by both, one thing does seems to a bit odd to me. When asked by Gielgold (who had read the different versions of the manifesto) about "the many changes in the different version of the DiEM manifesto (5.0, 6.0, 7.0, final) and who decided which changes were accepted and why" - to respond like following: "But the Manifesto, like a poem, cannot be written by everyone at once, including those who oppose its underlying principles. (The fact that you have seen a variety of its drafts proves that the process has been remarkably open and transparent.)" I don't how you feel about this, but to me this seems to be a bit fishy response - however stressed and time poor Varoufakis may be. My 2 cent, Jan On 17/02/16 7:09 AM, Alexander Karschnia wrote: >Dear Armin, > >I am afraid that the picture you got from the DiEM meeting was >incomplete: the second of the three sessions during the day-time >meeting of the "working group" was about economy. The DiEM initiative >seems inspired by the "modest proposal" that Varoufakis made last year >together with Stuart Holland Galbraith and James K. Galbraith: the >bottom-line is that the existing institutions and contracts do not have >to be changed, but just used in a different way. This >bottom-line-sentence was repeated by Varoufakis during the evening. In >that respect, the proposed change is not radical, but very pragmatic, >reformist: a kind of PERESTROIKA of the EU. Combined with GLASNOST: >radical about DiEM is the unconditional demand for transparency. Thus >more important than his "modest proposal" was Varoufakis role as >"megaphone of the whistle-blowers" since his legendary interview about >the eurogroup. It is no coincidence that the most pathos that this day >generated culminated in the repeated demand: "Asylum for Edward >Snowden! Free Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning!" <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
dear Alexander, thanks for your additional explanations. Yes, when I write economy I also mean political economy. So in fact your explanation brings me back to the proposal I have made. The separation between fiscal policy and monetary policy is enshrined in legislation relating to the ECB (European Central Bank). It means that the ECB is prohibited by law from giving money directly to governments to invest in social welfare. What the ECB has been and is doing is buying government bonds from Investment Banks to the amount of about 60 billion per months, up to a total of 1,6 trillions. All this money goes only to the biggest investment banks and 80% of it is used to buy back government bonds. Why they are doing that is exactly what you mention, the hope that this would help to curb deflation. The ECB hopes that those investment banks who get rid of some more risky government bonds will now use that freed up money to invest into the economy. However, the past year in Europe, and over a longer period in USA and UK has shown that they don't. From all that money that is artificially created by the ECB, or the Federal Reserve very little is actually going into investment into real business. Most of it ends up in financial "assets" which can be anything, really.Investment banks keep creating highly complex and potentially toxic types of assets such as collateral debt obligations (CDOs) which were partly responsible for the 2008 crash and are highly back in fashion. Some of that ECB and Federal Reserve money certainly has found its way into China and other places with non-democratic governments, low wages and no workers rights, not even to speak of environmental rights. In other words, quantitative easing has created a new asset bubble which is right now falling apart rather noisily if you follow stock exchanges. In short, this plan with 'quantitative easing' (creating accounting money and giving it to invstment banks) has not worked. There are even some extreme free market advocates, especially in Germany, who think that this bond buying program has infringed on holy free market principles - the central bank shall not get involved directly into the economy, the only way it ought to do so is monetary policy (which is a core neoliberal orthodoxy and the cause of much suffering). There is a court case and a whole dossier on this (in German) by public TV https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/staatsanleihen-ankauf-ezb-101.html But this idea that the central bank shall not be concerned with the economy is NOT a law of nature. It is part of a set of key institutional decisions which together form the institutional system of neoliberalism. The institutional system of neoliberalsm cannot be a holy cow for any progressive movement. I thought Varoufakis is such a great economist. Why does not he address this issue which is staring one into the face: when the ECB can create 60 billion Euros per month and give it to investment banks, it can also create that amount of money and give it to governments for social tasks - for education, health, pensions, refugees, natural protection and so on and so forth (not weapons buying and stupid roads building). I mistyped in my last email: it would not take 60 but only 6 months for the economies of those states to get going again. Combine that with all the other good proposals that Alex brought up, such as a 15 Euros per hour minimum wage, deflation would not be an issue any longer. Yes to a social Europe, but no to a Europe that behaves like a nation state with borders on its outside. Europe could be open and social too, cosmopolitan and globally networked. But the idea that radical transparency would be the key to a more democratic Europe strikes me as almost dangerously naive. Transparency and accountability was the 1997 mantra of Tony Blair. The problem is not that we don't know that shit is happening but that even when we point it out, those in power arrogantly ignore it. Those in power think they can ignore the left and just sit out any protest such as Occupy without so much as blinking. Change needs to come from the economic base and not the superstructure. That's why the ECB should print money (or rather create accountancy money) and give it to us all. best Armin On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 9:09 PM, Alexander Karschnia wrote: > Dear Armin, > > I am afraid that the picture you got from the DiEM meeting was > incomplete: the second of the three sessions during the day-time > meeting of the "working group" was about economy. The DiEM initiative > seems inspired by the "modest proposal" that Varoufakis made last year > together with Stuart Holland Galbraith and James K. Galbraith: the > bottom-line is that the existing institutions and contracts do not > have to be changed, but just used in a different way. This > bottom-line-sentence was repeated by Varoufakis during the evening. In > that respect, the proposed change is not radical, but very pragmatic, > reformist: a kind
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Dear Armin, I am afraid that the picture you got from the DiEM meeting was incomplete: the second of the three sessions during the day-time meeting of the "working group" was about economy. The DiEM initiative seems inspired by the "modest proposal" that Varoufakis made last year together with Stuart Holland Galbraith and James K. Galbraith: the bottom-line is that the existing institutions and contracts do not have to be changed, but just used in a different way. This bottom-line-sentence was repeated by Varoufakis during the evening. In that respect, the proposed change is not radical, but very pragmatic, reformist: a kind of PERESTROIKA of the EU. Combined with GLASNOST: radical about DiEM is the unconditional demand for transparency. Thus more important than his "modest proposal" was Varoufakis role as "megaphone of the whistle-blowers" since his legendary interview about the eurogroup. It is no coincidence that the most pathos that this day generated culminated in the repeated demand: "Asylum for Edward Snowden! Free Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning!" Is it the economy, stupid? What is at stake is to understand economy as political economy: to re-politicise economy. To fight for the priority of politcs. Autsterity is not a natural consequence of economic "mistakes" (and moral misbehaviour or cultural differences), but a political project! In this respect I would say: it's not the economy, stupid, it's politics. But this was not consensus, some of the participant did insist that it i s the economy and thus what is needed foremost a new social policy: return to the national welfare state or the transformation of the EU into a European social state? a European basic income? What impressed me the most were the activist-trade unionist RIGHT2CHANGE from Ireland who had a clear agenda demanding democracy, equality and justice. For this goal they did not only manage to mobilize the street in an impressive numbers, but also started a huge educational campaign for municipalities and working-class communities. These are trade unions of the future that transform themselves into political reforming catalysts. Compared to them, Hans-Jürgen Urban, the German representative of the trade unions, sounded lame and defensive when he spoke of "also economic democracy". In earlier days this would have been called "socialism". (But while Bernie Sanders is running an amazingly successful grass-roots-movement, not denying to be a "democratic socialist".) It is obvious that in Europe we do have socialism: a "socialism of the rich" which transfers the burden of debt from the banks to the shoulders of the citizens. A "recovering banker" reminded us that the idea that all debt has to be paid back was quite novel. Bankruptcy is part of the game. Capitalism without bankruptcy was like catholicism without sin (it keeps us straight). When the British banker heard that Ireland would pay back all their debt, they couldn't believe their luck! What happens if you don't do that? Nothing! Look at Iceland. When the bankers demanded their money back, they said: "We don't have any. We can pay you in fish." And then? A few years later, they borrowed them money again. It's just like in a bad relationship... What was consensus among the economists was that there is an investement-crisis in Europe. If there was echoes of the past in the city of Berlin, than it was the ghost of deflation: deflation is the enemy. Not inflation (which is the nightmare of the German government and public). It was deflation that paved the way for Hitler, not inflation. Thus the German austerity-politics has been called "Brüning-politics" by German critics after the infamous chancellor who preceded Hitler: It was the same vicious circle of austerity-authority-recession that Varoufakis described for the whole of Europe. Germanys investment-rate today is the lowest in 40 years - that is a huge political scandal! This was said by Varoufakis, but this should have been repeated over and over again, because it did not make it into the discussion or the media. And because of this investment-crisis, wages are too low throughout Europe. But to change that, the European trade-unions must "help Hans" (as a campaign by French trade-unions called it a few years ago) to return to a struggle for higher wages. It seems to me that this is the really difficult part and Hans-Jürgen Urban knows this all too well. But as long as the trade-unions in Germany do not insist on their RIGHT2CHANGE and start a educational campaign, this will not change. The reactions of the workers during last year's "Greece crisis" showed that it takes a looong way. Too long, I am afraid. We don't have time for a long march. Thus it might be smarter, not to use the word "socialism" an
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Greetings from Vancouver and thanks to all for this interesting report and discussion, impossible to find anywhere but on nettlme. Hank > On Feb 15, 2016, at 8:14 AM, Alex Foti wrote: > > couldn't agree more. also 15 euros an hour, breakup of bank cartels, > abolition of universal banking, fiscal expansion, ecojobs, a basic > income for the eurozone etc. > because otherwise it's lofty ideals about creating a multicultural > space which nobody knows what it contains, where it ends, and most > especially who's in charge. at the moment it's the neoliberals - i > think we need a plan for our europe and a constituent strategy to make > it happen (how to wield effective power, that is). > i know my idea of making a revolution to proclaim a European > Continental Republic is controversial and far-fetched - but i've grown > tired of hearing the same arguments over and over again for Another > Europe without knowing how to get from this Europe to that Europe. > pace keith, i actually think europe is a postcolonial idea (1957, a > year after suez..) and that the racism of europeans is not so much > linked to colonial empires (italy only had a small one, though, so i > might underemphasize) but more to the dark feudal christian identity of > europe that still feeds the Right. we've been butchering people > slightly different from us for centuries, and now many (most?) hate > immigrants. sure our place in the world has been drastically diminished > after 1945 (thank god), but we live in this part of the world and we > don't want it to become a place where inequality and xenophobia rule. a > united europe is not inevitable, actually disunity is very likely. a > disunited europe based on the fucking nation-state is a recipe for > (civil) war. we saw it happen already in the 1990s. it won't stop at > the Italian and Austrian borders this time... > i desperately hope diem 25 succeeds at least in some of its objectives. > ciao > lx > ??? > > On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 11:09 AM, Armin Medosch wrote: > > ??? ??? hello, > ??? ??? what this discussion shows sofar is the value of this list, > nettime. I > ??? ??? was neither there, nor have I listened in to the stream, but I > have the > ??? ??? impression that I have a pretty good idea of this meeting by now, > ??? ??? thanks to everyone.??? > <...> <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
couldn't agree more. also 15 euros an hour, breakup of bank cartels, abolition of universal banking, fiscal expansion, ecojobs, a basic income for the eurozone etc. because otherwise it's lofty ideals about creating a multicultural space which nobody knows what it contains, where it ends, and most especially who's in charge. at the moment it's the neoliberals - i think we need a plan for our europe and a constituent strategy to make it happen (how to wield effective power, that is). i know my idea of making a revolution to proclaim a European Continental Republic is controversial and far-fetched - but i've grown tired of hearing the same arguments over and over again for Another Europe without knowing how to get from this Europe to that Europe. pace keith, i actually think europe is a postcolonial idea (1957, a year after suez..) and that the racism of europeans is not so much linked to colonial empires (italy only had a small one, though, so i might underemphasize) but more to the dark feudal christian identity of europe that still feeds the Right. we've been butchering people slightly different from us for centuries, and now many (most?) hate immigrants. sure our place in the world has been drastically diminished after 1945 (thank god), but we live in this part of the world and we don't want it to become a place where inequality and xenophobia rule. a united europe is not inevitable, actually disunity is very likely. a disunited europe based on the fucking nation-state is a recipe for (civil) war. we saw it happen already in the 1990s. it won't stop at the Italian and Austrian borders this time... i desperately hope diem 25 succeeds at least in some of its objectives. ciao lx  On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 11:09 AM, Armin Medosch wrote:   hello,   what this discussion shows sofar is the value of this list, nettime. I   was neither there, nor have I listened in to the stream, but I have the   impression that I have a pretty good idea of this meeting by now,   thanks to everyone.à <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
hi armin. Am 15.02.2016 um 11:09 schrieb Armin Medosch : What strikes me as particularly disappointing is that this high-powered self-selected elite of saviours of EU-Europe have no other policy proposal than increased transpareny It's the economy stupid and to bring about any real change the economic base needs to change, sorry for my vulgar Marxism. sorry. but dont you think most of us - even most of the more conservative guys - know this fact. but what do you expect? how far would a movement come if you would put this as the main goal on the agenda? hey. its 2016. its postdemocracy. rightwing movement is on the march in almost all parts of europe. this is about defending what has been acchieved during the last century. when this step is done, others can follow. and by the way. if you think consequently about democracy and democratic structures, its obviously that economy can not work the way it does at the moment. others will understand this too, while thinking and discussing about it. so please rembember the wise words of brian enno: 'Start cooking, the recipe will follow' sincerely florian ### http://www.floriankuhlmann.com mail kont...@floriankuhlmann.com twitter @fkuhlmann skype florian_kuhlmann # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
hello, what this discussion shows sofar is the value of this list, nettime. I was neither there, nor have I listened in to the stream, but I have the impression that I have a pretty good idea of this meeting by now, thanks to everyone. What strikes me as particularly disappointing is that this high-powered self-selected elite of saviours of EU-Europe have no other policy proposal than increased transpareny It's the economy stupid and to bring about any real change the economic base needs to change, sorry for my vulgar Marxism. One very concrete proposal how this could happen would be to change the way how 'quantitative easing' is done. Currently, the ECB is creating money and uses it to buy government bonds from investment banks, that is, about 80% of the 60 Billion Euros created monthly by the ECB is used in that way. This is based on an orthodoxy in current economic thinking: the separation of monetary policy and fiscal policy. Now we all know that since 2008 governments have subscribed (in some cases not entirely voluntarily) to austerity policies that became necessary after they saved the banking system from collapse. Those austerity policies are in turn responsible for the prolonged economic crisis (not just in EU Europe). This economic crisis has long since turned into a social crisis and now also a political crisis. I would like to remind that the real effect of this economic crisis is not just that businesses suffer but even more so that the life-chances of a whole generation, that important cultural, scientific and social tasks remain undone, and that all this in turn plays into the hands of the far right. There would in principle - except for some stupid EU legislation which can and should be changed - no obstacle to the ECB creating the same amount of informational money per month and give it to governments and the EU commission to finance education, culture, social works, support for refugees, you name it. Do that for 60 months to the tune of 60 billion Euros per month and I guarantee the economic crisis would be over, people would be happier and more self-confident and happier and more self-confident people would demand democratic changes themselves; a happier, more confident and more democratic Europe would engage in more open and constructive ways with the world and could make more credible demands for democratic change elsewhere. The ECB should start the printing machine for us all and not just investment banks, because the latter is a receipt for disaster because it creates only another asset bubble which may lead - or is in the very process of doing so - another, this time really big global financial crisis which governments may find themselves unable to cushion (and all that is not just m idea but said by economists off the record). all best Armin     On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 9:22 PM, Michael Gurstein wrote: Sorry to intrude in this Euro-centric (myopic) discussion but just as DIEM25 was being presented Bernie Sanders was winning the New Hampshire primary for the US Democratic party nomination on the basis of rebuilding US democracy and being a facilitator of a "democratic revolution" and "socialism" in the US. <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
On 13/Feb/16 12:42, Felix Stalder wrote: The material circumstances that are dragging Europe (and the US) down have more to do with geopolitical and demographic shifts, the kind of stuff that Keith Hart is talking about. These are, at least in part, related to technological changes, but are primarily embodied in logistics, distribution of productive capacities and changing patterns of the world economy (such as increasing "south-south trade") and not in techniques of crowd control. "Material circumstances" is a key term -- and one that emphasizes some of the following points: Don't forget a more basal causal pressure: global population which affects all the above. Whenever localized resources are depleted, human populations begin to move, and if they can't move, they get angry: "A hungry man is an angry man." It is suggested that we are consuming 1.6 earth's worth of resources at the current population level. Surely pressures arising from this broad condition are propagating throughout the system in ways that we hardly are aware of or understand. Perhaps the fever of the 1% to accumulate what they do is related somehow -- another expression of the persistent drive of Life to continue itself in the form of 'optimized' (used with at least some irony!) evolutionary selection. The geo- in geopolitical change is definitely resource-depletion related to one degree or another. And certainly at some remove, but deeply related the 'political' as well. Technological 'change' also is one driver of resource depletion and shuffling around. I would not use a materialist approach, but trace the energy (re)sources and sinks as distributed across the entire techno-social system and globe. There is relationship between those flows and the flows of human conflict. jh -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Sorry to intrude in this Euro-centric (myopic) discussion but just as DIEM25 was being presented Bernie Sanders was winning the New Hampshire primary for the US Democratic party nomination on the basis of rebuilding US democracy and being a facilitator of a "democratic revolution" and "socialism" in the US. An interesting contrast I think in Sanders' self-identifying and embedding his campaign as part of a broad based, highly distributed, Internet enabled participative social movement with what appears to be a top down, (left) elite driven and non-participative process in DIEM25. Further it is quite clear that should by some chance Sanders were to become the next President of the US, the only possible means by which he can deliver on his promises (and his expressed strategy) to curb campaign finances, break the hold of Wall Street, implement single payer medicare etc.etc. is through continuing and extending his campaign mobilization of his broad based, highly distributed, Internet enabled participative social movement (something which to his eternal discredit Obama chose to demobilize immediately after his election... Another straw in the hurricane which doesn't seem to have wafted through the rarified halls in Berlin are Corbyn's broad based, highly distributed, Internet enabled participative social movement towards his ascension to the BLP leadership. And finally, here in Canada the quite spontaneous and largely unorganized and leaderless broad based, highly distributed, Internet enabled participative social movement which led to the sound defeat (70% to 30%) of Canada's version of austerity driven neo-liberalism (the hard right government of Stephen Harper) and the rather surprising election of a progressive centrist government through PM Justin Trudeau. Trudeau's government while not itself responsible for the anti-Harper movement is, in a wide number of interesting ways, attempting to govern as a broad based, highly distributed, Internet enabled participative social movement and directly opposite in social and at least for the moment, economic policies of its immediate predecessor. Some possible lessons to be learned? M -Original Message- From: nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org [mailto:nettime-l-boun...@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of Frederic Janssens Sent: February 14, 2016 8:22 AM To: nettim...@kein.org Subject: Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch Some comments and proposals. (I only followed the live-stream.) Geert Lovink 12 February 2016 at 21:33 >"The real challenge DIEM has to tackle is the question of organization. >It is called a movement, but is it really? Someone mentioned that one >cannot "found" a movement. They emerge, bottom up. What will happen >over the next weeks, and perhaps months, are local DIEM events to start >with Madrid, Amsterdam and for sure more that I do not know about. This >is the age of the internet so how about some internet coordination?" >... >"The internet easily >replicates the celebs memes but the hard work of designing internal >democracy has yet to begin." Yes. My proposal would be to formulate it thus : <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Some comments and proposals. (I only followed the live-stream.) Geert Lovink 12 February 2016 at 21:33 >"The real challenge DIEM has to tackle is the question of organization. >It is called a movement, but is it really? Someone mentioned that one >cannot "found" a movement. They emerge, bottom up. What will happen >over the next weeks, and perhaps months, are local DIEM events to start >with Madrid, Amsterdam and for sure more that I do not know about. This >is the age of the internet so how about some internet coordination?" >... >"The internet easily >replicates the celebs memes but the hard work of designing internal >democracy has yet to begin." Yes. My proposal would be to formulate it thus : What is needed for european level democracy to emerge is an internet protocol that enables large scale open discussion. It does not exist yet, we have to build it (if interested I have ideas how). The only discussion format that exists until now has not changed since millenia, and is limited to about 10 effective participants. (So yes, I think 'democracy' has mostly been flawed partly because of that limitation. It is only with the internet that it is technically possible to go beyond. I see this conjunction as an opportunity to try to do it effectively.) We need it internally to be democratic. And only if we can achieve that, can we convincingly propose it as a working model for official decision making. Alex Foti 13 February 2016 at 09:15 >"So this is my constructive criticism of diem. Be transparent and >radically democratic, certainly. But discuss and construct clearly >what the ultimate aim is in concrete terms. If we want to seize >power in Brussels and Frankfurt, we need to point out what kind of >European state we are fighting for." Not really. It is a good discussion subject, and proposals are welcome. But I think here the first task is more fundamental : trying to found democracy in a multinational, multicultural, multilinguistic space. We must first find an operational definition of who is 'we' and what is democracy before deciding the ultimate aim and starting to fight. Felix Stalder 13 February 2016 at 11:29 >"The only concrete demand, or action goal, was to increase transparency >in the ECB and the Eurogroup. >It was surprising, at least to me, that one of the best speeches of >the evening came from Zizek (delivered in a short video) who said >something like: Stick to a every simple demand, but pursue it >vigorously and to end and see how destabilizing this can be! >Given that the only concrete idea was to increase transparency, >this sounded really sensible strategy, something that a diverse >coalition could form around and then formulate more ambitious goals. >But there was no sense at all, how this even this relatively simple >and non-controversial demand could be energized, articulated and >executed beyond being voiced at talk shows." Yes. My proposal above includes transparency in internal working. If we succeed we can show the way by example. Prove the possibility of transparency by being transparent. >"Repressive orders crumble when people >start to loose their fear and act in large numbers, despite being >monitored not because they found ways to evade it. Security, in this >case, comes from social solidarity and collective action, not from >technology. >... >You cannot built a social movement in a dark corner." Yes. Anne Roth 13 February 2016 at 14:28 "Another question concerns the non-public parts during the day: how did that come to be actually? How did people get chosen, who chose them, what was the aim, what were the outcomes?" Yes. Internal transparency is required for the stated goals. -- Frederic # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Where is the British Labor party's new radical leadership under Corbyn in relationship to the Diem initiative? Is it my imagination or is it non-existent? This is not simply a parochial question as within months a generational in/out referendum will be taking place in the UK and the result could change the shape of the EU. It is at this key moment that the Corbyn team appears to be allowing the discussion of our membership to be conducted entirely in terms set by business leaders who are setting the agenda. Only the Greens under the redoubtable Caroline Lucas appears to have a sense of the importance of a wider, regional picture. Allthough the British Labor party are not as openly fractured on this issue the nature of their contribution to the campaign feels at best "luke warm", meekly trailing alongside the "in" campaign. No wonder as it is directed by former boss of Marks and Spencer, Stuart Rose, a fact that gives some idea of the parameters within which the case for remaining part of the EU will be made. I had hoped that possibly "Momentum" the organisation that represents the grass roots activists instrumental in bringing Corbyn to power, would seek to radicalise Labour's position. But in their list of campaigns on the Momentum website the European question appears entirely absent. It is worth recalling that Corbyn's mentor, Tony Benn, the leading standard-bearer for Labour's left in exile, was a long time opponant of Britain's membership. But although, after some delay, Corbyn agreed that Labor should campaign as part of the "in" group, though there is a strong sense of him "holding his nose". So I am struggling to see where Corbyn/Labor (as oppose to the Labour MPs who mostly detest the Corbyn insurgency) really stand on this. Lately he has been travelling accross Europe meeting fellow Socialists but I have no idea whether this extends to support or discussions that would connect him with Diem or whether the goal of democratising the asphyxiating European institutions is even on his radar. This would at least give Labor something other than folowing Cameron's fig leaf reforms to fight for. But my fear is that Corbyn's vision (on this issue) remains as parochial and "conservative" as ever and is worrying at a time when an opportuinity arises to be part of a radical European movement it looks like he just isnt that interested. I hope I'm wrong. --- d a v i d g a r c i a # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
As a person who watched the evening on live-stream, but spend the day in the Volksbühne to listen to the discussions of the âworking groupâ I just want to add: the âworking groupâ was not working â too many people who spoke too short, no real discussion. BUT it was good to get an impression on who-is-who of the activist scene in Europe. Not big names (âIs Negri not coming?â), but groups and initiatives. To catch the spirit of the Catalanian municipalities, the determination of the Irish RIGHT2CHANGE-movement, the Belgian Alter Summit (to name only a few). Their contribution made it very clear that an European democracy-movement has to combine both: pushing for the transformation into a transnational democracy AND strengthening the local level at the same time (municipalities, town hall meeting etc.) Striving towards a constitutional assembly to turn the EU into a real republic AND working on the ground in assemblies. Peaceful co-existence between a sovereign European parliament (not just a loose collection of national parties vaguely working together) AND a network of ârebel citiesâ (like Barcelona) as well as a wide-spread network of smaller assemblies: a âthird wayâ between representative democracy and direct, basic or âpresentistâ democracy. This is also a question for the âthought collectiveâ that Geert proposed. So much about the future, now about the past - the future of the past. I want to mention Boris Buden's contribution who spoke very strongly about the far-right government of Croatia, pointing towards their mission of historical revisionism. The discourse on âtotalitarianismâ that was developed in Germany during the 80's to relativize the German guilt-question, now has become a political weapon in the hands of the successors of their former collaborators. Buden's resumee: âIt is not yet clear anymore who won the second world war: ANOTHER PAST IS POSSIBLE!â It is clear who were the forces that had a vision for a democratic Europe: the antifascist resistance-movements. A movement to democratise Europe ought to be â no: IS an antifascist movement! It is the merit of Stephane Hessel to have called this legacy back into mind. Hannah Arendt had written about that long before. It was also her who worried that a pan-European movement would inevitably develop into an anti-American one. The anti-American affect was not very present at all at DiEM, that is already a lot taking into consideration how strong it is in some of the contemporary movements: the so-called âpeace-movement 2.0â (around Ken Jebsen) in Germany has been mentioned before, there are other examples of right-wing movements who want to join forces with left-wing movements to form a so-called âQuerfrontâ (political crossover-front). DiEM might be an alternative to this left-right-crossovers by trying to open a âpopular front 2.0â from liberals and greens, socialdemocrats and socialists to the post-autonomous movements such as blockupy, anarchists with the little @) or Bookchin-style democratic federalists. I hope my impression is correct, because that is what is urgently needed from my point of view. A central theme was, of course, the ârefugee-crisisâ: Europe once was not a place to escape to, but to escape from. The concept of âfortress Europeâ has this background: Nazi-Germany at the end of WWII. In the late 70's a book was published by the new nazi-networks in Germany called âEurofascismâ which elaborated on how many European volunteers came to Germany to join the German army to fight against Russians and Americans. The author distanced himself from Hitler and most of the nazis for being too german-centric, but he praised some fringe of the German army to develop a âEuropean visionâ. The concept of âfortress Europeâ has to be seen as the manifestation of what Buden called âanother pastâ. Last, not least: EU-colonialism. It was a Belgian artist Sven Augustijnen who pointed out that the EU was not only founded by civil servants who made their experiences as administrators in Congo, but also the EU-flagg resembles the flagg of Belgian-Congo! The EU was a neocolonial project. And it is our duty to change it into a postcolonial one. For these reasons I am hoping for a DiEM25 meeting in the near future in Brussels and I would suggest to invite Sven Augustijnen. All in all there were not enough artists involved, I felt. But most of all: there was a real lack of involving Europeans-without-European-background for a movement that says: ANOTHER EUROPE IS POSSIBLE! 2016-02-13 20:42 GMT+01:00 Felix Stalder : -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 2016-02-13 19:05, morlockel...@yahoo.com wrote: > The trend(s) that Europe is seeing itself dragged to are not result > of 'wrong' thinking and misbehaviour
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
> I think you are overrating technologies of control, neither the Stasi > nor the KGB could save their systems from collapse (though the ruined > a lot of lives). I think that the conclusion that nothing really changed and that power grabbing and re-grabbing mechanisms are the same as they were (and will stay the same in indefinite future) is grossly wrong (as is the notion of immutability of 'human nature'.) This school of thought is essentially waiting for the next successful 'organizing of masses and revolt' to make things right again. The organizers have just to say the right words and tweets, publish the right pamphlet, which somehow they missed to figure out so far (in all previous failed revolts), but they will find the magic words eventually, and then the Revolution will happen. It's all about words. It is going to be a long wait, as it's a classic example of Einstein's Insanity. It really depends how you think repression works these days. If you think that it's about repressing particularly dangerous individuals, then both encryption (when they can be dealt with individually) and large numbers (when they cannot be dealt with individually because you cannot imprison, or shoot, a very large number of people) help. If you think repression works by influencing the patterns of how people think (e.g. creating an environment that incentivizes people to put all emphasis on maximizing the number of useless "friends", or competing in a rat race of faking their own happiness), then encryption won't help much, but nothing much will. Neither of the above. Targeted repressing or influencing is not relevant, it's too expensive and ineffective. That's smokescreen and useful for PR. It works by inferring correct forecasts, from exposed communications, about group behaviours, before groups themselves understand them. The rest is easy. The biggest obstacle is that this is hard to understand by those who haven't been exposed to the data. It's not intuitive - it's statistics and number crunching, it's a new phenomenon. The way around is to look for secondary tell-tale signs, for example what's legal and what's illegal, what goes into standards, etc. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 On 2016-02-13 19:05, morlockel...@yahoo.com wrote: > The trend(s) that Europe is seeing itself dragged to are not result > of 'wrong' thinking and misbehaviour of supposedly powerful masses. > They are the result of material circumstances, and no amount of > magical (group)thinking will change that. > Material circumstances are mostly related to technologies of > social control, I think you are overrating technologies of control, neither the Stasi nor the KGB could save their systems from collapse (though the ruined a lot of lives). The material circumstances that are dragging Europe (and the US) down have more to do with geopolitical and demographic shifts, the kind of stuff that Keith Hart is talking about. These are, at least in part, related to technological changes, but are primarily embodied in logistics, distribution of productive capacities and changing patterns of the world economy (such as increasing "south-south trade") and not in techniques of crowd control. > Privacy technologies are definitely party of this equation. For > those that can't jettison the 19th century revolutionary scene from > their minds, think meeting on dark street corners. That was a > technology. Today's privacy is the same thing, but it looks a bit > different and takes far longer to learn, and it has to be done. Sure, but the question is, when or how do you ever come out of his corner. You cannot built a social movement in dark corner. And if you want to sidestep this phase, because you think that the critical mass of people are ultimately too stupid, brainwashed or what not, then you are either going into the direction of envisioning a (benevolent) dictator who will do the enlightened work of the unenlightened masses, or some kind of vanguard party (what I called Leninist) that will do the work. The historical record for both is dismal. > Asking people to 'loose their fear' and stampede into the > machinegun fire is short-sighted - and today 'we don't care that > they know about our moves better than we do' is equivalent of > this. It really depends how you think repression works these days. If you think that it's about repressing particularly dangerous individuals, then both encryption (when they can be dealt with individually) and large numbers (when they cannot be dealt with individually because you cannot imprison, or shoot, a very large number of people) help. If you think repression works by influencing the patterns of how people think (e.g. creating an environment that incentivizes people to put all emphasis on maximizing the number of useless "friends", or competing in a rat race of faking their own happiness), then encryption won't help much, but nothing much will. Felix | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJWv4dBAAoJEAu7W5UMn/KsUy8IAL0p9dwDOqaK3OBlitNL1Pnx waXX21U4t/3wOrI1wHqeZqonuPDE3zE2UuN3gmYd3tuUb/uPYNlqLN0OzM8C2Foq wo0K6HkyAn99ZdrdV+XZhyvWDh9TDhgLdgHupEYUymXJWrlt/8q+3NSqzM216RVg scfM+K6+P/tXMX0p/wHgY0t/bjJPTkBXixBo86B73luLI8AH0lv2w6UTCcdfchf6 fYQ+2KR96N0DO/6cDkhmMFpU+6BDD0o7aNeManfRjt2W/RL2S7J14U9oZtyQKszR ES4h2HzuiGsLNbdbGdeTgiPL5LBuzuf1d+BAXf8/vIcfGjhN+ILdGsLigC1Mn+k= =ibbb -END PGP SIGNATURE- # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
The trend(s) that Europe is seeing itself dragged to are not result of 'wrong' thinking and misbehaviour of supposedly powerful masses. They are the result of material circumstances, and no amount of magical (group)thinking will change that. Material circumstances are mostly related to technologies of social control, and these can not be handled by 'not being afraid' and stampeding, which is what current proposals boil down to. That's like not being afraid of bullets - looks great the first 5 minutes. What can make the difference is (painstakingly slow) acquisition of counter-technologies which can change the landscape of material circumstances and make the change sustainable outside the stampede phase. Privacy technologies are definitely party of this equation. For those that can't jettison the 19th century revolutionary scene from their minds, think meeting on dark street corners. That was a technology. Today's privacy is the same thing, but it looks a bit different and takes far longer to learn, and it has to be done. Nothing will change until the would-be changers stop taking knives to gun fights (hoping that bravery and motivation will compensate - they won't). Privacy technologies, including encryption, are essential part of this armament. Asking people to 'loose their fear' and stampede into the machinegun fire is short-sighted - and today 'we don't care that they know about our moves better than we do' is equivalent of this. Absolutely nothing will change as a result of people gathering and talking themselves into this or that, and then regurgitating it in the social media. The modern society is immune to such knives. The proof is obvious - that event in Berlin was completely legal, as are others of its kind, while encryption is less and less legal. The change may come only from the change in the material circumstances (it's not any more about material circumstances of production these days, as is all done by robots, but use of that phrase may help bridge the cognitive gap.) On 2/13/16 2:29 , Felix Stalder wrote: Here, I really totally disagree. Repressive orders crumble when people start to loose their fear and act in large numbers, despite being monitored not because they found ways to evade it. Security, in this case, comes from social solidarity and collective action, not from technology. I'm not against encryption as such, of course, there are many instances where it is vital, but this is not one of them (unless one follows a kind of Leninist approach). In this case, to focus on encryption seems more like a form of political procrastination. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
A few unstructured thoughts from one who just went to see (and pay for) the evening event: There was a LOT of interest by German media, unsurprisingly, since Varoufakis draws a lot of attention. No other left event intending to start an initiative for whatever would have that effect. No complaints. If it takes stars to shine some light on the fact that there is an alternative - fine. The same goes for the format of the event which under all other circumstances I would have found nothing but painful. Speeches about the general state of things, slogans, politicians' general view of the world, for hours one after the other. In the name of founding a movement - seriously? Eastern Europe mostly left out, far less women on stage than men, hrm. But, in the face of this dominant shift to the right which has finally also hit Germany as a backlash to Merkel's handling of the refugee situation I'm actually grateful for any initiative that draws attention to the fact that there is life on the left side of politics. It's good to get politicians, activists, intellectuals this different together to show there is a need and the possibility for change. In some areas of the German left there was criticism that all people on stage support boycotting Israel or something of the kind (I don't know if that's actually true) and therefore are all antisemites. That's a given in German politics and to be expected. No need to agree with that position necessarily but I wanted to add this observation as it was part of the public mumbling during and after the event. I left around midnight (next day was Wednesday, regular school/working day: who was this event for, actually?) with some questions after 3,5 hours of speeches. I had stayed just long enough to hear the first questions from the audience and, like them, would like to know: how? What are the steps towards a movement, any activity, what will those activities actually be? There will be events, and there will be something digital, they said, but how? I admit I arrived already with the strong belief that you can't 'found' a movement but since, I'm sure, the people on stage understand that, I was very curious to hear what they had in mind instead. Unfortunately that wasn't talked about really and maybe the leaders of parties etc. simply aren't the right people to come up with ideas for new movements. At least some basic information about where, how, when, who, what next would have been good to have and at this stage I don't even know how I'm going to find out but I hope there will be more concrete steps and information soon. Another question concerns the non-public parts during the day: how did that come to be actually? How did people get chosen, who chose them, what was the aim, what were the outcomes? Again: what next? My younger self would have totally rejected the whole thing simply for its form but today, like I said, I'm all for almost any kind of initiative that is just that: an initiative and not just words, against the neoliberal-conservative-fascist monster we face. Anne -- http://about.me/annalist https://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x7689407F942951E2 Jabber: _an...@jabber.ccc.de # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
so here i are my 2cents.. after a while. take it a duty free molotov cocktail without the lighter. yes, i listened to the stream, there were a few public and private screenings, for a lower entry cost. and indeed my expectations must have been too high, even if this volksbuehne event format successfully shows a perceived need for mass media compatible "follow me" events, it will later show how well it will have worked measured by its results. "more livestreams from the EU, full access to the TTIP files.." all in all the vocabulary was disappointingly similar to the one of the ruling political class, NGOs and well meaning humanitarian organisations who developed their own representational language games of detachement combined with motivational phraseology. there were still too many evangelists and celebrities rather than "experts" - as if these "influencers" would trigger a larger audience to not only join the movement, but to start risking to think critically - or "out of the box". in this way it resembled more a talkshow on german television and less a debate in an online discussion thread, with its choreography of all-too-predictable statements. there were not enough artists, hackers, activists, scientists - but instead mostly professional mediators. to my knowledge and memory a movement is not generated this way, it is based on an urgency of a struggle to fight for an issue. the plethora of issues sounded too much like the diffused radical liquid democracy outputs of the piratenpartei. so: try harder. the event showed a sense of democracy as a search for the lowest common demonimator which probably achieves the most likes. the abyss of social media expected to applaude and follow made this event almost boring and bordering the unbearable - to me at least, i wish for the best, but learned again to expect less. "start cooking". to go into details which could have been done better: invite other people. from outside europe. from other struggles which matter. from the gold mines in greece or chile. or from the neoliberal blackhole in the uk (nina power, mark fisher) or the burned suburbs of cizre in turkey and bring at least one of the whistleblowers onto the panel. there is no more need for yet another "le monde diplomatique" consensus building carnival of well meant opinions, instead there are more than enough mind blowing suggestions and shocking testimonials to bring up stage and document the urgency better than the introducing stock-photo-image movie with a soundtrack by brian eno. just try to shut up the old school double speak about more "realpolitik" combined with the ideal of "a european supranational identity" which made certain former leftists figures of the political class look irreplaceable in brussels. the political horizon is global and nothing else. if this was about basic radical democracy, then it looked too much like the formation of a new political party than an extraparlamentary, internationalist network of critical leftists. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Hi Felix, I agree with your analysis completely. The European problem is democracy not money. But where is the democratic push going to come from? I am a europhile, I have lived in Paris for almost two decades. In recent years I have begun to see that I may have backed the wrong horse. In 1900 Europe accounted , 25% of the world's population, Europeans controlled 80% of the land surface, for several centuries they lived off unearned income extracted from the rest of the world. In 2100, 6% of the world's population will live in Europe. The old predominate in every sense, the young have higher education and no future. The people recruited from Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe to do the work that pays for the residents' pensions are harrassed and vilified. Most Europeans still hanker for their own imperial dominance and despise non-Europeans. Europe has no credible means of self-defence. A corporate logic of governance generates as its only counterweight right-wing populism. The political trend is inexorably towards fascism. And this is built on resolute denial of reality at every turn. If you read about such a society in first millennium Mesopotamia, you would be thinking of the causes of collapse. Europe is the main and permanent loser in the current world crisis. No wonder there is no serious attempt to do something to reverse existing trends. The energy goes into denial and social fragmentation is an excuse for doing nothing. Keith # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
despite I would share amost all of the general goals of DiEM25, there are some remarkable procedural inconsistencies: - intransparency: how can you criticize the compositon of EU-closed meetings and apply the very same practice with a totally intransparent selection process for the core discussion group? - closed meetings: where are the vidoes of the internal discussions held during the day? how can we demand the EU to open their meetings if we don't do it ourselves? - paywall: how can you charge 12€ entry fee, excluding the poor, the refugees ..., and demand more equality at the same time? Stefan Am 13.02.2016 um 11:29 schrieb Felix Stalder: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 I was also there at the Volksbühne (though not like Geert during the day). <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
On 13/02/16 11:29, Felix Stalder wrote: > crisis in Europe is a crisis of democracy and not one of money. > Europe still is one of the richest, best resourced regions on the > globe. can you elaborate (which resources, measured how)? m # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 I was also there at the Volksbühne (though not like Geert during the day). I completely agree with DiEM25's general analysis that the current crisis in Europe is a crisis of democracy and not one of money. Europe still is one of the richest, best resourced regions on the globe. Consequently, this crisis must be countered with more, not less democracy, and that this more of democracy has to find expressions additional to occasional votes. These, in many ways, are uncontroversial, procedural points. The only element that distinguishes this from demands for more democracy coming from the right (inspired, I'm afraid, by far right victories in Swiss initiatives and referenda), is DiEM25's insistence that this needs to happened on a European, rather than a national level and that the retreat into the nation state is one of the drivers of the crisis. On 2016-02-12 16:12, Nina Temp wrote: > - It's interesting to see that all men I know are totally fond of > it, while all women I know are highly unimpressed and couldn't > help themselves breaking into stunned laughters given the populism > and emptiness of a lot of the speeches - which were leaving parts > of the audience behind with the feeling of being taken for dumb, > uninformed, easily manipulable and therefore to be patronized, > whereas this movement pretends to intend the opposite goals. Perhaps it's because I'm male, but I found the top-down element not so problematic, after all, this was the closing event in theater and much debates, as Geert has pointed out, had taken place during the day. At some point, it's good to come out on the stage and state what it is that you want, that this requires someone to represent the multitude, I can live with. But the problem was, to me, that even in this conventional format, there was very little in terms of demands, short or medium term goals or proposals, or even ideas, what next steps would be. There was lots of empty sloganeering, often not even particularly passionate. In fact it was a dull evening and by the end of it, the theater was considerably less crowded and at the beginning. The only concrete demand, or action goal, was to increase transparency in the ECB and the Eurogroup. This seems very pragmatic, actually doable, so I would have expected some sense of how to do it: to collect signatures, to call the all the MPs, block the ECB, march on Brussels, or what not. It was surprising, at least to me, that one of the best speeches of the evening came from Zizek (delivered in a short video) who said something like: Stick to a every simple demand, but pursue it vigorously and to end and see how destabilizing this can be! Given that the only concrete idea was to increase transparency, this sounded really sensible strategy, something that a diverse coalition could form around and then formulate more ambitious goals. But there was no sense at all, how this even this relatively simple and non-controversial demand could be energized, articulated and executed beyond being voiced at talk shows. > I do agree with Jacob Applebaum's call for secure communication, > but must remind that this will make the bottom-up process yet more > difficult. Here, I really totally disagree. Repressive orders crumble when people start to loose their fear and act in large numbers, despite being monitored not because they found ways to evade it. Security, in this case, comes from social solidarity and collective action, not from technology. I'm not against encryption as such, of course, there are many instances where it is vital, but this is not one of them (unless one follows a kind of Leninist approach). In this case, to focus on encryption seems more like a form of political procrastination. Felix | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2 iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJWvwVtAAoJEAu7W5UMn/Ksx7QIAOlME8s51E8LlsbGDb/u6xus bmnpjdYP5liHdNoyGV6i369XfMMt7JH6bCeMLsQ+bzDnmcFVJouOpnuTaq/SxW/q J4pVt+2V+M3M0fkBnEEay+IXXWMEOXlFKsyz2V3K4qEqvJWkKoOj1qhzJ5xTf+cW ByYlKCoqgWVa/sRou9j41AT8EluyuzeH1vCAuzWy0Me4WhpjeP8eOJRnG8ij1x1v KIRB9wBKIzhNDrtQmcaUG9cQ1tEQfLHipwB9PlzjUQgraAN8YBf0uyNl57+HLfez HAPbxj0uflFsX/p0NS80YoTiNpK79w71slw62B9AOFRLnFc72j0QzUklD0y/vBs= =2HZ7 -END PGP SIGNATURE- # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Dear Nina, Dear Geert, thanks for your reports and views on diem25 - an event that is ostensibly about setting up demoradical constituent power in europe - lead by varoufakis, the only credible opposant of ordoliberal austerity. i agree it wants to try to be the Great Recession version of the the Great Depression Popular Front - although not only we are living under informationalism and not industrialism, but the geopolitics is very different - political marxism is becoming residual in all forms (reformist, revolutionary, hybrid) and european fascism is not yet a unified threat - in a way it's like europe were a big weimar republic based on the eroding power of the black-red-gold alliance (Zentrum/CDU, SPD, FDP) threatened on the right by lega-like parties and pegida-style movements whose fortunes are being boosted by salafist threats to the European citizenry. Also, let's not forget that the 1930s, even in England and France, were not open to immigration and political refugees. But there is no fundamental threat to European democracy like the one posed by Hitler+Mussolini (Putin does not want to conquer the eurozone - although his patriarch is plotting with the pope against gay marriage in europe). Leaving historical parallelisms aside, the initiative is very interesting, although flawed in a few aspects, some of which have already been highlighted by Geert (who sounds supportive but nevertheless critical of the media-savvy, informationally poor semi-leninist set up) and Nina (who is much more dismissive of aging men trying to reinvent european politics). I think itis flawed in the remedy it proposes to presently disintegrating Europe. There is the urgency, but the course of action suggested fails to adress it. I just wrote an article in Italian (it should be published soon by ilmanifesto - i sent it five days ago) on the matter. If you want to defeat Bank, Commission and Merkel-Hollande, you need to establish another Europe. This is what Diem is saying. And given its alliance with Blockupy, the only transeuropean movement we have at our disposal, its words are credible in the sense they will lead to some form of political action. But how so? I'm afraid the how is where all the hopes will be dashed. Germans and Italians (the Romans and Venetians were there, Geert - the spaghetti movement is presently in a downswing) look up to Barcelona and Madrid, to En Comu and Podemos, for a radically populist answer to the Brussels Consensus (based on the right to city, queer rights, antiracism, mobilization of the precariat, urban ecology etc), capable of inspiring all movement forces across the Continent so to finally challenge and dismantle European neoliberalism. Yet not even the Spaniards have really resolved the issue of the kind of Europe we want and need. The article i wrote concurs with Simms that a constituent Europe must be decided and fought for (it's not a process like the Monnet guys told us, it's a disruptive event) and it can only be a European Continental Republic (Res Publica Europae Continentalis? my Latin sucks) which federates the eurozone and who else wants to join (many would want to get out, too - starting with Britain and possibly ending with Poland). I disagree with Simms it should be part of NATO: rather it should be strongly neutral - capable of defending itself but, say, reluctant to be dragged into war with Russia over Ukraine. So this is my constructive criticism of diem. Be transparent and radically democratic, certainly. But discuss and construct clearly what the ultimate aim is in concrete terms. If we want to seize power in Brussels and Frankfurt, we need to point out what kind of European state we are fighting for. It should protect fundamental rights (asylum, queer, labor, cyber, eco rights) and establish a transnational democracy that curbs the powers of the nefarious nation-states to empower autonomous regions (Catalunya, say) and cities (Berlin, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Athens) - its monetary and fiscal policies should be geared toward gender equality, the elimination of unemployment and precariousness, the valorization of youth across the union, and other crucial priorities advanced by the post-1999 and post-2011 movements. All this would be revolutionary in the present historical conditions. In fact, you would really need a revolution to dislodge the eurocracy from power. Will diem constitute a pan-european force for radical political change in the eurozone and the EU? I certainly hope so, for the alternative is dissolution and war also on the European continent. best for the shabbat, lx On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Nina Temp wrote: > Hello all, > > I was also there and cannot share Geert's enthusiasm a tiny bit, as do > many others that were there. > > Why? <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://m
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
El 12/02/16 a las 21:33, Geert Lovink escribió: <...> > Vital European energies are coming from Spain, and in particular > Barcelona. The program centered around Spain. I like to remark that there was a repeated mistake during all the sessions: Podemos was seen like a reference, like The reference for Spain. In fact in Spain, since the Indignados's, we are doing an amazing r-evolution despite of Podemos, surely not thanks to Podemos. The rebel cities of Barcelona and Coruña where yes represented in the DiEM "show", but Podemos was omni-presented in the discussions which will bring all this newly "founded movement" (¿?) to the starting point of killing the energy and action that are really making the deference (in Spain or elsewhere) carried out but the civil society organized (in Spain PAH, Partido X, Barcelona en Comú, 15MpaRato, Agua es vida, Mareas, Marea Blanca...) , to replace them by a poor and banal (yes, Podemos is mainly banal and inefficient, exept some very residual good people there)/macho centric/dogmatic/tech-incompetent/selfpreserving/narcisistic top-down leftish movement :), very poor in realistic ideas and practices. Really nothing new I'm afraid. I'm not sure that this is what we need to have the job of democratizing Europe done ;). And what I'm saying is not an opinion :D. It's science :D, and more precisely statistics: the DiEM event in Madrid is completely cooptated by Podemos. There is no room for anybody else except the useful fools that will represent a devoted and fan-boys like civil society; the real active civil society is expelled by this (see, for example: the camarade Ada Colau, great fighter and maire of Barcelona now, is less and less been part of it; as she said in the video in the soirée, she "welcomes" the new movement, but she doesn't say anymore she is part of it). And no one from the launchers of DiEM (Yanis, can you ear me?) is taking the responsibility to not let this happen in Madrid. Because I think that to have the things done (what was? oh! ya! To have Europe Democratize) good ideas are not enough, specially not ONE good idea. Democracy is only the ability to be together in diversity, to manage diversity, nothing else. We will need someone taking responsibility on the "how" despite of the leftish myths of the openess as a solution (in which the big fish eat the small one = no diversity) and the need to be united (merging in an TM in which, once more, the big fish eat the small one). We should take a great care of diversity to have really new things happening. There were some voices and very interesting people in the meeting during the afternoon previous the show, but what they were proposing, like all the distributed organization that Geert proposes, were really undermined being all the attention driven to the seduction of words and oratorial competition. So watch your back, Podemos could be there ;) and long life to the free culture and hacker philosophy! I hope DiEM get there and become a networked structure with strong methodology. Let me dream :). Simona [thank you, like always, to have been patient with my tragic english] # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: notes from the DIEM25 launch
Hello all, I was also there and cannot share Geert's enthusiasm a tiny bit, as do many others that were there. Why? - Let's start with the fact that it was indeed some "contemporary version of 1930s popular front": That doesn't only apply to the very general sense of it, but even to borrowing rhetorics from national socialism, given that a repeatedly mentioned ominous "they" was attributed to the nameless rich & powerful in the trailer (very similar to the financial elites said to be all Jewish in the 1930s) which - while not depicted with rats - was indeed illustrated by spiders (yes, actual spiders). - I was shocked to hear that the contents of the speeches didn't refine enough their intentions so that even a woman in the audience defining herself as fan of Ken Jebsen and the "New Peace Movement" (both representing a new spectrum of the political right in Germany) was still able to feel very included and happily applaud to everything presented. - In context of this, the "start cooking, recipe to follow" motto that Brian Eno announced (not without referring to Bono and even the defenseless dead David Bowie) and that is currently so fondly quoted, makes me think of a brilliant Hannah Arendt quote that I heard on Thursday's "Maker Culture" panel at transmediale, and that puts this actionism in a very problematic light: "Making is much too often an excuse for acting". (~) - The fact that there is a lot of big names from the cultural left supporting the movement, who obviously spread the information of the workshops among themselves while making others pay entrance to a theater, somehow gives me the feeling that this will in no way be bottom-up, but just reproduce the already existing power structures, making some enthusiasts work for free while the big names can add social capital and new networks to their accounts. - It's interesting to see that all men I know are totally fond of it, while all women I know are highly unimpressed and couldn't help themselves breaking into stunned laughters given the populism and emptiness of a lot of the speeches - which were leaving parts of the audience behind with the feeling of being taken for dumb, uninformed, easily manipulable and therefore to be patronized, whereas this movement pretends to intend the opposite goals. - Last but not least, of course I know that this project aims specifically at improving the current EU problematics, but these somewhat "All hail the EU" rhetorics left me with the uneasy feeling that this could end up as some kind of socialism that simply replaces "national" with "european", thus empowering yet again another local (well-fenced) in-group while actually the problems that caused the current European crisis are international, can't be isolated to a certain territory, and thus can also only be solved on that level and in a much more inclusive way, which should seek alliances with activists and politicians from all over the world, especially of course from the Africa, the Middle East and all the industrial global players. I don't know if all this was just teething problems. I actually have a hard time believing it, as all these are structural problematics, and it is hard for me to understand how highly professional politicians and intellectuals are not able to see them right away. I do agree with Jacob Applebaum's call for secure communication, but must remind that this will make the bottom-up process yet more difficult. Also, I was very surprised at him having the excellent chance on the whistleblower panel at transmediale to have the audience almost literally hanging on his lips, eagerly asking for answers to the question what they themselves can do -- and all he comes up with is some childish James Bond stories that don't even suit 1 person in 300 million and thus irresponsibly contribute to the very problematic already existing believe that we need more action of a kind that is sexy, technology-related and will make you famous. Crap! It's much more important to encourage people to do grass-roots work. The spectacle at the Volksbuehne didn't exactly tell a different narrative from A's?. N Am 13.02.2016 um 06:33 schrieb Geert Lovink : > Dear nettimers, > > last weekend I was in Berlin where I combined Transmediale festival > (attending workshops on the Snowden archive and MoneyLab related issues) > with the launch of the Democracy in Europe Movement (DIEM25), initiated > by the ex-Greek finance minister & Sydney-sider Yanis Varoufakis. The > day was divided in three parts: a press conference (an old school format > with weird criteria who was entitled to attend, and as I am 100% not > press, I left), a closed meeting divided in three parts (general > diagnosis, economics and strategy) and a theatre show in the large > auditorium of the Volksb??hne (see links below for the entire stream and > selected presentations). <...> # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for
notes from the DIEM25 launch
Dear nettimers, last weekend I was in Berlin where I combined Transmediale festival (attending workshops on the Snowden archive and MoneyLab related issues) with the launch of the Democracy in Europe Movement (DIEM25), initiated by the ex-Greek finance minister & Sydney-sider Yanis Varoufakis. The day was divided in three parts: a press conference (an old school format with weird criteria who was entitled to attend, and as I am 100% not press, I left), a closed meeting divided in three parts (general diagnosis, economics and strategy) and a theatre show in the large auditorium of the Volksb??hne (see links below for the entire stream and selected presentations). DIEM25 should be seen as contemporary version of 1930s ???popular front???, a meta-party that presents itself a broad coalition, a historical block Gramsci-style, consisting of old and new leftist parties, the Greens, Podemos, Die Linke, independent candidates and scattered members of social-democratic parties and progressive liberals. The key word here was the ???multi-level logic??? of the DIEM25 circles. There was consensus that is no longer sufficient to have the right arguments to counter the powers-to-be. We need to do something. Time is running out for Europe. That???s the essence of the DIEM slogan: if Europe does not democratize, it will disintegrate. >From the social movement side it was Blockupy that had the most visibility. Yanis attended a European coordination meeting of Blockupy last weekend, where Toni Negri, amongst others, was also present. Needless to say that many are involved in refugee/migrant support work, mostly on the local level. On the economic level peer-to-peer initiatives have clearly gained influence and visibility. The critique that the DIEM was a consumerist event (entrance: 12 euro) was in fact predictable and should be countered with demand that we need much more spectacle with the inclusion of Berlin DJs, theatre performances, much more video screens and up-to-date integration of digital tools in the overall presentation. There is more than Skype. Rightly so, the unity of politics and the arts was demanded and practiced???if in a rudimentary way. Vital European energies are coming from Spain, and in particular Barcelona. The program centered around Spain. Remarkably not Italy. Where are the Italian (autonomous) movements? In a similar way Greece was the absent object, with Syriza being the absent political party. The reason for this was clear because of the recent direction of the DIEM founder but nonetheless a pity. If one reconstructs the emergence of DIEM Greece is its birth place, and for many of us, a place where a multitude of alternative best practices are coming from. Hopefully these lacks and imbalances will be corrected as time goes by. Obviously countries from Central and Eastern Europe were represented: Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland. However, the great absent player in the room was Russia. The war in Ukraine was not even mentioned once. Traditionally, critical analyses of the situation in Russia do not come from the left. This leaves open space for analysis for players like George Soros (whose Russian NGOs were recently closed by Putin): http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/11/putin-threat-europe-islamic-state. At the same time traditional anti-Americanism was prevented as well. The USA was rarely mentioned. Europe is not seen a victim of imperialism. The often discussed TTIP trade treaty is, rightly so, seen as a European problem. The real challenge DIEM has to tackle is the question of organization. It is called a movement, but is it really? Someone mentioned that one cannot ???found??? a movement. They emerge, bottom up. What will happen over the next weeks, and perhaps months, are local DIEM events to start with Madrid, Amsterdam and for sure more that I do not know about. This is the age of the internet so how about some internet coordination? I counted around six ???people from the internet??? at the founding meeting, amongst them Jacob Appelbaum, who argued for a secure way to organize internal communication through crypto tools. Funny enough it was the use of Facebook that caused the only open controversy during the meeting. Whereas some favored the use of Facebook, others made it clear that it is impossible ???to take over Facebook???. How can a movement like DIEM have ownership over their communication destiny? Another term someone dropped was ???think tank???. There is something to be said for that. Why not create a ???thought collective??? that can do political coordination on a meta level, behind the scenes, while organizing local and regional assemblies and festivals at the same time? We arguably need more meta coordination as there are already so much local initiative. In the end, it is about democracy on a European level. However, DIEM cannot only be only concept and policy development, discourse making and strategizing in the background. In this media age,
