The letter notes the persistence of serious issues in Greece, including surveillance, threats, harassment, physical attacks, and murders of journalists. It also cites government pressure on editorial and media independence, including Greece’s public broadcaster, as well as legal threats, such as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) and criminal defamation.

The organizations asked national authorities to provide, in writing, an overview of the steps being considered to address the concerns, and to establish a national action plan.

Read the full letter here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

Tsoutsouvis had been a member of one of the first Greek leftist guerrilla orgs known as the ELA or Revolutionary People’s Struggle.

Over the years he participated in a number of militant acts of property destruction and later graduated to political assassinations targeting some of the worst perpetrators of torture of the Greek military junta.

He died on 15 May 1985 in a shoot out with the police in which he managed to take 3 of them with him.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by subMedia.

Map of Cyprus by Abraham Ortelius, 1527-1598. KB National Library of the Netherlands, Amsterdam. Public Domain

Prologue

An Orphic hymn says that Kypris, Aphrodite of Cyprus, was the “scheming mother of necessity.” She controlled and gave birth to the Earth, the sea, and the Cosmos (Orphic Hymn to Aphrodite 55). Another myth says that Aphrodite was born from the white aphros, foam, of the cut genitals of Ouranos (sky). The name Aphrodite comes from that sky aphros. She has the additional name of Kythereia because she first came close to the island of Kythera.

Venus (Aphrodite) Anadyomene (Rising from the aphros of the sea) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1848. Louvre. Public Domain

Cyprus, however, like Greece, has millennia long history. In the Bronze Age Cyprus had a thriving copper trade with Eurasia. Its name, Cyprus, may be connected to copper, also known as Cyprus.

Cyprus is the third largest island in the Mediterranean, some 3,572 square miles in size. Nevertheless, Cyprus suffered the indignities of foreign occupation. Empires / states that occupied Cyprus include Assyria, Egypt, Persia, Greek Ptolemaic Egypt, Rome, Arab caliphates, France, Venice, Mongol Ottoman Turkey, and Britain. Cypriot Greeks revolted against the pro-Turkish British rule and won Independence in 1960. England took revenge by bringing Turkey back to Cyprus.

The pogrom of 1955

The Patriarch emerging from the ruined church of the Holy Vergin at the Belgrade Gate, Istanbul, Turkey, during Pogrom, September 6-7, 1955. From Dimitrios Kaloumenos, The Crucifixion of Christianity, 48th edition, Athens, 2001. Courtesy Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos.

The violence exploded with the 1955 vicious Turkish pogrom against 85,000 Greeks in Istanbul. The pogrom took place during the London conference on Cyprus in late August to early September 1955 between Britain, Turkey, and Greece. The collusion of Britain and Turkey in this conference was part and parcel of Turkey’s unleashing of the pogrom against the Greeks of Istanbul. The two events, the Cyprus conference and the pogrom became indistinguishable.

On the eve of the pogrom, activists marked the Greek homes and properties for destruction. They had learned a lesson from the 1572 Saint Bartholomew Day massacre in France. Once the pogrom was over, the pogromists nearly disappeared. They had succeeded in their mission beyond expectation. They provided the Turkish government a fig leaf for the utter destruction of the Greeks of Istanbul.

Speros Vryonis, UCLA professor of history, explained the pogrom as an expression of “the depth of the inherited, historical hatred of much of Turkish Islam for everything non-Muslim.” That’s why religious fanaticism was “at the core of the pogrom’s fury.” This invested the pogromists with limitless violence. Their destruction of the Greeks’ property, and household and livelihood, what the Greeks call noikokirio, was “the most extensive and intensively organized” in the 500 years since Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453. The Turks destroyed more than 4,000 to 4,500 businesses and 3,500 homes; they wrecked about 90 percent of the Greek churches, showing off their “fervid chauvinism” and “profound religious fanaticism,” desecrating icons, defecating, and urinating on altars. They mocked, beat, and circumcised clerics. They exhumed and knifed the dead in the cemeteries, behaving like savage barbarians.

Shock, outrage and fear

On the aftermath of the pogrom, Greek Turkish relations took the form of a non-shooting war. Greece kept sending Turkey one memorandum after another, reminding Menderes of his responsibility to compensate the injured Greeks of Istanbul while punishing those who destroyed the Greek community. Menderes ignored the pleas of the Greek government but kept making the life of the Greeks in Turkey unbearable. Finally, on May 27, 1960, a military coup brought down the Menderes government, putting to death Menderes and his two closest associates. But the generals continued Menderes’ policies. Their “neo-Ottoman imperialism” armed Turkey to the teeth, crashing the Kurds. In 1974, with the permission of the US and England, Turkey, guided by the military, invaded, and occupied forty percent of Cyprus where they put into practice the cleansing policies Menderes tested in 1955 against the Greeks in Istanbul.

UN administrative zone in Nicosia. Behind this zone is the Turkish occupied territory of Cyprus — since 1974. Courtesy Lobby for Cyprus.

The Turks, embolden by the tacit approval of the US, which has been funding their armaments, continue to violate Greek airspace, an aggression they have been carrying out since 1964. And yet, despite this Turkish record of enmity against Greece, a behavior bordering on perpetual war, Greece on the surface persists in being friendly to Turkey. There’s no other explanation for such incomprehensive and demeaning Greek submission to the strategic aggression of Turkey in the Aegean than the dictates of America. The dogma of Imia still stands. The US considers Turkey a more important ally than Greece. The Turkish violations of Greek air space and Greek sovereignty in the Aegean Sea show the Europeans and Americans the real genocidal face of the Islamic state of Turkey. Neither NATO not the European Union react to the hostility of Turkey against Greece, member of both NATO and EU and a country that civilized the Western world. And Greece keeps following the American and NATO dictates of bowing to Turkey’s demands. Turkey even prevents Greece from connecting Crete to Cyprus with underwater cables. Turkish warships threaten war and disrupt the Greek exploration and works in the Greek Aegean Sea.

Despite Turkish aggression, Britain and America cooked the 1967 Greek military coup in Athens and the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

A Greek agent?

I came to the United States to study. During 1967 to 1972, I was a graduate student. I was concerned that soldiers governed Greece. But I did not have a clue of American meddling in the hatching of the coup or plans against Cyprus. My postdoctoral studies in the history of science at Harvard did not help to clear the picture. My Harvard studies brought me to Washington, DC, where I worked for a Congressional Committee, the Office of Technology Assessment. Then I joined the staff of Congressman Clarence Long (D-Maryland). This was in 1978, four years after the Turks occupied the northern half of Cyprus. The Cypriot ambassador met with Long, and I prepared the background for the meeting. I found the argument of the ambassador compelling. He was requesting about 15 million dollars to assist the internal refugees following the brutal Turkish invasion. Privately, I explained to the Congressman that what happened to Cyprus was catastrophic. I said the US should have never allowed, much less encouraged, Turkey to embark on such an atrocity.

A couple of months later, Congressman Long said to me, through his chief of staff, I should be looking for another job. Long himself said to me: “I never thought I hired a Greek agent.” It was useless to argue with him. He liked to be addressed as Dr. Long. He pretended he was against corruption. I convinced him to investigate the corrupt International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both creatures of the US Treasury Department. I prepared hearings on IMF and the World Bank, only to find out Long cancelled the hearings all together – at the last moment . Lobbyists crawled all over his office.

Cypria

With this background, we turn to a richly rewarding and memorable and beautifully written book about Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite. The book has an ancient Greek title, Cypria: A Journey to the Heart of the Mediterranean (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2024). The author is a British Cypriot writer and publisher, Alex Christofi.

Cypria, a lost Cypriot epic on the origins of the Trojan War, in the hands of Christofi becomes Cyprus. This is a beautiful island in the heart of the Mediterranean. Christofi relates the history of Cyprus like a personal journey, something like another Odyssey. He has no doubt that Cyprus is the Elysian Fields of gods and men. He says that Aphrodite came out of the waters of the Cypriot city of Paphos. I fully understand Christofi. When my daughter was very young, I used to tell her I was the first cousin of Odysseus. My struggles in America and efforts to return to Greece were Odysseys. All that accumulated passion for return, Nostos, would often explode in tears during “nostimon emar,” the day of return. But for Christofi, in addition to his love for Cyprus, he speaks about the strategic place of Cyprus at the intersection of Africa, Asia and Europe in the Mediterranean. Then he cites the island’s Greek traditions. He is proud of the Cypriot Greek script and that Cypriots claimed Homer as their own poet. He is right saying “Cypriots were the first to learn the vital secret of smelting iron.” The Cypriots also had a purple dying industry in their polis of Kition before 1,000 BCE.

In the Classical Age, Christofi highlights the Stoic philosophy of Zeno of Kition who flourished in Athens in late fourth century BCE. Zeno, says Christofi, “built a stupendous fortune of 6 million drachmas by trading purple dye across the Mediterranean.” However, Zeno lost his boats in a storm while in Piraeus, the harbor of Athens. At that moment, Zeno decided to educate himself. He spent 20 years following Greek philosophers. When he started giving his own lectures in the Stoa of Athens, he proposed a way of life that attracted millions for about 800 years. Christofi sums up Zeno’s philosophy, Stoicism. “Living well,” he says, “is simple: be strict with yourself and tolerant of others; if it isn’t right, don’t do it; if it’s not true, don’t say it; the best revenge is not to be like your enemy. More than anything – and you can imagine how this went down with the other philosophers – stop arguing about what it takes to be a good person and be one.”

Starting in the fourth century of our era, 800 years after Zeno, the Greek civilization of Cyprus and Greece came under ceaseless attacks by Christianity and, in the seventh century and after, by Islam. Both antagonistic and warring religions arrived in Cyprus early. Christofi, an Eastern Orthodox Christian, likes both religions. In fact, he writes with deep respect and affection for Islam. His friendly narrative on the Ottoman Mongol Sultans becomes lyrical when he describes Sultan Suleiman.

He says that, up to mid-twentieth century, Christian and Moslem Cypriots respected each other’s religion. Yet the Mongol Turks for centuries were vicious and genocidal against the Greeks.

In 1570 -1571 the Mongol Turkish troops captured Cyprus. They slaughtered many Greek Cypriots, looted the treasures of people, and enslaved the Greek population of Cyprus. “[The large polis of Cyprus,]Nicosia,” says Christofi, was pillaged, its inhabitants variously raped, murdered and enslaved.”

The rule of Turks in Cyprus was brutal and genocidal. The Greek Revolution of 1821 unsettled the oppressors of Cyprus. Just to terrorize the Cypriots so they would not follow the paradigm of their brothers and sisters in Greece, the Turks hanged hundreds of Cypriots, including the Archbishop of Cyprus Kyprianos. The next crucial date is 1878 when Sultan Abdul Hamid II handed Cyprus to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, with the promise that England would protect the Ottoman empire from Russia.

As I mentioned, Britain treated Cyprus harshly, its primary concern was to keep Turkey powerful and Greece and the Cypriot Greeks weak. Christofi says:

“Cyprus is in the middle of the sea at the meeting point of three continents, an island that only exists in the tension between the Eurasian, Arabian and African tectonic plates… It now connects the three continents umbilically as a major hub for undersea fibre-optic cables, a nerve-centre of the modern age. It is a crossroads, its identity ambiguous, contested – the only EU member that the UN places in Asia…. Our history is kaleidoscopic: a church built on the foundation of a temple to Aphrodite; a mosque that takes the form of a French Gothic church; a museum that was a British prison, that was an Ottoman fort, that was unhewn stone, trodden by pygmy hippopotami… I am an I that shouldn’t exist, a happiness born out of suffering, standing between the fortress and the open sea.”

Read Cypria. It’s an incisive and inspiring and timely story of Cyprus, especially the bloodletting of the twentieth century. Turkey is entrenched in northern Cyprus for 50 years. It threatens Greece and Greek Democratic Cyprus. And of the great powers, America, Russia, China, India and the European Union, no one dares to order Turkey off Cyprus. So the struggle for freedom and union of Cyprus with Greece must continue. Christofi’s Cypria is a superb introduction to the history of Cyprus, why it is our moral duty to free northern Cyprus from the genocidal impulse of Islamic Turkey.

The post Cypria: The Struggle of Cyprus for Freedom and Union with Greece appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Evaggelos Vallianatos.

Orientation

How much do left brain pathologies have to do with culture and geography?

Recently I was interviewed by Jeff J. Brown on China Rising about an article I wrote titled “The Dark Side of Left-Brain Operations”. During the interview, I contrasted the differences between the functions the left and the right sides of the brain. As we went through this, Jeff commented on how the characteristics of the right side of the brain corresponded to Chinese culture and how the characteristics of the left side of the brain seemed to be an expression of European-Yankee culture. A big part of my article discussed how there is a power struggle between the left and the right sides of the brain. Psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist pointed out that when the left side of the brain gets out of control, the result is the dark side of cultural institutions like the Reformation, the Enlightenment and industrial capitalism.

At the end of my interview I pointed out that McGilchrist, author of The Master and His Emissary, did not explain why the left brain running amuck was not the characteristic of Far Eastern countries like China, Japan or Korea. In other words, if when the left brain gets out of control if it was strictly a biological or psychological process, we would expect to find it happening in all cultures all over the world including South America and Africa. But we don’t. It is only Western. This new article attempts to provide a materialist explanation for these differences based on the book The Geography of Thought by Richard Nisbett for why Easterners and Westerners think differently.

Some provocative questions

Why would the ancient Chinese excel at algebra and arithmetic but not geometry (as the Greeks)? Why do modern Asians do very well at math and science but produce less in the way of revolutionary science compared to Westerners? As Nisbett says:

Chinese civilization is remarkable because Chinese civilization far outdistanced Greek civilization technologically in ink, porcelain, magnetic compass, stirrups and wheelbarrow, pound locks on canals, sternpost rudder, quantitative cartography, immunization techniques, astronomical observations of novae, seismographs and acoustics.

Why are East Asians able to see relationships between events better than the West but find it more difficult to disentangle an object from its surroundings? Why are Easterners more susceptible to the hindsight bias such as ‘they knew it all along’? Why do Western infants learn nouns at a much more rapid rate than verbs?Why do Easterners learn verbs at a more rapid rate? Why are Easterners so willing to entertain apparent contradictions? Why are Westerners more likely to apply formal logic when reasoning about everyday events?

Where are we going?

My purpose in this article is three-fold. First is to show the differences that Nisbett contrasts between holistic and analytical thinking. Secondly, I explore his materialist explanations for why these cultures think so differently. Lastly, I point out some weaknesses in Nisbett’s book.

Holistic vs Analytical Thinking in nature

Functional vs taxonomic classification

Which of these three is least like the other two? The three items are a dog, a carrot and a rabbit. If you think holistically the dog is different. If you think analytically the carrot is different. Why? Because in holistic thinking rabbits eat carrots, the dog is different. But if you think analytically the carrots are different because dogs and rabbits are animals while a carrot is a vegetable. Holistic classification is functional, based on how objects work together in everyday life. They are grouped together because of causal, temporal or spatial functional relationships. This analytical classification is called taxonomic. This means objects are classified according to type, independent of space, time or cause. It has little to do with everyday life interactions.

Form vs content

Closely connected to these classification differences is the relationship between form and content. In holistic thinking, objects (content) are never understood as separate from their atmosphere form (or setting). In analytical thinking, objects are separated from their context and treated separately. Thus, empiricism separates objects from their context and examines them in terms of what they have in common (empiricism). So too, thinking is separated from the senses and thoughts are compared to other thoughts leading to rationalism, including formal logic.  Contrary to this holistic thinking treats thinking and sensing as going together. There is no formal logic I know of in Chinese thinking.

Here are a couple of examples. In a research experiment with fish in the water, the Japanese made many more references to background elements. Americans focused on the fish and ignored the environment. In the United States an instruction book on how to draw was published called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. In it there was an exercise on drawing the negative space which surrounded the figure. The idea was to let the figure emerge growing out of the negative space rather than drawing the figure directly. The whole point of the exercise was to get Western students to stop treating the background as irrelevant. Easterners, knowing this already, would have little need for this exercise.

Diffused vs focused attention; aggregates vs synthesis

Holistic thinking and analytic thinking each have their pros and cons. In holistic thinking, we have a wide, diffused lens. We see the forest but the trees are blurry. In analytical thinking we have tunnel vision. We see the detail of the trees, but miss the majesty of the forest. This attention to detail leads analytical thinkers to imagine that the whole of the forest is nothing more than an aggregate of individual trees.  In holistic thinking the entire forest system is more than the sum of the trees.

Organism vs mechanism; plenum vs atoms and the void

In general, way beyond forests, holistic thinking imagines all of nature as an organism where all aspects are interdependent. In Chinese philosophy, nature consists of a plenum or Tao which is filled with interdependent substances like the five elements.  Wood, fire, earth, metal and water are constantly changing into each other in different proportions. This philosophy is embodied in the writings of Lao-Tze. The philosophy of nature in the West is mechanism where all the parts are interchangeable rather than interdependent. According to Democritus and Epicurus, nature is not a plenum. it is composed of atoms and the void. These atoms are discrete objects (atomism) and these objects are composed of particles or things.

Differences in language socialization

The differences between East Asian languages and Indo-European languages are so deep that they are embedded in how each learn language. Philosophically we can say that for East Asians generally, movement is more important than stasis. In the West, on the other hand, we start with things and then as a derivative try to explain movement. Nisbett points out that East Asian languages verbs are learned at a faster rate than nouns. It the West the opposite is true, nouns are learned faster. What do the nouns and verbs say? In East Asia, verbs are denoted by relationships. In the West nouns are denoted by categories. Lastly, there are differences even in the placements of nouns and verbs in a sentence. In East Asia, verbs come at the beginning and the end of sentence, with nouns in the middle. This indicates that first there is movement which temporarily thickens into a noun which then returns into more movement. In the West it is the opposite. First nouns, then verbs (predicate) and then objects. This follows a philosophy that says in the beginning there are things (nouns), there are verbs in the middle and then nouns (objects) at the end.

Polar vs dualistic opposites

The Tao in Chinese philosophy consists of two polar opposites, yin and yang and these opposites turn into each other creating new combinations of the five elements. These opposites depend on each other and cocreate with each other. In analytical thinking opposites are understood as being mutually exclusive, zero-sum game with choices such as “either/or”, as in Aristotle’s law of the excluded middle. When confronted with two apparently contradictory propositions Americans tended to polarize their beliefs. In the West there is typically a right and wrong and there will be a winner and loser. In holistic philosophy choice involves not choosing one or the other. Both are chosen in addition to other choices. Holistic philosophy strives for hostility reduction and compromise mediated by a third party.

Formal logic vs informal logic

Formal logic in the West is the study of the structure of an argument independently of its content. The basis of formal logic is to abstract qualities from context and connect these abstractions as if they had a life of their own. The syllogism:
– All women are mortal
– Sandy is a woman
– Sandy is mortal

It is correct from the point of view of formal logic. It doesn’t matter if we change Sandy’s name to Phyllis. It doesn’t even matter if we substitute immortal for mortal.

So:
– All women are immortal
– Phyllis is a woman
– Phyllis is immortal

This is still logically correct. It doesn’t matter that in real life woman are mortal. Nisbett points out that for the Chinese there is a whiteness of the house and the whiteness of the snow but not whiteness as an abstract, detachable concept that can be applied to almost anything. The Chinese were distrustful of decontextualization.

Nisbett writes that In China there were only two short-lived movements of little influence in the East that shared the spirit of logical inquiry that has always been common in the West. These are the logicians and the Mohists (Mo Tzu), both in the classical period of antiquity. Mo Tzu shared several logical concerns. They include the ideas of necessary and sufficient conditions, the principle of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Mo Tzu developed a rough version of cost-benefit analysis. However, there was never even among the logicians and Mohists a willingness to accept arguments that flew in the face of experience.

Holistic vs Analytical Relationships in Society

Cogs in the machine vs interdependent belonging

Earlier I said that analytical thinking treats parts in nature as particles or things. This carries over into how workers function in relationship to capitalism. Workers are treated as things, interchangeable parts. Unskilled workers are hired and fired with no sense of continuity or membership in an organization. They are cogs in a mechanistic machine. In Japan in the 1970s and early 1980s, even though it was a capitalist society, workers were still treated as interdependent parts of an organization. Every worker had a place and worker could have one job for their whole life. In speaking about the industrial revolution, Nisbitt points out:

Seeing the world of objects is linked to the industrial  Revolution. Assembly line—auto part atoms were put together by workers performing a repetitive set of actions over and over again (82)… {in the} late 18^th century, especially in the United States, they began to modularize the world of manufacture and commerce. From muskets to furniture they were broken down into the most standardized parts possible and the simplest replicable actions…. Time itself became a modular entity: three minutes for bolting on the carburetor; two and a half minutes for installing spark plugs…Starting around the late 19th century retail stores became modular chains. (83)

Collectivism vs individualism

One of the major divisions within cross-cultural psychology is that between collectivism vs individualism. As you might expect, holistic thinkers are collectivist. This means that the group comes first and decisions are based on the interests of the group, which is true from the micro to the macro level. Analytical thinkers are individualists. The individual is the center of attention and the group is seen as secondary or a necessary evil. This plays out when something happens to an individual. When an individualist has an unfortunate circumstance, their tendency is to imagine the personal motives of another person involved rather than the situation another person was in. This is called an “internal locus of control”. In social psychology Collectivist holists are more likely to examine the situation first. They will underestimate the power of individuals to change things. In part this is because they have an external locus of control.

In answer to the question tell me about yourself, Japanese schoolchildren are taught how to practice self-criticism both in order to improve their relations with others and to become more skilled in solving problems. In the West individuals answer the same question by referring to their personality traits, role categories and activities statically proclaiming, “I am what I am”. The proportion of self-references was more than three times higher for American children than for Chinese children.

In-group and out-group

In our initial description of the differences between collectivism and individualism we said that for collectivists the group comes first and for individualists the single person comes first. But this is only for the in-group. It says nothing about relationships with the out-group or strangers. As it turns out in East Asia the gap between in-group and out-group (strangers) is greater than in the West. In the West the relationship between individuals and their in-group is weaker, but their relationship to the out-group (strangers) is less. Part of this no doubt is that under capitalism, being civil to strangers is necessary for the exchange of commodities. In East Asia, which has either outright socialism or moderate capitalism, they are less likely to give strangers the time of day.

Rights vs obligations

Nisbett tells a story that an Asian friend is perplexed to hear in households in Yankeedom members of a family are always thanking each other rather than simply carrying out obligations. The basis of thanking someone is that there is no necessary interconnection between people that makes help a constitutional part of society. Instead, we volunteer to do something with the option to not help. This is the essence of individualism.

Nisbett says that for Westerners, once a contract has been agreed to it is binding regardless of circumstances that might make the arrangement problematic. To the Western mind, once a bargain is struck, it shouldn’t be modified.  For Easterners agreements are often regarded as tentatively agreed upon guides for the future. There is little or no conception of rights that are inherit in the individual. Furthermore, Nisbett points out:

The combative, rhetorical form is also absent from Asian law. More typically the disputants take their case to a middleman whose goal is animosity reduction. There is no attempt to derive a resolution to a legal conflict from any universal principle. The Americans were more likely to prefer adversarial adjudication with representation by lawyers. (75)

Holistic vs Analytical Relationships in the Sciences and the Arts

The Chinese used their experience to measure things. The Greeks abstracted from their experience and fixed abstract rules which were used as the basis for predicting and explaining the motion of these objects. As might be expected those who think analytically will disentangle relationships in order to extract abstract rules from them. The Greeks understood that it was necessary to categorize objects in order to be able to apply rules to them. Nisbett says that because the Chinese see relationships first their lack of interest in the categories prevented them from discovering laws that really were capable of explaining classes of events. In the case of the Greeks, most of Aristotle’s physical propositions were false, but Aristotle had testable propositions. Though the Chinese excelled in algebra and arithmetic they made little progress in geometry because proofs rely on formal logic.  While the Greeks excelled in geometry and had formal proofs they never developed the concept of zero which was required both for algebra and for an Arabic style place number system.

The arts

Interestingly but not surprisingly, Chinese paintings are dominated by landscape which dwarf human figures. Studies of Western paintings show human figures as three times as large. Furthermore, the Chinese paint the horizon lines 15% higher to call attention to the depth and allows more room for the objects. Analytical tradition of the West paint the horizon lines 15% lower. This reduces the range of the scene that is visible. Nisbett says the Chinese emphasized monophonic music which reflected their concern with unity. In the analytical West, polyphonic music was present where different instruments and different voices take different parts. Please see Table I for a comparison.

Table I

How Asians and Westerners Think Differently

Qualifications

We must be careful not to overstate generalities. In the case of the Far East, there were some atomistic and empirical traditions such as Mo Tzu that shared many of same interests as Western philosophers. Conversely in the West, while the atomism of Democritus and Epicurus were surely important, Western philosophy has a deep anti-atomist tradition stretching from Plato to Leibniz, Shelling and Hegel.

Within the Western tradition, Nisbett points out that the Southern European countries like Spain, and Italy plus Belgium and Germany are intermediate between the East Asian counties and the countries influenced by Protestant, Anglo-Saxon culture. Still more generally the European continent is more holistic and rationalist than are the empirical England or the United States. The big picture theories in politics and economics come from the continent including Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Comte. In psychology we have the big system philosophy of Freud and Piaget. It is hard to imagine behaviorism emerging in any place but the United States or England. When we turn to Western religions, we find the same split between the Anglo-American world of Protestants and the continental European tradition where Catholicism reigns.

Within Eastern traditions not all roads lead to China. While both the Chinese and Japanese stress order, it is a different kind of order. For the Chinese, order comes from the macro world of state on the one hand and the micro world of family relations on the other. This comes in the form of mother-son or father-daughter relations. For the Japanese the forces of order come from the meso-world of the peer group. The same pattern holds in school. For the Chinese, obedience to the teacher is primary, but for the Japanese control is managed by what classmates may think or say.

A huge difference between the Japanese and the Chinese is that Japan developed capitalism well over 100 years before the Chinese. But even in this case geography might have had something to do with it. Japan, like England, was an island where no large centralized system had room to develop. Even so, Japanese capitalism still retained a collective orientation. Loyalty to the corporation was much stronger among workers there than in either the United States or England. Finally, Nisbett points out that while in the macro and micro worlds the Chinese expect order, in the meso-world the Chinese have a more relaxed form of life. It is the Japanese who insist on a need for order in all parts of their lives. In that way they are similar to the Germans and Dutch.

Materialistic Explanations for East-West Differences

Geography and climate

Not just in China, but in all the great agricultural civilizations of the past there is a crucial climate, geography problem. First, there is inadequate rainfall, yet the presence of large bodies of water in the valleys. The problem for them is how to get the large bodies of water to their farms. In Greece and in Europe generally there is no such rainfall problem. European countries are surrounded by mountains leading to a change in climate as Jared Diamond pointed out in Guns, Germs and Steel.

Political consequences

China, along with Egypt, and India have ways to solve the problem of inadequate rainfall and large bodies of water by setting up irrigation systems. But China and India are very large countries and setting up local irrigation systems is too risky and they could fail too easily. Hence the development of a centralized agricultural state could solve their problems. However, the leaders of these centralized states soon recognized their position and they begin to expect more and more in return for performing this public service. The result is a centralized political system with a ruling class.

In Greece and generally in Europe there was no need for any centralized irrigation system because rainfall made it unnecessary. In addition, the high mountains between European states made any centralized political power over Europe next to impossible. The European continent has never completely fallen to an empire. Hence all political power was decentralized.

Means of subsistence

With a centralized irrigational system and rich river valleys, Chinese peasants settled down to do subsistence agriculture, including rice. The Greeks were not so fortunate. The Greek land was stony and dry which only lent itself to orchards growing olive trees. The Greeks made their living from herding, fishing and trade. They engaged in commercial agriculture producing olive oil for trade.

The subversiveness of trading

The activity of trading produces mutual effects in differentiating Greece from Chinese and other near Eastern civilizations. For one, it taught the merchants different languages and different systems of weights and measures opening them up to more trading. Second, living near the coast meant encountering many ethnic groups with different religions and politics. Third, trading also forced traders to haggle, going back and forth and arguing. This was a very powerful instrument in conducing not only economic affairs but political affairs. As is well known Greece developed an extraordinary decentralized political system in which debate and the teaching of rhetoric by the Sophists was a way of life. Farmers hired rhetoricians to help them win cases when their land was threatened to be taken over.

On the other hand, trade for China was not a necessity. They traded mostly in luxury goods. Surely traders were never given free reign by the emperor. This meant that China was a more closed civilization. Nisbett says that 95% of the Chinese population belongs to the same Han ethnic group. Nearly all of the country’s more than fifty minority ethnic groups are in the western part of the country. The Chinese were less exposed to other religions and political systems and when they were Chinese rulers saw them as inferior. Because there was no reason to learn how to haggle and be argumentative in marketing situations Chinese politics was far from the tradition of Greece debate.  Chinese civilization was under a centralized political rule that was from the top down. Argumentation was disapproved of because China did not have liberal political expectations. In addition, the Chinese kin relations, like the Japanese, had built into them the expectation people should be able to save face.

Implications for contemporary science

Nisbett makes a very interesting point about contemporary differences between Chinese and European traditions in science that are connected to what has been said so far. He writes that the Chinese are very good at following up and expanding what Western science has produced but they are not as good at making breakthroughs. Why could this be? Nisbett points out that most scientists they hit their peak contributing innovative scientific explanations in their 20s. But Chinese scientists have a tradition of deferring to elders. Therefore, at Chinese conferences young scientists are expected to defer to elders, even if these elders have nothing new to say. Seniority is more important than innovation. Competitive debate with clear winners and losers is understandably seen as in bad taste. However, in the West competitive debate has been going on for well over 2000 years. In addition, in the West the elderly are not revered, and are considered over the hill. The revering of the young in the West goes perfectly well with young scientists presenting findings that might contradict those of the elderly. Please see Table II for a summary of the ecological, political and economic explanations for the differences between holistic and analytical thinking.

Table II

Materialistic Explanations for Holistic vs Analytical Thinking

Criticisms of The Geography of Thought

The Geography of Thought is a very interesting and provocative book. Most of what I have to say about it are qualifications rather than direct disagreements. First of all, the book seems ahistorical. It presents the origin of two cultures, China and Greece, too much as destiny. It really does not account for the fact that China has a history which surely has some innovations since ancient China. So too Greece, let alone Europe, must have developed new innovations over the last two thousand years. In addition the book does not provide any explanation for how these historical innovations could have emerged using the ecological, political and economic explanations.

According to world-systems theory capitalism emerged in the West in the 16th century. This, of course, is a direct expression of analytical thinking. However, in the last of the 19th century Japanese capitalism developed and from the beginning of the 1980s capitalism also developed in China. We need an explanation for how this invasion of holistic thinking came about.  Lastly, the relationship between socialism in the 19th and 20th centuries needs to be made sense of in its relationship with holistic thinking in China. How is it similar and different from the values of ancient China?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bruce Lerro.

“We are deeply disappointed that the judicial process has ended with an acquittal and that those who murdered reporter Giorgis Karaivaz still enjoy their freedom, while Greek journalists live in fear that they too could be killed with impunity,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “We call on the Greek authorities to ensure that all of those involved in the deadly shooting of Karaivaz are brought to justice.”

The prosecutor argued that the two unnamed men, who are brothers and pleaded not guilty, shot Karaivaz at least 10 times outside his home near the capital Athens and linked the assassination to the journalist’s reporting on organized crime.

Unless new evidence emerges, the acquittal will remain in place.

CPJ has repeatedly expressed concern over deteriorating press freedom in Greece and the unsolved murders of Karaivaz and investigative journalist Sokratis Giolias, who was similarly gunned down in 2010 by professional hitmen in the street.

The Athens prosecutor’s office did not respond to CPJ’s email requesting comment.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Alexander the Great attacking the Persian King Darius in the Battle of Issus, Nov. 5, 333 BCE. Pompeii mosaic. Naples National Archaeological Museum. Public Domain

Prologue

Alexander the Great accomplished so much so soon so young that he rightly earned the honor of heroic greatness. He was definitely a hero and a genius. His mother Olympias tried to convince him he was the son of Zeus. Alexander loved and trusted his mother. He probably assured himself he was the son of Zeus. His hero, Achilles, was the son of goddess Thetis.

But the young man loved Aristotle who tutored him in Greek history, politics, philosophy, and international affairs. In addition, Aristotle passed on to his pupil his enormous knowledge and respect for Homer, the teacher of the Greeks for millennia. He edited the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer for Alexander. He urged him to unite the Greeks and to eliminate the Persian danger. Alexander did both. He was inspired by Aristotle. The result was unprecedented in history. His general Ptolemaios / Ptolemy, who was also a student of Aristotle, became king of Egypt and materialized the dream of Aristotle. He built a Mouseion-university and the Library of Alexandria. He opened the doors of these great institutions to the best Greek minds. The enlightenment that emerged in Alexandria was astonishing. It made our world. Alexandria became the capital polis of civilization for several centuries in the Mediterranean. And that really was the legacy of Homer, Aristotle, and Alexander.

Alexander’s dream

The other dream of Alexander was to create a united ecumene, in effect a world society and government under the rule of reason and his hegemony. This interpretation of Alexander comes from a Greek living in the Roman Empire that had abolished Greek freedom, conquering Greece in 146 BCE and making it a province of Rome. Plutarch was that voice. He was a Greek philosopher, prolific writer, and a priest of Apollo. He lived from about the second half of the first century to the first twenty of so years of the second century of our times. He served Rome but remained Greek.

“Plato, Aristotle, and other thinkers,” Plutarch said, “wrote and taught how to live in ideal cities but never translated their ideas into political reality. Alexander did. He conquered Asia, but his purpose was more than control and warfare. He dressed like the Asians did. He tried convincing his officers to marry Persian women. He married a princess from Afghanistan. He also established more than 70 Greek cities in Asia, all of them governed by justice and the rule of law, thus eliminating injustice in large regions of his empire. Plutarch argues correctly that the conquest of Alexander brought peace, justice, and civilization to Asia. It was by living as citizens of these cities that the bad and unacceptable were extinguished. The lives of the citizens improved by familiarity with better ways of living. Alexander succeeded in reforming the institutions of several nations. He certainly is a great philosopher…. Alexander believed that the gods sent him to unite the world and create one commonwealth of equality and justice and civilization.”^[1]

Alexander the Great, left, and Nike, goddess of victory, right, is crowning his victories. Gold stater, dated about 322 BCE. The gold stater came out of Sardes (Sardeis), key city of Lydia, which became a province of Persia. Alexander used Sardes for his mint. Courtesy Numismatic Museum, Athens.

Alexander was a revolutionary. In trying to reform his empire, adding, for instance, non-Greeks to Greek culture, he faced resistance from his Greek officers and the local elites in Asia. After all, for the first time in history a conqueror abandoned violence as a governing principle. Alexander wanted to convince the vast majority of the conquered people he was their friend. He joined Europe and Asia by marriages, similar clothing, and the equal administration of justice and by founding Greek cities all over Asia so Asians could see the difference.

After Alexander

Unfortunately, Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BCE. He was barely 33 years old. He and his successors ignored the rising power of Rome. This turned out to be a fatal error. Romans learned from the Greeks. But the wars among Alexander’s successors weakened them and gave the Romans a free hand in the West. They dismembered Macedonia and Greece and, by the end of the first century BCE, the main kingdoms of Alexander in Asia and Egypt were provinces of Rome. The Roman republic became Roman empire, a vast territory that included Alexander’s empire and Europe. Some of the Roman emperors were responsible leaders, but most of the remaining emperors were ruthless and corrupt. One of them, Constantine, dumped Greco-Roman religion and culture for a messianic and monotheistic religion, Christianity. Such a violent policy turned Greco-Roman civilization upside down. The Roman government and the church in the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, Constantinople, hired northern European barbarians to smash the Greek temples, burn libraries, and otherwise level the magnificent treasures the ancient Greeks had built. The great Alexandrian Library went up in flames in late fourth century. And in 415, Christian monks tore to pieces Hypatia, director of a philosophy school in Alexandria. Her crime was teaching Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.

Hypatia, detail from School of Athens by Raphael, 1510. Hypatia, in white robes, is above philosopher Pythagoras, shown writing on a book, and, possibly, next to philosopher Parmenides. Common Domain

Egypt and Greece belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire. The Western Roman Empire after the fourth century had fallen to the hands of European barbarians. This political division exacerbated divisions within Christianity, which blossomed to a civilization Schism of 1054. The anathemas hurled by the Pope and the Patriarch and the Patriarch against the Pope, brought the crusades. These religious wars inflicted death and destruction in Christendom and against Islam. The fourth crusade of 1204, instead of going to Jerusalem to fight the Moslems, it turned its wrath against the Greeks. French, German, and Venetian troops captured Constantinople, thus inflicting a giant wound on the security of medieval Greece. The Western crusaders burned the libraries of Constantinople and behaved like barbarians. Their occupation of Constantinople lasted for 50 years, cementing a rising hatred between Christian East and Christian West. The crusaders also captured the rest of Medieval Greece, shredding the country with foreign oppression and culture.

Victorious religious warriors from Venice, France and Germany enter Constantinople in 1204. Painting by Eugene Delacroix, 1840. Public Domain

Mongol Turks took notice. They took advantage of the protracted Christian civil war. They kept attacking the Greeks. In 1453, they captured Medieval Greece, which also exposed the West to the Mongol Turkish menace.

Fall of Constantinople, May 29, 1453. Mural from the Cafe of G. Antikas, Skopelos. Picture is depicting the Emperor Constantine Palaiologos on a white horse ready for battle. Public Domain

Greece suffered enormously from the loss of its freedom. Its best scholars left the country for Italy. They were loaded with the surviving manuscripts of ancient Greece. These Greek books were translated into Latin and started the Renaissance and made our world. In 1821, the Greek Revolution brought into being an independent state. In 1828, the European powers, Russia, England, and France, appointed Ioannes Kapodistrias as the first President of Greece.

Hellas, a sacred country, and school for humanity

Ioannes Kapodistrias, detail of a portrait by Thomas Lawrence, 1818-1819. The portrait shows Kapodistrias while serving as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia. Public Domain

Kapodistrias, 1776-1831, was from the Greek island of Kerkyra in the Ionian Sea. He was educated in philosophy, law, and medicine at the University of Padua. He proved himself a genius in diplomacy. Tsar Alexander I of Russia was so impressed by Kapodistrias he made him Minister of Foreign Affairs. Kapodistrias served in that powerful post from 1816 to 1822. In 1822, he took a leave of absence and set up home in Geneva where he founded the Philomusse Society to raise funds for the Greek Revolution and expand the cause of European Philhellenism.

The rise to power of Kapodistrias disturbed the Chancellor of Austria Klemens von Metternich. He ordered Austrian diplomats and other senior officials to watch him. One of the senior military officers named Joseph Chervenka, interviewed people who knew Kapodistrias. Chervenka summarized the impressions of those who spoke to him about Kapodistrias. On February 13, 1816, he wrote a report and sent it to Metternich. Chervenka said to Metternich that Kapodistrias had quite an agenda for making modern Greece into Hellas. He said:

“Kapodistrias expected all European powers unanimously to agree in establishing an independent Hellas with inviolable borders. Hellas would be neutral, not allowing any foreign intervention or influence in the country. Her sole purpose would be to cultivate the sciences and enlightenment for the benefit of humanity. Hellas would send teachers, artists, and laws to all countries. The rulers of those countries would be educated in Hellas. And in concert with their Greek teachers, they would be able to rule their people with fairness and justice in the spirit of Hellenic civilization. The geographical position of Hellas between East and West would help her to maintain a balance of security and peace. Kapodistrias also insisted that humanity would declare Hellas a sacred country.”^[2] (emphasis mine)

There are differences in the visions of Alexander and Kapodistrias. These two Greeks dreamt about the power of Hellas in relation to the rest of the world. One of the two, Alexander, had the power of the greatest king and emperor. His word was law. He created the largest empire the world has ever seen. He tried and to some degree succeeded to Hellenize the world, or at least, he put the first stone for an edifice of reason and civilization in a planetary governance. His premature death, however, undermined his original idea for a better world.

Similar misfortune struck Kapodistrias. In 1828, he took over a tiny, impoverished state threatened by Turkey and barely tolerated by the “great” European powers: England, Russia, and France. England was hostile to the new state of Greece. It never wished to see an independent Greece. England occupied the Greek Ionian islands and had strategic ambitions for capturing Cyprus, then occupied by Turkey. Moreover, England kept in its national museum looted Parthenon treasures. England could barely stand the ambitious policies of Kapodistrias to create the foundations of an independent Greek state. Here was a well-educated Greek who had served as Russia’s chief diplomat. But even before Kapodistrias was appointed to be the foreign minister of Russia, he had created an independent and neutral Switzerland and had prevented the division of France after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815.

Kapodistrias Road in Geneva. Sign is thanking Kapodistrias: “Diplomat and politician, defender of the interests of Geneva and Switzerland at the Congress of Vienna [in 1815].” Wikipedia

The model of Hellas

The efforts of Alexander the Great and the first President of modern Greece Ioannes Kapodistrias to employ Hellenic civilization for the good of humanity reflect the greatness of ancient Greece / Hellas. Greece had the good fortune of becoming the lighthouse of the world. For several centuries it gave birth to science and civilization of unprecedented beauty, reason, justice, and virtue. This good fortune came into being in the works of the epic poets Apollonios Rhodios, Homer and Hesiod; the tragic poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; historians Herodotos and Thucydides, the comic poet Aristophanes; philosophers / scientists who probed the heavens to such detail, that one of them, Democritus in the fifth century BCE, discovered the Atomic Theory and another, Aristarchos of Samos, in the third century BCE, proposed the Heliocentric Theory of the universe. Euclid in late fourth century BCE and Archimedes in the third century BCE pretty much created mathematics. Archimedes also advanced mathematical physics and engineering. Still yet another scientist, Hipparchos, set the foundations of mathematical astronomy in the second century BCE in Rhodes. He also left his fingertips all over the Antikythera Mechanism, an immaculate geared bronze computer of genius, the progenitor of our computers.

Main fragments (A-G) of the Antikythera Mechanism. Imaged by: PTM (Polynomial Texture Mapping). Fragments seen from both sides. Fragment A incorporates 27 of the 30 surviving toothed gears. X-rays of the front of Fragment A show the Cosmos with Sun at its center. The back reveal an upper spiral of a 19-year Metonic calendar and a lower spiral of an 18-year Saros predictive dial. The Antikythera Mechanism predicts the eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. Courtesy Tom Malzbender and Hewlett Packard.

Add to this extraordinary galaxy of intelligence and foresight, Aristotle, tutor of Alexander the Great and inventor of the science of zoology in the fourth century BCE, and you have lasting science and civilization power.

The Greeks lived in poleis (city-states) all over the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, “like ants or frogs in the sea and around a pond,” according to Plato.^[3] To make polis living enjoyable and tolerable and to protect themselves from each other and enemies, the Greeks invented political theory, democracy, jury courts, and laws published on acres of stone and marble for all to see and read. They built magnificent temples in honoring their anthropomorphic gods. They sculpted bronze and marble statues of the gods and handsome nude heroes, athletes, and dressed or naked women.

Reproductions of statues. Aphrodite of Melos, left. Kore (young woman) from the Acropolis, and Aphrodite of Knidos (Phryne) by Praxiteles. Painting by Evi Sarantea.

Greeks also shared the virtues of individuality, courage, the rule of law and justice, often democracy, science, technology, beautiful architecture and arts and crafts, theater, Panhellenic games, and festivals like the Olympics. And despite their conflicts, they created an admirable science-based civilization that became Western civilization.

Without Hellas: Climate chaos

However, the United States, Europe, and several other countries of the world have neglected most of the virtues they inherited from the Greeks (democracy, equality, rule of law, science for the public good and the discovery of truth, and love of the natural world). The result is awful. They are poisoning and damaging the planet and its ecosystems. The worst result of such carelessness and hubris is climate change. It threatens civilization, humanity, and the planet. The main conclusion of the US Fifth National Climate Assessment, Nov. 14, 2024, warns:

“The global warming observed over the industrial era is unequivocally caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities—primarily burning fossil fuels. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂)—the primary greenhouse gas produced by human activities—and other greenhouse gases continue to rise due to ongoing global emissions. Stopping global warming would require both reducing emissions of CO₂ to net zero and rapid and deep reductions in other greenhouse gases. Net-zero CO₂ emissions means that CO₂ emissions decline to zero.”

Edward Munch, The Scream, 1893. National Gallery of Norway. Prophetic icon of the plight of humanity from human abuse of nature, in this instance from rising planetary temperatures from the burning of fossil fuels. Public Domain.

But the most startling and devastating conclusion of the Fifth National Climate Assessment is that the US is beyond the charts. Its obsession with petroleum and petroleum-powered machines (cars, trucks, busses, ships, yachts, airplanes, leaf blowers, military fleets of airplanes and navies) have made the country extremely vulnerable to private greed, and to the forces of nature. Ceaseless dumping in the atmosphere of unfathomable amounts of planet-warming gases are threatening the country with thermal death. “The things Americans value most are at risk,” says the Fifth National Climate Assessment. “More intense extreme events and long-term climate changes make it harder to maintain safe homes and healthy families, reliable public services, a sustainable economy, thriving ecosystems and strong communities… The United States has warmed 68 percent faster than Earth as a whole over the past 50 years.”

Without Hellas: Triumph of nukes

In addition, the United States and a few other countries possess nuclear weapons, the ultimate means of extinction. The intentional or accidental explosion of a single nuclear bomb is certain to cause dramatic and planetary damage and death. Nuclear war is unthinkable. It will destroy humanity, civilization, and the planet. It’s necessary, therefore, to abolish these evil weapons and find an alternative to the dangerous system of state and international governance.

Could Hellas become a school for humanity?

Neither Alexander the Great nor President Kapodistrias could have foreseen the moral abyss of the modern world. The idea of Hellas is still relevant to forestall the resurrection of dark age, or to slow down its spread all over the planet. Kapodistrias knew his age of official slavery, European colonization of the tropics, and monarchies was destined to continue warfare as the only means of resolving conflicts and protecting the selfish interests of the landed oligarchy and governing classes. He thought that ancient Hellas in modern times could become the school for humanity. This thought was uppermost in his mind but did not have the opportunity to translate it into a formal proposal and policy. When he had enormous power, he hoped that Russia, England, and France would bless that idea by securing the territorial integrity and independence of resurrected Hellas. This country would do nothing else but cultivate the sciences for the enlightenment of humanity.

Kapodistrias’ proposal merits support and testing. Would a resurrected Hellas devoted to virtuous activities for the benefit of humanity make a difference? Could this Hellenic polis become the paradigm for for the future of humanity and the planet? I would answer both questions in the affirmative. If some ancient Greek books could trigger the Renaissance among the Arabs in the 8^th century and among the Europeans in the 15^th century, imagine what a country devoted to enlightenment and the public and environmental good could accomplish. The challenges are two. Convince the large powers of our time, the third decade of the 21^st century (the United States, China, Russia, India, and the European Union), to embrace such a new idea and give it a try. This would demand the end of war in Ukraine. The fire of Greek knowledge created the world. It can do it again. The countries of the European Union, the United States, and Russia own their existence to Hellenic civilization.

Second, modern Greece must become Hellas, that is to say, return to its ancient virtues of polytheism, democracy, science, naked Olympics, and political independence guaranteed by the world’s great powers, which will declare the country to be sacred Hellas. The prophetic visions of Alexander the Great and Kapodistrias have enormous attraction and power. The new sacred Hellas can indeed become the school for the planet. With many of its temples restored and schools open for the cultivation of science and enlightenment for humanity, it has a real opportunity to guide humans back to the right path of living in peace and harmony with each other and our Mother Earth.

NOTES

1. Plutarch, On the Fortune of Alexander, Discourse 1, 5-8. ↑

2. Polychrones K. Enepekides, ed., Regas-Hypsilantes-Kapodistrias (Athens: Estia, 1965), 196 (in Greek). ↑

3. Plato, Phaedo 109b. ↑

The post The School of Ancient Greece for Science, Civilization, and Planetary Governance appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Evaggelos Vallianatos.

…the Left narrative, no matter how accurate and intellectually powerful it may be, cannot expect to catch the imagination of the citizenry without including a vision for a real alternative future. Moreover, working-class institutions need to be reinstituted for the enhancement of class consciousness and authentic socialist parties need to be rediscovered for the Left narrative to become politically effective. Social movements are important, but their actions rarely have lasting effects. Only political parties can succeed in forging the Left narrative into the policy agenda and turn it into a programmatic plan for social change. Understandably enough, this is quite a tall order, but the Left needs to win once again the hearts and minds of the laboring classes. But it needs the necessary political agencies and cultural instruments to do so. It cannot accomplish it on intellectual grounds alone, especially with the politics of identity acting as a spearhead for social transformation… The Communist Manifesto would have remained just a mere political document if it wasn’t for the existence of radical political parties across the globe to embrace it as their guide and vision for the emancipation of the working class from the yoke of capital.

— CJ Polychroniou, “The Left has a Great Story to Share About Alternatives to Capitalism–But Sucks at Telling It,” Common Dreams

Shorn of the academic jargon, Polychroniou’s conclusion to his Common Dreams article gets a lot right about the failings of the US and European left and the road back to relevance.

It is true that today the left’s unstated action model is a plethora of focused, but single-issue social movements. However, that model has enjoyed, at best, limited success in the US since single-issue activism won big gains in the anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the movements effectively complemented a bloody defeat of US Cold War aggression and the other completed the formal constitutional promise of full-citizenship rights for Blacks, women, and other minorities.

But substantial, larger, associated issues remain unresolved. US imperialism continues unabated with ever-more casualties and injustices; the inequalities suffered by oppressed groups remain intact, with a token stratum of those groups allowed through the door of privilege, even to elite status, but with most lagging far behind.

Social movements have focused on specific policies (NAFTA, tax structure, minimum wage, healthcare, immigration reform), emerging trends (globalization, “neoliberalism”), gross inequality (Occupy), changes in governance (Arab spring, police reform), environmental degradation (fracking), or US foreign intervention among many other identifiable wrongs, all of which burn brightly in the beginning, then unfortunately just as quickly fade, as protest confronts the glacial, fractured electoral system.

It is also true that most of the left operates and acts without any overarching program of reform or revolution. The majority of US leftists, for example, enthusiastically, reluctantly, or by default rely upon the Democratic Party and electoral politics to drive broad, systemic change. They may hope that their issues will be embraced by the party’s policy makers, they may struggle with the party’s entrenched leaders for a suitable program, or they may simply defer to the Democrats out of desperation. DSA, a self-described ‘democratic’ socialist party, is very far from cutting the umbilical cord with the Democrats. While the Green Party expends impressive effort to achieve ballot status, it brings a hodge-podge of candidates to the ballot, seldom aligned with any kind of common program or larger goal. And the small Marxist parties have failed to impact the labor movement or pressure reform movements from the left, as last did the US Communist Party of Gus Hall’s era when anti-Communist repression was far more intense than today and the word “socialism” was then a term of abuse.

But it is not just a program that is missing, but a vision as well.

‘Anti-capitalism’ is not a vision, but a defiance; it expresses hostility and resistance, but not rejection. It gives us no alternative to capitalism. Most of the US left counts itself as anti-capitalist, but one can only guess at what that might mean.

Some are more specific: they are anti-neoliberal capitalism, anti-disaster capitalism, anti-racial capitalism, or perhaps anti-monopoly capitalism. But, by implication, are they for some other kind of capitalism? Do they pine for the era before neoliberalism? Do they imagine capitalism without racism? Do they wish to turn the clock back to the stage before monopoly capitalism? An imagined time when capitalism did not spawn disasters?

These are not political visions, they’re mere fantasies!

The dominant alternative vision to capitalism until the collapse of real-existing-socialism in the late-twentieth century was Marxist socialism. From the rise of mass socialist parties in the final decades of the nineteenth century, the vision sketched by Marx and his followers dominated the hopes of ‘anti-capitalist’ working people. Whatever else the early Marxist militants meant by socialism, they agreed that socialism should end the exploitation of workers by capitalists; they envisioned ending capitalism once and for all and not merely managing it or buffering its worse aspects.

With the birth of real-existing-socialism, creating, shaping, and developing the vision proved to be a lengthy, often messy process, as though serious onlookers would expect it to be otherwise. Previously rare or unheard-of levels of economic, cultural, and human growth were achieved. Enormous sacrifices were made. And internal and external enemies were met.

Some leaders rose to meet challenges, some failed to do so. Mistakes were plentiful, as were acts of unparalleled heroism. The costs of change and of development were enormous, which any thoughtful observer would concede in a life-and-death struggle against capitalism. Ultimately, those living in the lands where socialism was won, no matter how briefly or for how long, must weigh the sacrifices against the gains made, and discount the judgment of smug, privileged foreign critics.

Ironically, Polychroniou, who correctly steers the left away from aimlessly drifting in the political maelstrom of left-wing faddism and unmoored posturing, paints a picture of real-existing-socialism so without merit or achievement as to turn anyone away from the socialist alternative.

Polychroniou, like his sometime collaborator, Noam Chomsky, often shows an impressive critical eye toward the failings of the capitalist system and of imperialism, but follows unfailingly the conventional, stereotypic Cold War demonization of real-existing-socialism; he cannot even credit twentieth-century socialism with being ‘real,’ calling it “actually-existing-socialism.” Like Chomsky, Polychroniou mistrusts the mainstream media at every turn, recognizing its obedience to the ruling class, but accepts everything it sells about the ruling class’s arch-enemy: the real-existing-socialism of the last century.

As a result, Polychroniou’s often perceptive comments are diminished, lost before disdain for a project that he believes has proven, in reality, to be an unmitigated disaster. According to Polychroniou, “actually existing socialism” was “undemocratic,” undermining its “social, cultural, and economic achievements…” “Workers had no say in economic decisions… [T]he rulers possessed no wealth and had no private property of their own but made all of the decisions for the rest of society. The USSR was at best a ‘deformed workers’ state’.” [my emphasis]

Polychroniou sees this ‘deformation’ as a huge impediment to the achievement of socialism. Consequently, he is surprised that its disappearance did not bring on a flowering– a revival– of interest and commitment to socialism. “Instead of feeling liberated by the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’ the western Left felt a loss of identity and entered a long period of intellectual confusion and political paralysis.” In other words, the Western Left suffered malaise, lost its bearings, and floundered at a time when Polychroniou thought his “real” socialism was within reach.

Surely this bizarre psychologistic explanation of the failure of a Left unburdened by the legacy of Communism is as unsatisfying as Polychroniou’s comic strip characterization of over 70 years of real-existing-socialism. As he concedes, the so-called Western Left found its opportunity to fulfill its promise of a different alternative. But the promise collapsed before it got started, degenerating into scholastic quarrels over truth, identity, and forms of governance.

Still Polychroniou recognizes the urgent need for a Left political party — a class-based organization of those committed to a common road to social change– to serve as the vehicle for a program and a vision. In his words, “[The] Left needs to win once again the hearts and minds of the laboring classes.” In his judgment, systemic change must be realized through the political party. However, he surely knows that the idea that radical political ideas can be realized through centrist parties has long been discredited, though far too many radical organizers continue to pursue that dead end in the US and Europe.

It must be acknowledged that the popular idea that a Left political party can be constituted by addition, simply bringing all the various social movements together, is equally flawed, relying on the magical thinking that ideological proximity or contiguity is the same thing as the organic unity necessary for party-building.

Similarly, the seductive idea that a political party can be constructed around the mere fact that it is new and different from the failed, bankrupt center-left parties of Europe and the US has been proven wrong by the corruption or decline of Europe’s new wave. From the German Greens to Spain’s Podemos, Italy’s Five Star, or Greece’s SYRIZA, the promise of a shiny new toy filling the political vacuum left by a dying center-left is decidedly broken.

Without a distinctive vision, without a concrete program, with only a pledge for more “democracy,” all of the new wave disappointed its idealistic followers, leaving many disgusted and disenchanted with political action.

To his credit Polychroniou is critical of this trend. In a September, 2023 article “Endgame for Syriza, The Unbearable Lightness of the Greek Left” in Common Dreams, he chronicles the rise and fall of Greece’s SYRIZA party, a new-wave, self-styled radical party that actually grasped the brass ring of political power in 2015, but soon capitulated to capital without a fight. Since SYRIZA’s fall from its former heights, Polychroniou ponders its future.

“The answer to that mystery,” he says, “was revealed during the leadership election that was held just this past Sunday [September 24, 2023] when party members elected a gay, liberal, former Goldman Sachs trader, shipping investor, and political neophyte Stefanos Kasselakis to head the once radical left-wing Syriza party.” The once “radical” SYRIZA has devolved into a nondescript liberal party of the center/center right (as has the German Greens).

But he concludes his insightful essay on SYRIZA’s rapid decline with this bizarre note: “Under Kasselakis, Syriza will cease having affinity to leftist politics in any form or shape, which means that Greece will now be left with a Leninist-Stalinist Communist Party as the only large-scale organized political force fighting for the interest of the working class.” [my emphasis]

Is the idea of the KKE — the Greek Marxist-Leninist party “fighting for the interest of the working class” which he dismissively refers —  so distasteful to Polychroniou as to rule it out-of-hand? Would Greek working people be better off if the KKE were not fighting for their interests? Is the fourth largest political party in Greece declared “untouchable” by Polychroniou? Is he apologizing because Greece actually has a committed fighter for the interests of its working class?

Polychroniou’s dismissal comes with no logic and no evidence. It is simply the deeply entrenched, unexamined anti-Communism that he shares with so many middle-strata, academic and intellectual leftists of his and past generations. Despite KKE’s long history of contesting capitalism and imperialism, its unwavering, heroic resistance to fascism, and its persistent promotion of a Greek society free of exploitation, Polychroniou and others of his ilk can find no circumstances in which they could even conditionally support “the only large-scale organized political force fighting for the interest of the working class” in Greece.

Surely, this is the epitome of blind, foolish, and counterproductive anti-Communism.

It is ironic that the KKE pointed out– long before 2015 and Polychroniou– that SYRIZA would not and could not answer the challenges facing Greece in the throes of crisis. At the time, intellectuals like Polychroniou, dismissed KKE’s assessment and charged it with sectarianism for refusing to join in coalition with the now admittedly discredited SYRIZA.

*****

It is, however, a good thing that Polychroniou and others are reexamining the tactics and strategies of the European and US Left in the twenty-first century. It is difficult to reconcile the occurrence of economic catastrophes unseen since the Great Depression, numerous tragic and bloody wars of aggression and domination, and social and political crises with the lack of significant social change or revolution over the last quarter-century. The title of Vincent Bevins’s recent book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, captures the dilemma well. Arguably more people have been motivated to protest existing conditions than ever before, but no revolutionary change has ensued. Why?

The question, or one very much like it, is taken up by Anton Jäger and Arthur Borriello in their recent book, The Populist Moment: The Left After the Great Recession. Both books are the subject of a critical review in the 8 February 2024 issue of The London Review of Books (James Butler, “A Circular Motion”).

Certainly, the failure of the Left and the current numerous fractures on the Left deserve serious retrospection and assessment. The way forward could well come from such study. But it will falter if poisoned from the onset with mindless anti-Communism. It will be prone to the same limiting calls to individualism, to identity, and the vacuous, vague, but always heralded cry for more “democracy.” A challenge to capitalism will require more than virtue-signaling.

Surely, the lessons of a century of social upheaval, confrontation, and revolution animated by working-class organizations cannot be cavalierly dismissed. The role of Communists and Communist Parties was decisive in colossal social change in the twentieth century. Might they be decisive again?

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Greg Godels.

CPJ and other organizations recently reported that Greece is the only EU country to currently have two open cases of impunity for the murder of journalists and that almost no other country in the EU has experienced such a high number of physical attacks which endanger the safety of journalists in the last few years.

Read the full text of the letter below:

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The report concluded that Greece is the only EU country to currently have two open cases of impunity for the murder of journalists, and almost no other country in the EU has experienced such a high number of physical attacks which endanger the safety of journalists in the last few years.

The organizations called on Greek authorities to make a clear demonstration of political commitment to improve press freedom in the country and take specific measures in compliance with European standards to renew the trust of the media community.

Read the full report here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The article informs us that Greece was hit by an economic crisis a decade ago. It had, then, a load of debt – (doesn’t it now?) – which it could not repay and almost left the eurozone. So far so good.

The newspaper informs that today it is one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. Again, so far so good. And clearly, the famous credit rating agencies are upgrading Greece’s debt rating and thus, opening the way for large investors and the economy is growing at twice the rate of the eurozone average. That’s right. CEPR economist Dean Baker, commenting on the article after its publication, wrote with emphasis: “Since the eurozone growth rate for 2023 is projected to be 0.8 percent, growing twice as fast is a rather low bar.”

The journalist mentions that unemployment is at 11 percent, which one would say, with a dose of humor,  is “Greek statistics” because the probability is that unemployment is much higher. (Greece’s past government falsified fiscal data in order to enter eurozone.) Dean Baker will point out though, “The 11 percent unemployment rate is far higher than the rest of the European Union, which has a 5.9 percent unemployment rate.” Everywhere in Greece there is poverty, and mine conditions in society.

I am one of the Greeks living in New York, and I have received many messages and phone calls from Greek people who want to immigrate to America because they cannot make ends meet. Friends and family members ask me the same. They are forced to do two-three jobs to survive. The minimum wage is 780 euros (650 net). So, how is it that the article describes “a miracle”? One would say that even the examples of the people mentioned in the article are not typical.

And the tourists who have returned en masse, as the article states, has not helped to improve incomes. On the popular islands – that the average Greek cannot visit – usually, there are galley conditions for the workers.

Unfortunately, in Greek society, a small percentage of 5%-10% live well – “the oligarchs eat with golden spoons” – and the rest suffer. Children of the poor go to school hungry. The country has some of the most expensive fuel in Europe, expensive food, high VAT, and very expensive electricity. Many do not have money for dental care, to change tires on the car, or, to start a new family. The journalist writes “misery of austerity is still fresh”, no, it is not fresh; it is still present in the social conditions. Nowhere is mentioned that the government gave, until recently, “Soviet-style” Food Pass and Fuel Pass coupons, which helped the re-election by a landslide of the conservative leader Mr. Mitsotakis. This image is not beautified by the fact that the companies Microsoft and Pfizer are investing in Greece.

For reasons that are understandable, rating agencies like DBRS Morningstar and Moody’s do their job. Very likely for them, a strong economy means neoliberalism, purchasing power that is getting worse every year, and cheap labor. And Greece is a country that lacks personalities like AOC and Bernie. But the NYTimes should not present these assessments while ignoring the poverty that still exists in the country that gave birth to Democracy. The NYTimes has accustomed us to a more critical look at the suffering of ordinary people.

In conclusion, “can a dead man dance?” No! So, the information given by the NYTimes should create “a complete picture” and not the opposite. Perhaps, we can accept that somehow, the good American newspaper wants to help improve the desperate economic situation that continues to impoverish the Greeks and stop the transfer of wealth to the few. Good psychology is everything, even in economy. Until then, the country will continue to live its own difficult fate, its own 1929, similar to the conditions America experienced at the start of the Great Depression era.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dimitris Eleas.

Athens, September 29, 2023—A pattern of inaction and inadequate investigation from Greek authorities in the 2010 murder of Greek journalist Sokratis Giolias was revealed in an investigation published today by press freedom groups Free Press Unlimited, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders.

“Impunity in Europe: the uninvestigated murder of Greek journalist Sokratis Giolias” found no authorities have ever been held to account for their investigative failures amid ongoing impunity in the case. The findings show strong parallels with the recent murder of Greek reporter Giorgios Karaivaz, killed on April 9, 2021.

Giolias, a former radio journalist and TV editor who started the popular news blog Troktiko, was shot and killed by two assailants in police uniforms in front of his house on July 19, 2010. The investigation is part of the A Safer World For The Truth initiative to investigate, document, and pursue justice for murdered journalists.

“Thirteen years after the murder, witnesses remain too fearful to speak out,” said Jasmijn de Zeeuw, researcher on the case at Free Press Unlimited. “The persistent impunity for two journalist murders is emblematic of the lack of priority given to the protection of Greek journalists.”

“Our investigation makes plain the failure of Greek authorities to thoroughly investigate Sokratis Giolias’ murder, underscoring the stark erosion of press freedom in Greece,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “To establish the country’s standing as a beacon of democracy, Greek authorities must swiftly implement our recommendations to bring about justice in Giolias’ case.”

“‘Assassination is the extreme form of censorship,’ as Irish writer George Bernard Shaw said. An unpunished killing of a journalist also has a self-censorship effect on his living colleagues,” said the head of the EU-Balkans desk at RSF. “Contrary to what the Greek government claims, there is censorship in Greece. And there will be until justice is served for the assassinations of Sokratis Giolias and Giorgos Karaivaz.”

Despite the militant group Sect of Revolutionaries publicly claiming responsibility for Giolias’ murder, no one has ever been charged. In 2030, the case is set to expire and authorities will no longer be able to hold anyone responsible for the murder.

Following their analysis of witness testimonies, case files, and news reports, A Safer World For The Truth’s researchers found that authorities failed to follow several leads in the investigation of Giolias’ murder, including facts that were reported in 2013.

The case files indicate that the police investigation primarily focused on verifying hypotheses launched in the Greek media. Case files seen by A Safer World For The Truth suggest that important leads, such as the relationship between Giolias and a senior police official, remain under-investigated.

The report underscores the lack of transparency from the authorities throughout the investigation, including a failure to keep Giolias’ family informed about the investigative progress.

The report demonstrates the relevance of the case to the safety of journalists in Greece, which is ranked last of all EU member states on RSF’s World Press Freedom Index.

Thirteen years after the assassination, witnesses and journalists approached for this investigation often declined to speak about the case due to fears that doing so could put them in danger. This silencing effect was also evident right after the murder when security concerns among journalists rose.

The longstanding impunity in Giolias’ case demonstrates a pattern of poor investigative standards applied to crimes against journalists in Greece, replicated in the recent case of Karaivaz, who was killed two years ago. The failure to provide justice in both these cases has created a chilling effect on the Greek press corps.

This investigation provides recommendations to independently review errors made in the investigations. It also calls on the Greek government to review its investigative practices in cases of crimes against journalists and requests the European Commission to monitor the government’s progress.

###

Notes for editors:

A Safer World For The Truth is a collaboration between Free Press Unlimited (FPU), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). We investigate murders through a series of cold case investigations to push for justice on the national level, and we organize the People’s Tribunal on the Murder of Journalists to put a spotlight on states’ obligation to protect journalists and to investigate all attacks against them. To learn more about the project, visit our website https://www.saferworldforthetruth.com/.

Spokespeople are available for interviews in Dutch, French, and English:

Free Press Unlimited (Amsterdam): jdezeeuw@freepressunlimited.org

Committee to Protect Journalists (New York City): press@cpj.org

Reporters Sans Frontières (Paris): pszalai@rsf.org

About the organizations:

Free Press Unlimited (FPU)

Free Press Unlimited is a non-profit press freedom organization based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands that helps local journalists in conflict areas to provide their audience with independent news and reliable information. By supporting local media professionals, Free Press Unlimited seeks to support the enabling of a sustainable, professional, and diverse media landscape.

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent nonprofit organization that promotes press freedom worldwide and defends the right of journalists to report the news safely and without fear of reprisal.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is an NGO based in Paris, France. Its foreign sections, its bureaus in 10 cities, including Brussels, Dakar, Washington, Berlin, Tunis, Rio de Janeiro, Taipei and Stockholm, and its network of correspondents in 130 countries give RSF the ability to mobilize support, challenge governments and wield influence both on the ground and in the ministries and precincts where media and Internet standards and legislation are drafted.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The groups’ press conference Wednesday followed a mission to Athens September 25 to 27 during which they met with media professionals, state bodies, and civil society stakeholders. Read the full press release, which details the groups’ findings, here.

A detailed report with expanded recommendations will be published in both Greek and English in the coming weeks and will be shared with domestic stakeholders and European institutions.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The post Poseidonia Meadows in Greece at Grave Risk appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Evaggelos Vallianatos.

On August 16, the British Museum stated in a press release that an independent review into its security was being launched “after items from the collection were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.”  The extent of such theft or damage is not clear, though the Museum revealed that one member of staff had been dismissed, with legal action being taken against the unnamed individual.  The Metropolitan Police, through its Economic Crime Command branch, was also investigating the matter.

Led by former trustee, Sir Nigel Boardman, and Lucy D’Orsi, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, the review is intended to furnish the Museum with “recommendations regarding future security arrangements” while also commencing “a vigorous programme to recover the missing items.”

Short on detail, the Museum gave some sense about the items involved, which were, it was keen to point out, “kept primarily for academic and research purposes.”  These included “gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD.”

Officials have been keen to contain the scandal, with director Hartwig Fischer insisting that this was “highly unusual”.  In apologising for the whole affair, he also assured the public that “we have now brought an end to this – and we are determined to put things right.”  Fischer’s own occupancy of the director’s role is also coming to an end in 2024.

The Chair of the Museum, George Osborne, formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer, even saw an opportunity to weave the theft into a strategy of reforming the institution.  “This incident only reinforces the case for the reimagination of the Museum we have embarked upon.”

The person who seems to have spurred such reimagining was subsequently identified as Peter John Higgs, a curator of Greek antiquities of some prominence.  There is a delicious irony in this, given the fraught history the Museum has had with the Elgin Marbles, so brazenly taken from the Parthenon in Athens by the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1801.

Much the same could be said about many artefacts housed in the BM’s collections, including the Benin bronzes and the Easter Island Hoa Hakananai’a.  As the notable human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson sourly remarked in 2019, “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”

What has since emerged is that the Museum has been less than frank about the spate of pilfering, let alone the number of items missing from its inventory.  One report suggests that the number might be anywhere between 1,500 to 2,000, taken over a period of two decades.

Publicity is being made about the artefacts through official channels without much specificity, which can be taken either as a sign of acute awareness as to where they might be found, or old-fashioned, groping ignorance.  Christopher Marinello, lawyer and CEO of Art Recovery International, is of the latter view.

Higgs, it transpires, was sacked on July 5 with barely a murmur, despite having led the 2021 exhibition  “Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes,” which was received by three Australian museums and slated to arrive in Suzhou Museum in China at the end of the year.  The Higgs dismissal took place, it has been reported, for his alleged role behind the disappearance of various gold jewellery, semi-precious stones and glass.

The suspicion here is that Higgs operated stealthily, removing the objects over a number of years.  Somewhat odder, and less stealthy, was how many of those objects found their way onto eBay.  Prices also dramatically varied, suggesting either a cheeky sense of humour, or the understanding of an untutored eye.  One item of Roman jewellery, made from onyx, valued anywhere between £25,000 and £50,000, fetched the less than princely sum of £40.

In 2016, an unnamed antiquities expert cited in a Telegraph report began noting various listings of glass items and semi-precious gems on the e-commerce site.  Pieces from the Townley collection of Graeco-Roman artifacts, which the Museum started purchasing in 1805, were spotted under an eBay seller by the name of “sultan1966”.  Sultan1966 proved less than forthcoming to the expert in question when confronted about any link to Higgs.

In June 2020, the Museum was informed of the matter.  In February 2021, the BBC revealed that an art dealer by the name of Ittai Gradel had alerted the institution about some of the items being sold online.  Deputy director Jonathan Williams took five months to rebuff the claim: “there was no suggestion of any wrongdoing.”  An unconvinced Gradel chased up matters with a museum board member, claiming that Williams and Fischer had swept “it all under the carpet.”  In October 2022, Fischer repeated the line that “no evidence” of wrongdoing had been identified.

The son of the alleged perpetrator, Greg Higgs, is mightily unimpressed, declaring that his father could not have been responsible.  “He’s lost his job and his reputation, and I don’t think it was fair.  It couldn’t have been (him). I don’t think there is even anything missing as far as I’m aware.”  The lamentable conduct by the British Museum, notably in initially insisting that nothing had gone missing, would suggest that someone is telling a glorious fib.

The Economist, in reacting to the affair, suggested that making off with such items from a museum “is easier than you might think.”  But what also matters is the museum’s response to alleged claims of theft.  As Marinello puts it, instances of pilfering are not unusual, but the British  Museum’s failure to involve the police “right away” was nothing short of “shocking”.  The Higgs matter suggests as much and is likely to prove a tonic to those seeking a return of various collections lodged in the British Museum over the years.

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s Minister of Culture, is one who wasted little time suggesting that the missing objects reinforced “the permanent and just demand of our country for the definitive return” of the Parthenon Marbles.  The fact that the incidents had taken place “from within, beyond any moral and criminal responsibility” questioned “the credibility of the organisation itself.”  Such theft has somehow put the universe of looted treasures into greater balance.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On August 16, the British Museum stated in a press release that an independent review into its security was being launched “after items from the collection were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.”  The extent of such theft or damage is not clear, though the Museum revealed that one member of staff had been dismissed, with legal action being taken against the unnamed individual.  The Metropolitan Police, through its Economic Crime Command branch, was also investigating the matter.

Led by former trustee, Sir Nigel Boardman, and Lucy D’Orsi, Chief Constable of the British Transport Police, the review is intended to furnish the Museum with “recommendations regarding future security arrangements” while also commencing “a vigorous programme to recover the missing items.”

Short on detail, the Museum gave some sense about the items involved, which were, it was keen to point out, “kept primarily for academic and research purposes.”  These included “gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD.”

Officials have been keen to contain the scandal, with director Hartwig Fischer insisting that this was “highly unusual”.  In apologising for the whole affair, he also assured the public that “we have now brought an end to this – and we are determined to put things right.”  Fischer’s own occupancy of the director’s role is also coming to an end in 2024.

The Chair of the Museum, George Osborne, formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer, even saw an opportunity to weave the theft into a strategy of reforming the institution.  “This incident only reinforces the case for the reimagination of the Museum we have embarked upon.”

The person who seems to have spurred such reimagining was subsequently identified as Peter John Higgs, a curator of Greek antiquities of some prominence.  There is a delicious irony in this, given the fraught history the Museum has had with the Elgin Marbles, so brazenly taken from the Parthenon in Athens by the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1801.

Much the same could be said about many artefacts housed in the BM’s collections, including the Benin bronzes and the Easter Island Hoa Hakananai’a.  As the notable human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson sourly remarked in 2019, “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”

What has since emerged is that the Museum has been less than frank about the spate of pilfering, let alone the number of items missing from its inventory.  One report suggests that the number might be anywhere between 1,500 to 2,000, taken over a period of two decades.

Publicity is being made about the artefacts through official channels without much specificity, which can be taken either as a sign of acute awareness as to where they might be found, or old-fashioned, groping ignorance.  Christopher Marinello, lawyer and CEO of Art Recovery International, is of the latter view.

Higgs, it transpires, was sacked on July 5 with barely a murmur, despite having led the 2021 exhibition  “Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes,” which was received by three Australian museums and slated to arrive in Suzhou Museum in China at the end of the year.  The Higgs dismissal took place, it has been reported, for his alleged role behind the disappearance of various gold jewellery, semi-precious stones and glass.

The suspicion here is that Higgs operated stealthily, removing the objects over a number of years.  Somewhat odder, and less stealthy, was how many of those objects found their way onto eBay.  Prices also dramatically varied, suggesting either a cheeky sense of humour, or the understanding of an untutored eye.  One item of Roman jewellery, made from onyx, valued anywhere between £25,000 and £50,000, fetched the less than princely sum of £40.

In 2016, an unnamed antiquities expert cited in a Telegraph report began noting various listings of glass items and semi-precious gems on the e-commerce site.  Pieces from the Townley collection of Graeco-Roman artifacts, which the Museum started purchasing in 1805, were spotted under an eBay seller by the name of “sultan1966”.  Sultan1966 proved less than forthcoming to the expert in question when confronted about any link to Higgs.

In June 2020, the Museum was informed of the matter.  In February 2021, the BBC revealed that an art dealer by the name of Ittai Gradel had alerted the institution about some of the items being sold online.  Deputy director Jonathan Williams took five months to rebuff the claim: “there was no suggestion of any wrongdoing.”  An unconvinced Gradel chased up matters with a museum board member, claiming that Williams and Fischer had swept “it all under the carpet.”  In October 2022, Fischer repeated the line that “no evidence” of wrongdoing had been identified.

The son of the alleged perpetrator, Greg Higgs, is mightily unimpressed, declaring that his father could not have been responsible.  “He’s lost his job and his reputation, and I don’t think it was fair.  It couldn’t have been (him). I don’t think there is even anything missing as far as I’m aware.”  The lamentable conduct by the British Museum, notably in initially insisting that nothing had gone missing, would suggest that someone is telling a glorious fib.

The Economist, in reacting to the affair, suggested that making off with such items from a museum “is easier than you might think.”  But what also matters is the museum’s response to alleged claims of theft.  As Marinello puts it, instances of pilfering are not unusual, but the British  Museum’s failure to involve the police “right away” was nothing short of “shocking”.  The Higgs matter suggests as much and is likely to prove a tonic to those seeking a return of various collections lodged in the British Museum over the years.

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s Minister of Culture, is one who wasted little time suggesting that the missing objects reinforced “the permanent and just demand of our country for the definitive return” of the Parthenon Marbles.  The fact that the incidents had taken place “from within, beyond any moral and criminal responsibility” questioned “the credibility of the organisation itself.”  Such theft has somehow put the universe of looted treasures into greater balance.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The post Greece: From Burning to a Green Future appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Evaggelos Vallianatos.

Speaking from Corfu - where the wildfires have thankfully calmed down a bit since Monday – Katy puts the WMO’s announcement into context.

Here she is now, talking to Daniel Johnson.

This content originally appeared on UN News - Global perspective Human stories and was authored by Daniel Johnson.

The post Revolution in Rural Greece appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Evaggelos Vallianatos.

Sometimes you wake up from a dream to realize it is telling you to pay close attention to the depth of its message, especially when it is linked to what you have been thinking about for days.  I have just come up from a dream in which I went down to the cellar of the house I grew up in because the basement light was on and the back cellar door had been opened by a mysterious man who stood outside.

I will spare you additional details or an interpretation, except to say that my daytime thoughts concerned the media spectacle surrounding the Titan submersible that imploded two miles down in the ocean’s cellar while trying to give its passengers a view of the wreck of the Titanic, the “unsinkable” ship nicknamed “the Millionaire’s Special.”  The ship that no one could sink except an ice cube in the drink that swallowed it.

Cellar dreams are well-known as the place where we as individuals and societies can face the flickering shadows that we refuse to face in conscious life.  Carl Jung called it “the shadow.”  Such shadows, when unacknowledged and repressed, have a tendency to autonomously surface and erupt, not only leading to personal self-destruction but that of whole societies.  History is replete with examples.  My dream’s mysterious stranger had lit my way through some dark thoughts and opened the door to a possible escape.  He got me thinking about what all of us tend to want to deny or avoid because its implications are so monstrous.

The obsession with the alleged marvels of technology together with naming them after ancient Greek and Roman gods are fixations of elite technologues who have lost what Spengler called “living inner religiousness” but wish to show they know the classical names even though they miss the meaning of these myths.  Such myths tell the stories of things that never happened but always are.  Appropriating the ancient names without irony – such as naming a boat Titanic or a submersible Titan – unveils the hubristic ignorance of people who have never descended to the underworld to learn its lessons.  Relinquishing  their sense of god-like power doesn’t occur to them, nor does the shadow side of their Faustian dreams.

They will never name some machine Nemesis, for that would expose the fact that they have exceeded the eternal limits with their maniacal technological extremism, and, to paraphrase Camus, dark Furies will swoop down to destroy them.

Nietzsche termed the result nihilism.  Once people have killed God, machines are a handy replacement in societies that worship the illusion of technique and are scared to death of death and the machines that they invented to administer it.

The latter is not a matter fit to print since it must remain in the dark basement of the public’s consciousness.  If it were publicized, the game of nihilistic death-dealing would be exposed.  Because power, money, and technology are the ruling deities today, the mass media revolve around publicizing their marvels in spectacular fashion, and when “accidents” occur, they never point out the myth of the machines, or what Lewis Mumford called “The Pentagon of Power.”  Tragedies occur, they tell us, but they are minor by-products of the marvels of technology.

But if these media would take us down to see the truth beneath the oceans’ surfaces, we would see not false monsters such as the Titanic or Moby Dick or cartoon fictions such as Disney’s Monstro the whale, but the handiwork of thousands of mad Captain Ahabs who have attached the technologues “greatest” invention – nuclear weapons – to nuclear-powered ballistic submarines.

Trident submarines. First strike submarines, such as the USS Ohio.

These Trident subs live and breathe in the cellars of our minds where few dare descend.  They are controlled by jackals in Washington and the Pentagon with polished faces in well-appointed offices with coffee machines and tasty snacks.  Madmen.  They hum through the deep waters ready to strike and destroy the world.  Few hear them, almost none see them, most prefer not to know of them.

But wait, what’s the buzz, tell me what’s happening: the Titan and the Titanic, wealthy voyeurs intent on getting a glance into the sepulchre of those long dead, while six hundred or so desperate migrants drown in the Mediterranean sea from which the ancient gods were born.  These are the priorities of a society that worships the wealthy; a society of the spectacle that entertains and distracts while the end of the world cruises below consciousness.

The United States alone has fourteen such submarines armed with Trident missiles constantly prowling the ocean depths, while the British have four.  Named for the three-pronged weapon of the Greek and Roman sea gods, Poseidon and Neptune respectively, these submarine-launched ballistic missiles, manufactured by Lockheed Martin (“We deliver innovative solutions to the world’s toughest challenges”), can destroy the world in a flash. Destroy it many times over. A final solution.

While the United States has abrogated all treaties that offered some protection from their use and has declared their right of first use, it has consistently pushed toward a nuclear confrontation with Russia and China.  Today – 2023 June – we stand on the precipice of nuclear annihilation as never before.

A single Trident submarine has 20 Trident missiles, each carrying 12 independently targeted warheads for a total of 240 warheads, with each warhead approximately 40 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb.  Fourteen submarines times 240 equals 3,360 nuclear warheads times 40 equals 134,400 Hiroshimas.  Such are the lessons of mathematics in absurd times.

James W. Douglass, the author of the renown JFK and the Unspeakable and a longtime activist against the Tridents at Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action outside the Bangor Submarine Base in Washington state, put it this way in 2015 when asked about Robert Aldridge, the heroic Lockheed Trident missile designer who resigned his position in an act of conscience and became an inspirational force for the campaign against the Tridents and nuclear weapons:

Question: “What did the Nuremberg attorneys say about war crimes that had such a deep impact on Robert Aldridge?”

Douglass: “They said that first-strike weapons and weapons that directly target a civilian population were war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg principles. Those Nuremberg principles, which are the foundations of international law, are violated by both by electronic warfare – which is why we poured blood on the files for electronic warfare [at the base] – and also by the Trident missile system, which is what Robert Aldridge was building.”

Robert Aldridge saw his shadow side.  He went to the cellar of his darkest dreams. He refused to turn away.  He became an inspiration for James and Shelley Douglass and so many others.  He was a man in and of the system, who saw the truth of his complicity in radical evil and underwent a metanoia.  It is possible.

If those missiles are ever launched from the monsters that carry them through the hidden recesses of the world’s oceans, there will never be another Nuremberg Trial to judge the guilty, for the innocent and the guilty will all be dead.

We will have failed to shed light on our darkest shadows.

Writing in another context that pertains to today’s high-flying nuclear madmen whose mythic Greek forbear Icarus would not listen, the poet W. H. Auden put it this way in Musée des Beaux Arts:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

We turn away at our peril.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Edward Curtin.

Through a WhatsApp message from Portugal, my friend Eunice Neves asked to share a moment with me. She was with an Afghan couple, Frishta and Mohammad, and their baby son, Arsalan. The young family has resettled in Mértola, a small city in southern Portugal. They looked forward to celebrating World Refugee Day as part of a project which the Portuguese government lauds as a model for refugee resettlement.

I had first met Frishta in 2015 when she was a volunteer teacher, in Kabul, Afghanistan. At a school for “street kids” she helped young child laborers gain literacy and math skills, while also learning basic ideas about nonviolence. The children could be rowdy and boisterous, but when Frishta entered the classroom, they were eager to please their talented teacher. Frishta’s altruism and skill made her a target for persecution when the Taliban ascended to power. Following death threats to her and her husband, the couple fled their home just prior to the Taliban takeover of Kabul. Days later, on August 21^st, 2021, Frishta gave birth to Arsalan.

Eventually, after harrowing and harsh months seeking refuge in Pakistan, the family found a safe haven in Portugal. An international group of activists familiar with the former volunteer group helped devise a model resettlement project. Now, 25 young Afghans have been integrated in Portuguese cities. Eight of the young people have spent thirteen months in Mértola, helping rehabilitate arid land through syntropic farming and permaculture. Together, they pursued a program designed to fully integrate them into Portuguese society.

During today’s conversation, Arsalan amused himself with a garden hose by watering the flowers, the walls and himself. “Look where he is now,” said Eunice, shifting the phone to show Arsalan, fully clothed, splashing contentedly in a small tub he had partially filled with water. From his makeshift boat, he blew me a kiss!

Arsalan’s security, in sharp contrast to the dangerous circumstances surrounding his birth, should epitomize the story of every vulnerable refugee seeking a safe haven. Sadly, tragically, and shamefully, on this World Refugee Day, we must recall a tragedy all too familiar which took place last week. In the deepest part of the Mediterranean Sea, a ship carrying at least 100 children, among hundreds of others, capsized.

Irish author Sally Hayden, who, for years, has accompanied migrants attempting to enter Europe, writes: “The dead are victims of the world’s inequality. They are victims of the fact that the privileged of this planet have freedom of movement simply due to the luck of where they were born, while much of the rest must risk their lives in the hope of accessing a secure, dignified life….Those who survive that journey live with huge trauma – many have told me how they are haunted by memories of watching family members or friends drown; how they appealed for help, but their distress calls were ignored; how, when the boat engines failed or fuel ran out and they drifted, they were certain they would die of thirst one by one.”

The mind revolts and simply will not consent to imagine the terror felt by a single child, much less the hundred or so who drowned and sank to the ocean’s deepest depths inside that boat last Wednesday. Photos of the boat before it sank showed the upper decks entirely packed with would-be migrants, meaning that, horrifically, the lower decks were crammed with migrants – including most of the children – as well. It’s estimated 500, or even 750, people were on board. There were only 104 survivors, mostly young adult males with the strength to cling for hours onto available wreckage. There were no life preservers; legal migration had been made near-impossible.

Writing from Ireland, Ed Horgan, a campaigner for Irish neutrality, calls this a tragedy in which “hundreds of migrants were fleeing wars and dire poverty and human rights abuses.” (Irish Examiner, Opinion, 17 June)

Horror spreads everywhere when militarism reigns and weapon sales proliferate, causing displacement and rising numbers of people fleeing violence.

Horgan holds the European Union’s Border and Coast Guard agency, FRONTEX, partly accountable, noting they and the Greek Coast Guard, “had been monitoring this ship for up to 12 hours prior to the disaster, and failed to offer any practical assistance until it was too late.”

Here in the United States, where I live, similar tragedies unfold. One of my closest friends, Laurie Hasbrook, has worked to accompany refugees arriving in Chicago for over two decades. Last weekend, with two other volunteers, she was almost arrested for attempting to serve food and supply warm clothing to shivering and famished migrants who had newly arrived in Chicago. U.S. activists in the southwest face criminal charges for attempting to save the lives of migrants by dropping off water and food supplies along routes where needy people might access the supplies.

We have much to learn from people in Portugal who’ve created model projects based on mutual respect and creative problem-solving as they’ve welcomed young Afghans to become integral members of Portuguese society.

Upholding the right to safety, we should stop pouring money into the coffers of military contractors. These merchants of death take us down the road of militarism and exploitation. Rather than be led by fortress Europe or US-led NATO full spectrum dominance, we should find security by extending the hand of friendship and seeking reciprocal, survivable plans to rehabilitate lands and communities. It’s vital that people worldwide persuade governments to promote global peace and justice instead of wars and military domination which inevitably lead to tragedies like the one which occurred last week in the Mediterranean Sea.

Photo Credit: Hellenic Coast Guard

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kathy Kelly.

We speak with Jumana Abo Oxa, project manager at the Greek refugee project, Elpida Home, who is in Washington, D.C., where she is meeting with Biden administration officials and lawmakers in an effort to seek help for 82 families, including many women parliamentarians, who evacuated from Afghanistan but have been stuck in Greece for over a year and a half.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

At least tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of cities and towns across Greece Thursday to protest the government's handling of last month's Tempi railway disaster and the capitalist system that puts profits before people.

The general strike—which was called by the General Confederation of Greek Workers and public sector workers umbrella organization ADEDY—crippled transportation on land, in the air, and at sea. In the capital Athens, metro services and the tram network were shut down. Many flights were canceled due to a work stoppage by air traffic controllers, and many ferries remained docked.

In addition to Athens, demonstrations took place in Thessaloniki, Patras, and elsewhere—including in Tempi, site of the February 28 head-on collision between a freight train and a high-speed inter-city passenger train carrying 350 people. Fifty-seven people died and 85 others were injured in the crash.

"Had this been a serious country, everybody at the transport ministry would be in handcuffs."

Much of the Greek left blames the disaster on railway staffing cuts, outdated technology, and infrastructure neglect and degradation caused by years of severe fiscal austerity measures.

Rallying under the slogan "this crime will not be forgotten; we will be the voice of all the dead," demonstrators shouted "murderers" and "the tears have dried up and turned into rage" as they marched in central Athens.

"This was mass murder," Pavlos Aslanidis, the father of one of the passengers killed in the crash, toldAlphaTV. "Had this been a serious country, everybody at the transport ministry would be in handcuffs."

According toWorld Socialist Web Site:

Demonstrations were replete with anti-government slogans and chants rejecting the initial claims of New Democracy Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis that the disaster was the result of the errors of a single station master in Larissa—the passenger train's last stop before the crash. Some banners in Syntagma Square outside Parliament read, "It was no human error, it was a crime" and "Our dead, your profits."

"Two weeks have passed since the crime in Tempi, Larissa and the country is shaking with anger and daily struggle," the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), which backed the strike, said in a statement. "It is the debt of every worker, every youth, to continue to demand the obvious: This crime must not be covered up!"

PAME accused the government of trying "to block people's participation to the strike by... spreading fake news about the legality of the strike in the public sector and on the day of the strike, ordering the closing of Athens central Metro stations, so as to block people from reaching Athens center and participating in the rallies."

"At the same time, a series of photos and videos on social media and news sites show unprovoked police violence and also persons with civilian clothes, black hoods, and covered faces sitting side by side with the riot police forces," the leftist confederation added.

Video footage posted on social media showed what appeared to be unprovoked attacks by police on demonstrators. Other footage showed people throwing Molotov cocktails and projectiles at police.

Among those participating in Thursday's demonstrations was Yanis Varoufakis, the leftist lawmaker and former finance minister who is recovering from a brutal assault last Friday.

"The masterminds of the austerity and dogmatic privatization that led us to disaster were international institutions: the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission—the so-called Troika," the Varoufakis-led MeRA25 party said in a statement before Thursday's strike, referring to the International Monetary Fund.

"Their reach is global, and the victims of their inane policies are spread from Argentina to Greece and beyond," the leftist party added. "The fight against them is something that must unite all progressive forces."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Recovering from a brutal assault that left him with a broken nose and cheekbone, leftist Greek lawmaker Yanis Varoufakis on Tuesday urged progressives "not get distracted" from the railway accident that killed 57 people last month or the neoliberal "privatize everything doctrine" he blames for the disaster.

Appearing on ANT1's "Kallimera Ellada" (Good Morning, Greece) on Tuesday, Varoufakis—the parliamentary leader of the left-wing MeRA25 party and former finance minister—told hosts Giorgos Papadakis and Maria Anastasopoulou he needs to "thank the public hospital staff" because "they worked miracles" to treat his fractured cheekbone and nose, which was broken in six places during the Friday evening assault by a group of young men the lawmaker described earlier as "hired thugs."

"The oligarchic establishment is trying to exploit my injuries in the most hideous, Goebbels-like manner."

"I will recover," he said, brushing off more questions about the attack. "But those 57 from the train accident in Tempi won't, and their families' pain cannot be treated," a reference to the February 28 collision of passenger and freight trains in Larissa.

Many observers have linked to disaster to austerity measures imposed upon Greece from abroad, especially by the so-called "Trokia" of the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund. These institutions are widely reviled due to the suffering their policies forced upon Greece and other economically ailing European Union members after the 2007-08 global financial meltdown.

In aTuesday letter thanking supporters for "showering" him with "solidarity" following the attack, Varoufakis called for focusing on "what really matters."

"The Greek railway tragedy, that claimed 57 lives, has triggered a remarkable youth movement which is undermining the hegemony of the neoliberal 'privatize everything' doctrine," he wrote.

"The oligarchic establishment is trying to exploit my injuries in the most hideous, Goebbels-like manner," Varoufakis continued, referring to the Nazi propaganda chief. "They are insinuating that I, an anti-systemic politician, [have] fallen victim to the anti-systemic mood that politicians like me have inspired in our youth."

"We must not let them succeed in sullying a pristine, spontaneous, peaceful, progressive youth movement," he added.

Ekathimerinireported Tuesday that two people have been arrested in connection with that attack—a 19-year-old described by Greek Citizen Protection Minister Takis Theodorikakos as an "anarchist," and a 17-year-old who allegedly recorded the assault on his phone.

Varoufakis was attacked Friday evening outside a restaurant in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia. According to the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25)—which Varoufakis co-founded—the leftist lawmaker was at the restaurant with members of the movement from around Europe.

"A small group of thugs stormed the place shouting aggressively, falsely accusing him of signing off on Greece's bailouts with the Troika," DiEM 25 said. "Varoufakis stood up to talk to them but they immediately responded with violence, savagely beating him while filming the scene."

During his appearance on "Kallimera Ellada," Varoufakis said that after he left the eatery, one of his assailants was "pushing me and hitting me and I said to him, 'I'm trying to respect you, to listen to what you want, and you're hitting me?'"

When asked why he did not have a police or security escort, Varoufakis said police make him feel "imprisoned" but that "things will probably change now, due to my wife's demand... 'From now on, you will have police officers.'"

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Tens of thousands of people marched throughout Greece on Wednesday—amid a nationwide walkout organized by labor unions and student associations—to demand accountability and reforms in the wake of the country's deadliest train disaster, which has been attributed to austerity imposed from abroad.

The February 28 crash that killed 57 people and injured another 72 has sparked public outrage over the deteriorating quality of the rail network. As Reutersreported, "Striking workers say years of neglect, underinvestment, and understaffing—a legacy of Greece's decade-long debt crisis—are to blame."

"Greece sold its state-owned railway operator, now called Hellenic Train, to Italy's state-owned Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane in 2017 during its debt crisis," the news outlet noted. "The sale was a term in the country's bailout agreements with the European Union and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund."

More than 40,000 workers and students hit the streets of Athens, where they chanted "murderers!" and "we are all in the same carriage." Demonstrators in Greece's capital and largest city also waved signs reading, It's not an accident, it's a crime" and, "It could have been any of us on that train."

Another 20,000-plus people rallied in Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city. Meanwhile, near the scene of the train collision in Larrisa, protesters declared, "No to profits over our lives!"

The demonstrations coincided with a daylong strike called by trade unionists. Greece's largest public sector union participated in the work stoppage, disrupting a wide range of transit services, while a teachers' union made clear that "it's not the time to fall silent."

Rail workers, for their part, "have staged rolling, 24-hour strikes since Thursday, bringing the network to a halt," Reuters reported. "The workers say their demands for improvement in safety protocols have gone unheard for years."

Police have responded to protests held across Greece since the disaster occurred with violent repression.

Many of the roughly 350 passengers aboard an intercity train that collided with a freight train while traveling on the same track—including 12 victims—were university students returning to Thessaloniki from Athens.

The stationmaster was arrested hours after the crash and is facing felony charges for disrupting transport and endangering lives.

"You feel angry because the government did nothing for all of those kids," 19-year-old Nikomathi Vathi told Reuters. "The public transport is a mess."

The main rail workers' union has vowed to "impose safe railways so that no one will ever experience the tragic accident at Tempi ever again," adding that "we have an obligation toward our fellow humans and our colleagues who were lost in the tragic accident."

Leftist former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis this week accused the Greek government of trying to "cover-up the real causes of our railway tragedy... by bypassing parliamentary scrutiny and appointing arbitrarily its own three-member investigative committee—on which, remarkably, they included a gentleman who oversaw the botched privatization of our railways—not to mention the prime minister's pronouncement that the cause was human error."

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the leader of Greece's conservative government who is up for re-election this year, orginally blamed the crash on human error before apologizing Sunday and "acknowledging that decades of neglect could have contributed to the disaster," Al Jazeera reported.

Hours after the collision, former Transport Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned. Mitsotakis appointed one of his closest allies, George Gerapetritis, to replace him.

At a Wednesday morning press conference, Gerapetritis said that he understands why people are angry, apologized for the crash and promised to identify its causes, and announced that rail services are being suspended until at least the end of March while the government conducts a safety review.

"No train will set off again if we have not secured safety at the maximum possible level," said Gerapetritis. Greece's new transport minister said the government plans to invest in upgrading infrastructure and hiring more staff.

According to Al Jazeera correspondent John Psaropoulos, the press conference raised "more questions than answers" and is likely to make "the families of the victims even angrier."

As the news outlet reported:

“First of all, we've learned that some of the automated systems that should have been in place throughout the Greek network, were in fact operational on the night of the accident in Larissa station," said Psaropoulos.

He explained that an automated optimal route selection for the train would have been possible, but was not used.

"Secondly, it also doesn't answer why two additional station masters who should have been on duty until 11:00 pm took off at 10:00 pm without permission. Thirdly, it does not answer why the train was about 15 minutes late in leaving," he added, explaining how all these things contributed to the collision.

"It suggests enormous problems in the operation and training of personnel," said Psaropoulos.

E.U. Railway Agency executive director Josef Doppelbauer toldEuronews on Wednesday that his organization repeatedly warned Greek authorities of the need to shore up rail safety prior to the deadly crash.

Despite years of warnings from regulators and the provision of funding to modernize the country's railways, Doppelbauer said, Greek officials failed to fully implement an automated rail traffic management system and other recommended changes. If they had, he added, the disaster likely would have been averted.

European Commission (EC) President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to provide technical support. Gerapetritis was set to meet with Doppelbauer and other transportation experts from the bloc later on Wednesday.

Varoufakis, who served as Greece's finance minister in 2015 when the "troika"—the EC, the European Central Bank, and the IMF—rammed through a devastating "structural adjustment" program, balked at Leyen's offer, arguing that she helped bring about the crisis in the first place.

The EC was part of the unelected troika that "railroaded the Greek government into the botched privatization that caused the tragedy," he noted. "Keep your assistance dear Ursula. We have had enough."

Last week, the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), which was co-founded by Varoufakis, argued that "the E.U. has blood on its hands."

The deadly collision "has further brought the negligence and corruption of the Greek government under scrutiny, and rightly so," the group said. "However, the role of the European Union in the tragedy cannot go unmentioned either, as it was the E.U. and its institutions who forced Greece to sell off public utilities for a pittance to private—and in the case of the railways, bankrupt and incompetent—companies."

Erik Edman, spokesperson of the European Realistic Disobedience Front (MeRA25), a left-wing Greek political party founded by Varoufakis, denounced the E.U.'s posturing after it lowered its flags to half-mast on Friday in a symbolic tribute to the victims of the crash.

"The architects of the permanent impoverishment of the Greek state and the disastrous privatization of its public property are lowering their flags today," said Edman. "The EC were the brains behind the haphazard privatization that forced the Greek state to sell the entirety of its national railways to the bankrupt (!) Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane for—I kid you not—a measly 45 million euros."

"They view demonstrations, such as those by Greek rail workers, as backward unionists opposing the efficiency of privatization," Edman continued. "People who had been warning of an inevitable accident as a result of underinvestment. Their colleagues had been injured in past years, and now."

"They constantly praise the corrupt government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis as a 'success story,'" he added. "So, they should either stand by the policies they've been supporting and keep the flags up, or take them down and put them away in shame. Anything else is hypocrisy of the worst kind."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

More than two millennia ago, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounted a disastrous conflict Athens waged against Sparta. A masterwork on strategy and war, the book is still taught at the U.S. Army War College and many other military institutions across the world. A passage from it describing an ultimatum Athens gave a weaker power has stayed with me all these years. And here it is, loosely translated from the Greek: “The strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.”

Recently, I read the latest National Defense Strategy, or NDS, issued in October 2022 by the Pentagon, and Thucydides’s ancient message, a warning as clear as it was undeniable, came to mind again. It summarized for me the true essence of that NDS: being strong, the United States does what it wants and weaker powers, of course, suffer as they must. Such a description runs contrary to the mythology of this country in which we invariably wage war not for our own imperial ends but to defend ourselves while advancing freedom and democracy. Recall that Athens, too, thought of itself as an enlightened democracy even as it waged its imperial war of dominance on the Peloponnesus. Athens lost that war, calamitously, but at least it did produce Thucydides, a military leader who became a historian and wrote all too bluntly about his country’s hubristic, ultimately fatal pursuit of hegemony.

Imperial military ambitions contributed disastrously to Athens’s exhaustion and ultimate collapse, a lesson completely foreign to U.S. strategists. Not surprisingly, then, you’ll find no such Thucydidean clarity in the latest NDS approved by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In place of that Greek historian’s probity and timeless lessons, the NDS represents an assault not just on the English language but on our very future. In it, a policy of failing imperial dominance is eternally disguised as democratic deterrence, while the greatest “strategic” effort of all goes (remarkably successfully) into justifying massive Pentagon budget increases. Given the sustained record of failures in this century for what still passes as the greatest military power on the planet — Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, of course, but don’t forget Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and indeed the entire $8 trillion Global War on Terror in all its brutality — consider the NDS a rare recent “mission accomplished” moment. The 2023 baseline “defense” budget now sits at $858 billion, $45 billion more than even the Biden administration requested.

With that yearly budget climbing toward a trillion dollars (or more) annually, it’s easy to conclude that, at least when it comes to our military, nothing succeeds like failure. And, by the way, that not only applies to wars lost at a staggering cost but also financial audits blown without penalty. After all, the Pentagon only recently failed its fifth audit in a row. With money always overflowing, no matter how it may be spent, one thing seems guaranteed: some future American Thucydides will have the material to produce a volume or volumes beyond compare. Of course, whether this country goes the way of Athens — defeat driven by military exhaustion exacerbated by the betrayal of its supposedly deepest ideals leading to an ultimate collapse — remains to be seen. Still, given that America’s war colleges continue to assign Thucydides, no one can say that our military and future NDS writers didn’t get fair warning when it comes to what likely awaits them.

Bludgeoning America with Bureaucratese

If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.

That’s a saying I learned early in my career as an Air Force officer, so I wasn’t exactly surprised to discover that it’s the NDS’s guiding philosophy. The document has an almost Alice in Wonderland-like quality to it as words and phrases take on new meanings. China, you won’t be surprised to learn, is a “pacing challenge” to U.S. security concerns; Russia, an “acute threat” to America due to its “unprovoked, unjust, and reckless invasion of Ukraine” and other forms of “irresponsible behavior”; and building “combat-credible forces” within a “defense ecosystem” is a major Pentagon goal, along with continuing “investments in mature, high-value assets” (like defective aircraft carriers, ultra-expensive bombers and fighter jets, and doomsday-promising new ICBMs).

Much talk is included about “leveraging” those “assets,” “risk mitigation,” and even “cost imposition,” a strange euphemism for bombing, killing, or otherwise inflicting pain on our enemies. Worse yet, there’s so much financial- and business-speak in the document that it’s hard not to wonder whether its authors don’t already have at least one foot in the revolving door that could, on their retirement from the military, swing them onto the corporate boards of major defense contractors like Boeing and Raytheon.

Perhaps my favorite redefined concept in that NDS lurks in the word “campaigning.” In the old days, armies fought campaigns in the field and generals like Frederick the Great or Napoleon truly came to know the price of them in blood and treasure. Unlike U.S. generals since 1945, they also knew the meaning of victory, as well as defeat. Perish the thought of that kind of campaigning now. The NDS redefines it, almost satirically, not to say incomprehensibly, as “the conduct and sequencing of logically-linked military initiatives aimed at advancing well-defined, strategy-aligned priorities over time.” Huh?

Campaigning, explains the cover letter signed by Secretary of Defense Austin (who won’t be mistaken for Frederick II in his bluntness or Napoleon in his military acuity), “is not business as usual — it is the deliberate effort to synchronize the [Defense] Department’s activities and investments to aggregate focus and resources to shift conditions in our favor.”

Got it? Good!

Of course, who knows what such impenetrable jargon really means to our military in 2023? This former military officer certainly prefers the plain and honest language of Thucydides. In his terms, America, the strong, intends to do what it will in the world to preserve and extend “conditions in our favor,” as the NDS puts it — a measure by which this country has failed dismally in this century. Weaker countries, especially those that are “irresponsible,” must simply suffer. If they resist, they must be prepared for some “cost imposition” events exercised by our “combat-credible forces.” Included in those are America’s “ultimate backstop” of cost imposition… gulp, its nuclear forces.

Again, the NDS is worthy of close reading (however pain-inducing that may be) precisely because the secretary of defense does claim that it’s his “preeminent guidance document.” I assume he’s not kidding about that, though I wish he were. To me, that document is to guidance as nuclear missiles are to “backstops.” If that last comparison is jarring, I challenge you to read it and then try to think or write clearly.

Bringing Clarity to America’s Military Strategy

To save you the trauma of even paging through the NDS, let me try to summarize it quickly in my version — if not the Pentagon’s — of English:

1. China is the major threat to America on this planet.
2. Russia, however, is a serious threat in Europe.
3. The War on Terror continues to hum along successfully, even if at a significantly lower level.
4. North Korea and Iran remain threats, mainly due to the first’s growing nuclear arsenal and the second’s supposed nuclear aspirations.
5. Climate change, pandemics, and cyberwar must also be factored in as “transboundary challenges.”

“Deterrence” is frequently used as a cloak for the planetary dominance the Pentagon continues to dream of. Our military must remain beyond super-strong (and wildly overfunded) to deter nations and entities from striking “the homeland.” There’s also lots of talk about global challenges to be met, risks to be managed, “gray zone” methods to be employed, and references aplenty to “kinetic action” (combat, in case your translator isn’t working) and what’s known as “exploitable asymmetries.”

Count on one thing: whatever our disasters in the real world, nobody is going to beat America in the jargon war.

Missing in the NDS — and no surprise here — is any sense that war is humanity’s worst pastime. Even the mass murder implicit in nuclear weapons is glossed over. The harshest realities of conflict, nuclear war included, and the need to do anything in our power to prevent them, naturally go unmentioned. The very banality of the document serves to mask a key reality of our world: that Americans fund nothing as religiously as war, that most withering of evils.

Perhaps it’s not quite the banality of evil, to cite the telling phrase political philosopher Hannah Arendt used to describe the thoughts of the deskbound mass-murderers of the Holocaust, but it does have all of war’s brutality expunged from it. As we stare into the abyss, the NDS replies with mind-numbing phrases and terms that wouldn’t be out of place in a corporate report on rising profits and market dominance.

Yet as the military-industrial complex maneuvers and plots to become ever bigger, ever better funded, and ever more powerful, abetted by a Congress seemingly lustful for ever more military spending and weapons exports, hope for international cooperation, productive diplomacy, and democracy withers. Here, for instance, are a few of the things you’ll never see mentioned in this NDS:

1. Any suggestion that the Pentagon budget might be reduced. Ever.
2. Any suggestion that the U.S. military’s mission or “footprint” should be downsized in any way at all.
3. Any acknowledgement that the U.S. and its allies spend far more on their militaries than “pacing challengers” like China or “acute threats” like Russia.
4. Any acknowledgment that the Pentagon’s budget is based not on deterrence but on dominance.
5. Any acknowledgement that the U.S. military has been far less than dominant despite endless decades of massive military spending that produced lost or stalemated wars from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq.
6. Any suggestion that skilled diplomacy and common security could lead to greater cooperation or decreased tensions.
7. Any serious talk of peace.

In brief, in that document and thanks to the staggering congressional funding that goes with it, America is being eternally spun back into an age of great-power rivalry, with Xi Jinping’s China taking the place of the old Soviet Union and Vladimir Putin’s Russia that of Mao Zedong’s China. Consistent with that retro-vision is the true end goal of the NDS: to eternally maximize the Pentagon budget and so the power and authority of the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Basically, any power that seeks to push back against the Pentagon’s vision of security through dominance is defined as a threat to be “deterred,” often in the most “kinetic” way. And the greatest threat of all, requiring the most “deterrence,” is, of course, China.

In a textbook case of strategic mirror-imaging, the Pentagon’s NDS sees that country and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as acting almost exactly like the U.S. military. And that simply cannot be allowed.

Here’s the relevant NDS passage:

“In addition to expanding its conventional forces, the PLA is rapidly advancing and integrating its space, counterspace, cyber, electronic, and information warfare capabilities to support its holistic approach to joint warfare. The PLA seeks to target the ability of the [U.S.] Joint Force to project power to defend vital U.S. interests and aid our Allies in a crisis or conflict. The PRC [China] is also expanding the PLA’s global footprint and working to establish a more robust overseas and basing infrastructure to allow it to project military power at greater distances. In parallel, the PRC is accelerating the modernization and expansion of its nuclear capabilities.”

How dare China become more like the United States! Only this country is allowed to aspire to “full-spectrum dominance” and global power, as manifested by its 750 military bases scattered around the world and its second-to-none, blue-water navy. Get back to thy place, China! Only “a free people devoted to democracy and the rule of law” can “sustain and strengthen an international system under threat.” China, you’ve been warned. Better not dare to keep pace with the U.S. of A. (And heaven forfend that, in a world overheating in a devastating way, the planet’s two greatest greenhouse gas emitters should work together to prevent true catastrophe!)

Revisiting the Oath of Office

Being a retired U.S. military officer, I always come back to the oath of office I once swore to uphold: “To support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Naturally, if China, Russia, or any other country or entity attacks or otherwise directly menaces the U.S., I expect our military to defend this country with all due vigor.

That said, I don’t see China, Russia, or weaker countries like Iran or North Korea risking attacks against America proper, despite breathless talk of world “flashpoints.” Why would they, when any such attack would incur a devastating counterattack, possibly including America’s trusty “backstop,” its nuclear weapons?

In truth, the NDS is all about the further expansion of the U.S. global military mission. Contraction is a concept never to be heard. Yet reducing our military’s presence abroad isn’t synonymous with isolationism, nor, as has become ever more obvious in recent years, is an expansive military structure a fail-safe guarantor of freedom and democracy at home. Quite the opposite, constant warfare and preparations for more of it overseas have led not only to costly defeats, most recently in Afghanistan, but also to the increasing militarization of our society, a phenomenon reflected, for instance, in the more heavily armed and armored police forces across America.

The Pentagon’s NDS is a classic case of threat inflation cloaked in bureaucratese where the “facts” are fixed around a policy that encourages the incessant and inflationary growth of the military-industrial complex. In turn, that complex empowers and drives a “rules-based international order” in which America, as hegemon, makes the rules. Again, as Thucydides put it, the strong do what they will and the weak suffer as they must.

Yet, to paraphrase another old book, what does it profit a people to gain the whole world yet lose their very soul? Like Athens before it, America was once a flawed democracy that nevertheless served as an inspiration to many because militarism, authoritarianism, and imperial pretense didn’t drive it. Today, this country is much like Thucydides’s Athens, projecting power ever-outwards in a misbegotten exercise to attain mastery through military supremacy.

It didn’t end well for Athens, nor will it for the United States.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by William Astore.

It’s time to rethink EU migration policy. New walls are being built in Europe, but they will not solve the present crisis – and the money could be far better spent.

Instead, Serbia is constructing a fence on its border with North Macedonia and plans another to prevent crossings from Bulgaria. Greece is planning to extend its high-tech 40-kilometre-long, 5-metre-high steel, concrete and barbed wire fence on the border with Turkey by a further 140 kilometres.

Over the past two years Poland, Lithuania and Latvia have fortified their borders with Belarus by erecting fences of steel and barbed wire at a cost of more than half a billion euros. Several years earlier, Hungary spent €1.64bn erecting steel and razor-wire barriers on its borders with Serbia and Croatia.

Around 1800 kilometres of border walls and fences have been built on the perimeter of the EU in the past decade. The hefty prices include cameras, heat sensors, drones, armed vehicles and guards to patrol and keep the outsiders out, as well as the costs of reduced trade between neighbours and damaged wildlife.

The new militarised borders are intended to slow down the inflow of irregular migrants entering the EU from the east along the western Balkan route. Over 228,000 undocumented asylum seekers from the Middle East, North Africa and Asia entered the EU last year, half of them along the Balkan route. That was a substantial increase on 2021, sparking fears of another refugee crisis similar to the one that sent a million undocumented refugees to the EU in 2015-16.

Yet these expensive walls are unlikely to stop the refugees. If the wall can’t be scaled with ladders, it can be walked around: the wall on the Polish-Belarusian border may be 186 kilometres long, but that leaves 232 kilometres of the border unfenced.

Nevertheless, these longer walls do force would-be migrants to take more dangerous routes. They also permit higher profits for smugglers and traffickers of people. For example, even though fewer refugees were apprehended in Hungary after the fence was built, the number of human smugglers arrested increased, and thousands of migrants continued to cross the southern Hungarian borders heading for western Europe.

The long journeys of asylum seekers include dangerous crossings of seas or rivers, sleeping rough in cold and heat, and abuse by people smugglers. According to the Missing Migrants Project, more than 25,000 people have gone missing in the Mediterranean alone since 2014.

Why take such risks? Refugees from Afghanistan may be escaping Taliban rule. Those from Turkey, Iraq and Syria may be fleeing wars. Economic migrants from Tunisia, Egypt, Bangladesh, Algeria and Morocco are determined to reach the EU to escape poverty, earn living wages and build a better life. Yet the EU meets them all with walls, barbed wire and filthy refugee camps.

There is a precedent for solving migration issues with humane policies, not walls. The war in Ukraine drove four times as many refugees into the EU in 2022 than the conflict in Syria did in 2015-16. In contrast, the status of Ukrainian refugees is regulated.

Over 4.8 million of them, mostly women and children, have registered for the EU’s temporary protection scheme or other national programmes, including over 1m in Poland and Germany, and over 100,000 in the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, the UK, Bulgaria and France.

The EU’s Temporary Protection Directive allows Ukrainians to move freely between member states, gives them instant rights to live and work, and offers access to benefits like housing and medical care for up to three years.

While migrants are a net cost in the short run, in the long run they are taxpayers. Some will assimilate and settle in the EU, thus helping relieve its worker shortage and demographic crisis.

Why not adopt the same policies for Arab and African migrants? Governments can provide asylum-seekers with temporary accommodation, legal pathways to obtain jobs, language classes and modest financial support. Private companies can invest in human capital by training and hiring these workers. Once employed or in school, the young men – most of these migrants are young men – will pay taxes and productively contribute to the host society.

The fears that natives lose jobs to migrants are largely overstated, because migrants tend to take less desirable jobs. Moreover, they create new jobs within and outside diaspora communities – in other words, groups of migrants in host countries who have come from the same original culture.

If people in host countries are worried about an excess of young male migrants, the EU can design a ‘merit’ migration system like the one in Canada to welcome families with young children. Local diasporas and personal sponsors can be asked to support new migrants and bear some responsibility for their housing, language training and employment. With more support and mentoring available, migrants will be better able to assimilate into the EU culture.

There are some hopeful signs. The new Slovenian government is removing a 143-kilometre razor-wired border fence with Croatia, built during the 2015-16 refugee crisis, due to its ineffectiveness. Let’s hope that other countries will follow suit, and use the lessons of regulated migration of Ukrainian refugees to address the problem of other migrants in Europe and beyond.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Klaus F. Zimmerman.

In Peru, plagued by an entrenched political opposition, allegations of corruption and a low approval rating, former president Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve congress, which has led to his impeachment and subsequent arrest. This has sparked a wave of protests that have paralyzed the country.

Meanwhile in Greece, the police murder of Kostas Fragoulis, a Roma teenager accused of stealing 20 Euros of gasoline has inspired another wave of protests.

Finally, a statement from Alfredo Cospito, an anarchist prisoner on hunger strike resisting Italy’s draconian 41-bis regime.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by subMedia.

In Peru, plagued by an entrenched political opposition, allegations of corruption and a low approval rating, former president Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve congress, which has led to his impeachment and subsequent arrest. This has sparked a wave of protests that have paralyzed the country.

Meanwhile in Greece, the police murder of Kostas Fragoulis, a Roma teenager accused of stealing 20 Euros of gasoline has inspired another wave of protests.

Finally, a statement from Alfredo Cospito, an anarchist prisoner on hunger strike resisting Italy’s draconian 41-bis regime.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by subMedia.

Unsolved journalist killings weigh on the Greek press corps 

Investigative journalist Sokratis Giolias, who was killed 2010, and crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz, who was killed 2021, were gunned down in similar circumstances by professional hitmen in the streets and there have been no arrests in either case. It has been years since authorities provided updates on Giolias, and while authorities say they are looking into what happened to Karaivaz, his family and colleagues are dissatisfied by the pace of the investigation. 

CPJ met with Karaivaz’s widow, Statha Alexandropoulou-Karaivaz, on the balcony of her Athens home overlooking the spot on the street where her husband was killed. She pointed CPJ to her emotional message on social media criticizing authorities for their sluggish work and for failing to update the family. “By no means will I accept silence,” she wrote, adding that she had heard rumors of the case being shelved. Soon after her post, Takis Theodorikakos, the minister for citizen protection in charge of overseeing the police met with Alexandropoulou-Karaivaz, and issued a statement that the investigation will continue “until the culprits are brought to justice.” 

But the assurance has proved cold comfort to the many journalists closely following the case. “In Greece, where everything gets leaked, the fact that there are no leaks about this probe is very telling,” one journalist told CPJ on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivities involved. Other journalists told CPJ they were skeptical that the investigation would yield any answers, especially because Karaivaz covered organized crime groups and their alleged links to policemen, officials, and politicians. The Greek elite, they said, have little interest in seeing a thorough investigation to fruition. 

The threat of violence has chilled reporting  

For many journalists covering issues like organized crime, protests, refugee movements, the threat of violence is part of their everyday working lives. Extremists groups have also launched arson attacks against media outlets. Authorities in most cases have failed to identify the perpetrators, compounding journalists’ feelings that they put themselves in harm’s way simply by doing their jobs. “When Karaivaz was murdered, we were frozen. This feeling is still with us,” Eliza Triantafillou, a journalist with investigative outlet Inside Story told CPJ. Thodoris Chondrogiannos, a journalist with investigative outlet Reporters United said that as long as Karaivaz’s killing is not properly investigated, “we can assume that it can happen to any journalist, and sources can also assume the same.” 

Journalists are concerned about surveillance

In November 2021, newspaper EfSyn reported that intelligence services’ wiretapped the cellphone of Stavros Malichudis, a journalist covering refugee issues. Then, in April 2022, Reporters United revealed government documents indicating authorities had similarly wiretapped a phone belonging to financial journalist Thanasis Koukakis in 2020. Koukakis also said that in 2021 his phone had been infected with Predator spyware, which can monitor a phone’s conversations, text messages, passwords, files, photos, internet history, and contacts. The company that sells Predator, Intellexa, says on its website that it markets its products to law enforcement agencies. 

The government initially denied that it surveilled the journalists. But over the summer, when an opposition politician revealed his phone was targeted with Predator — igniting a political scandal that ended in the resignation of Greece’s intelligence service chief and the prime minister’s aide, who was also his nephew — parliament vowed to investigate the use of spyware and other surveillance tools. The investigation, however, ended in October with no conclusions as the parliamentary inquiry failed to interview key players.  

Journalists predict more reporters will be surveilled  

Reporters who spoke with CPJ believe more members of the media have been targeted with wiretaps than is publicly known. “The process to get waivers for wiretapping is just so easy,” Malichudis told CPJ in an interview; in 2021, annual figures show that an official with oversight authority over the Greek secret service approved more than 15,000 wiretap requests on the basis of vague national security interests. Koukakis has taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights. 

While the government denied that it procured Predator, journalists are not so sure. Triantafillou told CPJ that the Predator spyware costs millions of Euros, a sum governments can afford. She pointed out that the firm Intellexa, which acquired Predator from its original developers in 2018, “continues its operations in Athens, undisturbed by the authorities” despite the scandal. 

In September dozens of Greek and foreign correspondents in the country petitioned PEGA, an EU committee investigating spyware abuse, to probe the Greek surveillance scandal, concerned that their phones could also be infected. “The fear of being under surveillance is just as effective as being under surveillance: it makes it difficult for journalists to find and communicate with their sources,” said Triantafillou. 

After CPJ’s fact-finding mission, another Greek reporter, Anastasios Telloglou alleged that security services had tracked him, as well as Chondrogiannos, Triantafillou, and Koukakis, using mobile data to identify their sources.  

The new government is especially sensitive to critical reporting

When Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came to power in 2019, he vowed to improve Greece’s public image, tarnished by years of corruption and financial mismanagement. But journalists told CPJ that the new government has made life harder for politics reporters who now face retaliation for reporting on issues deemed harmful to Greece’s reputation. 

The government is especially jittery about unfavorable coverage in international media, reporters told CPJ. In September, German weekly Der Spiegel defended its correspondent, Giorgos Christides, after Greek government officials accused him of a breach of ethics over his reporting on the authorities’ treatment of refugees and migrants on the Greek-Turkish border. The reporter was vilified in pro-government media outlets as “anti-Greek” and his newspaper as “pro-Turkish.” In another case, after Politico Europe reporter Nektaria Stamouli, who heads the Greek Foreign Press Association, published an article in August on the country’s eroding press freedom, government spokesperson Giannis Oikonomou accused Stamouli in a statement of opposition bias.  

Lawsuits are another method to clamp down on critical reporting. In the wake of the government surveillance scandal, the prime minister’s nephew and former aide Giorgis Dimitriadis sued two media outlets, EfSyn and Reporters United, for a collective total of US$400,000 in damages over their investigations about Dimitriadis’ alleged business links with Intellexa. He has also sued Koukakis, demanding the withdrawal of a tweet about Reporters United’s and EfSyn’s reporting on the surveillance. The first hearings in the cases are scheduled for November.

A prominent critic of the government, Kostas Vaxevanis, publisher of weekly Documento told CPJ his newspaper has faced more than 80 vexatious lawsuits for damages in the millions of Euros launched by state-owned companies, institutions, government officials, and ruling party politicians. Most of these lawsuits end up in the courts which Vaxevanis said often rule in favor of the journalists. But the lawsuits themselves serve as a kind of warning, Nikolas Leontopoulos, investigative journalist at Reporters United, told CPJ. “The lawsuits strangle us, squeezing us of two things we lack the most: time and money,” he said. 

CPJ emailed questions to the office of the Greek government’s spokesperson, the press department of the Ministry of Citizens Protection and Intellexa but did not receive any reply. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Attila Mong.

The post Ecocide in Greece appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Evaggelos Vallianatos.

One aspect of May’s federal election in Australia has been strangely overlooked: Labor’s win follows a pattern among the main centre-left parties in Europe and comparable countries.

Traditional social democratic and labour-based parties are resurgent, and now hold office (on their own or in coalition) across all of Scandinavia and in Germany, Spain, Portugal and New Zealand.

Where the past decade has been dominated by talk of a crisis of the left, the debate is increasingly shifting to the crisis of the right.

• READ MORE: Labor has a huge health agenda ahead of it. What policies should we expect?
• Other Australian federal elections results

SREcholz ran an uncluttered campaign based on simple promises: a higher minimum wage, stable pensions, more affordable housing and a carbon-neutral economy.

The picture isn’t uniform, of course. Some countries have experienced the de facto demise of their main centre-left party. We might call this the “PASOKification” syndrome, after the sharp loss of support for Greece’s PASOK party, but it extends to other parts of Europe.

The Netherlands’ once-dominant Labour Party was placed sixth in last year’s election, with just 5.7 percent of the vote.

France’s main party of the left, the Socialist Party, was reduced to just 6.4 percent in the first round of the 2017 presidential elections and just 1.7 percent this year, but it sealed a deal to join the French Left’s first broad coalition pact in 20 years.

British Labour, meanwhile, lost the 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections. Despite the toxicity that surrounds the Conservative government, Labour leader Keir Starmer remains unpopular and unlikely to win the next election.

In Belgium and Italy, the Left’s situation is less bleak, though its main parties are far from hegemonic. In the highly fragmented Belgian system, the Flemish and Walloon socialist parties are part of the seven-party (yes, seven!) “Vivaldi coalition”.

Italy’s Democratic Party is part of the current Draghi-led national unity government, and in more recent times has held the prime ministership.

Outside Europe, the new “pink tide” in South America has seen, for example, 35-year-old Gabriel Boric win Chile’s presidential election.

Scholz ran an uncluttered campaign based on simple promises: a higher minimum wage, stable pensions, more affordable housing and a carbon-neutral economy.

Great to see New Zealand PM @jacindaardern again at @The_ANZLF in Sydney.

We will work with businesses and governments across the Tasman to drive better paying jobs and to support free and open trade.

Working together, we can seize opportunities for our mutual benefit. pic.twitter.com/cgIn2fUXpv

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) July 7, 2022

Why the bounce back?
Some common factors help us understand the partial return of the left.

First, the vote share of the two main centre-right and centre-left parties has declined in most of these countries, yet the centre-left can still assemble a majority where the electoral system enables it.

Australian Labor’s record low primary vote of 32.6 percent is part of that trend, with centre-left parties in Norway, Sweden and Spain now capturing between 25 percent and 30 percent of the vote. And even when parties win larger vote shares (as in Portugal), they have usually needed coalition partners.

Nevertheless, centre-left parties remain a fixture in many party systems, and have found ways of getting back into office.

Second, the reinvigorated centre-left parties — including Anthony Albanese’s Labor — share common policy positions. We might sum them up as a “back to basics” strategy, with a clear focus on improved wages and conditions, job security and reinvigorated public institutions.

Albanese’s win has parallels with the victory of Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrat–led “rainbow coalition” in Germany. As one commentator described it:

Scholz ran an uncluttered campaign based on simple promises: a higher minimum wage, stable pensions, more affordable housing and a carbon-neutral economy.

Social democrats have sought to (mildly) rebuild public institutions. The Danish Social Democrats have pledged to increase public and welfare spending by 0.8 percent per year for five years.

Jacinda Ardern’s NZ Labour government has increased the minimum wage. Antonio Costa’s recent majority government in Portugal was built on a coalition united in seeking to reverse the austerity measures that followed the eurozone crisis.

Labor’s win follows a pattern of centre-left parties holding office in a number of countries.

The pandemic has also helped fuel a resurgence of social democratic parties, and @RobManwaring says some factors could help explain this bounce back. @Flinders https://t.co/ij414vCGsL

— The Conversation (@ConversationEDU) July 10, 2022

Common features …
This “new” minimalist social democracy has several entwined elements. First, the incoming governments have captured a mood, amplified by the pandemic, that centre-right governments have neglected key public goods.

Second, these centre-left governments have turned away from “third way” policies associated with leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. As catalogued here, centre-left parties have turned leftwards since the 1990s and 2000s.

Many of their party manifestos have a renewed focus on tackling inequality and increasing welfare spending.

Third, the centre-left parties have been gradually “greening”. Many are seeking to make renewables part of their reinvigorated industry and manufacturing agendas.

As Albanese and his colleagues know, this is a delicate balancing act, aimed at protecting employees in fossil-fuel-intensive industries while setting out modest climate targets. This “balance” seems to be hitting the electoral sweet spot by capturing public demand for action while allaying fears about the speed of transition — even if the targets fail to keep up with the science.

The final element is the longstanding “feminisation” of the parties. Many are reaping the rewards of the struggles by feminist MPs, allies and members to improve representation.

It’s no coincidence that four of Scandinavia’s five current centre-left prime ministers are female. The centre-left parties look modern and representative, and most have strong gender policies, especially on issues like the gender pay gap.

… And one significance difference
It’s worth noting a key difference between Australian Labor and its resurgent counterparts. Many centre-left parties in Europe have made strong pledges to invest in their welfare states — in part to see off the welfare chauvinism of radical right challengers.

In New Zealand, the Ardern government has announced a new unemployment insurance scheme.

The dynamics seem different in Australia, and Labor apparently sees little electoral value in shifting from its “modest” welfare agenda.

One important lesson for Labor is that in almost all the cases internationally, the centre-left has had to learn to govern in partnership with other key players.

This will be a pressing issue for Albanese as he deals with a record crossbench in both houses. It could even determine how long Australia’s centre-left party governs.

Dr Rob Manwaring is associate professor, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

We start in so-called Chile where the newly elected ostensibly left-libertarian president Gabriel Boric has failed to deliver on his promise to free political prisoners.

Meanwhile in Munich, police have raided a number of apartments, an anarchist library, and a print shop.

Then in Greece, long term anarchist prisoner Giannis Michaildis has announced a hunger strike demanding his release.

Finally, a run down of the recent events at the Defend the Forest Atlanta encampment.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by subMedia.

From July to September 2021, Koukakis, a financial editor for CNN Greece and a regular contributor to local and international outlets including The Financial Times and CNBC, had his cellphone surveilled by Predator spyware. The letter notes that the journalist’s communications were previously targeted by the Greek National Intelligence Service, a body overseen by the prime minister’s office.

The groups call on the Greek government to explain authorities’ previous surveillance of Koukakis, to disclose all available information about the source of the 2021 spyware attack, and to transparently show whether the Greek government was connected to the 2021 attack.

The full text of the letter can be read here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

From July 12 to September 24, 2021, Koukakis, a financial editor for CNN Greece and a regular contributor for local and international outlets including The Financial Times and CNBC, had his cellphone surveilled by Predator, according to news reports and Koukakis, who disclosed the hacking on Monday, April 11, and spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

Koukakis, who covers financial news, said he was notified about the surveillance by the digital rights group Citizen Lab in late March. Around the time of the surveillance, he covered topics including alleged money laundering and corruption, he said.

“Greek authorities must conduct a swift, thorough, and transparent investigation into the surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis, find whoever orchestrated it, and hold them to account,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Journalists must be able to protect their sources, and authorities must ensure that the are able to work without fear that hackers will gain access to their sources or details of their private lives.”

Predator spyware was originally developed by the North Macedonian company Cytrox, and can monitor a phone’s conversations, text messages, passwords, files, photos, internet history, and contacts, according to the Greek news outlet Inside Story, which said that the software is now owned by the Cyprus-based company WiSpear.

Koukakis told CPJ that Citizen Lab researchers believed his phone was infected through a text message containing a link that he clicked on July 12.

Koukakis said he previously noticed his phone acting strangely in 2020 and suspected it may have been infected with spyware. That August, he filed a complaint with the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy, which later said it did not find any evidence of a breach of privacy on his phone. When Koukakis was targeted by spyware in 2021, he was using a new phone he had purchased since that incident, he said.

Koukakis told CPJ that on April 6, 2022, he filed a new complaint to the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy and sent them Citizen Lab’s report on his case. He said he also planned to file a criminal complaint over the surveillance.

Greek government spokesperson Yannis Economou denied that the government had any involvement in surveilling Koukakis, according to news reports. CPJ emailed the Hellenic Authority for Communications Security and Privacy for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.

CPJ was unable to find contact information for WiSpear, as its website did not load. In February, the company was fined in Cyprus for illegally surveilling private communications through the use of a “spy van,” according to news reports.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

From July 12 to September 24, 2021, Koukakis, a financial editor for CNN Greece and a regular contributor for local and international outlets including The Financial Times and CNBC, had his cellphone surveilled by Predator, according to news reports and Koukakis, who disclosed the hacking on Monday, April 11, and spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

Koukakis, who covers financial news, said he was notified about the surveillance by the digital rights group Citizen Lab in late March. Around the time of the surveillance, he covered topics including alleged money laundering and corruption, he said.

“Greek authorities must conduct a swift, thorough, and transparent investigation into the surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis, find whoever orchestrated it, and hold them to account,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Journalists must be able to protect their sources, and authorities must ensure that the are able to work without fear that hackers will gain access to their sources or details of their private lives.”

Predator spyware was originally developed by the North Macedonian company Cytrox, and can monitor a phone’s conversations, text messages, passwords, files, photos, internet history, and contacts, according to the Greek news outlet Inside Story, which said that the software is now owned by the Cyprus-based company WiSpear.

Koukakis told CPJ that Citizen Lab researchers believed his phone was infected through a text message containing a link that he clicked on July 12.

Koukakis said he previously noticed his phone acting strangely in 2020 and suspected it may have been infected with spyware. That August, he filed a complaint with the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy, which later said it did not find any evidence of a breach of privacy on his phone. When Koukakis was targeted by spyware in 2021, he was using a new phone he had purchased since that incident, he said.

Koukakis told CPJ that on April 6, 2022, he filed a new complaint to the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy and sent them Citizen Lab’s report on his case. He said he also planned to file a criminal complaint over the surveillance.

Greek government spokesperson Yannis Economou denied that the government had any involvement in surveilling Koukakis, according to news reports. CPJ emailed the Hellenic Authority for Communications Security and Privacy for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.

CPJ was unable to find contact information for WiSpear, as its website did not load. In February, the company was fined in Cyprus for illegally surveilling private communications through the use of a “spy van,” according to news reports.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Controversy gripped the Greek political scene on April 7 as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was invited by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to speak before Greece’s parliament in a virtual address, appeared alongside two fighters of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Although the Greek government and its media arms attempted to whitewash the Azov Battalion in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine, which failed, it actually ended up being counterproductive as it made Greek civilians aware to the fact that the neo-Nazi group were oppressing the 100,000+ ethnic Greeks living in Mariupol and its surrounding villages like Sartana.

Zelensky’s invitation to speak to the Greek Parliament was already mired in controversy as the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), left-wing MeRA25 and right-wing Hellenic Solution boycotted parliament that day. The appearance of the Azov fighters prompted MPs from the official opposition SYRIZA to storm out of parliament, despite the party initially being enthusiastic for Zelensky to speak before parliamentarians.

With Greek media and opposition parties, even those who supported Zelensky, blowing up at the appearance of the Azov Battalion, it took the Greek government almost three hours to try and distance themselves from the debacle, with government spokesperson Yiannis Economou saying: “including a message from an Azov Battalion member was wrong and inappropriate.

For their part, Mitsotakis and President Katerina Sakellaropoulou highlighted Zelensky’s speech but made no reference to the appearance of the Azov Battalion. SYRIZA, MeRA25 and fellow left-wing party KINAL (third largest party in Greece) are demanding explanations from the ruling New Democracy government. Even former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy party characterised the speech from the Azov Battalion fighter as “a big mistake.”

This scandal is now being moved to the forthcoming Conference of [Party] Presidents, and the opposition are seeking explanations as to whether the government was aware or agreed with Zelensky to give the floor to Azov Battalion fighters.

The appearance of the Azov Battalion in the Greek parliament should not be surprising when the Greek mainstream media were whitewashing the group to the point of even lionising them in interviews and claiming they had “nothing to do with the Ukrainian government” despite being a unit of the Republican Guard, which falls under the command of the Interior Ministry.

In addition, Manolis Androulakis, the last EU diplomat to evacuate Mariupol, deliberately lied to the Greek public and claimed in an interview that the “Azov do not kill their own”; i.e., civilians. This not only contradicts all available evidence from Mariupol civilians themselves, including from ethnic Greeks, but even contradicts Western liberal human rights organizations who have documented Azov Battalion crimes since 2014.With a Greek diplomat and mainstream media whitewashing the Azov Battalion, it is little wonder why Zelensky had the audacity to play a video message from the two Azov Battalion fighters claiming to be ethnic Greeks from Mariupol.

One of the biggest questions being raised in Greece at the moment is why did the two Azov Battalion fighters appear in Zelensky’s virtual address to the Greek Parliament to begin with when the Ukrainian president has always appeared alone during his tour of receiving the applause and adulation of European parliaments.

One of the supposed ethnic Greek fighters of the Azov Battalion identified himself as Mikhail. The other kept his face hidden. Speculation is rife whether the Azov Battalion member, who spoke in Ukrainian to the Greek parliament, is actually an ethnic Greek or not – but at this time it is impossible to verify, and more importantly, irrelevant to the fact that the Greek government has exposed itself to a massive humiliation at a time when its popularity is already dropping due to the declining economic situation and decision to send weapons to Ukraine.

As the Azov Battalion has the disdain of all Greeks – from liberals to the Far Right and the Far Left, except from the most radical neoliberal circles, it can be assumed that Zelensky attempted to foster a good image for the neo-Nazi group. The beginning of the war in Ukraine saw the pro-government Greek media engage in a massive whitewashing of the Azov Battalion, but as the weeks passed on, more and more testimonies from Greeks in Mariupol revealed the suffering they had endured under the Kiev regime and the Azov Battalion.

More revealing, ethnic Greeks from Essentuki, Chechnya and other parts of Russia were joining the Russian military to fight against the Azov Battalion in Mariupol, especially after news filtered that one ethnic Greek in the Russian military was killed, public opinion towards the Azov Battalion began to sway significantly. It can only be assumed that Zelensky attempted to restore the image of the Azov Battalion by presenting their own alleged ethnic Greek fighters.

What began as an exercise to tick off the Greek Parliament’s participation in Zelensky’s tour of Europe’s Parliaments, has now turned into a massive debacle. As Greece has a special responsibility for the 100,000+ Greeks in Mariupol, the country should not just blindly follow Western interests who have been silent about Donbass’ suffering since 2014. But alas, as New Democracy serve the interests of NATO and the West rather than Greek citizens and diaspora Greeks, it will once again have to deal with another blow to its already diminishing popularity.

• First published in InfoBrics

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Antonopoulos.

In Austria, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg was very much a standard bearer for that cause, citing stubbornness on the part of the citizenry of his country.  (Only 69% of those eligible have received at least one dose, a rate significantly behind that of other western European states.)  “We have enough vaccines,” he told CNN prior to announcing his resignation.  “Science gave us the possibility, the exit ticket out of this vicious circle of virus waves and lockdown discussions.  And simply not enough people are using this possibility and taking this exit ticket”.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is now openly entertaining the idea, one sparked by the emergence of the Omicron COVID variant.  “We have the vaccines,” she told reporters in Brussels this month, “the life-saving vaccines, but they are not being used adequately everywhere.  And this costs.”  It was time to “encourage and potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union”.

Such ideas had already been circulating in legal and political debates for some time.  The European Court of Human Rights decision of Vavřička and Others v. The Czech Republic, handed down in April this year, is said to have opened the door.  That particular case involved parents in the Czech Republic who had refused to have their children vaccinated for a range of reasons, including religious ones.  They were punished by fines, and their children excluded from kindergarten.

The majority found that the mandatory childhood vaccination policy was compatible with Article 8 (the right to respect and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights.  Any lawfulness of interference with the physical integrity of a person, the court accepted, would have to have some basis in the domestic law of the country.

The court also found that a policy object of protecting the health of members of society in general, and declining voluntary vaccination rates which would jeopardise the goal of herd immunity, could justify such rules.

Even the dissenting finding of Judge Wojtyczek acknowledged that the Convention did “not exclude the introduction of an obligation to vaccinate in respect of certain diseases, coupled with exceptions based upon conscientious objection.”

The latest experiment along these lines is taking place in Athens, with the Mitsotakis government suggesting that those over 60 will be fined €100 if they refuse vaccination past mid-January.  (The number of those unvaccinated in that group hovers at around 520,000.)  In doing so, Greece makes itself something of a pioneer in targeting a specific age group.  Currently, it has laws mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for staff working in health care facilities and those involving care of the elderly and disabled

Rather than calling it what it is – a punitive measure that risks being disproportionate – the government prefers another angle.  “It’s not a punishment,” claims the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.  “I would say it is a health fee.”   For the Greek PM, it’s all numbers, age and a few false comparisons.  “Experts estimate that the importance of the vaccine in a 70-year-old person is equivalent to 34 vaccinations of younger ones in terms of public health.”

With such sophistry, it is little wonder he is facing trouble.  Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister and current sitting member, is one promising to make things difficult.  As a critic of the punitive policy, he blames himself for having mockingly suggested that odious idea to the Prime Minister.  “I had the Prime Minister in front of me in Parliament (two months ago) and … I said, ‘Imagine that you were to introduce a $200 fine every month for the unvaccinated… what effect is this going to have?”

Taking the cudgel and baton to the sceptics and the obstinate in the population, Varoufakis observes, is tantamount to feeding their cause in the most divisive way imaginable.  Some people are going receive the jab as a result of it, but the nation will be divided and opponents feel “that they are being martyred for being concerned.”

He makes a few important points on the policies of the Mitsotakis administration.  The first is the absence of trust citizens have towards government, whose officials have done much to erode.  The second is that citizens are generally suspicious what their government might do next – for instance, bribing them, tickling their pleasure tendencies and hoping that they will fall for a vaccination fix.  In many countries, this measure has been used in several instances: vouchers, drinks, meals, and straight cash bribery.

An article recently published in Nature emphasises the salient nature of the first point.   “In countries with a high level of consensus regarding the trustworthiness of science and scientists, the positive correlation between trust in science and vaccine confidence is stronger than it is in comparable where the level of social consensus is weaker.”

Previous studies on the nature of Greece’s unwillingness to receive vaccinations show that the government has much work to do.  A study published in January this year in Global Health and Policy found that, of a sample of 1004 respondents, a mere 57.7% expressed any desire to be vaccinated against COVID-19.  The authors found the pressing “need for public health officials to take immediate awareness raising measures.”

Any vaccination policy that calls for exclusions and excommunications is one that can only admit to failure.  Authoritarianism, be it in terms of health or any field of government endeavour, comes a distant second to the power of persuasion and reassurance.  And history has thrown up some dark precedents, which can provide rich fodder for opponents, when countries decided to violate the physical autonomy of humans for the sake of the broader public good.  Sensible if traditional on this score, Varoufakis makes a sound recommendation: present the facts.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On April 24, 2021, US President Joseph Biden declared that the massacre of 1.5 million Turkish Armenians in 1915 constituted genocide. As to whether genocide is the word Americans can consent to use about Native Americans who suffered death, torture, displacement, apartheid and disease at the hands, mainly, of European settlers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a lot less clear, although some state governors have gone for it. As for slavery, not until July 2008 did the US House of Representatives apologize for American slavery of blacks and the subsequent discriminatory laws and practices that have continued to marginalize and oppress a population that today constitutes over 47 million or 14% of the US population. 9 States have officially apologized for their involvement in the enslavement of Africans.

European and American histories are replete with massacres, genocides, and unjust applications of overwhelmingly disproportionate force against indigenous peoples and others who have stood in the way of the material interests of their invaders and conquerors. The US slow determination to condemn Turkey for crimes not dissimilar to those that it has itself committed, abundantly, and in recent history, serves the cause of an official hypocrisy that has long characterized US foreign policy – bedazzling, confusing or distracting its own domestic citizenry from the ugliness of forever imperialism.

Turkey, none too happy about being charged with genocide was hardly taken by surprise. While Turkey has always defended itself against such charges, several Ottoman officials were indeed tried and hanged for their role in the Armenian atrocities. (Which Americans were hanged for atrocities against the Indigenous peoples?). It was not only Turks who were implicated. Many Kurds, who today represent Turkey’s major internal nemesis (matching its external, Greece), participated. Others condemned the atrocities. Some Kurds who participated later atoned. Both Armenian and Kurdish exiles of the collapse of the Ottoman empire ultimately established themselves in Syria under French administration and where the Allawi Shia minority was later to extend protection to Christians against Sunni extremism and concede a fragile autonomy to the Kurds. Today, the Assad regime and Syrian Kurds face off against Turkish invaders who have afforded protection to as many as five million jihadist and former-ISIS supporters around Afrin and Idlib, while the US uses Kurdish forces (principally the SDF) to exploit Syrian oil and gas on its behalf and has them maintain prisons and camps for ISIS remnants.

Biden’s charge was a politically nuanced expression of growing US dissatisfaction with its NATO partner even if, by the same token, it extended a measure of sympathy to the former Soviet and still pro-Russian nation of Armenia, which had suffered at the hands of Azerbaijan and its ally, Turkey, in the 2020 battle for and successful acquisition of disputed territories of Nagorno-Karabakh. Might Armenia, possibly overcome by US moral magnanimity, wrench itself further away from the sphere of Russian influence and look with greater favor upon the USA? Nagorno-Karabakh was an autonomous oblast in Azerbaijan but sharing religious, cultural, and linguistic features of neighboring Armenia. In 1988 the parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh had voted to unify with Armenia. A UN Security Council resolution in 1993 called on Armenia to withdraw its forces from the Azerbaijani district of Kelbajar. Turkey imposed an economic embargo on Armenia and the border was closed. The eruption of hostilities in 2020 was possibly triggered by Armenia’s decision to restore an old border checkpoint, located 15km from Azerbaijan’s export pipelines or by an Azerbaijani incursion into Armenian territory.

Turkish relations with Turkic Azerbaijan, whose population is around 10 million, and with whom it shares 11 miles of border have always been strong. Turkey has helped Azerbaijan realize its economic potential from the Caspian Sea by purchasing Azerbaijani gas and cooperating with Azerbaijan and Georgia in infrastructural projects such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Trans-Anatolian pipeline that connects to the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) at the Turkish border with Greece at Kipoi.

A Renascent Empire

It is doubtful that Biden’s endorsement of the “G” word will do much to further complicate relations between the USA and Turkey, but it represents a good moment to pause and reassess what those complications are and the directions in which they point for the future of global peace and conflict. For the major questions today are not to do with the question of genocide as such but with whether, having breathed new life into the Ottoman corpse, Turkey rejoins the ranks of forever empires and, if so, the regional and global impacts this will have. The questions invoke more than empirical calculations of national interest since they have as much or more to with religion (especially Sunni Islam), transnational ethnic (Turkic) identity, national regeneration, energy policy under conditions of climate change and, not least, social class and gender inequities.

That Turkey is a renascent empire is clear enough. By 2021, Turkey had engaged in barely contested or recent uncontested military actions in Iraq, Syria and Libya, had played proxies in South Caucasus and Yemen while engaging in disputes with Greece, strongly supporting the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, and aspiring eastward along the pan-Turkic horizon towards western China. On February 19, 2021, the nationalistic State-owned Turkish television station TRT1 showed a map of the territories it claimed Turkey would control within the next thirty years. They included many Russian and FSU territories including Rostov, Volgograd, Astrakhan, Samara Oblasts, Chuvashia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Adygea, North Ossetia, and Crimea, including Sevastopol. Turkey was predicted to extend its sphere of influence to include Greece, southern Cyprus, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, Gulf countries, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. Curiously, the map originated in a book published in 2009 by the founder of Stratfor Center for Research in International Politics.

It might be appropriate to laugh this off as fanciful delusion, as did many Russian commentators, but by 2021 it was at least clear that Turkey had considerably and aggressively expanded its regional and global influence. Turkey had joined the Council of Europe in 1950 and the European Customs Union in 1995 and embarked on negotiations for membership of the EU in 1999. Yet mirroring the pro-Islamist orientations of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Justice and Development Party (AKP) that has held power continuously since 2003 — and in a corrective to the overly coercive imposition of western legal, cultural, and technological practices by the country’s founder Kemal Ataturk from 1923 (sustained by the military up until its participation in an attempted coup against Erdogan in 2016) – the AKP has exerted a strong eastward pull in recent years. This was partly cause and partly result of the stalling in 2015 of negotiations for entry to the EU, reflecting EU concerns about human rights and the rule of law, particularly in the light of the merger in 2015 of the AKP with the anti-European Nationalist Movement Party. In addition, the escalation of Turkish tensions with fellow NATO member Greece, as Turkey pressed claims to the right to prospective oil and gas deposits in what may be Greek maritime territories, has further impaired its image in Brussels.

A Militaristic Empire of Bases, Interventions, and Soft Power

Turkish forces were mainly instrumental in bringing about the formation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in 1974. This gained independence in 1983 but is only recognized by Turkey. Since 2018, Turkey has occupied a significant stretch of Syrian land along Turkey’s border with Syria, enveloping as many as five million people.

Earlier, it had invaded northern Iraq in its perpetual quest to subjugate Kurdish populations. Turkish armed attacks in Iraq started in 2007 with an air attack involving 50 fighter jets. Turkey’s 2008 “Operation Sun” involved 10,000 troops. Turkey would likely be an influential party to the takeover by NATO, involving 5,000 NATO troops, of US training and military operations in Iraq from 2021.

It was engaged in the conflict in southern Yemen through its support for the country’s local branch (the Reform Party) of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is represented in the government of Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed based in the south-eastern port city of Aden, thus helping fill the vacuum created by the downfall of the Ali Abdullah Saleh regime in February 2012 and an Iranian-staged coup by Houthi militia against President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi in March 2015. This raised concern in Egypt that Turkey’s efforts to increase its presence near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which Gulf oil is transported before reaching the Suez Canal, will threaten the security of Egypt and the Arabian Gulf. Turkey maintains a military base in Djibouti, has tried to gain a foothold both in Somalia and the Sudanese Red Sea island of Suakin.

Altogether, Turkey maintained bases in Qatar, Libya, Somalia, Northern Cyprus, Syria, and Iraq. Turkey had established a strong alliance with the UN-approved Government of National Accord (the GNA) in Tripoli, Libya, by agreeing to establish an Exclusive Economic Zone in the Mediterranean as a step towards claiming rights to ocean bed resources, and by stationing Turkish forces in January 2020 in defense of Tripoli against the forces of a rival government based in Tobruk, eastern Libya, under former CIA asset Khalifa Belasis Haftar, commander of the Libyan National Army. While the UN Secretary General registered the deal on October 1, 2020, the Tobruk government (supported by the EU, Greece, Russia, Egypt, Cyprus, Malta, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Serbia, Syria, Israel, Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Arab League) denounced Turkey’s agreement with the GNA as illegal. Notably, Greece protested that it ignored the presence of Greek islands Crete, Kasos, Karpathos, Kastellorizo and Rhodes, and their respective maritime borders. Turkey’s seismic survey ships and navy vessels regularly clash with Greek vessels near the Greek island of Kastellorizo. In August 2020, Greece and Egypt signed their own maritime deal in response, an exclusive economic zone for oil and gas drilling rights. Yet Turkey wields considerable influence over the coalition government that was established in March 2021.

Turkey played a significant role in support of Azerbaijan in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2021. Turkey’s President Erdogan was the guest of honor at the Azerbaijani victory ceremony in Baku in December 2020, and hailed the “one nation, two states” relationship between Turkey and Azerbaijan.

In the gathering conflict over water rights between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in spring 2021, it was expected that Turkey (leader of the Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking States which comprises Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan) would side with Kyrgyzstan, which considers itself a Turkic nation. Tajikistan speaks a language that is related to predominantly Iranian languages Farsi and Dari.

Turkish influence is further enhanced by its considerable diaspora, giving Turkey some leverage over the internal politics of advanced nations with large Turkish immigrant populations, including France and Germany. This extends beyond Turkish ethnic communities as such to all Muslim communities, especially Sunni, open to persuasion that the Turkish state speaks on behalf of the Islamic world. Turkish charities have been active among the 5.7 million Muslims in France, for example, where 50% of imams are trained in turkey and serve Turkish interests while benefitting from Qatari funding.

In addition to its international interventions Turkey’s natural assets grant it considerable leverage over global and regional trade, and military uses of the Turkish straits, Black Sea and Sea of Azov.

A Troubling US and European Ally

Turkey has been a principal ally of the USA throughout much of the Syrian conflict, following the uprisings against the Baathist regime of Bashar Assad in 2011. Experts are divided as to the extent to which these were genuine outpourings of Arab-Spring demands for more democracy, on the one hand, or incited, exploited and expropriated by jihadist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood — that thirty years previously had staged a violent campaign against Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father — and for which there was considerable support from Sunni Turkey as well as funding from Qatar. Turkey turned a blind eye to CIA and jihadist trafficking of fighters and materiel across the border with Syria and allowed itself to be used as a base for oppositional groups. (See also here). Despite a souring of US-Turkish relations following the attempted “Gülen” coup in 2016 against Turkish President Erdogan (who claimed that the USA had harbored its alleged progenitor, Muhammed Fethullah Gülen), the USA did little or nothing to contain a Turkish invasion of northern Syria that year, even though its most prominent victims were US allies, the Kurds, thousands of whose families around Afrin were displaced to make room for hundreds of thousands of oppositional Syrians and foreigners. Some of the new arrivals were bussed up from Ghouta under the terms of a deal agreed between Turkey and Russia. Turkey set up its own administration in the area, and incorporated it within Turkish electricity grid, cellphone networks and currency. It trained and incorporated oppositional militia who were integrated into a military police force, while establishing compliant local Syrian councils to run things. 500 Syrian companies were registered for cross-border trade. In 2019 the USA appeared to greenlight a further Turkish invasion by removing (some) US troops from the area, and in 2020 Turkey stood against a Russian and Syrian offensive on Idlib, although sources differ as to whether it was a win or a lose for Turkey. A continued Turkish occupation of northern Syria assists the USA and NATO in a medium-term policy, following a decade of inconclusive war, to impoverish and destabilize what remains of Assad’s Syria, even as some Arab nations, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, seek a road back to Damascus despite steep US sanctions that stand in their way. Turkish intervention in Syria has come at a high price: 3.7 million Syrian refugees on top of a domestic population of 84 million, and this in time will likely prove a major source of domestic aggravation. Whether Turkey’s Syrian intervention has achieved greater national security against Kurdish PKK insurrectionists or, to the contrary, consolidated Kurdish opposition to Turkey and provoked an assured succession of Kurdish terrorist attacks into the foreseeable future, is moot.

Turkey has proven helpful to the USA as a member of NATO since 1952, its hosting of US military and air bases (notably Incirlik) and nuclear weapons and, more recently, in its military assistance to Azerbaijan against the much weaker Armenian (and Russian) interests in Nagorno-Karabakh (which Russia did little or nothing to defend despite Armenia’s membership of the Russian-led Collective Treaty Security Organization [CTSO], and despite Azerbaijan’s shooting down of a Russian helicopter over Armenian territory).

Turkey provided robust support for the US-backed coup regime of President Zelensky in Ukraine against Russia, including the sale to Ukraine of up to 17 unmanned aerial vehicles in 2019, persistent refusal to recognize Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 (to which Turkey itself may lay historical claim), [There was a referendum where Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia — DV Ed] its assistance to the anti-Russian Tatars of Crimea, its cooperative partnerships with anti-Russian Georgia, and its control over access from the Aegean to the Black Sea (through the Turkish straits which include the Bosporus, sea of Marmara and Dardanelles), which it helps to patrol, and the Sea of Azov. In all these and other ways Turkey has contributed to US and NATO efforts to harass and contain Russia.

Troubled US Patron

The USA is not happy with (and has implemented sanctions in retaliation for) Turkey’s purchase in 2017 of Russia’s S-400 military defense system. The purchase had helped Turkey atone for its shooting down, for little apparent reason, of a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M attack aircraft in 2015 that had allegedly strayed into air space above the formerly Syrian province of Hatay – Syrian rebels shot the pilot as he descended by parachute and downed a rescue helicopter – constituting the first NATO downing of a Russian or Soviet warplane since an attack on the Sui-ho Dam during the Korean War in 1953. The USA is also irritated by Turkey’s conciliatory stance towards Nord Stream 2 and its involvement in TurkStream 1 and TurkStream 2, all of which facilitate the delivery of Gazprom oil and gas to Europe and impede US designs on the European market for its liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Turkey’s Bi-Polar Economy

Turkey’s economy has grown considerably in the 21st century, with average GDP growth averaging 5.4% 2003-2013 and, apart from China, Turkey outperformed all its peers in the fourth quarter of 2020. Turkey’s GDP growth of 5.9% was faster than for the G-20 nations in 2020 excepting China’s 6.5% rate. Its relations with China and China’s Belt and Road initiative are robust, even to the point of Turkish disinclination to intervene in the controversies over allegations of China’s treatment of the Turkic Uyghurs, another source of immigration to Turkey.

Yet Turkey’s currency is fragile. The lira collapsed 50% against the US dollar 2017-2020, and inflation hit 15% in 2019 in response to government’s resort to printing money via its ownership of the Central Bank. While net national debt is a healthy 35.2% of GDP, foreign currency reserves are relatively low and inflation is high. The currency crisis reflects domestic political instability, international diplomatic errors, a balance of trade deficit, over-reliance on construction for growth, and over-dependence on foreign currency loans in the private sector. The Covid 19 epidemic badly bruised Turkey’s income from tourism. The crisis intensified in the final quarter of 2020 with the resignation of Turkey’s finance minister (son-in-law to President Erdogan) and ouster of the head of the Central Bank, following a precipitate further collapse of the lira. Erdogan took the opportunity to reassure the investment community of his faith in financial profiteering and in Turkey as a globally attractive source of cheap labor. Foreign investors likely to be of considerable importance in efforts to stabilize the Turkish economy include China, which is expected to participate in the Istanbul Canal project, and Qatar, which promised billions of new investments at the end of 2020.

The Energy Factor

Energy lies close not just to the country’s economy but to the existential center of neo-Ottomanism and its many apparent contradictions between domination, self-sufficiency, and dependency. It has both nurtured and stifled Turkey’s vacillating economy. This dynamic plays out in at least four principal ways:

1. Control over oil, gas, and other energy flows by tanker through the Turkish (Bosporus) straits and a planned additional waterway, Erdogan’s pet project, the Istanbul Canal. As a hub for the supply of gas from Central Asia, Russia and the Middle East to Europe and other Atlantic markets, Turkey exercises enormous potential leverage over other nations that is immediately susceptible to political manipulation. State-owned corporations are powerful players in Turkish energy politics. They include TPAO for petroleum, domestically producing 7% of Turkish petrol consumption; BOTAS, the state-owned Petroleum Pipeline Corporation; and state-owned Tupras which controls 85% of Turkey’s refinery capacity. Countries that border the Black and Azov Seas are significantly dependent on the Bosporus Straits for passage of imports and exports. Many ports on the Azov ship grain to Turkey, for example. Russia exerts significant control over passage from the Black to the Azov seas via the Kerch strait, half of which it owns. Future monetization of Turkey’s advantage as gatekeeper of the potential Bosporus chokehold will likely be enhanced by construction of the Istanbul Canal which may not be constrained, it is thought, by the Montreux Convention of 1936 that currently regulates conditions of passage through the Straits, and that will permit Turkey to charge additional fees in return for speedier, more expansive permissions and passage. Critics fear the costs (an estimated $15 billion) of such an enormous enterprise and its environmental consequences. Russia fears that that the new canal will facilitate Black Sea access for NATO ships.

2. Permission for and participation in the construction of regional pipelines (as in the Trans-Anatolian pipeline that delivers Azeri gas from the Caspian to the Trans-Aegean pipeline and on to Europe). Pipeline fees of passage are an important source of revenue. In 2021, Turkey had four long-term pipeline contracts with Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. Two major pipelines include the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan), linking Turkey, George and Azerbaijan, and the Iraqi Pipeline from northern Iraq to Ceyhan (in the southeast corner of Turkey). The Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) pipeline runs from Erbil in Iraq to Ceyhan. Ceyhan is an important port for Caspian and Iraqi oil imports. Under the US Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act of 2017, the US has sanctioned both TurkStream 1 & 2. But these are of declining significance to Turkey, in any case, given the competition from the Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea, and transit fees for passage through the new Istanbul canal that will likely prove more lucrative than pipeline fees. Another imminent threat to TurkStream 2 is the north-south corridor formed by Greece, Turkey and Ukraine that can be fed by LNG from the Mediterranean with reverse flows back to Ukraine.

3. The purchase of Liquefied Natural Gas from the USA and other suppliers (Turkey is a primary destination for US LNG) and its rerouting by pipeline, tanker, or truck – a development that reduces the significance of regional pipelines, affords Turkey more flexibility in routing and also the blocking of competitors, and puts the USA in a potentially strong competitive position against Russia’s Nord Stream 1&2 and TurkStream 1&2 for delivery of gas to Europe. LNG gas imports from the USA, Qatar, Algeria, Nigeria were cheaper in 2021 than constructed pipeline gas from Gazprom. Turkey was now Europe’s third largest importer of US LNG behind Spain and France.

4. The development of new oil and gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean, Aegean, and Black Seas. These acquire considerable relevance in the context of Turkey’s near total oil and gas dependency, which has been a major economic stumbling block. Almost all (99%) of Turkey’s natural gas was imported in 2015, of which 56% came from Russia’s Gazprom (other suppliers were Iran and Azerbaijan), although Russia’s share had fallen to 34% by 2019. Turkey spent $41 billion on natural gas imports alone in 2019. 60% of Turkey’s crude oil imports are from Iraq and Iran, and 11% from Russia (2015). This very dependence has served as inspiration to Turkey to establish its own supplies of fossil fuel both in the Eastern Mediterranean, in partnership with Libya (where both the US and Russia have tacitly supported a policy of opposition to new developments lest these compete with their own exports) and in the Black Sea.

In August 2020, President Erdogan announced a major find (320 billion cubic meters but may well prove much more) of natural gas reserves in the Black Sea within the western part of Turkey’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – the Sakarya field, on the perimeter of Bulgaria’s and Romania’s maritime borders. Critics worry about the costs of deep-water drilling and extraction from Sakarya, an ultra-harsh environment. Erdogan has expressed his desire that Turkey should develop Sakarya independently but, if the capability of TPAO falls short, involvement of non-Turkish majors could eat into profits considerably. For the longer term and as the impacts of climate change intensify, Turkey’s energy plans are uncomfortably wedded to planetary-menacing fossil fuel while at home, coal constitutes 40% of Turkey’s domestic energy production in conditions of escalating demand.

Favoring Greece

US unhappiness with Turkey as a partner stands at a crossroads. Turkey remains a strategically useful regional proxy force for the USA, alongside Israel, for the advancement of US interests in Syria. This can last indefinitely, even as Israeli preoccupation with Turkey’s expansion intensifies and as Turkey’s bid for leadership of Sunni Islam proves more compelling. This is particularly true of the Palestinian cause in Israeli-occupied Gaza. Turkish humanitarian organizations were behind the Gaza Freedom Flotilla of six ships in 2010 that sought to bring relief to the Gaza Strip. The ships were forcibly detained by Israeli forces in international waters and 10 Turkish activists were slaughtered. Israel has since paid compensation.

The recent surprising alliance between the USA and Israel may be seen in this light, i.e. as Israel’s targeting of Turkey, not Iran, while Turkish interventions are perceived by the UAE, Egypt, and the Arab League as a threat to Arab security, a perspective that is shared by France and probably other European powers. UAE’s Foreign Affairs minister has even said that the UAE wants Turkey to stop supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, bête noire of Sisi’s post-Morsi Egypt and Syria’s Assad regime, among others. Turkey’s bid for Sunni leadership, therefore, cannot advance far in competition with powerful regional rivals, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt but, in as much as both Saudis and Egypt have recklessly betrayed the Palestinian cause in their attempt to maintain US favor, Turkey has uncovered a strong and unpredictable weapon of soft power. Turkey’s capability as US proxy in the Turkic world will prove increasingly useful as the USA persists in its attempt to destabilize, fragment, contain and threaten the Russian Federation and in its gathering assault on Chinese power. But on the other hand, Turkey’s quest for independent power may lead it towards seemingly unlikely alliances with Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China, possibly in league with Russia and Iran, against the USA and India in Asia. There have been two trilateral summits between Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan (2017, 2021). It is envisaged that there may be nuclear cooperation between Pakistan and Turkey (Pakistan has nuclear warheads), and Russia is building 4 nuclear energy plants in Turkey. China has supplied missile technology. The further the USA moves away from Turkey, the closer, inevitably, Turkey will draw towards Russia with implications for the way Turkey chooses to nurture its ties to Turkic powers within and close to the borders of the Russian Federation.

In the Western world, on the other hand, the USA has increasingly less cause for sympathy with Turkish ambitions since these irritate both the European Union and NATO. US disillusionment may go so far as a US withdrawal of its military facilities in Turkey (including its air base in Incirlik and NATO’s Land Command in Şirinyer, Izmir) in favor of Greece as its new major Mediterranean center of operations, embracing new or expanded US facilities in Souda (Crete), Volos, Larissa, and Alexandroupolis. By 2025, Souda will become the largest and most important US naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean with 25,000 personnel. While Turkey has been suspended from the purchase of F-35 war planes since its purchase of Russian S-400 air defense in 2019, Greece is now planning expenditure of $3 billion on F-35s. A US-Greek Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement signed in October 2010 provides a framework for this expanding partnership. In line with US favoring of Greece against Turkey, Greece is set to intensify cooperation with Israel, as in pipeline deals to bring Eastern Mediterranean gas to Europe. Andrew Lee has called this overall strategy a version of the “Intermarium” – a geopolitical concept originating in the post-World War 1 era that envisages an alliance of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea, over the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea that would serve as an alternative power bloc between Germany and Russia.

Conclusion

In conclusion we can infer the following:

(1) Turkey, released at least in part by Erdogan’s AKP from the foundational Ataturk mission of westernization and secularization, has rediscovered in Islamism an Ottoman legacy that could enable it to re-establish a regional, even a global influence – political, cultural, economic and military – throughout the Muslim and Turkic worlds and the Muslim diasporas of the non-Muslim and non-Turkic worlds.

(2) Combining and deploying the advantages of new sources of energy independence and its traditional chokehold power in the Bosporus (extended now to the Istanbul Canal), Turkey will ascquire a much stronger negotiating position in its relations with Russia, the USA and EU.

(3) Its economic fragilities notwithstanding, Turkey will grow in its attraction to international investors, particularly China, on account of its net international and regional energy networks.

(4) Turkey’s greater activity in the Middle East will be perceived as a growing threat to the established powers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to Israel and the UAE, while its growing involvement in Yemen may give it a stronger toehold in the politics of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.

(5) In Syria, Turkey will for some time exercise a significant constraint on the restitution of Syrian sovereignty and therefore will be regarded with suspicion both by Iran and by Lebanon whose interests are directly impacted by deterioration of the Syrian economy.

(6) Domestically and regionally, Turkey must still worry about Kurdish irredentism which it has done little to soothe and much to anger. To this is added the pressure of a large, new, unsettled immigrant population of Syrian exiles.

(7) Through its recently established links with Libya, and its long-standing influence over Northern Cyprus, Turkey will be a stronger contender for influence in the eastern Mediterranean and north Africa.

(8) Most importantly, Turkey’s relatively recent and aggressive renascence in some of the world’s most strategically and militarily sensitive parts of the world exponentially increases the likelihood of reckless behavior – on the parts of many players – and unforeseen consequences any of which could easily ignite regional tensions, in conflagrations that almost certainly will suck in the world’s major nuclear powers.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Oliver Boyd-Barrett.

by subMedia / April 20th, 2021

As always, there’s a lot happening in the world.  Ongoing wars between countries, civil wars within them and threats of war elsewhere; at least one full-blown famine; dramatically growing rates of poverty and hunger all over the place; attempted coups in some countries and successful coups in others, various national elections, multiple assassinations of political activists and journalists — all just in January alone.

And even if the winter of 2021 were not quite so eventful, Greece is far away for most people in the world.  Recent Greek history, even more distant.  Which always seems especially unjust being here in the United States of Amnesia, the most forgetful place on Earth, because as with so much of the world, the modern history of the US is inextricably tied up with the modern history of Greece, from the massacre that gave rise to 17N, to the fact that members of this long-disbanded armed group are being singled out for persecution in Greek prisons today.

Dimitris Koufontinas has written two books while in prison, one of which is out of print.  The other looks like it can be found in hardback form in both Greek and German, but not in English.  But what seems to come up most, whether you search in English, German, or Greek, if you look for the name Dimitris Koufontinas or the November 17 Group, are statements in support or in opposition, with a little tiny bit of space for some kind of objective journalism in between.  Prominent among the statements against, say, releasing disabled former 17N prisoners on humanitarian grounds, are tweets from the US State Department condemning any leniency against those they call terrorists.

Of course, one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, and this reality couldn’t be more true of Dimitris Koufontinas.

What is especially remarkable to me, as I was brushing up on recent Greek history in preparation for writing both a song on the subject (“November 17”) and this piece, is that even the counter-terrorism state department types writing their entries keeping track of their various nemeses around the world readily acknowledge that the origins of 17N stemmed from the massacre carried out by forces of the Greek military junta at the campus of Athens Polytechnic University on November 17th, 1973.

This massacre gave rise to 17N in much the same way as the re-formation of an armed resistance movement in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s was a direct consequence of what became known as Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, carried out by British Army in 1972.  As in Ireland, the drowning in blood of peaceful protesters, among other events, caused some people to resort to responding with violence in kind.

Support for the Greek military junta, and for the violent suppression of left and anarchist movements in Greece in the decades following the Second World War, was a key component of US and British foreign policy in southern Europe, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with concurrent events in Chile, Vietnam and elsewhere at the time.  Along with the head of the Greek riot police, one of the first people to be assassinated by 17N was the CIA station chief for southeastern Europe — and he was not the only US citizen killed during the armed struggle.

After the restoration of democracy in Greece, class conflict there did not disappear, and neither did the immense influence of oppressive institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.  Huge left and anarchist movements in Greece continued to be violently repressed by armies of police, many of whom who held, and continue to hold, a fascist worldview.

But as with many other parts of the world, by the end of the twentieth century, for a wide variety of reasons, many armed resistance movements were disbanding, and in 2002, 17N became another to do that.

Dimitris Koufontinas — 17N chief of operations or “terrorist mastermind,” depending on which press releases you read — turned himself in, and has been in prison ever since.  Under the previous government in Greece, although in prison, his conditions of imprisonment were relatively humane, and even improving.  With the rise since 2019 of the New Democracy Party in Greece, however, with relatives of 17N victims now once again in prominent positions of political power, laws have been passed specifically to target this one man for treatment that amounts to torture.

On January 10th, Dimitris Koufontinas stopped eating.  He’ll likely die soon, and when he does, maybe you’ll see something flash across the screen, and he’ll get his 15 seconds of fame, outside of Greece, with an AP story and a BBC report.  And when you see this story, you should know that it did not begin with any of the assassinations, bombings or other actions this man may or may not have carried out, regardless of what they say on the screen.

There was a fascinating online panel discussion on Wednesday night on the Julian Assange case that I recommend everyone watch. The video is at the bottom of the page.

But from all the outstanding contributions, I want to highlight a very important point made by Yanis Varoufakis that has significance for understanding current events well beyond the Assange case.

Varoufakis is an academic who was savaged by the western political and media establishments when he served as Greece’s finance minister. Back in 2015 a popular leftwing Greek government was trying to oppose the imposition of severe loan conditions on Greece by European and international financial institutions that risked tipping the Greek economy into deeper bankruptcy and seemed chiefly intended to upend its socialist programme. The government Varoufakis served was effectively crushed into obedience through a campaign of economic intimidation by these institutions.

Varoufakis describes here the way that leftwing dissidents who challenge or disrupt western establishment narratives – whether it be himself, Assange or Jeremy Corbyn – end up not only being subjected to character assassination, as was always the case, but nowadays find themselves being manipulated into colluding in their own character assassination.

Here is a short transcript of Varoufakis’ much fuller comments – about 48 minutes in – highlighting his point about co-option:

The establishment, the Deep State, call it whatever you want, the oligarchy, they’ve become much, much better at it [character assassination] than they used to be. Because back in the 1960s and 1970s, you know, they would accuse you of being a Communist. They would accuse me of being a Marxist. Well, I am a Marxist. I’m really not going to suffer that much if you accuse me of being a left-winger. I am a left-winger!

Now what they do is something far worse. They accuse you of something that really hurts you. Calling somebody like us a racist, a bigot, an antisemite, a rapist. This is what really hurts because if anybody calls me a rapist today, right, even if it’s complete baloney, I feel as a feminist I have the need to give the woman, implied or involved somehow this accusation, the opportunity to speak against me. Because that is what we left-wingers do.

Varoufakis’ point is that when Assange was accused of being a rapist, as he was before the US made clear the real case against him – by trying to extradite him from the UK for exposing its war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan – he could not defend himself without alienating a significant constituency of his natural supporters, those on the left who identify as feminists. Which is exactly what happened.

Similarly, as Varoufakis notes from earlier conversations he had with Assange, the Wikileaks founder was in no position to properly defend himself against accusations that he colluded with Russia and Donald Trump to help Trump win the 2016 US presidential election against Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.

At the time, Assange’s supporters were able to point out that the leaked emails were true and that they were in the public interest because they showed deep corruption in the Democratic party establishment. But those arguments were drowned out by a narrative confected by the US media and security establishments that Wikileaks’ publication of the emails was political interference because the emails had supposedly been hacked by Russia to sway the election result.

Because Assange was absolutely committed to the principle of non-disclosure of sources, he refused to defend himself in public by confirming that the emails had been leaked to him by a Democratic party insider, not the “Russians”. His silence allowed his vilification to go largely unchallenged. Having already been stripped of support from much of the feminist left, particularly in Europe, Assange now lost the support of a sizeable chunk of the left in the US too.

My latest: Even if Julian Assange’s death is not the goal, the US and UK have recklessly ensured that possibility grows ever more likely – and will continue to do so until they swiftly bring his incarceration and torture to an end https://t.co/DM4fM4PAJH

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) January 7, 2021

In these cases, the one who stands accused has to defend themselves with one hand tied behind their back. They cannot hit back without further antagonising a substantial section of their supporters, deepening divisions within the left’s ranks. The victim of this kind of character assassination is caught in the equivalent of reputational quicksand. The more they fight, the deeper they sink.

Which is, of course, exactly what happened to the UK’s former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn when he was accused of being a racist. If he or his supporters tried to challenge the claim that the party had become antisemitic overnight under his leadership – even if only by citing statistics that showed the party hadn’t – they were immediately denounced for supposed “antisemitism denial”, posited as the modern equivalent of Holocaust denial.

Notice Ken Loach, who was also on the panel, nodding in agreement as Varoufakis speaks. Because Loach, the noted left-wing, anti-racist film-maker who came to Corbyn’s defence against the confected media campaign smearing him as an antisemite, soon found himself similarly accused.

Jonathan Freedland, a senior columnist at the liberal Guardian, was among those using precisely the tactic described by Varoufakis. He tried to discredit Loach by accusing him of denying Jews the right to define their own experience of antisemitism.

Freedland sought to manipulate Loach’s anti-racist credentials against him. Either agree with us that Corbyn is an antisemite, and that most of his supporters are too, or you are a hypocrite, disowning your own anti-racist principles – and solely in the case of antisemitism. And that, QED, would prove you too are motivated by antisemitism.

Loach found himself with a terrible binary choice: either he must collude with Freedland and the corporate media in smearing Corbyn, a long-standing friend, or else he would be forced to collude in his own smearing as an antisemite.

It’s a deeply ugly, deeply illiberal, deeply manipulative, deeply dishonest tactic. But it is also brilliantly effective. Which is why nowadays rightists and centrists use it at every opportunity. The left, given its principles, rarely resorts to this kind of deceit. Which means it can only bring a peashooter to a gun fight.

My latest: George Monbiot, supposedly the Guardian’s ‘conscience of the left’, offered his followers two feeble excuses for failing to raise his voice in support of Julian Assange against the US extradition bid. But this time his excuses simply won’t wash https://t.co/ACc0vdN0fF

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) October 6, 2020

This is the left’s dilemma. It’s why we struggle to win the argument in a corporate media environment that not only denies us a hearing but also promotes the voices of those like Freedland trying to destroy us from the centre and those supposedly on the left like George Monbiot and Owen Jones who are too often destroying us from within.

As Varoufakis also says, the left needs urgently to go on the offensive.

We need to find ways to turn the tables on the war criminals who have been gaslighting us in demanding that Assange, who exposed their crimes, is the one who needs to be locked up.

We need to make clear that it is those who are so ready to smear anti-racists as antisemites – as Corbyn’s successor, Sir Keir Starmer, has done to swaths of Labour party members – who are the real racists.

And we need to unmask as war hawks those who accuse the anti-war left of serving as apologists for dictators when we try to stop western states conducting more illegal, resource-grab wars with such devastating results for local populations.

We must get much more sophisticated in our thinking and our strategies. There is no time to lose.

This article was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2021 at 3:58am and is filed under Character Assassination, Greece, Jeremy Corbyn, Julian Assange, Lies, Media, Racism, The “Left”, The “Right”, UK Israeli Lobby, UK Media, UK Politics, WikiLeaks.

You couldn’t tell when you read above the entrance of the World Bank the noble phrase, “Our Dream is World Free of Poverty”. To this hypocrisy I can only add, ”…And we make sure it will just remain a dream.” This says both, the lie and the criminal nature of the two International Financial Institutions, created under the Charter of the United Nations but instigated by the United States.

The front of these institutions is brilliant. What meets the eye are investments in social infrastructure, in schools, health systems, basic needs like drinking water, sanitation – even environmental protection – over all “Poverty Alleviation”; i.e., A World Free of Poverty. But how fake this is today and was already in the 1970’s and 1980’s is astounding. Gradually people are opening their eyes to an abject reality, of exploitation and coercion and outright blackmail. And that, under the auspices of the United Nations. What does it tell you about the UN system? In what hands are the UN? The world organization was created in San Francisco, California, on 24 October 1945, just after WWII, by 51 nations, committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights.

The UN replaced the League of Nations which was part of the Peace Agreement after WWI, the Treaty of Versailles. It became effective on 10 January 1920, was headquartered in Geneva Switzerland, with the purpose of disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries, through negotiation diplomacy and improving global welfare. In hindsight it is easy to see that the entire UN system was set up as a hypocritical farce, making people believe that their mighty leaders only wanted peace. These mighty leaders were all westerners; the same that less than 20 years after the creation of the noble League of Nations, started World War II.

*****

This little introduction provides the context for what was eventually to become the UN-backed outgrowth for global theft, for impoverishing nations around the world, for exploitation of people, for human rights abuses and for shoveling huge amounts of assets from the bottom, from the people, to the oligarchy, the ever-smaller corporate elite – the so-called Bretton Woods Institutions.

In July 1944 more than 700 delegates of 44 Allied Nations (allied with the winners of WWII, including the Soviet Union) met at the Mount Washington Hotel, situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, to regulate the international monetary and financial order after WWII. Let’s be sure, this conference was carried out under the auspices of the United States, the self-declared winner of WWII, and from now on forward the master over the financial order of the world – which was not immediately visible, an agenda hidden in plain sight.

The IMF was officially created to ‘regulate’ the western, so-called convertible currencies, those that subscribed to apply the rules of the new gold standard; i.e., US$ 35 / Troy Ounce (about 31.1 grams). Note that the gold standard, although applicable equally to 44 allied nations, was linked to the price of gold nominated in US dollars, not based on a basket of the value of the 44 national currencies. This already was enough reason to question the future system and how it would play out. But nobody questioned the arrangement. Hard to believe, though, that of all these national economists, none dared question the treacherous nature of the gold-standard set-up.

The World Bank, or the Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), was officially set up to administer the Marshall Plan for the Reconstruction of war-destroyed Europe. The Marshall Plan was a donation by the United Stated and was named for U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, who proposed it in 1947. The plan gave $13.2 billion in foreign aid to European countries that had been devastated physically and economically by World War II. It was to be implemented from 1948 to 1952 which, of course, was much too short a time, and stretched into the early 1960s. In today’s terms the Marshall plan would be worth about 10 times more, or some US$ 135 billion.

The Marshall Plan was, and still is, a Revolving Fund, paid back by the countries in question, so that it could be relent. The Marshall Plan money was lent out multiple times and was therefore very effective. The European counterpart to the World Bank-administered Marshall Fund was a newly to be created bank set up under the German Ministry of Finance, The German Bank for Reconstruction and Development (KfW – German acronym for “Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau”).

KfW, as the World Bank’s European counterpart still exists and dedicates itself mostly to development projects in the Global South, now primarily with funds from the German Government and borrowed from the German and European capital markets. KfW often cooperates on joint projects with the World Bank. Today there is still a special Department within KfW that deals exclusively with Marshall Plan Fund money. These still revolving funds are used for lending to poor southern regions in Europe, and also to prop up Eastern European economies, and they were used especially to integrate former East-Germany into today’s “Grand Germany”.

Two elements of the Marshall Plan are particularly striking and noteworthy. First, the reconstruction plan created a bind, a dependence between the US and Europe, the very Europe that was largely destroyed by the western allied forces, while basically WWII was largely won by the Soviet Union, the huge sacrifices of the USSR – with an estimated 25 to 30 million deaths. So, the Marshall Plan was also designed as a shield against communist Russia; i.e., the USSR.

While officially the Soviet Union was an ally of the western powers, US, UK, and France, in reality the communist USSR was an arch-enemy of the west, especially the United States. With the Marshall Plan money, the US bought Europe’s alliance, a dependence that has not ended to this day – and has, and still is, preventing Europe from establishing normal relations with Russia, even though the Soviet Union disappeared three decades ago. The ensuing Cold War after WWII against the USSR, also all based on flagrant lies, was direct testimony for another western propaganda farce whichm to this day, most Europeans haven’t grasped yet.

Second, the US imposition of a US-dollar based reconstruction fund was not only creating a European dollar dependence, but was also laying the ground work for a singular currency, eventually to invade Europe — what we know today has become the Euro. The Euro is nothing but the foster child of the dollar, as it was created under the same image as the US-dollar.  It is a fiat currency, backed by nothing. The United Europe, or now called the European Union, was never really a union. It was never a European idea, but put forward by US Secret Services in disguise of a few treacherous European honchos. And every attempt to create a United Europe, a European Federation, with a European Constitution, similar to the United States, was bitterly sabotaged by the US, mostly through the US mole in the EU, namely the UK.

The US didn’t want a strong Europe, both economically and possibly over time also militarily (pop. EU 450 million, vs US pop. 330 million; 2019 EU GDP US$ 20.3 trillion equivalent, vs US GDP US$ 21.4 trillion. Most economists would agree that a common currency for a loose group of countries has no future, is not sustainable. There is no common Constitution, thus no common objective, financially, economically and militarily. A common currency is not sustainable in the long run under these unstable circumstances. This is more than visible only 20 years into the Euro. The eurozone is a desperate mess. In comes the European Central Bank (ECB), also a creation inspired by the FED and the US Treasury. The ECB has really no Central Bank function. It is rather a watch dog. Because each EU member country has still her own Central Bank, though with a drastically reduced sovereignty which the eurozone countries conceded to the ECB, without receiving any equivalent rights.

Out of the currently 27 EU members, only 19 are part of the Euro-zone. Those countries not part of the Eurozone; i.e., Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Sweden and more, have preserved their sovereign financial policy and do not depend on the ECB. This means had Greece opted out of the Eurozone when they were hit with the 2008/2009 manufactured “crisis”, Greece would now be well on her way to full recovery. It would not have been subject to the whims and dictates of the IMF, the infamous troika, European Commission (EC), ECB and IMF, but could have chosen to arrange their debt internally, as most debt was internal debt, no need to borrow from abroad.

In a 2015 bailout referendum, the Greek population voted overwhelmingly against the bailout, meaning against the new gigantic debt. However, the then Greek President Tsipras, went ahead as if the referendum had never taken place and approved the huge bailout despite almost 70% of the popular vote against it.

This is a clear indication of fraud, that no fair play was going on. Tsipras and/or his families may have been coerced to accept the bailout – or else. We may never know the true reason why Tsipras sold his people, the wellbeing of the Greek people to the oligarchs behind the IMF and World Bank – and put them into abject misery, with the highest unemployment in Europe, rampant poverty and skyrocketing suicide rates.

Greece may serve as an example on how other EU countries may fare if they don’t “behave” – meaning adhere to the unwritten golden rules of obedience to the international money masters.

This is scary.

*****

And now, in these times of covid, it is relatively easy. Poor countries, particularly in the Global South, already indebted by the plandemic, are increasing their foreign debt in order to provide their populations with basic needs. Or so they make you believe. Much of the debt accumulated by developing countries is domestic or internal debt, like the debt of the Global North. It doesn’t really need foreign lending institutions to wipe out local debt. Or have you seen one of the rich Global North countries borrowing from the IMF or the World Bank to master their debt?  Hardly!

So why would the Global South fall for it? Part corruption, part coercion, and partly direct blackmail. Yes, blackmail, one of the international biggest crimes imaginable, being committed by the foremost international UN-chartered financial institutions, the WB and the IMF.

For example, the whole world is wondering how come that an invisible enemy, a corona virus, hit all 193 UN member countries at once, so that Dr. Tedros, Director General of WHO, declares on 11 March a pandemic – no reason whatsoever since there were only 4,617 cases globally – but the planned result was a total worldwide lockdown on 16 March 2020. No exceptions. There were some countries who didn’t take it so seriously, like Brazil, Sweden, Belarus, some African countries, like Madagascar and Tanzania – developed their own rules and realized that wearing masks did more harm than good, and social distancing would destroy the social fabric of their cultures and future generations.

But the satanic deep dark state didn’t want anything to do with “independent” countries. They all had to follow the dictate from way above, from the Gates, Rockefellers, Soroses, et al elite, soon to be reinforced by Klaus Schwab, serving as the chief henchman of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Suddenly, you see in Brazil a drastic surge in new “cases”, no questions asked, massive testing, no matter that the infamous PCR tests are worthless, according to most serious scientists – see “The COVID-19 RT-PCR Test: How to Mislead All Humanity. Using a “Test” To Lock Down Society” (by Pascal Sacré – 5 November 2020)
(only sold and corrupted scientists, those paid by the national authorities, would still insist on the RT-PCR tests). Brazil’s Bolsonaro gets sick with the virus and the death count increases exponentially – as the Brazilian economy falls apart.

Coincidence? Hardly.

In comes the World Bank and/or the IMF, offering massive help mostly debt relief, either as grant or as low interest loans. But with massive strings attached: You must follow the rules laid out by WHO, you must follow the rules on massive testing on vaccination, when they become available, mandatary vaccination – if you conform to these and other country-specific rules, like letting western corporations tap your natural resources, continue privatizing your social infrastructure and services – you may receive, WB and IMF assistance.

Already in May 2020 the World Bank Group announced its emergency operations to fight COVID-19 had already reached 100 developing countries – home to 70% of the world’s population with lending of US$ 160 billion-plus. This means, by today, 6 months later and in the midst of the “Second Wave” the number of countries and the number of loans or “relief’ grants must have increased exponentially, having reached close to the 193 UN member countries. Which explains how all, literally all countries, even the most objecting African countries, like Madagascar and Tanzania, among the poorest of the poor, have succumbed to the coercion or blackmail of the infamous Bretton Woods Institutions.

These institutions have no quarrels in generating dollars, as the dollar is fiat money, not backed by any economy – but can be produced literally from hot air and lent to poor countries, either as debt or as grant. These countries, henceforth and for pressure of the international financial institutions, will forever become dependent on the western masters of salvation.  Covid-19 is the perfect tool for the financial markets to shovel assets from the bottom to the top.

In order to maximize the concentration of the riches on top, maybe one or two or even three new covid waves may be necessary. That’s all planned, The WEF has already foreseen the coming scenarios by its tyrannical book Covid-19 – The Great Reset. It’s all laid out. And our western intellectuals read it, analyze it, criticize it, but we do not shred it apart – we let it stand, and watch how the word moves in the Reset direction. And the plan is dutifully executed by the World Bank and the IMF – all under the guise of doing good for the world.

What’s different from the World Bank and IMF’s role before the covid plandemic?  Nothing. Just the cause for exploitation, indebtment, enslavement. When covid came along it became easy. Before then and up to the end of 2019, developing countries, mostly rich in natural resources of the kind the west covets, oil, gold, copper and other minerals, such as rare earths, would be approached by the WB, the IMF or both.

They could receive debt relief, so-called structural adjustment loans, no matter whether or not they really needed such debt. Today these loans come in all names, forms, shapes and colors, literally like color-revolutions, for instance, often as budget support operations.  I simply call them blank checks – nobody controls what’s happening with the money. However, the countries have to restructure their economies, rationalizing their public services, privatizing water, education, health services, electricity, highways, railroads – and granting foreign concessions for the exploitation of natural resources.

Most of this fraud –fraud on “robbing” national resources — passes unseen by the public at large, but countries become increasingly dependent on the western paymasters. People’s and institutional sovereignty is gone. There is always a corrupter and a corruptee. Unfortunately, they are still omni-present in the Global South. Often, for a chunk of money, the countries are forced to vote with the US for or against certain UN resolutions which are of interest to the US. Here we go – the corrupt system of the UN.

And, of course, when the two Bretton Woods organizations were created in 1944, the voting system decided is not one country, one vote as in theory it is in the UN, but the US has an absolute veto right in both organizations. Their voting rights are calculated in function of their capital contribution which derives from a complex formula, based on GDP and other economic indicators. In both institutions the US voting right and also veto right is about 17%. Both institutions have 189 member countries. None of these other countries have a voting right higher than 17%. The EU would have, but they were never allowed by the US to become a country or a Federation.

*****

Covid has laid bare, if it wasn’t already before, how these “official” international, UN-chartered Bretton Woods financial institutions are fully integrated in the UN system – in which most of the countries still trust, maybe for lack of anything better.

Question, however: What is better, a hypocritical corrupt system that provides the “appearance”, or the abolition of a dystopian system and the courage to create a new one, under new democratic circumstances and with sovereign rights by each participating country?

• First published by the New Eastern Outlook – NEO

This article was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2020 at 1:48am and is filed under “The West”, Brazil, COVID-19, EU, Europe, Exploitation, Fearmongering, Greece, IMF, Jair Bolsonaro, Lies, Privatization, Transparency/Secrecy, United Nations, US Dollar, US Hypocrisy, US Terrorism, World Bank, World Economic Forum (WEF).

The current Turkish-Greek tension is only one facet of a much larger conflict involving, aside from the two Mediterranean countries, Israel, Egypt, Cyprus, France, Libya and other Mediterranean and European countries. Notably absent from the list are the United States and Russia; the latter, in particular, stands to gain or lose much economic leverage, depending on the outcome of the conflict.

Conflicts of this nature tend to have historic roots – Turkey and Greece fought a brief but consequential war in 1974. Of relevance to the current conflagration is an agreement signed by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his Greek and Cypriot counterparts, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Nicos Anastasiades, respectively, on January 2. The agreement envisages the establishment of the EastMed pipeline which, once finalized, is projected to flood Europe with Israeli natural gas, pumped mostly from the Leviathan Basin.

Several European countries are keen on being part of, and profiting from, the project. But Europe’s gain is not just economic but also geostrategic. Cheap Israeli gas will lessen Europe’s reliance on Russia’s natural gas which arrives in Europe through two pipelines, Nord Stream and Gazprom, the latter extending through Turkey.

Gazprom alone supplies Europe with an estimated 40% of its natural gas needs, thus giving Russia significant economic and political leverage. Some European countries, especially France, have labored to liberate themselves from what they see as a Russian economic chokehold on their economies.

Indeed, the French and Italian rivalry currently under way in Libya is tantamount to colonial expeditions aimed at balancing out the over-reliance on Russian and Turkish supplies of gas and other sources of energy.

Fully aware of France’s and Italy’s intentions in Libya, the Russians and Turks are wholly involved in Libya’s military showdown between the Government of National Accord (GNA) and forces in the East, loyal to General Khalifa Haftar.

While the conflict in Libya has been under way for years, the Israel-et al EastMed pipeline has added fuel to the fire: infuriating Turkey, which is excluded from the agreement; worrying Russia, whose gas arrives in Europe partially via Turkey, and empowering Israel, which may now cement its economic integration with the European continent.

Anticipating the Israel-led alliance, on November 28, 2019, Turkey and Libya signed a Maritime Boundary Treaty, an agreement that gave Ankara access to Libya’s territorial waters. The bold maneuver allows Turkey to claim territorial rights for gas exploration in a massive region that extends from the Turkish southern coast to Libya’s north-east coast.

The ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’ (EEZ) is unacceptable in Europe because, if it remains in effect, it will cancel out the ambitious EastMed project and fundamentally alter the geopolitics – largely dictated by Europe and guaranteed by NATO – of this region.

However, NATO is no longer the once formidable and unified power. Since its inception in 1949, NATO has been on the rise. NATO members have fought major wars in the name of defending one another and also to protect ‘the West’ from the ‘Soviet menace’.

NATO remained strong and relatively unified even after the dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the abrupt collapse, in 1991, of its Warsaw Pact. NATO managed to sustain a degree of unity, despite its raison d’être – defeating the Soviets – being no longer a factor, because Washington wished to maintain its military hegemony, especially in the Middle East.

While the Iraq war of 1991 was the first powerful expression of NATO’s new mission, the Iraq war of 2003 was NATO’s undoing. After failing to achieve any of its goals in Iraq, the US adopted an ‘exit strategy’ that foresaw a gradual American retreat from Iraq while, simultaneously, ‘pivoting to Asia’ in the desperate hope of slowing down China’s military encroachment in the Pacific.

The best expression of the American decision to divest militarily from the Middle East was NATO’s war on Libya in March 2011. Military strategists had to devise a bewildering term, ‘leading from behind’, to describe the role of the US in the Libya conflict. For the first time since the establishment of NATO, the US was part of a conflict that was largely controlled by comparatively smaller and weaker NATO members – Italy, France, Britain and others.

While former US President, Barack Obama, insisted on the centrality of NATO in US military strategies, it was evident that the once-powerful alliance had outweighed its usefulness for Washington.

France, in particular, continues to fight for NATO with the same ferocity it fought to keep the European Union intact. It is this French faith in European and Western ideals that has compelled Paris to fill the gap left by the gradual American withdrawal. France is currently playing the role of the military hegemon and political leader in many of the Middle East’s ongoing crises, including the flaring East Mediterranean conflict.

On December 3, 2019, France’s Emmanuel Macron stood up to US President Donald Trump, at the NATO summit in London. Here, Trump chastised NATO for its reliance on American defense and threatened to pull out of the alliance altogether if NATO members did not compensate Washington for its protection.

It’s a strange and unprecedented spectacle when countries like Israel, Greece, Egypt, Libya, Turkey and others lay claims over the Mediterranean, while NATO scrambles to stave off an outright war, among its own members. Even stranger, to see France and Germany taking over the leadership of NATO while the US remains, thus far, almost completely absent.

It is hard to imagine the reinvention of NATO, at least a NATO that caters to Washington’s interests and diktats. Judging by France’s recent behavior, the future may hold irreversible paradigm shifts. In November 2018, Macron made what then seemed as a baffling suggestion, a ‘true, European army’. Considering the rapid regional developments and the incremental collapse of NATO, Macron may one day get his army, after all.

This article was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2020 at 3:02am and is filed under France, Germany, Greece, Libya, NATO, Turkey.

Expectedly, over 100,000 people rushed to the Ipsala border point in the Edirne province separating Turkey from Greece, hoping to make it through the once-porous border.

Even though, initially, the sea route was not opened for the refugees, many attempted to brave the sea, anyway, using small fishing boats and dinghies. A few have reportedly reached the Greek Islands.

What transpired was one of the most tragic, heart-rendering episodes of the Syrian war and the subsequent refugee crisis saga.

This time around, Greece, with tacit political support from the rest of the European Union, was determined not to allow any of the refugees into its territories.

The prevailing understanding in Europe is that the Turkish government was purposely engineering a refugee crisis to press the EU into supporting Turkish military operations in Idlib in northern Syria.

“They didn’t come here on their own,” the Greek Public Order Minister, Michalis Chrysohoidis, told reporters on February 29, with reference to the flood of refugees at his country’s border. “They are being sent away and being used by (our) neighbor, Turkey,” he added.

While the media focused mostly on Erdogan’s decision within the context of the Idlib conflict, little mention was made of the fact that Syrian and other refugees in Turkey have been the focal point of an internal crisis within the country itself.

The Istanbul mayoral election (held on March 31 and, again, on June 23) underscored the anti-refugee sentiment among ordinary Turks, one that is compounded by the fact that Turkey itself has been subjected to a protracted economic recession.

Unsurprisingly, the over 3.5 million Syrian refugees who had fled the war in their country over the last decade are being scapegoated by opportunistic politicians, the likes of Istanbul’s new Mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.

“Imamoglu was … able to tap into simmering discontent with the large number of Syrian refugees in Istanbul in the context of his general complaints about the high level of unemployment in the city,” wrote Bulent Aliriza and Zeynep Ekeler on the Center for Strategic and International Studies website.

The Turkish government is now fully aware of the obvious correlation in the minds of many Turkish voters between the oppressive economic crisis and the Syrian refugee population in Turkey.

In fact, a recurring argument made by the Turkish government is that its military campaign in northern Syria is ultimately motivated by its desire to create a safe zone that would allow for the resettlement of many Syrian refugees.

With its NATO alliance faltering, and with growing difficulties at the northern Syrian front, Turkey’s strategy quickly fell apart. However, the scenes of naked, shivering refugees running back to the Turkish side, after being pushed away by Greek military and police was not only indicative of Turkey’s growing political dilemma, but of Europe’s betrayal of Syrian refugees and its utter incompetence in fashioning long-term solutions to a crisis that has been brewing for years.

On March 18, 2016, Turkey and EU countries signed the statement of cooperation, which resulted in a short-lived barter. According to the deal, Turkey agreed to stem the flow of refugees into Europe in exchange for economic incentives to help Ankara cope with the economic burden, partly resulting from the refugee crisis.

Aside from the fact that Turkey has claimed that the EU failed to fulfill its part of the deal, the agreement did not offer a long-term solution, let alone a political vision that would ultimately end the suffering of millions of Syrians.

What makes the Syrian refugee crisis within the Turkish-EU context particularly complex is the fact that the refugees are finding themselves hostage to selfish, political calculations that view them as a burden or a pawn.

This unfortunate reality has left Syrian refugees in Turkey with three options, all of which are dismal: returning to a war zone in Syria, coping with unemployment and an increasingly hostile political environment in Turkey or making a run for the Greek border.

When Ahmed Abu Emad, a young Syrian refugee from Aleppo, opted for the third and final option on March 2, he was shot in the throat by Greek border police. His fellow refugees rushed his gaunt body back to Turkey, where he was laid to rest.

Considering their limited options, however, neither death, injury nor torture will end the quest of Syrian refugees, who are desperately trying, as they have for years, to find a safe space and badly needed respite.

Perhaps only Palestinian refugees can relate to the dilemma of their Syrian brethren. It is one thing to be pushed out of your homeland, but it is a whole different thing to be refused, dehumanized and subjugated everywhere else.

The Syrian refugee crisis is a political, not a humanitarian crisis – despite the palpable humanitarian component of it. Therefore, it can only be resolved based on a comprehensive political solution that keeps the interest of millions of Syrian refugees — in fact, the Syrian people as a whole — as a top priority.

Several ‘solutions’ have been devised in the past but they have all failed, simply because various governments in the Middle East and Europe have tried to exploit the refugees for their own political, economic, and ‘security’ interests.

The time has come for a more considerate and thoughtful political strategy that is predicated on respect for international and humanitarian laws, one that adheres to the Geneva Conventions regarding the rights of war refugees.

Syrian refugees do not deserve such inhumane treatment. They have a country, a glorious history and a deeply-rooted culture that has profoundly influenced ancient and modern civilizations. They deserve respect, rights and safety. Equally important, they should not be used as pawns in a costly and dirty political game in which they have no interest or choice.

This article was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2020 at 12:16pm and is filed under EU, Greece, Refugees, Syria, Turkey.

So far, Bernie has purposefully avoided discussing socialism in broader conceptual terms or as a social philosophy while persistently narrowing the discussion to issues of economic disparity, free higher education or a national healthcare system. In fact, Sanders’s own supporters are the ones who often push the acceptable parameters of the dialogue to bigger questions and take his movement to places he is unwilling, likely because his candidacy filled the void of the political space left vacant following the suppression of the Occupy Wall Street phenomena. For example, some of his devotees may define socialism as the ‘equal distribution of wealth’ or even the ‘collective ownership of the means of production.’ However, Bernie and his followers both equally avoid providing any philosophical basis to their ideas and usually reduce it to abstractions of moral principles or human rights.

The most vigorous elucidation of socialism and its historical development from material conditions rather than ideals can be found in Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program, a letter written in 1875 by the German philosopher to the early incarnation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in which he scathingly attacked the SPD for drafting a more moderate platform at its congress. Just four years earlier, the short-lived Paris Commune in France had been brutally repressed and the German counterparts of the Communards appeared to be making concessions in the wake of its failure. In the address, Marx contends that socialism is an  atransitional phase between capitalism and communism where vestigial elements of the free market are mixed with state ownership of the productive forces. According to Marx, socialism does not develop on its own but “emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”

While socialism might be an improvement, it still bears the stigma of capitalism because it is based on the idea that people will receive equal compensation determined by their individual contribution to the economy. Marx argues that even though profiting from the exploitation of the labor of others through private ownership of the means of production may decline, the exchange of labor itself as a commodity replicates the logic of the free market in that it still leaves workers under the dominion of what they produce if their earnings are equivalent to their labor. Since workers inherently have varying degrees of mental and physical ability, the primary source of economic inequality is left in place. Hence, Marx’s conclusion that human liberation can only be achieved once labor is transformed from a means of subsistence to freedom from necessity in a communist society, or “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.” In the same document, it is made clear what role the state must play in this post-revolutionary but intermediary stage:

Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

Many on the left today, particularly social democrats, try to separate Marx’s words about the role of the state from the Bolsheviks who later expanded upon the working class seizure of power by revolutionary means and put it into practice in the Russian Revolution of 1917. However, Marx did consider the United States one of a handful of countries where a peaceful transition to socialism was a remote possibility, at least during his own lifetime.

The same SPD that Marx convinced to abandon its reformist platform for a more radical line would turn their backs on the working class decades later when it endorsed the imperialist carnage of World War I and collaborated with proto-fascists. In 1912, the SPD rose to prominence after it was elected to the majority of seats in the Reichstag, but once in power its duplicitous leadership voted to support the war effort despite the Second International’s vehement opposition to militarism and imperialism. Those within the SPD who protested the party’s pro-war stance were expelled which brought an end to the Second International, most notably Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemberg who would go on to found the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). After the war’s conclusion which resulted in a German defeat and the abolition of its imperial monarchy, mass social unrest and general strikes led to the Spartacist Uprising in the unsuccessful German Revolution of 1918–1919 which was violently crushed by the right-wing Freikorps paramilitary units under orders from SPD leader and German President, Friedrich Ebert. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were summarily executed in the crackdown and became forever revered martyrs in the international socialist movement.

The SPD would once again betray the German people during the Weimar Republic in the lead-up to the Second World War, rebuffing the KPD’s efforts to organize a coalition against fascism which sealed Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, as Michael Parenti described in Blackshirts and Reds:

True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds. Meanwhile, a number of right-wing parties coalesced behind the Nazis and in January 1933, just weeks after the election, Hindenburg invited Hitler to become chancellor.

Social democracy’s consistent impediment of the seizure of power by the working class led to its branding as the “moderate wing of fascism” by the Comintern. By the time the Third International and the social democratic Labor and Socialist International (LSI) finally cooperated to form a Popular Front in the Spanish Civil War, it was undermined by the disruptions of Trotskyists and anarchists which cleared the way for Franco’s victory. Today, social democrats who are embarrassed by these unpleasant facts try to sweep their own tainted history under the rug, ironically the same ideologues who are always eager to cite the ‘purges’ of the Stalin era to discredit communism. A 2017 article exonerating the SPD in Jacobin Magazine, the flagship publication of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is a perfect example of such lies by omission.

Bernie Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history, but a significant amount of the grassroots basis for his recent success has come from his backing by the DSA whose own rank-and-file increased by the tens of thousands during his 2016 candidacy and continued following Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton. This culminated in the election of two DSA members to Congress, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and Rashida Tlaib (MI), in the 2018 mid-terms. The DSA has historical roots in the Socialist Party of America (SPA), having been established by former chairman Michael Harrington, best known as the author of the classic 1962 study, The Other America: Poverty in the United States, which is widely credited as an inspiration for the welfare state legislation of the Great Society under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. However, in stark contrast with the SPA and its founder, Eugene V. Debs — whom Sanders idolizes and even once made a film about — Harrington advocated for reforming the Democratic Party from within over building a third party.

Sanders might style himself as a “socialist”, but many have noted his actual campaign policies are closer to the New Deal reforms of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression. A more accurate comparison than Eugene Debs would be with the appointed Vice President during Roosevelt’s third term, Henry A. Wallace, who has been written out of history ever since the Southern reactionary wing of the Democratic Party convinced FDR to replace him on the 1944 ticket with Harry S. Truman. The progressive Wallace had been Secretary of Agriculture during Roosevelt’s first two terms and was a big supporter of his domestic program. After his one-term removal, Wallace served as commerce secretary until Truman succeeded Roosevelt and fired him in 1946 for giving a speech advocating peace and cooperation with the Soviet Union which contradicted Truman’s foreign policy that kick-started the Cold War. Wallace ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948 but his campaign was sunk by red-baiting, reminiscent of the recent bogus claims of “Russian meddling” to assist Sanders’s presidential bid. Yet even Wallace was much further to the left than Bernie is today, particularly on foreign policy. As Congressman of Vermont in 1999, Sanders notably voted to authorize the use of military force against Serbia, resulting in one of his campaign staffers quitting in protest and an end to his friendship with the previously cited Parenti.

As for his socialist credentials, all one has to do is look at the model Bernie consistently invokes as an example whenever pressed to define “democratic socialism” in the Nordic model which today scarcely resembles what it once was prior to the mysterious assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986. Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Denmark may have high taxes on the wealthy and a strong social safety net while a large percentage of the workforce is unionized and employed in the public sector — a more “humane” form of capitalism — but these gains came from class struggle, not from the top down. Similarly in the U.S., the financial regulations and public programs during the Roosevelt administration were not enacted out of the goodness of FDR’s heart but because he was a pragmatic politician and member of the ruling class who understood that it was the only way to save American capitalism from itself and prevent workers, then well organized in a strong coalition of labor unions with socialists and communists, from becoming militant. Reforms such as those under the New Deal were enacted so they could be repealed later, as we see now with Social Security and Medicare increasingly under threat. If Sanders were to be elected but his policies obstructed, it would be because no such alliance behind him yet exists.

On the other hand, recent history shows that not even a united front and mass organization can ensure the democratic wishes of workers as Greece learned in 2015 after the electoral victory of the inappropriately named ‘Coalition of the Radical Left ’ — abbreviated SYRIZA — which completely double-crossed its constituency and the Greek working class once in power. When the Great Recession hit in 2008, Greece was impacted more than any other country in the Eurozone during the economic downturn and underwent a decline which exceeded that of the Great Depression in the United States as the longest of any modern capitalist country. However, like all debt run up by capitalist governments, Greece’s bankruptcy was created by the irreconcilable contradiction of the state being torn between its constituents in the masses of people and the rich and corporations who both want to pay as low in taxes as possible, an incompatibility which forces elected political leaders to borrow excessively instead of taxing the former which give them votes or the latter which gives them money.

Like the United States, many European countries saw their productive power slowly outsourced to the developing world in recent decades where bigger profits could be made and labor was cheaper while wages and living standards in the imperial core stagnated, though the process was slower in Europe because of social democracy. For the financial sector and predatory creditors, this made for a whole new market of consumer debt to invest in and a bonanza of speculative trading. That is, until 2008 when the speculations finally crashed after consumer credit reached its limit. On the brink of failure, the so-called leaders of industry and champions of private enterprise in the banking sector begged European governments to save them from collapse. Unfortunately for Greece, its small, poor economy was already heavily in debt and unattractive to lenders, therefore unable to borrow without paying high interest rates.

At the time of Greece’s debt crisis, European governments were already besieged by their respective banks in the form of bailouts. When the German and French banks turned out to be the biggest creditors of the Greek government, the prospect of Greece defaulting meant that the German and French governments could not provide financial assistance to their corresponding banks a second time without then-President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, committing political suicide. Therefore, the European Union’s political “solution” was to make Greece the whipping boy for the financial crisis by using the pooled collective money of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund— widely referred to as the ‘troika’ — to make a series of bailout loans to Greece so it could pay off the French and German banks, but which imposed draconian austerity measures and neoliberal ‘shock therapy’ onto its economy.

The troika’s ‘structural adjustment programs’ resulted in hundreds of thousands of state sector jobs lost and the minimum wage reduced by more than 20% while much of the energy, utilities and transit sectors underwent mass privatization. Greek workers saw their taxes raised just as pensions and benefits were cut, bonuses capped, and salaries frozen at the same time government spending on health and education was slashed. As many economists predicted, the spending reductions during the downturn only worsened the crisis. However, just as we have seen throughout the EU and the U.S. since the global financial meltdown, a silver lining to the crisis in Greece was an expansion of the political spectrum and Overton Window. By 2014, the far right Golden Dawn party suddenly became the third largest group from Greece in the European Parliament, but still far behind the first-place SYRIZA, founded in 2004 as a broad alliance of the country’s left-wing parties, sans the Greek Communist Party (KKE).

In the beginning of 2015, SYRIZA rode into office in a snap election, picking up half of the Hellenic Parliament seats on its campaign promise of rejecting austerity. After failing to reach an agreement with the troika, a referendum was held to decide on whether the country should accept the bailout terms and the result was a solid 61% pulling the lever against the country’s colonization by the EU and ‘reforms’ of the international creditors, a vote which also effectively signaled that the Greek people were willing to exit the Eurozone. Despite pledging to let the electorate decide the country’s future, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and SYRIZA stabbed the Greek working class in the back and ignored the outcome of the referendum, totally capitulating to the demands of the private banking corporatocracy. Much of the pseudo-left had pinned their naive hopes on SYRIZA, but the truth is that the warning signs were there from the very beginning, starting with Tsipras’s questionable decision to appoint economist Yanis Varoufakis as Finance Minister, a figure who had several conflicts of interest with the institutions he was assigned to stand up to.

Varoufakis was tapped to negotiate with the troika in spite of his open ties to the neoliberal Brookings Institute, a D.C. establishment think tank funded by a cabal of billionaires and the Qatari government, as well as his previous work as an advisor to the centre-left PASOK government of George Papandreou which preceded SYRIZA and initially ushered in the austerity. The “rock star economist” jumped ship after less than six months from his ministerial post on the stated reason it was evident the SYRIZA-led government was caving in to the troika, yet Varoufakis himself had already sold Greece down the river when he led the negotiations to extend its loan agreement with the IMF that was due to expire in his first month in office. Varoufakis could have used the prospect of a potential Grexit from the Eurozone as leverage and refused to negotiate, but instead fully surrendered to the troika’s bribery. When SYRIZA later fully embraced austerity, it was only a continuation of the process he set in motion while his resignation was motivated by self-interest in maintaining his radical facade.

Allowing the IMF to make a killing off Greece’s debt was just the first breach of faith. By the time Tsipras was voted out four years later, the SYRIZA-led government had made military deals with Israel, sold arms to Saudi Arabia during its genocidal war on Yemen, provided NATO with its territory for the use of military bases and naval presence, and paved the way for the latter to accede the renamed North Macedonia as a member state. Meanwhile, Varoufakis has since been busy lending his ‘expertise’ to left candidates in other countries. After the UK Labour Party’s resounding defeat in the 2019 general elections, many rightly faulted Jeremy Corbyn’s reversal of his decision to support the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum after he was convinced by the party establishment to change his longtime Euroskepticism. Unsurprisingly, another figure who had advised him to do the same was none other than the former Greek finance minister, who has also since partnered with Bernie Sanders to launch a “Progressive International.”

The 2019 UK general election was really a second Brexit referendum, where the electorate justifiably expressed their disgust at the Labour Party’s contempt for democracy and neutering of Corbyn. Once upon a time it was Labour who stood against the de-industrialization foisted onto Britain by the neoliberal imperialist EU and the offshoring of its manufacturing jobs to Germany and the global south. Corbyn should have listened to the words of past Labour leaders like Tony Benn, who opposed the European project and its unelected bureaucracy as a violation of British sovereignty and democracy, not charlatans like Mr. Varoufakis. Worst of all is that the “left” is now disparaging the entirety of the working class as bigots and reducing the Leave vote to a reaction against the migrant crisis, as if Greece’s bailout referendum never occurred. Like the Yellow Vest protests in France, Corbyn’s loss was a sign that the opposition to globalization by the working class is still in good condition but has no authentic left to represent it. If Bernie meets the same fate, a real vanguard should be prepared to take the reins.

This article was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2020 at 10:55pm and is filed under “The Left”, Alexis Tsipras, Austerity, Bernie Sanders, Brexit, Democrats, Donald Trump, Economy/Economics, EU, France, Germany, Greece, Jeremy Corbyn, Neoliberalism, Privatization, Socialism, UK Labour Party.

EDIRNE, Turkey — A group of migrants on Saturday tried to bring down a fence in a desperate attempt to bust through the border into Greece while others hurled rocks at Greek police. Greek authorities responded, firing volleys of tear gas at the youths.

At least two migrants were injured in the latest clash between Greek police and migrants gathered on the Turkish side of a border crossing near the Greek village of Kastanies. As in previous confrontations this week. officers in Greece fired tear gas to impede the crowd and Turkish police fired tear gas back at their Greek counterparts.

Groups of mostly young men tied ropes onto the fence in an attempt to tear it down. Some shouted “Allah is Great” while others shouted “open the border.”

It was not immediately clear what caused the two migrants’ injuries. A Greek government official said the tear gas and water cannons were used for “deterrence” purposes.

Thousands of migrants headed for Turkey’s land border with Greece after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government said last week that it would no longer prevent migrants and refugees from crossing over to European Union territory. Greece deployed riot police and border guards to repel people trying to enter the country from the sea or by land.

Erdogan plans to be in Brussels on Monday for a one-day working visit. A statement from his office did not specify where he would be during his visit or the reason why he’s heading to the EU’s headquarters.

The announcement came hours after EU foreign ministers meeting in Croatia on Friday criticized Turkey, saying it was using the migrants’ desperation “for political purposes.”

In a statement Saturday, the Greek government said that around 600 people, aided by Turkish army and military police, threw tear gas at the Greek side of the border overnight. It also said there were several attempts to breach the border fence, and fires were lit in an attempt to damage the barrier.

“Attempts at illegal entry into Greek territory were prevented by Greek forces, which repaired the fence and used sirens and loudspeakers,” the statement read.

Thousands of migrants have slept in makeshift camps near the border since the Turkish government said they were free to go, waiting for the opportunity to cut over to Greece.

“It is very difficult, but there is hope, God willing,” said Mahmood Mohammed, 34, who identified himself as a refugee from Syria’s embattled Idlib province.

Another man who identified himself as being from Idlib said he was camped out in western Turkey both to get away from the war at home and to make a new life for his family in Europe or Canada after crossing through the border gate.

Erdogan announced last week that Turkey, which already houses more than 3.5 million Syrian refugees, would no longer be Europe’s gatekeeper and declared that its previously guarded borders with Europe are now open.

The move alarmed EU countries, which are still dealing with the political fallout from a wave of mass migration five years ago. Erdogan has demanded that Europe shoulder more of the burden of caring for refugees. But the EU insists it is abiding by a 2016 deal in which it gave Turkey billions in refugee aid in return for keeping Europe-bound asylum-seekers in Turkey.

In a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, Erdogan said the Turkey-EU migration deal is no longer working and needs to be revised, according to the Turkish leaders’s office.

While crediting Turkey for hosting millions of migrants and refugees, European foreign ministers said the bloc “strongly rejects Turkey’s use of migratory pressure for political purposes.” They called the situation at the border unacceptable and said the EU was determined to protect its external boundaries.

In Berlin on Saturday, about 1,000 people rallied in front of the Interior Ministry urging Germany to take in asylum seekers stuck at the Greek border. They then marched through the streets downtown behind a banner reading “Europe, don’t kill. Open the borders, we have space.”

From a slow-moving truck, one of the leaders led a chant in English: “No borders, no nations. Stop deportations.”

Greek authorities said they thwarted more than 38,000 attempted border crossings in the past week and arrested 268 people — only 4% of them Syrians. They reported 27 more arrests Saturday, mostly migrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Greece has described the situation as a threat to its national security and has suspended asylum applications for a month, saying it will deport new arrivals without registering them. Many migrants have reported crossing into Greece, being beaten by Greek authorities and summarily forced back into Turkey.

A video handed out by the Turkish government on Saturday, purported to show a Greek soldier firing shots toward a barbed-wire fence at the border. The Associated Press was not in the area and could not verify its authenticity.

Turkish authorities say one migrant was killed earlier this week by bullets fired by Greek police or border guards near the border crossing. Greece denies the accusation. A child also drowned off the island of Lesbos when a boat carrying 48 migrants capsized.

On Saturday, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu renewed accusations of Greek authorities mistreating migrants.

“Their masks have fallen,” he said. “The ruthlessness of those who gave lectures on humanity has become evident.”

Soylu claimed that some 1,000 Turkish special operations police deployed on the border had started to thwart the actions of the law enforcement teams assembled by Greece to drive the migrants back.

The minister also predicted that Greece would not be able to “hold on to its borders” when the river that delineates most of the Turkey-Greece border gets shallower and easier to cross.

Soylu has said Erdogan instructed Turkish authorities to prevent migrants from attempting to reach the Greek islands in dinghies to avoid “human tragedies.” Hundreds have drowned attempting the comparatively short but dangerous voyage from Turkey’s coast.

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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press reporters Costas Kantouris in Kastanies, Greece, Demetris Nellas in Athens and David Rising in Berlin contributed.

Turkish authorities said gunfire from the Greek side killed one person and wounded five others — an assertion the Greek government rejected as “fake news.”

The clashes were near the border village of Kastanies, along a border fence that covers much of the frontier not demarcated by the Evros river.

Turkey made good on a threat to open its borders and allow migrants and refugees to head for Europe last week. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s action triggered days of violent clashes at the Greece-Turkey land border.

Thousands of migrants and refugees have gathered at the frontier, and hundreds more have headed for the Greek islands from the Turkish coast.

The office of Ekrem Canalp, governor for the Turkish border province of Edirne, said one migrant was killed and five others wounded after Greek police and border units fired tear gas, blank rounds and live ammunition at migrants gathered between the Turkish and Greek border crossings of Pazarkule and Kastanies.

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas categorically denied any migrants had been wounded or killed by Greek authorities.

“The Turkish side creates and disperses fake news targeted against Greece. Today they created yet another such falsehood,” he said. “There is no such incident with fire from the Greek authorities,” he said.

Greek authorities said Turkish police were firing tear gas at Greek authorities, and supplied video they said backed their assertion.

During the clashes earlier Wednesday, reporters on the Greek side of the border heard what sounded like gunfire, though it was unclear whether this was live ammunition. A group of people could be seen carrying something which could have been a person between them, and running to the Turkish border post. Shortly afterward, and ambulance was heard leaving.

Reporters on the Turkish side saw at least four ambulances leave the area.

The head of emergency services at Edirne’s Trakya University Hospital, Burak Sayhan, told journalists six people had been admitted to the emergency department Wednesday, including one who was dead on arrival. He said one person had been shot in the head, two had gunshot wounds to their lower and upper extremities and one had a broken nose.

Greece has also come under migration pressure from the sea. Greek islands that are relatively short distance from Turkey by water are seeing even more new arrivals. A child died when the dinghy he was in capsized off the coast of the Greek island of Lesbos earlier this week.

Gale-force winds and rough seas hampered sea crossings Wednesday.

Greece sent a navy ship to Lesbos to house more than 400 of the new arrivals. Tension has mounted with some local residents on the island, where the main migrant camp is massively overcrowded.

The government has called the situation a direct threat to Greece’s national security and has imposed emergency measures to carry out swift deportations and freeze asylum applications for one month. Migrants have been reporting being summarily pushed back across the border into Turkey.

The mass movement to Greece’s borders of migrants and refugees, the majority of who appeared to be from Afghanistan, has appeared organized. Buses, minibuses, cars and taxis were provided in Istanbul to ferry people to the border, while some of those who managed to cross have said they were told by Turkish authorities to go to Greece.

Turkey’s announcement that its border to Europe was open came amid a Russia-backed Syrian government offensive into Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, where Turkish troops are fighting.

The offensive has killed dozens of Turkish troops and sent nearly a million Syrian civilians toward Turkey’s sealed border. However, Oleg Zhuravlev, head of the Russian military’s coordination center in Syria, said Tuesday claims about a humanitarian crisis in Idlib were false.

European Union interior ministers held emergency talks to show solidarity with Greece and to drum up more equipment to bolster the 27-country bloc’s outside border with Turkey. Other officials accused Turkey of “blackmail” for waving migrants through.

The European Commission has praised Greece as “the shield” on Europe’s external borders. Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas said “there are 20,000 people that have been instrumentalized by buses to be sent, creating an unprecedented situation.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, speaking Wednesday at the French Senate, said the “migratory pressure is at Europe’s door, … That migratory pressure is being organized by President Erdogan’s regime to blackmail the European Union. The EU won’t give in to blackmail.”

Turkey, for its part, accused Greece of mistreating refugees.

Erdogan on Wednesday called on Greece and other European nations to respects migrants’ rights. He screened a photograph depicting Greeks who reportedly found refuge in Syria in 1942, saying: “Greeks who try all kinds of methods to keep refugees away from their countries — from drowning them at sea to shooting at them with bullets — should not forget that they may need to be shown the same mercy some day.”

He also accused EU countries of hypocritical behavior, saying they had rushed to Greece’s help “with money, boats and soldiers” to prevent a new influx of migrants but ignored Turkey’s plight concerning 3.7 millions Syrian refugees on its territory.

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia pledged to help Greece to deal with pressure along its border. The four countries have been known for their tough stance against migrants and rejected an EU plan to redistribute refugees in member states.

European Council head Charles Michel was meeting with Erdogan in Ankara Wednesday, while EU Vice President Josep Borrell and Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic were holding talks with Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Erdogan, Borell said that the EU delegation asked Turkey “not to encourage the further movement of refugees and migrants toward the EU borders.”

“We had the opportunity to express our understanding of the difficult situation Turkey is currently facing but also stressed that the current developments at the European borders is not leading to any solution,” he said.

Borell said Turkish officials’ response was that Turkey was not encouraging people to move but that “they cannot prevent people from doing so.”

Greek authorities said there were about 15,000 people along the Greek-Turkish land border on Wednesday, and they had blocked 27,832 attempts to cross the border between Saturday morning and Wednesday morning. A total of 220 people who managed to cross were arrested.

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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Elena Becatoros in Athens, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Karel Janicek in Prague contributed to this report.

Turkey’s decision to ease border restrictions came amid a Russia-backed Syrian government offensive into Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. That offensive has killed dozens of Turkish troops and led to a surge of nearly a million Syrian civilians fleeing the fighting toward Turkey’s sealed border.

Turkey backs the Syrian rebels fighting in Idlib province, and has sent thousands of troops into the area. Idlib is the last opposition-held stronghold in Syria, and is dominated by al-Qaida linked fighters.

A Turkish official said the fighting in Idlib was directly linked to Turkey’s decision to open the gates for refugees to Europe. He said Ankara had changed its focus to preparing for the possibility of new arrivals from Syria “instead of preventing refugees who intend to migrate to Europe.”

“Europe and others must take robust action to address this monumental challenge,” said Fahrettin Altun, the communications director for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “We can’t be expected to do this on our own.”

Erdogan’s decision open his country’s borders with Europe made good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent. His announcement marked a dramatic departure from a previous policy of containment, an apparent attempt to pressure Europe into offering Turkey more support in dealing with the fallout from the Syrian war to its south.

Under a 6 billion euro deal in 2016, Turkey agreed to stem the tide of refugees to Europe in return for financial aid, after more than a million people entered Europe in 2015. Turkey has since accused the EU of failing to honor the agreement, and Erdogan has frequently threatened to allow refugees into Europe unless more international support was provided.

Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, as well as many others from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Turkey borders Greece and Bulgaria, both European Union members.

On the Greek-Turkish land border, Greek army and police patrols using tear gas and stun grenades to thwart attempts by thousands to push into the country overnight.

Officials said the situation was much calmer Sunday morning. But in the afternoon, authorities used tear gas and water cannons to push back another crowd attempting to cross. Migrants threw rocks and other objects, and one policeman was injured. Greek authorities said they stopped about 10,000 crossing attempts Saturday, and another 5,500 on Sunday.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis convened the defense and foreign affairs committee Sunday evening. Afterward, a government spokesman said Greece was starting a one-month freeze on accepting asylum applications from migrants who enter illegally.

Europe’s border agency Frontex said it was “redeploying equipment and additional officers to Greece.”

A Greek government official said the Turkish authorities also fired teargas at the Greek border, using drones flying close to the border. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

Stavros Zamalides, the president of the Greek border community of Kastanies, said Turkish soldiers used wire cutters to actively help people cross.

The United Nations migration organization reported at least 13,000 people had massed on Turkey’s land border by Saturday night, the vast majority apparently from Afghanistan.

In Istanbul, a steady stream of buses, taxis, cars and minibuses were ferrying hundreds more throughout Sunday to Edirne, a town near the border with Greece. The vehicles weren’t part of any regular bus route.

Those boarding the buses — the vast majority Afghans — said they were heading to Greece and eventually hoped to get to Germany.

On the Greek islands, more than 500 people had arrived from the nearby Turkish coast by Sunday evening, a clear increase in the usual number of people who arrive on eastern Aegean islands from Turkey.

Existing migrant camps on the islands are already dramatically overcrowded, and tensions there have mounted.

In a small harbor on Lesbos, angry local residents refused to allow migrants — including families with young children and babies — to disembark from a dinghy that had just arrived. Groups who arrived on other parts of the island remained there for hours because locals prevented buses from reaching them to transport them to the main camp.

On Sunday night, a former staging area used for new arrivals on Lesbos was set on fire.

More than 19,300 people already live in and around island’s migrant camp, which has a capacity of 2,840. Protests by island residents last week over the situation degenerated into clashes with riot police on Lesbos and Chios.

Greece said it was using “all available means” to tell migrants that the country’s borders were closed, including text messages to foreign mobile phones in the border area.

In Syria, fighting escalated on the ground and in the skies between Turkish and Syrian troops. Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, remained largely on the sidelines through the weekend even as a Turkish-led counter offensive blunted and in some cases reversed Syrian government advances.

But the head of the Russian military’s Reconciliation Center in Syria, Rear Adm. Oleg Zhuravlev,, warned Turkey that its aircraft could be in danger if they fly over Syria.

“In view of the sharp exacerbation of tensions in the air space over Idlib, the Syrian government was forced to declare it closed,” Zhuravlev said in a statement released late Sunday. “In this situation, the Russian troops’ command can’t guarantee security of flights of Turkish aircraft in the skies over Syria.”

Syria’s official news agency SANA said the four pilots in the two jets shot down Sunday had ejected and landed safely. Turkey’s Defense Ministry said it had hit the two SU-24 aircraft as well as Syrian air defense systems after one of its aerial drones was downed.

Earlier Sunday, Syria said northwestern airspace was closed and any aircraft or drone that entered “will be treated as hostile and shot down.”

The Syrian announcement followed two days of Turkish drone strikes in Idlib province. Syrian activists said the strikes killed more than 50 Syrian government forces and allied fighters. Turkey has lost 54 soldiers in February, including 33 killed Thursday in a single airstrike. Outraged, Erdogan announced his country’s European borders were open Saturday.

The crisis in Idlib stems from a Syrian government offensive with Russian military support, which began Dec. 1. Turkey is worried it might come under renewed international pressure to open its now-sealed border with Syria and offer refuge to hundreds of thousands more Syrian civilians.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, speaking from a military headquarters near the Syrian border, said Turkey aimed to confront Syrian government forces rather than Russian troops. He called on Moscow to persuade Assad to withdraw to 2018 cease-fire lines on the edges of Idlib.

Referring to losses inflicted on Syria, he said Turkey had “neutralized” more than 2,200 Syrian troops, 103 tanks and eight helicopters. The operation is Turkey’s fourth in the war-torn country since 2016.

Altun, the Turkish communications director, claimed 80,888 migrants had left Turkey for Europe “in the past several days.” There was no evidence to support his claim. Greece’s Foreign Ministry tweeted that these numbers were “false and misleading.”

Wilks reported from Ankara, Turkey. Robert Badendieck in Istanbul, Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, Elena Becatoros in Athens and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

What is certain, however, is that the Middle East is already in the throes of a major geostrategic war, which has the potential of becoming an actual military confrontation.

Unsurprisingly, Israel is at the heart of this growing conflict.

“Last week, we started to stream gas to Egypt. We turned Israel into an energy superpower,” Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, bragged during a cabinet meeting on January 19.

Netanyahu’s self-congratulating remarks came on the heels of some exciting financial news for the embattled Prime Minister, as both Jordan and Egypt are now Tel Aviv’s clients, receiving billions of cubic meters of Israeli gas.

For Netanyahu, pumping Israeli gas to two neighboring Arab countries constitutes more than just economic and political advantages – it is a huge personal boost. The Israeli leader is trying to convince the public to vote for him in yet another general election in March, while pleading to Israel’s political elite to give him immunity so that he can stay out of prison for various corruption charges.

For years, Israel has been exploiting the discovery of massive deposits of natural gas from the Leviathan and Tamar fields – located nearly 125 km and 80 km west of Haifa respectively – to reconstruct regional alliances and to redefine its geopolitical centrality to Europe.

The Israeli strategy, however, has already created potentials for conflict in an already unstable region, expanding the power play to include Cyprus, Greece, France, Italy, and Libya, as well as Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Russia.

On January 2, Netanyahu was in Athens signing a gas pipeline deal, alongside Greek Prime Minister, Kyriako Mitotakis, and Cyprus President, Nicos Anastasiades.

The EastMed pipeline is projected to travel from Israel to Cyprus, to Greece and, ultimately, to Italy, thus transporting eastern Mediterranean gas directly to the heart of Europe.

A few years ago, this scenario seemed unthinkable, as Israel has, in fact, imported much of its natural gas from neighboring Egypt.

Israel’s Tamar field partly rectified Israel’s reliance on imported gas when it began production in 2003. Shortly after, Israel struck gas again, this time with far greater potential, in the massive Leviathan field. On December 31, 2019, Leviathan began pumping gas for the first time.

Leviathan is located in the Mediterranean Sea’s Levantine Basin, a region that is rich with hydrocarbons.

“Leviathan is estimated to hold over 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas—enough to fill Israeli power-generation needs for the next 40 years, while still leaving an ample supply for export,” wrote Frank Musmar in the BESA Center for Strategic Studies.

Egypt’s share of Israeli gas – 85 billion cubic meters (bcm), with an estimated cost of $19.5 billion – is acquired through the private Egyptian entity Dolphinus Holdings. The Jordanian deal was signed between the country’s national electricity company NEPCO, and American firm, Noble Energy, which owns a 45% stake in the Israeli project.

Jordanians have been protesting Israel’s gas deal en-masse, as they view economic cooperation between their country and Israel as an act of normalization, especially as Tel Aviv continues to occupy and oppress Palestinians.

The echoes of the popular protests have reached the Jordanian parliament which, on January 19, unanimously voted in favor of a law to ban gas imports from Israel.

Israel is diversifying beyond exerting regional economic dominance to becoming a big player on the international geopolitical stage as well. The EastMed pipeline project, estimated at €6bn, is expected to cover 10% of Europe’s overall need for natural gas. This is where things get even more interesting.

Turkey believes that the deal, which involves its own regional rivals, Cyprus and Greece, is designed specifically to marginalize it economically by excluding it from the Mediterranean’s hydrocarbon boom.

Ankara is already a massive energy hub, being the host of TurkStream, which feeds Europe, with approximately 40% of its needs of natural gas coming from Russia. This fact has provided both Moscow and Ankara not only with more than economic advantages but geostrategic leverage as well. If the EastMed pipeline becomes a reality, Turkey and Russia will stand to lose the most.

In a series of successive, and surprising moves, Turkey retaliated by signing a maritime border deal with Libya’s internationally-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), and by committing to send military support to help Tripoli in its fight against forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar.

“Turkey will not permit any activity that is against its own interests in the region,” Fuat Oktay, Turkey’s Vice-President, told Anadolu News Agency, adding that “any plan that disregards Turkey has absolutely no chance of success.”

Although European countries were quick to condemn Ankara, the latter has succeeded in changing the rules of the game by staking a claim to vast areas that are also claimed by Greece and Cyprus as part of their so-called exclusive economic zones (EEZ).

Not only will Turkey be drilling in Libya’s territorial waters for natural gas, but in disputed water near Cyprus as well. Ankara is accusing Cyprus of violating “the equal claim to discoveries”, an arrangement that followed the military conflict between both countries in 1974.

If the issue is not resolved, the EastMed pipeline project could potentially turn into a pipedream. What seemed like a lucrative deal, with immense geopolitical significance from an Israeli point of view, now appears to be another extension of the wider Middle Eastern conflict.

While the EU is eager to loosen Russia’s strategic control over the natural gas market, the EastMed pipeline increasingly appears unfeasible from every possible angle.

However, considering the massive deposits of natural gas that are ready to fuel struggling European markets, it is almost certain that the Mediterranean natural gas will eventually become a major source of political disputes, if not a war.

            <p class="postmeta">This article was posted on Tuesday, January 28th, 2020 at 5:14pm and is filed under <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/europe/cyprus/" rel="category tag">Cyprus</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/europe/greece/" rel="category tag">Greece</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/middle-east/israel/" rel="category tag">Israel</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/middle-east/turkey/president-recep-tayyip-erdogan/" rel="category tag">President Recep Tayyip Erdogan</a>, <a href="https://dissidentvoice.org/category/asia/middle-east/turkey/" rel="category tag">Turkey</a>. 

Last October Yossi Cohen, head of Israel’s Mossad, spoke openly about assassinating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“He knows very well that his assassination is not impossible,” Cohen said in an interview. Soleimani had boasted that Israel tried to assassinate him in 2006 and failed.

“With all due respect to his bluster,” Cohen said, “he hasn’t necessarily committed the mistake yet that would place him on the prestigious list of Mossad’s assassination targets.”

“Is Israel Targeting Iran’s Top General for Assassination?” I asked last October. On January 3, Soleimani was killed in an air strike ordered by President Trump.

Soleimani’s convoy was struck by U.S. missiles as he left a meeting at Baghdad’s airport amid anti-Iranian and anti-American demonstrations in Iraq. Supporters of an Iranian-backed militia had agreed to withdraw from the U.S. diplomatic compound in return for a promise that the government would allow a parliamentary vote on expelling 5,000 U.S. troops from Iraq.

The Pentagon issued a statement confirming the military operation, which came “at the direction of the president” and was “aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.” The Pentagon claimed that Gen. Soleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, under indictment for criminal charges, was the first and only national leader to support Trump’s action, while claiming that Trump acted entirely on his own.

“Just as Israel has the right to self-defense, the United States has exactly the same right,” Netanyahu told reporters in Greece. “Qassem Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of American citizens and other innocents, and he was planning more attacks.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed retaliation for the general’s death, tweeting that “Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime.”

Capable Foe

Soleimani was the most capable foe of the United States and Israel in the region. As chief of the Quds Force, Soleimani was a master of Iran’s asymmetric warfare strategy, using proxy forces to bleed Iran’s enemies, while preserving the government’s ability to plausibly deny involvement.

After the U.S. invasions of Iraq, he funded and trained anti-American militias that launched low-level attacks on U.S. occupation forces, killing hundreds of U.S. servicemen and generating pressure for U.S. withdrawal.

In recent years, Soleimani led two successful Iranian military operations: the campaign to drive ISIS out of western Iraq in 2015 and the campaign to crush the jihadist forces opposed to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The United States and Israel denounced Iran’s role in both operations but could not prevent Iran from claiming victory.

Soleimani had assumed a leading role in Iraqi politics in the past year. The anti-ISIS campaign relied on Iraqi militias, which the Iranians supported with money, weapons, and training. After ISIS was defeated, these militias maintained a prominent role in Iraq that many resented, leading to demonstrations and rioting. Soleimani was seeking to stabilize the government and channel the protests against the United States when he was killed.

In the same period, Israel pursued its program of targeted assassination. In an effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, Mossad assassinated at least five Iranian nuclear scientists, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman. Yossi Melman, another Israeli journalist, says that Mossad has assassinated 60-70 enemies outside of its borders since its founding in 1947, though none as prominent as Soleimani.

Israel also began striking at the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq last year. The United States did the same on December 29, killing 19 fighters and prompting anti-American demonstrations as big as the anti-Iranian demonstrations of a month ago.

Now the killing of Soleimani promises more unrest, if not open war. The idea that it will deter Iranian attacks may come to rank with George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” in the annals of American folly.

“This doesn’t mean war,” wrote former Defense Department official Andrew Exum, “it will not lead to war, and it doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war.”

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported two years ago that Washington had given Israel the green light to assassinate Soleimani, as Haaretz recounted:

“Al-Jarida, which in recent years… [has] broken exclusive stories from Israel, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that ‘there is an American-Israeli agreement’ that Soleimani is a ‘threat to the two countries’ interests in the region.’ It is generally assumed in the Arab world that the paper is used as an Israeli platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East.”

Trump has now fulfilled the wishes of Mossad. After proclaiming his intention to end America’s “stupid endless wars,” the president has effectively declared war on the largest country in the region in solidarity with Israel, the most unpopular country in the Middle East.

This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.