High come everyone. Good evening. Welcome to the bookstore cafe. My name is molly quicker am the director of public programming your at the bookstore. Welcome, welcome to tonights event for disaster capitalism. We are so excited to have all of you. Can i get a round of applause from anyone who has never been in this bookstore before . [applause] awesome. Welcome. That gives me the opportunity to take this moment to tell you about this bookstore and things we do here. Housing works is a Healing Community of People Living with and affected by hiv and aids. Our mission is to individual crises of homelessness and aids come to relentless advocacy, the provisions of lifesaving services and entrepreneurial services, businesses assist in those efforts. Thats what this bookstore is in addition to all of our trip stores you may seem rather silly but its one of those businesses. That means every single thing in historical all of the books and lps and dvds are donated to us. And our team of booksellers and bartenders is made up of volunteers. That way all of the money we raise in the store goes directly to job training, advocacy, housing, health care, and other services for almost an former homeless new yorkers living with hiv and aids. We are one of the Largest Service organizations in the world and everything with that we host at the bookstore is a key part of the fundraising for that event. We are incredibly grateful to all of the people and organizations t that purchase bt in our event programs. Tonight we want to make special, special thanks to those who make this event possible by donating books to us with your personal to me left. You can grab a book and can purchase it at the register. We also have some free wine and some free beer tonight which is a really awesome, the way that works is that they give us books and they buy from our cafe. That when you get to buy books and you get a free beer and we get to fundraise which is really amazing. We encourage you to buy a book tonight to enjoy free drink and then after that to purchase a second drink and to buy a million books while you get to that which is really important part of our fundraising. And come back and see us as well. You can help us up a volunteer your time, donating your old stuff, hosting an event with us just like this one or by renting out our space for a private function. We have beautiful weddings and private parties almost every single weekend. If youre in the market for a wedding or if he meets with you tonight she should come and get my card after the show and learn all about our private events as well. You can stay in touch by such driving to our newsletter which comes twice a month and is filled with free readings and concerts and parties and great events just like this one. You have a really, really busy following and we encourage you to come back and see us. You can stay in touch on social media. We are housing works of books and you can find the rest of our calendar at housing works. Org event. So without further out a deal on clinic at this show started. Im going to bring up are too intelligent and amazing gentlemen tonight. These guys will come up, have a short video and they will talk and then after that will open up the questions to the audience and the microphone not entirely speaking in is a microphone that you can ask a question. So once we get to the portion just remember where i am at that you can commit to ask a question. All right. So for some going to introduce our moderator and it easier for tonight, jeremy scahill. He is an investigative reporter, war correspondent and author of the National Best selling book dirty wars, the world, the battlefield and blackwater. He has served as a national to the correspondent for the nation and democracy now . He was twice awarded the prestigious torch book award and his producer and writer of the Award Winning film dirty wars which premiered at the 2013 film festival, was nominated for an academy award. Antony loewenstein the wrong paper, sorry. Antony loewenstein is independent australian journalist, documentary maker and blogger was written for the bbc, the nation and the washington post. He is a guardian columnist and the author three best selling books, might israel question, and others. His new book is disaster capitalism making a killing out of catastrophe. He is coeditor and cowriter of for gods sake because books have been translated into journalism has been a finalist in many global award. He is currently working on a documentary about disaster capitalism. Here they are. Apostolat[applause] thank you all for coming. Were going to show a short clip. Ive been working on a film for about four years with a new york filmmaker who is sitting over there. The film is about afghanistan, haiti, pahpa new guinea, those were fighting back and challenging other areas. The film is 90 shot. We have been to haiti, afghanistan and pahpa new guinea choice. We are currently the process of trying to raise money to finish it come to rough cut it to have slot money, talk to me afterwards. And heres a short clip of the film in progress. Thank you. [applause] i know how difficult it is to raise funds to do journalism projects that are not going to be profitable. And one of the things that always has struck me about anthonys work is that he is a quintessential underdog journalist and set out to do a documentary with a global focus that tells history from the perspective of those who were being targeted rather than doing the targeting, is not going to make a lot of friends, and its not good to make you a lot of money. I think if we lose the institution of independent filmmaking, of independent journalism thats motivated not by profit but the desire to tell history from the perspective of those who are victims of it, then we have a totally bankrupt society when it comes to open media and media freedom. So i hope and i believe that this documentary will see the light of day. It will. Its coming. I know it will. Its interesting because you could bring this dvd in your backpack and stream it around the country and around the global south and around the world but because of the level of detail and the way you guys are producing this, i believe it deserves a much wider viewing. I hope if theres anyone in this audience that can spare 10,000 speakers for 100,000 or 500,000. You should deadly approach antony after this. Antony is a friend of mine that ive done difference with him in his native australia and now we are flipping it around and im hanging with him here. Most of the way that i know antony though is through his journalism. And i think thats true of the opposite. He knows me through my journalism. I think theres a this very small group, a very small tribe of journalists from around the world who were sort of impacted and molded by the anticorporate globalization of rising of the mid to late 1990s that were of course fueled by the global south and then embraced by sectors activists in the global north. And then further had the outlook on the world shaped by the post9 11 reality where you had a cartoonish set of billions in power in the United States in bush and cheney. You had naked, cold, socalled free market capitalism being openly defended or offended by the brutal iron fist of militarism around the globe. And there is a small circle of journalists globally that it made it their business to expose the machinery of the connection between war and corporate interest. And antonys journalism may not be wellknown in the United States over people who really are interested in investigating the Global Impact of economic neoliberalism and western militarism imperialism, antony has been an incredible voice in that struggle to get these stories out. I have a lot of things i want to ask antony about and also people should be think about questions you may want to ask them, but i want to start with the situation of refugees who are fleeing syria, iraq, and elsewhere. And migrating to various European Countries. You said something earlier to me before we started this event that i thought was really fascinating and an underreported story. Entities you talked about the para militarization of the response to refugees in your. So maybe you can give an overview of that and explain what you meant by that. One of the things that is arguably the greatest star, one of the greatest stories of our time is the fact that are now more refugees looking for a silence, safety, but the Second World War but i think the u. N. Said 50 or 60 Million People are now currently searching for some kind of safety. One of the things that less talked about, i spent time in greece in the book but the fact that so much of what the European Union is doing, so much of the money they are spending, its not about helping refugees . Its about surveillance and monitoring and policing. So lots policing. So a lot of the a lot of the money, for example, some of the money that we solely was led to be given to greece under the austerity packages had to be spent on surveillance. Has to be spent on monitoring and surveillance refugees. An issue you dont often hear about. So when the great party in power made and an arguably completely devastating capitulation to the European Union austerity, the result was the also accepted apart from messy privatization other social services and realities is to surveil. That means leasing out israeli drones to monitor refugees, range of other things like that. So in some ways greece has done this speakers and many other European Countries as well. Which israel likes to lease out its of drones that its a theme. Rather than buying, you can get airtime so to speak for doing so. One of the things thats interesting about that apart from being disturbing is you have a massive industry that is pretty happy about the fact that there are now god knows how many refugees surging from north africa, middle east to europe, putting aside the u. S. Or elsewhere. I think the question about that, whether its immigrants from the south is that this is massive, big business. Not just a question and one mind state of helping people have a better life. Thats maybe to you and i would see it. How can we help people be treated better . But its a huge business opportunity, and one of the things that so few journalists are writing about the reasons, who knows why that is apart from journalist not being good at the job come is understanding why this has become such a big business in which companies are involved. And greece is one of those countries, italy as well and ultimate with the refugee crisis says that have European Union based on out of undemocratic brussels, for years many on the left, not so much the right but the left side europe in the eu as of the ultimate unify dream. Thats over. Im not saying the eu will collapse tomorrow. They wont there is profound disquiet in much of europe on the left and right for Different Reasons including the uk in saying what exactly are we signed up . What exactly is a video . What are we going to . Are we looking at greece as an example has been completely devastated by years of austerity which is only going to get worse, or overlook is something which actually is far more democratic and eu in their late is undemocratic, and thats why think a lot of people are really questioning what the European Unions future is. Its interesting, your characterization, the reason i think initially there was a lot of hope and a lot of optimism. I want to talk about Jeremy Corbyn and britain down the line, but you said, he just said that the austerity is only connected to worst. Explained that. Portrayed itself as a left wing antiausterity push back against sort of right wing policies of merkel in germany, the European Union, nato infrastructure. I was a public portrayal. But you know just sort of quickly moved on and said these guys are total part of the public in fact they will make it worse. For those who dont know, they want another election in september just recently. The reason i think theres been a massive capitulation, the former finance minister of greece loves twitter is a longtime illustrator one of the reason i think he left the government was he knew theyre going to capitulate in a profound way. Yes, there was a gun to greece said at a stop the political will. Its a long conversation where the greeks should made a distinctly the European Union. That was a fear if greece left the eu economy would completely collapse. Economy has collapsed but in a far more egregious way. They made a decision are alexis the press or the lives around, hes a Prime Minister, others around him, but that was too far to go. The reason i think its likely to be worse, i dont know for sure is with the terms upon which they are assigned far more privatization of public service, farmer cuts to hospitals and Public Health care entities also farmer greater reliance on monitoring and surveillance refugees which is one of the less talked about increase as well. The reason that spot is having spent time in greece, spent time in this people seeing these devastating personal effects, people who spend their lives as middleclass people, forced to give their children lunch. Like that is the reality and greece today which happens in parts of the u. S. As well for sure. But in greece is a testing reality, and the effect of that is you now have in europe, or i should say in europe and also in greece a far right Neonazi Party in parliament. The Third Largest party in the great part of the. Day 1715 in the recent election. Their support is growing not decreasing. The search of a far right militancy in europe is only going to get worse. And, unfortunately, to me and undemocratic European Union that imposes policies that make a european citizen such as greeks dont feel like theyre actually independent, most greeks i message we are not an independent country more. The decisions are being made in brussels. Its not made in athens. Its made elsewhere. The effect of that is that people are more likely maybe to latch onto a simplistic far right ideas which is, and ironically the Neonazi Party does have a solution to anything of course but it solutions argued bash refugees industry. There such a deep space provided in greece and that for years the police and military were in on the. So just to finish on that point, the concern that syriza faces as they are imposing with the fundamentally opposed, and, therefore, what the present is the challenge is for a major left party that came into power pledging to change the economic environment. The capitulate within five months. And the real reason for that because we dont know the conversations that what happened in the room between the eu and greece. With a bit of an idea. Thats a problem. I have a twopronged follow on this. On the one hand, im curious as to your thoughts about why Angela Merkel has staked out the visit she has. On the one and shes trying to appear as though, shes taking salafis with refugees and just try to appear as though, they want germany to be this safe territory for the refugees to enter. And im curious what your analysis of her position and also the uks position is on refugees. But to respond record is something that you said about sort of fascist men occupy parties rising, i spend a lot of time in the former yugoslavia, and whats interesting is that in central, southern, eastern europe, in a lot of countries you had sort of dueling banjos playing for power. On the one hand, you have the failed neoliberal experiment with the u. S. Supported color revolutions at all these things. On the other hand, you have a kind of red Brown Coalition that takes place where youve got remnants of former authoritarian government, milosevic in serbia, for instance, teaming up with neofascist pseudonationalists entities. Corrosion out the provision of croatia is a borderline fascist who is straight out of some kind of a bizarre cold war textbook. You saw this in poland and other countries where there was on the one hand a rejection of neoliberal policies. On the other hand, and embrace of pseudonationalistic policies. So on both of those side of the scale, youve got merkel positioning trying to appear as though shes friended to refugees taking salafis, but in reality one of the main people leaving the kind of war against refugees and immigrants and on the other hand, you have these kind of remnants of failed regimes teaming up with fascists basically, or ultra nationalis nationalists, that tend to go more towards the right wing and campaign on issues like we will do with the price of bread, reject nato membership, you know, nationalize Public Services again. How do you see all of that coming into play speak with germany is a fascinating case. The history in the country is always close to the service to many germans, and this has been shown by poll after poll, are deeply mad at the fact they feel like they are bailing out the deluge of europe, greece in particular and others. They say they are sick of it so, therefore, lets ge they perceid it as taking a hard line against those by their banks that are tremendous amount of money off of completely, massively, massively. Theres also in germany a growing neonazi movement which, of course, has always been there but that are regularly pretty much every week into former east five bombings of refugee homes and centers. This is a growing threat that im not saying they about to take power, trying to do a fear monger but this is a problem. Merkle said it will take 800,000 refugees issue. Up early from syria which is it is a case and happens, that is welcome if that happens but, so she is, this is not an excuse, but theres lot of things is juggling. Economically and financially a number of greek ministers have come out and said in the last month when theyre in negotiations with the germ essential they were told you have no choice. Theres nothing to negotiate a. Give me been elected on your platform, we dont typically making the rules. We have the money. Capitulate or not. Obviously syriza in greece i guess couldve said screw you, going under own, but there was this profound fear of doing so. Whether the sentiment within greece is going to increase to lead the eurozone is a thing possible. I thi