Admission: GD Witchunt to Prop-up Collapsing 4th Reich Coalition in Athens....

New Democracy Samaras Spokesperson Balltakos admitted in not too many words that the witchunt against Golden Dawn was set up whilst Samaras was in the States in order to weaken their electoral polling strength and make Samaras seem stronger than he is in relation to Syriza. Baltakos is famous for recently stating 'I was born an anti-communist and I will die one' also with close relationships with the Greek security services EYP

Which begs the question if the frame up of Golden Dawn MP's was staged who staged the murder of Pavlos Fissas? And the subsequent murder of two Golden Dawn members?

The fake left in its 'neo-fascist anti-fascist' phase wont have a second word said about GD. They are Nazis like Samaras says they are. They prop up the theory of the 'two extremes'. Pivotal to this are bankrupt forces that have emerged from PASOK and have become the most vociferous cheerleaders of this theory... fighting fascism in the form of KEERFA. PASOKites for a whole lifetime they have found a second calling supporting the EU's expansionist agenda of global open borders justifying unlimited and uncontrolled mass immigration to crush all working classes throughout Europe.

They assume that Greeks will both vote for a Xmas slaughter (eg. in supporting Troika electoral candidates) and at the same time will support their country being overrun by hordes of people the world over they have labelled ...migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and any other epithet one can create to justify this process trampling on the territorial integrity and independence of a small country which in the imperialist phase of decline of capitalism had no colonies and was always a neo-colony of big imperial powers.

Having locked up a series of elected GD MP's on trumped up charges and reduced the overall majority required to push through Troika cuts with the agreement of the Left in this process their overall majority is paper thin down to 2 MP's. A collapsing govt whose overall appearance is of an evacuation from the sinking ship of the Titanic and soon will be revealed to represent an overwhelming minority if it goes to the polls in May for Mayoral and Euroelection purposes. Many voices are being heard that they need to hold Triple Elections for  if the govts stark nudity in electoral support is revealed it cannot last long, taking into account that its coalition partner PASOK isn't standing under its own name for the first time since 1974 and it is disintegrating rapidly with open slagging matches between the leader of the party Venizelos and Kaklamanis and Papandreou where Kaklamanis was referred to as an 'old poofta' and Papandreou 'as mad' (he didn't vote for the a new round of bank restructuring)

The latter day neo-colonialists of the EU's Empire, the Troika quislings who run Greece couldn't do it without the help and support of the fake left. Its only been days when Dragasakis in Syriza said the economic crisis is due to Greeks fault and they have to support measures to solve this ie pay the banksters exhorbitant interest rates. Whilst Syriza pays lip service to the ideas of socialism in reality they are a wing of the EU bourgeoisie who want open borders and an 'end to austerity' ie a return to capitalism before the 2007 crash. In other words the golden age of Euro debt financing the Olympic games bonanza and the period of the deindustrialisation and de-agriculturialisation of Greece, ie the period that set in tablets of stone the current bankruptcy, which has led to an economic and social collapse of unprecedented proportions.

The scenes inside the Parliamentary brothel where the son of the MP Baltakos was allowed free reign in Parliament to start a punch up inside Parliamentary corridors because his father was forced to resign shows what a circus this institution is which runs on a bonus of 50 unelected MPs and over 20 Executive Decrees. Instead of being arrested and locked up he was taken out of Parliament under police escort.

Barozo stated in January that Greece should have triple elections in May....

5th April 2014
Kasidiaris GD MP has stated they have other interviews with Syriza MPs who stated the same as the ND press spokesperson regarding GD....

6th April 2014
According to the Syriza MP Panagoulis in an interview today in PARON GR there is another angle to these developments. He is the man Kasidiaris alleged he spoke to. ND was in negotiation with GD to get them to not stand in certain Mayoral areas of Greece and split the right-wing vote thus allowing Syriza to come in first.

The Real Causes of the Catastrophic Crisis in Greece and the “Left”

1. The integration of Greece into the EU is the real cause of its catastrophic crisis

The almost complete destruction of the lower classes in Greece is not due to the causes usually attributed to it by the “Left”.[1] In fact, contrary to the misleading “explanations” provided by this Left and the Right alike, the actual cause is the full integration of the Greek economy into neoliberal globalization, through its accession into the EU. This has meant the complete transformation of Greece into an economic and political protectorate of the Transnational Elite.[2]

The catalyst for this crisis was Greece’s unofficial default, which, however, was merely the consequence of the destruction of its production structure, as a result of the opening, and liberalization of markets imposed the EU, following Greece’s entry in 1981. It is therefore no wonder that both the Left (apart from the Communist Left) and the Right––in fact, the entire Greek establishment––are fully united in not challenging the main cause of the present economic destruction: Greece’s membership in the EU.

In other words, contrary to the deceptive pre-election promises of SYRIZA, (which is an organic part of the Euro-left that has just chosen its leader, A. Tsipras, as its candidate for president of the EU Commission), there is no way that an EU/EMU Member State could refuse to apply the policies imposed by neoliberal globalization, as borne out by History with Mitterrand, Lafontaine, Hollande, et. al.  It is equally disorienting to state, as SYRIZA does, that, if elected to power, it would revert the catastrophic legislation imposed by the well known ‘Troika’ (representing the IMF, the EU and the ECB) in the past three years or so.

The above deceptive promises are based on the myth that neoliberalism is some kind of a mistaken ideology or a doctrine[3] upheld by “bad” politicians such as Thatcher, Merkel, Blair, etc. However, neoliberal globalization is, in fact, a systemic phenomenon implying, also, that the EU members’ economic growth does not rely anymore mainly on the domestic market but on the international market (within the EU and without) and that it is the Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) that control world production and trade, and–– through the Transnational Elite[4]––the international political, military and cultural institutions.  

So, only if the EU governments were taken over by the Euro-Left and they then forced the TNCs based in EU to operate solely within the EU area––imposing in the process strict social controls on the movement of capital and commodities from the other economic blocks (i.e. those of the Far East and America)––only then could the European economy be indifferent to its own level of competitiveness and live in the Euro-Left’s nirvana, happily ever after. In fact, however, EU is moving in exactly the opposite direction of further integration within the New World Order (NWO) defined by neoliberal globalization! This is clearly shown by the current negotiations between EU and US for a Transatlantic Free Trade Area.

2. Capitalist globalization can only be neoliberal

The Euro-elites simply cannot afford to lose more of their competitiveness. In fact, the real reason for the creation of EU and later of the Eurozone had nothing to do with the ideals of freedom, democracy, human values and the rest of its ideology, as EU’s history has clearly shown. It was the growing gap in competitiveness (in terms of EU’s share of world exports) during the 1980s, which led the Euro-elites to speed up the integration procedures, which were mostly dormant up to then. The EU economic failure was clearly due to the fact that the competitiveness of its commodities was increasing at much slower rates than those of is competitors, particularly in the low cost countries of the Far East.[5] As supporters of the EU and its integration were claiming at the time, only a market of continental dimensions could provide the security and the economies of scale that were necessary for the survival of the European capital in the hyper-competitive global market that was just emerging at the time.

However, despite the high degree of integration achieved by the ‘Single European Act’ in the 1990s, and even despite the creation of the Eurozone, its decline in competiveness continued. Thus, whereas the share of Euro-exports to world exports was 35.8% in 1990, ten years later, it has fallen to 29.7% and by 2010 it has fallen further to 26.3%![6] In other words, within two decades, the Eurozone countries have lost more than a quarter of their competitiveness, measured in terms of their share in world exports. Although the Euro-elites are well aware of the fact that a significant part of their ‘loss’ of exports is in fact due to their de-industrialization­­––because of the move of industrial capital by the TNCs (most of them based in the metropolitan countries including the Eurozone ones) towards the low-cost paradises of China, India and the rest–– this is obviously no consolation to their own workers (and electorates), which benefit very little (if at all!) by globalization!

The present EU policies therefore, are not the result of a conspiracy or a satanic plot of the elites to exploit further the European workers but simply of the fact that the opening and liberalization of markets required by globalization, so that TNCs could expand their activities further, inevitably led to the present neoliberal policies implemented by every country fully integrated into the New World Order. To put it simply, globalization in a capitalist world can only be neoliberal and the rest is mythology adopted by today’s bankrupt world “Left”––apart from the genuine (but diminishing) anti-systemic Left.

3. Competitiveness is the rule

If, therefore, we accept the premise that the Euro-elites have no other option but to improve their competitiveness within the globalized economy, the next question is how competitiveness can be improved. There are two main ways in which a country’s competitiveness could improve: either by changing relative prices, i.e. squeezing the prices of locally produced commodities with respect to those produced abroad by squeezing wages and salaries, or by improving productivity of locally produced commodities, which may lead to lower cost of production without reducing real wages and salaries or to better quality products, etc.

Changing relative prices in the former way is the easy solution, as it could be implemented, almost at a stroke, in case a country controls its own currency and Greece itself has repeatedly resorted to devaluation policies in the post-war period to improve, temporarily, its competitiveness. In case however a country does not control its currency, as is the case of Greece in the Eurozone, the only other option, given its historically low level of labor productivity because of the lack of investment in research and development, is the presently implemented policy of squeezing wages and salaries in the hope that the cost of production will fall accordingly. In fact, the level of Greek productivity of labor, for instance has always been historically much lower than that of the Eurozone (in 2006 it was just 77% of the average Eurozone one[7]), something which is not that much peculiar if we take into account the fact that the proportion of productive investments to the GNP is much higher in the European ‘North’ than in the ‘South’ in general and Greece in particular.

So, if we start with the premise that the uneven levels of competitiveness and productivity are unavoidable in an economic union like the EU, which consists of countries at highly different levels of development (as they have been historically formed within a very uneven development process like the capitalist one), then we may easily understand the causes of the crisis in countries like Greece. The fact, therefore, that a Eurozone country like Greece, facing a problem of low competitiveness, cannot devalue its currency (i.e. change its relative prices without the need for suppressing domestic wages and incomes) is not the cause of the crisis. This may be the cause of a similar competitiveness crisis of an advanced capitalist country like Germany but not of a country like Greece where low competitiveness is a development problem.

Particularly so, when the Greek entry to the EU and later to the Eurozone had itself significantly exacerbated the development problem by effectively dismantling the productive structure of the country, as its infant industry and agriculture were not capable to compete with the imported commodities, following the opening and liberalization of markets imposed by the Single Market. Under these conditions, even a Greek exit from the Euro and a devaluation of the drachma that will be re-introduced in its aftermath, could only have temporary effects on Greek competitiveness, unless mass investment in its productive structure takes place at the same time, which is far from guaranteed in an internationalized market economy.

4. The EU as a mechanism to transfer surplus from its “South” to its “North”

In other words, competitiveness at the core Euro countries, which are characterized by higher levels of labor productivity than in the South, mainly depends on keeping wages and prices under control, so that German commodities continue to be competitive (because of their higher quality and so on) compared to similar commodities produced in East Asia and beyond. On the other hand, compettiveness in the European periphery, which consist of countries with lower levels of labor productivity, like Greece, mainly depends on improving productivity through new investment on R&D.  Therefore, the competitiveness problem in the South is mainly a development  problem and refers to the need of creating a strong productive base, which will not be formed within the process of uneven capitalist development (as today), but within a process of social control of the economy to create a self-reliant economy.

Yet, despite the fundamental difference concerning the causes of low competitiveness between the “North” and the “South” of the EU, in the framework of the post-Maastricht Europe, a common policy was adopted for all member countries––a policy that was determined by the needs and the interests of the North. Thus, the Single Market, did not mean the unification of peoples, as the EU propaganda presented it, not even the unification of states, but simply the unification of free markets. ‘Free markets’, however mean not only open markets (i.e. the unhibited movement of commodities, capital and laboutr), but also flexible markets (i.e. the elimination of any obstacle  in the free formation of prices and wages, as well the restriction of state role in the control of economic activity, which implies the drastic restriction of the element of ‘national economy’.

This was the essence of the neoliberal globalization characterizing the new institutional framework of the EU, i.e. that the state control of the domestic market of each member state (which was drastically restricted within the Single Market of 1992) was not replaced  by a corresponding EU control of it, apart from some (mostly nuissance) regulations on uniformity, etc. In other words, the new institutions aimed at the maximization of the freedom of organized capital,, whose concentration was facilitated in any way possible, and the minimization of the  freedom of  organized labor, whose co-ordination was restricted in any way possible and mainly through the unemployment threat.

 If Germany is indeed the country which was on the receiving end of the greatest benefits from joining EU and the Eurozone, whereas the countries of the European South received the least benefits out of it, this was far from accidental or due to the bad designing of the Eurozone as, post-Keynesians and other reformists (including the Euro-Left!) argue. When the Eurozone was institutionalized at the beginning of the new millennium Germany already enjoyed relatively high levels of labor productivity and competitiveness and the new currency essentially has ‘frozen’ the relative deviations between the advanced North of the Eurozone and the much less advanced South (parts of which were in fact underdeveloped).

Then, the Single Market itself, under conditions of a common currency, brought about a relative equalization of commodity prices and a certain increase in wages in the South, as workers were struggling to maintain the real value of wages and at the same time to narrow the gap in wages with Northern workers. On the other hand, German employers were in a much better position to suppress wage rises because of the difference in labor productivity they enjoyed due to advanced technology and investment in R&D, but also due to better relative prices. As Wolfgang Münchauput it, “Germany entered the Eurozone at an uncompetitive exchange rate and embarked on a long period of wage moderation.

Macroeconomists would say Germany benefited from a real devaluation against other members”.[8] If we add to this, that the countries in the South no longer had the power to devalue their currencies, whereas Germany did not have any need to devalue its currency as long as it could keep wage rises in pace with labor productivity increases, then we can understand why (and how) the Eurozone essentially functions as an economic mechanism to transfer economic surplus from the countries of the European South to those in the North and particularly Germany.

5. The disorienting role of the “Left”

The obvious conclusion is that it is impossible to take any radical measures to exit from the current economic (and not only!) disaster, without a unilateral exit from the EU along with a cancelation of the debt (for which the people were never asked anyway), as well as the discarding of all legislation imposed by the Troika and the adoption at the same time of the necessary geostrategic changes. Only this way, Greece could retrieve the minimum required economic and national sovereignty for a strategy for economic self-reliance, which is necessary for the permanent exit from the crisis, through building a new productive structure to meet its needs.

This means that the views that we could implement another policy even within the Eurozone, as SYRIZA suggests, or that it would suffice to exit from the Euro (without the parallel direct and unilateral exit from the EU) to implement a radically different economic strategy (as other Left organizations suggest), are completely misleading. This is because, as I tried to show above, the cause of the present economic catastrophe in Greece is neither the austerity policies of the Troika, as the supporters of the former view claim, nor the poor design (and implementation) of the Euro that led us to deficits and massive debt, as argued by the supporters of the latter view.[9]

Thus, supporters of the former view (Laskos and Tsakalotos), in fact, reproduce the myths of an obsolete internationalism according to which the struggle of the European proletariat within the EU will reverse the austerity policies, despite the fact that, after almost five years of economic crushing of the popular strata, there has not been even a single (“official” or unofficial) European strike against these policies! On the other hand, the supporters of the latter view (Flassbeck and Lapavitsas), acting as the “Plan B” of the Euro-elite––in case it is forced to expel (temporarily or permanently) Greece from the Eurozone––argue for a Greek exit from the Euro, but not from the EU. However, in both cases, the failure of the proposed policies can be taken for granted, although the consequences will not be identical.

 Thus, in the first scenario of a SYRIZA-based government (which looks likely following the Euro elections that could well function as a catalyst for general elections) it is a matter of time for its failure to become evident, if it insists on its pro-EU and pro-Euro policy. Despite its present rhetoric, it would simply have to follow the same economic policies as the present government, perhaps with a minor relaxation of austerity policies (assuming that the Euro-elites will find a way to cancel part of the Debt to make the rest of it payable). As markets will remain open and liberalized under a Syriza government (the party never challenged this fundamental tenet of neoliberal globalization), labor markets will also continue to be flexible. However, open and liberalized markets mean:

• wages and salaries will be kept at around their present minimum levels, or, at least, these levels will be the basis for any future increases strictly linked to productivity rises;
• Public Health and Education will never recover from their present dismantling, as the government will have to continue implementing the present Eurozone strict fiscal policies to keep budget deficits under strict controls;
• the selling out of the social wealth of Greece, following privatizations of essential services like electricity, water, transport, ports and airports, communications (and now even Greek islands!) will not be reversed, making the implementation of any effective social policy to protect the victims of globalization impossible;
• Unemployment may marginally fall from the present almost 30% of the working population (and 60% of young people) only to the extent that foreign investors will be attracted by the present extremely low wages/salaries and the ‘political stability’ that SYRIZA might secure. However, given the strong competition on this front by other low-wage countries in the Balkans and beyond (East Asia), unemployment is bound to be stabilized at very high levels for any foreseeable future, with young Greeks having either to work in Greece’s “heavy industry” (as the establishment calls tourism) or emigrate.

Clearly, this Latin-Americanization (or Balkanization) of the Greek economy will become permanent under SYRIZA’s pro-EU policy, and in the elections to follow a (likely brief) period of SYRIZA in power, the party will probably have the fate of the social democratic party PASOK, which has effectively been demolished. In fact, this would simply be the belated end of the Euro-Left in Greece, following the similar end of this kind of “Left” in the rest of Europe, in the era of globalization. Yet, the International “Left” is unable to see all this and would be ready to celebrate the possible victory of SYRIZA in the next elections,[10] whereas Leo Panitch, is so enthusiastic about the new kind of ‘progressive’ reform SYRIZA represents that he became almost lyrical when reading that Tsipras “spoke in terms of the ‘historic opportunity’ that now exists for a left alternative to the current capitalist ‘European model’.[11] This, at the very moment when the same Tsipras is also indirectly praised by the New York Times, the leading organ of the Transnational Elite, presumably as a ‘serious’ Left politician worthy of its trust, compared to the ‘loony left’ they so despise:

Mr. Tsipras…has backed away from past rhetoric about abandoning the euro and said he does not want Greece to drop out of the 18-country zone that uses the currency. But he does want a fundamental reworking of the terms of Greece’s bailout funds, worth 240 billion euros, or about $328 billion.“Our intention is to change the framework, not smash the euro”, he said.[12]

On the other hand, in the case of the second scenario, i.e. of a Left government that decides a Greek exit from the Euro (but stays in the EU), the image would be much more blurred, as the reintroduction and significant devaluation of the reintroduced drachma would initially bring in some positive results. But, these would be completely temporary, unless they were accompanied by a parallel radical restructuring of the productive structure, based on social decisions and not left to the market forces, as both scenarios implicitly or explicitly assume. And this brings us back to the need for a strategy of self-reliance that presupposes a Greek exit from both the Euro and the EU.

The main reason why both approaches are not only wrong, but also completely misleading, is that they are not based on the fact that the current devastating crisis is due to structural reasons having everything to do with the uneven capitalist development process, which is further exacerbated in the era of neoliberal globalization and the consequent policies implemented by the EU, and very little to do with the broader financial crisis[13], austerity policies, or the debt itself and the ways to deal with it .

Thus, as far as austerity policies are concerned, it is obvious that they are a consequence and not the cause of the devastating crisis. The solution, therefore, to the “problem” is not just the redistribution of income at the expense of profits and in favor of wages, as (supposedly is the conclusion drawn by a “Marxist” kind of analysis), as this inequality is nothing new but an inherent characteristic of the capitalist system. Unsurprisingly, despite growing world inequality during the era of neoliberal globalization, the system has enjoyed a sustained period of expansion throughout this period, with world GDP rising at an average 2.9% in the 1990s and 3.2% in the period up to the beginning of the latest financial crisis (2000-08)[14]. Furthermore, the only case that a systematic redistribution of income against the rich took place in a capitalist system was when the tax burden was shifted to the rich during the social democratic period (approx. 1945-1975). However, this kind of redistribution is simply not feasible anymore in the NWO of Neoliberal Globalization, since Trans-national Corporations can easily move to tax havens like Ireland, India, etc. leaving massive unemployment and poverty behind them.

Yet, neither the deficits and the consequent debts were created by reckless fiscal policies nor, as more sophisticated variations on the same theme maintain, because of the fact that the German elite were suppressing wage rises at a time when the other elites in the Eurozone, and particularly the elites in the Euro periphery, were doing the exact opposite. This policy, according to the same argument had created an artificial competitive advantage and consequent Balance of Payments (BP) surpluses in Germany and, vice versa in the European South, i.e. low competitiveness and BP deficits. This, in turn, had led to excessive borrowing by the peripheral countries, (made easy by the fact that it was backed up by a strong currency, the Euro) up to the moment that the fiscal “bubble” burst, when the consequent shortage of liquidity made lending to these countries much tighter, leading to the well known debt crises in countries like Greece. Not surprisingly, the Euro-elite, has just decided to adopt an even tighter economic control of the Euro-members, through the Banking Union.[15]

6. Concluding remarks

The crucial, therefore, issue arising is the following one: can a small Euro-peripheral country like Greece afford not to implement the policies of neoliberal globalization today? Or, should, (as the present “Left” suggests), the millions of unemployed and poor wait for a radical change in the balance of forces in the EU and the Eurozone, so that a new pan-European Left government proceeds with the ‘progressive’ reforms suggested by its supporters? Alternatively, should they better wait for a new socialist revolution in order to proceed with genuine socialist policies, as suggested by the dwindling anti-capitalist Left? My sympathies would of course be (as have always been) for an anti-systemic Left, as it is the only one which struggles against its full integration into the system and the NWO. Yet, it is obvious to me that, today,  this Left is no less millenarian than the integrated into the system “Left”, and as such is equally useless to the victims of globalization, who every day lose even more their hope for any better future, many of them increasingly resorting to suicide.  

Under these conditions, it is clear to me that only if a country broke away from the internationalized market economy and pursued a policy of self-reliance, it could retrieve the necessary degree of economic and therefore national sovereignty, so that it is the people who will be determining the economic process, i.e. which economic and social needs are met and how, instead of leaving this life-and-death issue to ‘market forces’ and the Social Darwinism they inevitably imply. This, for a country like Greece would imply the need for the creation ‘from below’ of a Popular Front for Social and National Liberation[16] (instead of relying on the professional politicians of the “Left” or of the Right), which will formulate a program for the radical changes needed to achieve the short term aim of restoring full social control on all markets, unilaterally cancelling the Debt and all related legislation imposed by the Troika, as well as a unilateral exit from the EU. Although socialization of the banking system and of the de-nationalized industries, particularly those covering basic needs (energy, water, transport, communication, etc.) will be necessary even at this early stage, yet, the medium-term aim will have to be economic self-reliance, so that the basic needs of all citizens are met through the rebuilding of the economic structure according to social needs rather than according to market demand. On the other hand, the issue of the systemic change, i.e. whether Greece would be in the future a state-socialist society, an Inclusive Democracy,[17] or a radical kind of social democracy, will be determined by the people themselves at a later stage once the present crucial problems concerning their survival have been sorted out..

In fact, Greece will not be alone in such a struggle against the NWO and neoliberal globalization. Not only the peoples in other countries in the European periphery and beyond would follow its example when they realize  that there is a way out of the present catastrophe, HERE and NOW, but also the  peoples who already fight against neoliberal globalization would also join the common struggle against the New World Order of neoliberal globalization. In fact, this struggle is already intensifying from Latin America (Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, et. al.) up to the Eurasian peoples of the ex-USSR, and the peoples in the Arab countries (I do not of course mean the pseudo-revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt or the engineered insurrections in Libya and Syria),[18] who shed their blood everyday in the struggle for their national and social liberation.

Takis Fotopoulos is a political philosopher, editor of Society & Nature/Democracy and Nature/The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. He has also been a columnist for the Athens Daily Eleftherotypia since 1990. He is also the author of numerous books in Greek on development; the Gulf War; the neo-liberal consensus; the New World Order; the drug culture; the New Order in the Balkans; the new irrationalism; globalization and the Left; the war against “terrorism”; His latest book in Greek is Greece as a protectorate of the transnational elite: The need for an immediate exit from the EU and for a self-reliant economy (Athens: Gordios, November 2010). He is also the author of over 1,000 articles in British, American and Greek theoretical journals, magazines and newspapers, several of which have been translated into over twenty languages. His latest book is :Subjugating the Middle East. Integration into the New World Order (Progressive Press, 2014) 

Notes 

[1] See e.g. the recent book by two members of the SYRIZA  leadership, ( one of them a member of Parliament representing the party), Christos Laskos and Euclid Tsakalotos, Crucible of Resistance: Greece, the Eurozone and the World Economic Crisis, (Pluto Press, Sept. 2013).

[2] Takis Fotopoulos, “Greece: The implosion of the systemic crisis”, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter 2010); see, also, Greece as a protectorate of the transnational elite,(Athens: Gordios, November 2010),http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/fotopoulos/greek/grbooks_gordios_EE_2010/grbooks_gordios_EE_2010.htm
 [3] see e.g. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine:The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, (London: Penguin, 2008).

[4] see for the meaning and significance of the Transnational Elite in administering the NWO, Takis Fotopoulos, Subjugating the Middle East: Integration into the New World Order – Vol. 1: Pseudo-Democratization, (Progressive Press, 2014), Part I.
 [5] Thus, whereas the EU share of world exports was stagnant between 1979 and 1989 , the US share increased by 3.5% and the Far Eastern share increased by a massive 48% ,(World Bank, World Deνelopment Report 1991, Table 14).

[6] World Bank, World Development Indicators 2002, (Table 4.5) & World Development Indicators 2012, (Table 4.4).
 [7] World Bank, World Development Indicators 2008, Table 2.4.

[8]Wolfgang Münchau, “Germany’s rebound is no cause for cheer”, Financial Times, 29/8/2010.

[9]Heiner Flassbeck and Costas Lapavitsas, Left-Wing Strategies to Solve the Euro Crisis, (Rosa Luxemburg Foundation:: Berlin, May 2013, http://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Studien/kurzfassung_flassbeck_en.pdf  
and full version in “The systemic crisis of the euro – true causes and effective therapies”, http://www.rosalux.de/publication/39478.
 [10] See e.g. Andreas Bieler, “Crucible of Resistance: Class Struggle Over Ways Out of the Crisis”, Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 926 January 10, 2014; Reproduced also in Global Research.

[11]Leo Panitch, “Europe’s left has seen how capitalism can bite back»” , The Guardian, 13/1/2014.
 [12]Andrew Higgins, “Opposition Dissent Tempers Greek Attempts at Optimism”,

The New York Times, 12/1/2014.

[13] Takis Fotopoulos, “The myths about the economic crisis, the reformist Left and economic democracy”, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 4, No. 4, (October 2008), http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol4/vol4_no4_takis_economic_crisis.htm

[14] World Bank, World Development Indicators 2010, Table 4.1.
 [15] ‘Big step’ reached in rescue plan for eurozone banks, BBC News, 12/12/2013 ; See, also, Maria Snytkova, “European countries lose bank sovereignty”, English Pravda, 2012/2013 http://english.pravda.ru/world/europe/20-12-2013/126445-bank_sovereignty-0/

[16]see Takis Fotopoulos, “Neoliberal Globalization and the need for popular fronts for national and social liberation”, The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, Vol. 9, No. 1/2 (2013), (under publication).
 [17]Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, (London/NY: Cassell /Continuum, 1997/1998).

(18) SUBJUGATING THE MIDDLE EAST:Integration into the New World Order (Progressive Press, 2014) Vol 1: Integration through pseudo-democratization; vol 2: Integration through engineered armed insurrections

Greece: The EU’s Neo-liberal Poster Boy

Economic Freefall

From a budget deficit at 120% of GDP in 2010 we are now hovering around 180% nearly four years into the worst crisis in living memory where GDP has fallen cumulatively by 25%, averaging 5% fall annually (whereas during the civil war it fell 12%!).

Unemployment has broken all EU records, hovering officially at 28% overall and 65% for the under 25year olds. Every year the claim is made that growth is returning, but the only growth on the horizon is unemployment (1.5m), soup kitchens, suicides (plus 5k) and homelessness.

Alleging they have created a budget surplus (by adding QE to the budget), the Government is being touted as the poster boy of the EU, but this has been done by reducing Greeks to penury. All new wages (including doctors) are at E580; the pension age has shot up to 67, with 40 year contributions. The latter essentially means the end of pensions for there is no work available for even a discontinuous 40 year period, though there is ‘lots’ of part time work. In other words, a decade after the arrival of the Euro, hourly wages are now at E2.5 (£2).

The EU’s ‘Free Movement’ destroyed the Greek labour movement as Greece borders the ex-‘communist’ states of the Balkans. The oversupply of labour in a de-industrialising Greece led to a lowering of wages and the displacement of Greeks from the labour market.  It is well known that Greece has large numbers of illegal immigrants who work in a cash economy and send euros abroad. Figures from the Bank of Greece show that billions of Euros went to Albania, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Of course figures on repatriation of funds by illegals is a kind of surrogate indicating the extent of the immigration as well as a scourge for the health of the Greek economy and Greek working people. In 2004 there were 4.5m active workers now there are 2m.

The cost of the Olympics and NATO’s agreement that Greece should match Turkey’s arms spending in the ratio of 7 to 10, essentially bankrupted the country. The added burden of 72 new property taxes and a collapse in property prices of between 30-80% has led to a 90% collapse in all new building work. This was the capitalist economic model of the last couple of decades and it appears to be in permanent decline.

Raw Materials: Gold, Gas & Oil: Bonanzas for Multinationals

The Greek gas distribution company Despa was sold to Americans not Russians, who offered a better deal, will not be functioning for years. A gold mine in Skouries, Thessaloniki, was sold for peanuts to a Canadian conglomerate by the ex-PASOK finance minister, Papakonstantinou, with no share (or even royalties) for the Government. Protestors have been imprisoned on trumped-up charges with demonstrations as large as 30k in Thessaloniki (Greece’s 2^nd city)

Health

The EU has done deals with Israeli pharmaceutical companies TEVA, via Germany, to import non-EU patented medicine for sale in Greece. The Greek pharmaceutical industry which employs over 20,000 people and supports over 30% of the domestic market will be shut down as a result. The model for this are the shipyards, airports and soon to be, railways and transport systems. The Samaras government is sacking contracted to the Greek NHS doctors by the hundreds (Finance Minister Georgiadis had a close escape in a meeting with them) and they have imposed E 25 charges to visit hospitals without taking into account the lack of medicines when one eventually manages to get into a hospital. The increase in mental health issues is such that, before the crisis, 1000 people yearly went to homes. Now it’s more than 3000, but most of the mental health institutions are on the verge of closure due to lack of funding.

ERT-Public Sector

The State broadcaster, ERT was shut down in just 24 hours despite the lie that they would be re-hired. It has ceased international broadcasting as a prelude to total cessation of public sector broadcasting. Victory of the state here became the green light for further mass sackings (school caretakers, municipal police etc.).

The EU’s rule means the imposition of externally determined budgetary constraints (25k sackings from the 700k strong public sector), making a public service media unviable. There is no other rule to require the existence of one so long as there is ‘pluralism’ i.e. more than one private sector provider of corporate ‘news’. This is directly linked to the Free Trade Agreement with the USA which seeks the abolition of the ‘cultural exception’ of national governments in cultural life so that Hollywood dominates above all else. This is directed most strongly at France, but would apply to all European nations. The contemporary capacity to wage this cultural assault is in total contrast to the circumstances of 1939 when Greece won an important ruling against a Belgian company for a railway contract when it defaulted alleging if a public service is threatened states have the right to default. (1)

The EU is funding propaganda equating ‘Nazism with Communism’ under ‘Europe for the Citizens’ programme for 2014-20 whereby each nation’s history is erased to create a ‘common European citizen’. Participants (i.e. media outlets and NGO’s) can claim up to Euro 100,000 for working towards this aim.

Massive strike wave

In the last twelve months strikes in the transport sector Metro, Seafarers and Secondary School Teachers, have been met with emergency strike bans in total conflict with all the agreements of the EU and ILO’s alleged ‘right to strike’. A strike by university administration staff facing sackings has been going on for 13 weeks with 3-4 of the main universities shut down for the last 3 months.

The conflict with the Troika and the collapsing Samaras government (which relies on 4 MPs to give it a majority) is now over continued mass sackings, repossessions of first homes and a land tax. As opposed to the rest of Europe, Greek home ownership was accrued primarily via work and not bank loans. So any new laws which aim to repossess properties on behalf of the parasitic banks will be met with fierce resistance, as has already been evidenced over electricity cut offs, imposed due to property taxes, which was eventually defeated on the streets. Thomson from the IMF said if you want a welfare policy buy tents.

The Troika, Agent of the ECB/IMF

None of the socio-economic indicators have improved over the four year programme and none of the declared aims have achieved anything more than a massive worsening of standards of life. The crisis has no end in sight despite all the official pronouncements and the contradictions building up in the foundations of the EZ are so large than when the debt crisis re-merges again(ECB’s money printing ceases) it will make the previous one feel like a walk down the park. Only by breaking up the EU-EZ leaving its budgetary controls can nations embark on a different course. The irony is that the majority ‘left’ forces in Greece want a Europe of the ‘peoples’ whilst the euro-sceptics want a Europe of ‘nations’ when what is at stake that there is no common Europe for the common man but only for the multinationals and the centrifugal forces pulling it apart raises hope that the sooner it dissolves the better.

(1)“In a scholarly study on the issue of force majeure in relation to the obligations of States, Mr. Youpis (Greek council) explained yesterday that a State is not required to pay its debts if, by paying, it would compromise its essential public services. The Belgian government would most likely agree with the principle thus stated.”

http://droit-public.ulb.ac.be/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Working-Paper-The-ERT-case-or-when-a-screen-gone-blank-reveals-the-plight-of-public-service-in-Europe-a-documentary-breviary-to-fuel-the-debate.pdf

VN Gelis

6th December 2013

 

An Eye Witness Report from a Dickensian Athens

A city centre which at night resembles parts of Detroit and daily life which resembles Victorian Britain with many beggars and a general feeling of a country in irreversible decline. Schoolchildren have been seen looking in dustbins for food and many people have died burning wood in makeshift stoves in apartments to keep warm.

Despite all the official pronouncements that the Troikas (EU-ECB-IMF) programme will herald growth decline has been on average 5% fall in GDP annually over the last five years figures not seen since the 12% annual fall during the civil war of the 1940’s and unemployment has skyrocketed to at least 2.5m (official amount 1.5m) roughly between 30-40% of the population.

The shock therapy which is killing the patient stone dead has led to massively reduced govt majority (4) and we are in a permanent govt crisis with confused orders from the centre. Land taxes and property taxes are destroying the social fabric of society splintering it apart until there is nothing left and new Orwellian measures of seizing bank accounts electronically on behalf of tax demands  are to be applied as the new year gift to Greek citizens due to the massive non-payment crisis of all the new taxes. Over E70billion has gone to pay parasitic banksters (under Troika tutelage) and the wage and pension cuts which range from 20% to 60% (eg. bus drivers) implies that govt spending is massively reduced. Schools and hospitals are being merged, many schools have no heating and over 25k public sector workers have been fired this year.

Wave upon wave of immigration continue to hit Greek shores and they have nowhere to go so inevitably there is a crime wave in poorer Athenian districts and the prisons are already full. The younger generation and those till their 40’s will never see a pension as without 40 year contributions one will not be able to get one and companies avoid full time work to pay less tax and insurance. The new norm are jobs at E2.5 an hour with shifts whenever the boss feels like it.

The organised forced of the fake left which now have a majority on the public sector union ADEDY organised a rally on Saturday and only around 200 people turned up. The leaders of the unions hide behind govt strike bans despite massive strike waves that broke out in both February and October of this year. Syriza as the main party of the opposition despite gaining 27% does not seek a fight for power and is relegated to asking for Germany’s surpluses as a way to solve the capitalist crisis ie the old bankrupt economic model.

If the current situation continues and so far it is the longest depression in a western economy the state will start to disintegrate. Whether a revolt occurs prior to disintegration or as a consequence of it is what is on everyone's mind. Time is running out for all concerned.

British & American Globalist Fake Leftists Against the Greek Nation

David Walters(Marxist Internet Archive): An American Provocateur Proponent of the NWO and One World Government

"Dear comrades, if we shall keep mum today, tomorrow the Jewish Marxists will ride on our backs... Vladimir Lenin" 

“The Greek people are anarchic and difficult to tame. For this reason we must strike deep into their cultural roots: Perhaps then we can force them to conform. I mean, of course, to strike at their language, their religion, their cultural and historical reserves, so that we can neutralize their ability to develop, to distinguish themselves, or to prevail; thereby removing them as an obstacle to our strategically vital plans in the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.”
(As reported in the popular Greek magazine, Oikonomikos Tachydromos on 14 Aug. l997, Henry Kissinger, while addressing a group of Washington, D.C. businessmen in Sept.1974)

"They condemn us that we want to abolish borders and dissolve the State. But the State we build today no longer exists as they dissolved it. Who therefore is a patriot? They or us? Capital doesn't have a country and it runs to find profit in whatever country it is able to. That is why it isn't concerned for the existence of borders and the state. But all we own are our hats and the small kerb in front of us, unlike capital that runs wherever it finds profit."
Aris Velouhiotis- Partisan Leader of Greece 1944

http://www.marxists.org/archive/velouchiotis/1945/x01/x01.htm
A section of the article that Walters refused to upload on MIA and only after consistent complaints do they appear.

Show me who your friends are….
On who runs MIA and their piece in the New York Times (House Organ of US Imperialism) plus the dubious role of a Brian Bagsen (an avowed anti-bolshevik in charge of the Russian section!!)
 “Historical Bias: I believe Marxism was a complete failure as a form of government. Hence, it follows that I  believe that Marxism has been a failure when in the form of a political party. Yet, despite these failures, it has an ever present connection to radical mass movements, which is an interesting paradox. I openly loathe Bolshevism and vanguardism, which I firmly believe leads to horribly unethical government where the ends justify the means. Needless to say, these beliefs often put me at odds with many in this organization, and eventually led to my depature.”
Brian Bagsens Biography

I wish we had MORE of him…
David Walters
http://tinyurl.com/q6bzuol

At the end of the 90’s David Walters flew to Greece like others before him, to use their skills in setting up some  new venture that which later became the Marxist Internet Archive. I was informed of him and asked to try and make contact. At the time of the NATO bombardment of Serbia egged on by British imperialism with mass protests in Greece (where nooses were set up for Tony Blair and the weekly satirical magazines ‘Pontiki’ had him in a gay pose with Clinton) this must have affected the American for over the next decade and a half he has engaged in an internet stalking relationship on behalf of American imperialism against myself. I came across him over the debates regarding Seattle where another American group (Spartacist League) condemned the protests and called them reactionary and nationalist as workers complained against Chinese imports and abstained from them.


Visit to the USA
Walters was involved in disrupting a visit to a now disbanded self-proclaimed Marxist Workers Group in Detroit over the fact that I reprinted what Engels wrote on homosexuality and the fact that the leader of this group said in late 1999 that there was no ‘immigration’ problem to Greece and there was no ‘open border policy of US-EU imperialism in place’. We arrived at Detroit international airport and waited and waited for them. They turned up to tell us that something had happened which they didn’t explain and after a day we left as we were provided with nowhere to sleep and left to fend for ourselves having to leave at 6am to get out of the city. On arriving at a McDonalds we were told to move away as we were the wrong colour and could end up dead before we could find a taxi.

9/11 Fake Terror and anti-Iranian venom
Over the course of a decade Walters has trumpeted vociferously the 9/11 put up job which launched the ‘war on terror’ and bankrupted the USA. He alleges that he has connections with a French group though no one ever has verified it and according to himself he is a loner.  I would classify him as an American deadbeat who lives in a Potemkin village world of make believe. In the same period the same friend who helped set up the Marxist Internet Archive noticed that a whole host of anti-communist stuff was appearing and some of the editors on the threads were avowed and self-declared anti-Bolsheviks and this was noted in a circular sent out by me to many US organisations as they refused to upload translations done by myself either from English to Greek or from Greek to English from Greece’s revolutionary historical past. They kept on citing various problems when it came to Greek translations from computer malfunctions to html codes etc. They also refused to upload material on the Greek civil war written by Greeks so we were forced to produce a book on it...

At the same time he kept on stating our views are marginal in Greece (five or so ex-organisations that make up the  collective Patriotic Left) that Greece is a sub-imperialist country and they can receive an unlimited number of illegal immigrants as the EU has deemed this necessary via the Dublin 2 agreement, that no one has published any study on Marxism and Immigration (D Dousias in 2009 who presided over the only scientific analysis of the Greek Roma and who has been included in my latest work on Immigration http://imfoccupationgreece.blogspot.com/) and he appears to support all Americans who voice the opinion that Greeks as a nation should be overrun erased etc and become like the USA (which is the starting point of all conversations ie how wonderful is the ‘multicultural’ ghetto of the USA and its export should be a sine non qua for the labour movement everywhere and anywhere). John Reinman on the self-styled ‘socialist’ discussion group voiced the same opinion from Oakland California that it has been overrun by all and sundry and that this is essentially wonderful. So the Yank experience becomes the world experience and if one doesn’t subscribe to that schema one is labelled ...racist.  This coming from a country that called Vietnamese ‘gooks’, Arabs ‘sand niggers’ and kept blacks segregated up till 1970 and just as they stopped segregation they got them all to join the prison industrial complex having a higher incarceration rate than anywhere else on earth etc. Its as if we now all live in the international departure of an airport lounge and we shake hands with everyone we meet say ‘gia sou’ and this is now called ‘international socialism’ not globalism of the most rotten kind. Whoever uses Oakland California as a starting point in anything needs their head examined. That’s where we don’t want to end up.

Walters then goes on to berate a member of the Patriotic Left for being in Tehran when the main topic was 9/11 and how WW2 was used to justify the creation of the state of Israel. These views (bar the Anglo-American fake left) are widespread in France and Greece as an ex-central committee member of the French CP Garaudy wrote on the state of Israel a long time ago. Walters hides behind the collaborationist French govts past history to support left Zionism and label people ‘anti-semitic’ for they dare breach the topic of the US airbase in the Middle East. An old tired trick that no longer holds water but works well in US academia and the far left globalist circuits that label people either ‘conspiracy theorists’ ‘holocaust deniers’ ad nauseum. Having lost uncles in Hitler’s concentration camps it is a bit of a cheek to argue that I believe there were no concentration-extermination camps. Why don’t we just say what Walters really means. There was only one Holocaust, the jewish one and it trumps all others and anyone questioning the depth and severity of it must deny it existed for after all how can we collect money to prop up the Zionist entity if we haven’t got a story to sell?

Degeneration of the US ‘far left’...
 In years of old before they became corrupted an American group wrote this
    [O]n a sufficiently large scale, immigration flows could wipe out the national identity of recipient countries.... If, for example, therewere unlimited immigration into Northern Europe, the population influxfrom the Mediterranean basin would tend to dissolve the national identity of small countries like Holland and Belgium. More generally, unlimited immigration as a principle is incompatible with the right ofnational self-determination; to call for it is tantamount to advocating the abolition of national states under capitalism.”
Workers Vanguard's original article on the subject (January 18,
1974):

Now they send me articles castigating the ‘nationalism’ of the Greek labour movement in other words accept your lot don’t complain and don’t protest. Between an armed revolution and global revolution there are a multitude of ways the issue of illegal immigration could be wrested from the fake rightists.

Most of the American ‘far left’ groups degenerated in the 70’s into self appreciation societies which became infatuated with the individual self and adopted the policies of lifestyles ( paedophilia, gay, lesbian now trans) just like the Ottoman Empire did in 1864 before its ignominious collapse and it is an irony of history that then Anglo-French imperialism considered them ‘backward’ for legalizing homosexuality (before the Russian Revolution) and coined a phrase in French (shagging like a Greek!) and now British imperialism is on a mission via Camerons foreign office to ‘educate’ the backward members of the Commonwealth and actively promote homosexual lifestyles (majority of countries which have homosexuality banned on their statute books are from the ex-Commonwealth countries)

The arrival and perpetual legalization of immigrants in the USA (11million under Obama) became the second most adopted slogan from the ‘far left’ groups there. Anyone raising any objections was also labelled reactionary and backward as if the destruction of historic nations (which have a history far greater than the bastard offspring of British Imperialism) is a principle that anyone other than  real fascists can espouse in this day and age whereby unelected central banksters and their political offshoots dictate who lives and who dies.

We had a decade of being told we live in Fortress Europe and then we realise this was just the propaganda trick used by the globalists for a ‘fortress’ which has the front gate open wide ain’t a fortress.

There were groups of ex-trotskyists (Vitsoris group) who during the course of the last direct imperialist occupation of Greece who claimed opposing the 3rd Reich was futile, Germany is unifying Europe, it is bringing the working class into closer unity forgetting that the abolition of nations is a decision nations should be allowed to take by themselves not imposed from above with the presence of army officers or from turning national tax offices into the vehicle of imposing bankster rules as they have done in Greece and have imposed in Cyprus (via the bailin).

Agios Panteleomonas 2008 Immigration Question goes National
When local residents started to complain and protest about the unchecked arrival and squatting of hundreds of illegal immigrants who used the square to live, sell drugs, go to the toilet harangue the local Greek girls and old women by relieving them of their gold jewellery (mostly a Christian cross) one should have said these Greeks are racist they aren’t open to the world despite since the 70’s having the 4th most tourists in the EU.

When predominantly women set up committees and egged on men to do something about the fact they couldn’t go about their daily business, men were forced into action. The corporate media that represents the interests of globalism started a vociferous campaign against the residents labelling them ‘racists. On the back of this campaign the ‘leftists’ who work in tandem with the corporate media started to march and march and march against the local residents. Riot police turned up and threw tear gas into the main church. The residents stood firm beyond all the odds. Walters labelled all these residents ...nazis.

Lets now look at Walters line on immigration, its due to the root causes of imperialisms decay, the collapse of societies due to war and population movements across borders. If I am not mistaken the war in Vietnam started in 1945 and lasted till 1975 a full thirty years. The civil war in Yugoslavia and the imperialist intervention lasted another decade in the 1990’s. The amount of Vietnamese or Serbs that arrived in Greece can be numbered in the palm of one hand. Now why is that? All immigration according to Walters is ‘progressive’ ‘anti-imperialist’ for we are dealing with ‘immigrant rights’ UN conventions and as Felicity Lawrence said ‘migration theory’. Iraqui and Afghani collaborators of Western imperialism never crossed the borders into Greece chased out by those resisting imperialism in their territories only victims of ...imperialism. Collaborators become an above class entity (migrants) and they gain supra-national rights. The labour movement of each country based within specific national borders have no rights to question anyone and anything. They have to be open in order to not be ‘xenophobic’.

So when we had underage girls being pimped by Nigerian drug dealers in central Athens 100m from Omonia square we have to put this down to ‘migration theory’ ie pimping has gone global and there is nothing to be done. Locals aren’t allowed to say anything as they weren’t allowed to say anything in the slums of South Africa when the same phenomena appeared. Long live the unity of international pimps and underage prostitution should be added as another one of Walters ‘transitional demands’ in the current era. When the Algerian resistance banned prostitution and alcohol and took out severe measures against those who flouted the rules, we should have argued they are oppressing the rights of ‘sex workers’ and they should be free to ply their trade with occupation troops, otherwise this shows the chauvinistic oppression by males of Algerian women?

When the corporate media journalists who are nothing more than hired whores of capitalism in decay arrive in any scene they dictate the terms of the news agenda not based on what happened and why but on what we need to say and gather facts accordingly. Paul Mason arrived in Patras interviewed a few people and declared there was a Golden Dawn riot against illegal immigrants from the offices of the BBC as always which has a monopoly of the truth (same BBC that announced half an hour before it collapsed the 3rd Tower during 9/11 and also the non-existent finding of weapons of mass destruction to justify the Iraqui invasion). Although given airtime and does circuits in Universities and book fairs as to how the working class has gone global to sell books for his much needed pension pot so he can retire in some idyllic setting.

The reality was a Greek woke up one night heard a whole bunch of noise, went out to tell some people to shut up, not knowing they were lumpen illegal hoodlums and they stabbed him to death. In the disused ex-fabric producing factory Piraiki Patraiki they went to hide. The next morning locals gathered to protest and find them. The police arrived on the scene to save them from a riot. The locals stole a road digger to attack one of the ex-factory walls. GD arrived on the scene in the form of party leaders and informed the road digger owner his road digger had been stolen trying to diffuse the situation. The police then used helicopters to ship out those inside the factory to the safety of Athens. So hundreds of residents involved in more than a few days battle with riot cops (many had to be shipped in from Athens) were labelled GD. Problem solved. Who is Paul Mason? Ex leftie leader of Workers Power. Totally impartial as always, being British helps when reporting on Greece...having a past as a colonial overlord. Mustn’t let tradition get in the way of a good revisionist story after all we have agendas to sell.

Walters then castigates another poster for uploading Marx’s comments on immigration rounding on him as if they were uploaded by me. This is the style of ‘debate’ hatchet job man who pretends he actually is listened to by anyone and rounds on them if they mention Marx on Immigration. Well here is a blogsite only with comments by Marx and Engels on Immigration. Read at your peril cos you wont find most on the MIA, they don’t do that sort of thing. They are respectable with Stalin and Rorty all over.
http://classicalmarxismvsimmigration.blogspot.com/

Nuclear Power apologist...
After the ban by the now disbanded Permanent Revolution group Walters went round campaigning for nuclear power how progressive it is and how it will end ‘global warming’ in particular just as Fukushima occurred. Despite the facts against the topic eg Pripyat 25 years after Chernobyl is a city still evacuated of 50k citizens as the readings are 75k times higher than they were before the explosion. An American true to form everything that is rotten from the states he wants exported. He has found ‘safe’ nuclear power despite the fact that Pripyat is now burnt out for at least 600 years due to radioactivity, the same with Fukyshima and despite the protests in Japan that saw 200k citizens march outside the Presidential Palace, but hey lets ignore mass movements, we know better, nuclear power is safe...Walters said so and as an American one must take their hat off to him.

British ‘far left’ and Greece
Just like they did nothing for the struggle of independence for Kenya prior to that what is it they did regarding Britain’s involvement in fostering Greece’s civil war and supporting the collaborators of Hitler?
Answers on a postcard please. Prize a book of mine on the Greek civil war.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Greek-Civil-War-VN-Gelis/dp/1468011545/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375609286&sr=1-1&keywords=the+greek+civil+war
The British ‘far left’ has always been in the overwhelming majority pro-imperialist alongside their American counterparts. Their support is always based on the ‘ethnics’ behaving themselves and following  what the centre decides.

WRP-Gerry Healy had an organisation in Greece which destroyed the first post-dictatorial printshop after expelling the majority of the organisation in a typical healyite frame up and shutting down all the bookshops. Throughout this period Bob Archer was with Gerry Healy and not only that, when their honcho in Athens (another self-styled fake jew Savvas Michael) was parading in Tehran and Libya singing the praises in order to get money from there we were supposed to keep quiet when allegations regarding rape and financial fraud were aired in public for the first time. I made a special journey to the UK to interview their Gestetner trade union rep they had called Richard Goldstein and translated the interview and with a series of reports, posters and adverts in Pontiki exposed the WRP and called for a Commission of Inquiry (as to whether they had handed over pictures of Iraqui communists to Saddam and taken money from the oil-igarchs) but the successors to Healy weren’t interested only in trying to maintain Healyism without Healy. In the 90’s Archers alliances with Slaughter were based on an anti-Serb venom paralleled only by Blair (who obviously had guns). There is a saying in Greek ‘show me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are’ fits accordingly with Bob Archer and David Walters. A marriage made in heaven.

The Militant had followers in PASOK who were in PASOK. One wing ‘left’ in 1991 another about three years ago. What discerned them was their slavish acceptance of PASOK as being ‘social democratic’ instead of pure capitalist (liberal centre party of Greek capitalism) and their careerist appetites. When things started to rock they jumped ship in order to find new homes (latest declaring themselves the ‘communist wing in Syriza and supporting the Euro, EZ and EU!!) Those that joined PASOK or were allied to it did it for material gain, there wasn’t much politics and there hasn’t been much since. When hundreds of thousands hit the squares swearing at Parliament and the PASOK and ND MP’s how did they cdes of Militant in Greece feel? Their whole lifetime in politics was geared around being in PASOK. Insofar as they marched in the 70’s chanting ‘US bases Out’ ‘National Independence and Territorial Integrity’’  EC and NATO are the Same’ Greece Belongs to the Greeks’ they weren’t racist or nationalist, but John Reinman http://oaklandsocialist.com/  if he was a member then forgets the ‘sins’ of his youth and in old age seeks revenge to those who remind him of his past. Now if they weren’t the slogans being chanted confirm that with those who were there...

SWP Greece has been one of the most vociferous in gaining EU subsidies to promote ‘diversity and multiculturalism’ through their open border Soros networks (Athens Indymedia run on govt platforms from the Athens Polytechnic), language schools for foreigners, social forums etc and its no coincidence that when they were exposed way back in 2004 I was banned from even broaching the subject in their media. Half their organisation after the SWP UK touting it as being the biggest in Greece joined Sinaspismos to get an electoral subsidy and now in the leader of Davanelos they parade as being the ‘left opposition’ inside Syriza when they have been known to support every anti-Greek act by foreign US subsidised govts eg Skopje when they marched there holding up the flags of a foreign territory which has claims on Greece, over the issue of Macedonia. When hundreds of thousands of Greeks marched in the 90’s against the USA’s attempts at divide and rule they resurrected the hundreds of thousands who marched during the 3rd Reich (when it handed over a section of northern Greece to Bulgaria without fear for their lives and many were killed.)

They consistently campaigned against the citizens groups that sprung up in central Athens turning up with the riot cops to tear gas them and hurl abuse from 2008 onwards. GD turned up for the same reasons to pay lip service to the struggle of the residents in order to gather votes. Now because the SWP are the marketing agents for GD (they both call each other Bolsheviks and nazi respectively when they are nothing of the sort just two sides of the same globalist coin) they managed to help gain them votes from 0.29% to 10% in three years. A group which is so ridiculous allegedly against the Troika but for the EU and against Merkel but for her as they condemn the protests against her. Now the corporate global media jumped on the bandwagon of GD these votes hover around 15-20%. The system is creating its next fallback option in the form of Syriza or GD as players in any coalition that might be formed.

Left unchecked illegal immigration would be a ticking time bomb. Campaigning around the fake slogan of ‘migrant rights’ and calling for ‘unity’ among all and sundry may apply to imperialist centres which had colonies all over the world but does not apply to banana republics for the scale and  volume of immigration surpasses the domestic labour force (Eleftherotypia-newspaper spoke in 2004 about the presence of 2.5m so has the Greek TUC research department INE-GSEE spoken about the presence of 40% foreign born workers in relation to the indigenous labour force). That is over a decade ago.
Campaigned  pro-actively for a vote for PASOK in 1991...

Permanent Revolution ex-Workers Power (another now disbanded group and the irony here is Walters always intervenes on the scene  whilst groups are on the verge of disbanding) had a blog site. I intervened initially on topics related to Greece as I did with a series of letters in Weekly Worker regarding Greece. PR forecasted perpetual boom (instead of ‘catastrophist theory’... as they labelled it) just as the EZ was going into depression and they asked for a meeting and a series of eyewitness reports from Greece. In the middle of one of them when we had a two day bombardment to destroy the occupation of the squares Walters appeared with his poison pen letters (not on the content of the material which was being uploaded by the way) to talk about ....gays and immigration.  PR then blocked the second eye-witness report. PR who were an offshoot of Workers Power have known that I disagree with the Americanisation of politics in fields of sexual relations (its not the duty of labour parties to actively promote any sexual lifestyles) from the 80’s. But as British they are in bed with the Yanks and kowtow to their every whim. In that they follow the political class that rules Britain to the letter. They are American poodles.

‘Weekly Worker’ or otherwise known as Globalist Weekly
When a book came out ‘How the IMF Broke Greece’ edited by me with contributions from others and was reviewed by an ex-British miner Dave Douglass, Walters appeared on the scene (without having read it to attack it!) and to say ‘illegal immigration’ is good for Greece as it has been good for... America. The irony now of the situation is that illegal immigration left unchecked has led to riots in many parts of Greece. We are now being told to condemn Greeks for rioting when Greeks are being killed by the local corporate media, the foreign corporate media (Paul Mason-Newsnight Channel 4 John Snow) in other words to accept their lot as no one can go against the 4th Reich (much like the ex-cdes of the Vitsoris group) for the arrival of millions in the territory of Greece is a natural phenomena (‘migration theory,’ ‘human rights ‘ in the past it was just known as Lebensraum). Funny how Cuba closes its borders to ‘gusanos’ but Greece cant. So why does Greece have a navy, an  army and a rail service? To ship them in by the kilo dump them without any means of support in a concrete mega city and then expect them to live like hippies (ie to molest no one, to commit no crimes to live idyllically by eating air and handing out flowers to each passer  by in particular old ladies not living like animals in squares and using them as latrines in 40c heat) as if they are in Matala in Crete in the 70’s.

Or let’s put it another way. 15 million or so tourists visit Greece a year. Why not turn the tourist industry into just a reception centre of illegal immigration so no UN conventions on ‘human rights’ are breached. Ensure each new arrival is housed and fed to the standard of tourists in hotels and turn Greeks into waiters for this service so they can get some hotel work back as they have been made redundant from that as well. After all an ‘open border’ policy espoused by Greeks who were trained under Lyndon Larouche and happen to be the family that had the central bankster bros under Simitis who brought us into the Euro (and now pretend they are the rrrevolutionaries of Antarsya) are the direct connection between the British ‘far left’ and Greece.

But the fake left wont touch the topic as they don’t want to go against the status quo. They are globalisations last vital bulwark. Hence when they look at Syriza they see ‘success’ and want to repeat it abroad as if the conditions are the same everywhere and the success of Syriza whatever that means in practice, is anything to look up to other than with they eyes of parliamentary cretins, just as the Greek parliament has ceased to exist.

There is no nationalism as yet of Greek labour. It has been decimated, de-industrialised and replaced by globalized labour which has no interest for Greece or the Greek nation. They are all there for their own individual ends not the collective ends of society as they can just up sticks and leave at any moment in time and aren’t interested in society or social issues as issues. Hence one notices the total absence of immigrants from the globalist left and if they are there they are there for show like a flower on vase by the window.

But that isn’t the issue with Walters. Walters does not seek debate just the closure of it by creating labels, latest one being I am David Irving when he openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Greeks. Well what label aspires to him? The only good American is a dead one? After all he is on record to not support the military conflicts arrayed against the USA from Afghanistan to Iraq... wants the mess that is the USA exported everywhere and assumes we have to fall for it.

The other irony is that all the parties of the official fake Left KKE-Syriza ask for illegals to leave Greece ie by overturning the Dublin 2 agreement and being given travel papers to go to northern Europe to alleviate Greece’s problems. In other words they want Greece to be an open border arrival point, then processing and then movement up the chain. You don’t hear Walters criticise them for being anti-immigration now do you? That is what Syriza and the KKE openly argue. Lets look at Lenin:

"What does 'Down with frontiers' mean? It is the beginning of anarchy.... Only when the socialist revolution has become a reality, and not a method, will the slogan 'Down with frontiers' be a correct slogan."

Lenin April 1917 on the National Question
http://classicalmarxismvsimmigration.blogspot.com/2011/02/lenin-against-open-borders.html

I remain committed to the ideals of Greece belongs to the Greeks, US Bases Out, Greece must Exit the EU etc even if Syrizas new found friends in the bankruptcy of the Anglo-American ‘far left’ have adopted the Brookings Institute, the London School of Economics and the world banks as their mantra and the evidence of it is that all talk of ‘socialism’ is in reality just talk about lifestyles (race or sex never about class). Hence there never was any ‘debate’ on the WIN site, just a concerted and united effort by Americans and their British toadies to state openly Greece should cease to exist. One does not debate neo-fascists, one exposes them openly for what they are, pure globalists whether of the ‘open’ or closed variety.

On neo-fascism...
I’ll leave the last words to Lafazanis the leader of the Left Faction in Syriza with 30% of the votes at their founding conference:
“you want a procedure with Presidential decrees in order to avoid the control of Parliament – a control which is to be avoided only by non-democratic regimes. The two bourgeois parties have engineered a disgusting and to be condemned coup, blatantly, by using Parliament as a decoration”
2nd August 2013

Which leaves one with the obvious question if the Greek Parliament no longer votes on anything why does the Left still participate in it?
Answers again on a postcard please.

Much like the other question. Walters alleges he has the same line as me on the nation state and he was criticised by Gerry (hands off the US ambassador in Libya!) Downing that he is a rabid nationalist and that a national question arises if the volume of immigration is such to question the identity of nations, but that this law is overturned if you are an imperialist country or sub-imperialist overturning Trotskys observations in 1940 that a national question may also emerge in imperialist countries if overrun by Hitler, he argues for the closure of borders in non-imperialist countries. So how come that doesn’t make him a xenophobe, nationalist as Gerry alleges? So South Africa must have arrived at an imperialist level of development as well?


EU-USA=One World Govt
“The totalitarian state, subjecting all aspects of economic, political, and cultural life to finance capital, is the instrument for creating a supernationalist state, an imperialist empire, the rule over continents, the rule over the whole world.”
Nationalism and Economic Life
-Leon Trotsky 1933

The centralising tendencies of global imperialism implies they no longer seek to have nation states with any role whatsoever. They are creating  an imperialist unification based not on army invasions like Hitler (that happened with the defeat of Germany and Japan in WW2) but on NATO, WTO, central banks, IMF, common currencies leading to world currencies. By destroying nations or creating mini-USA’s everywhere imperialism wants to create the old ‘divide and rule’ philosophy to control and contain all labour movements like what the British Empire did in Africa when it shipped Indians over and blocked the Blacks from working on the railways so they could not disrupt the Empire.

Socialist Discussion Site…
I was on the site for one month prior to withdrawing. The eyewitness report from the ERT occupation affected the Syriza lackeys... on the site. Let’s have a look at some of their comments:
Greeks are ‘primitive xenophobes’ Dan

‘Apodidictic manner’ Bob Archer

After explaining to me that Greece benefitted from the EU and EZ and the EU I am told...despite contrary information provided from a KKE source:
‘I would be grateful if vngelis would take part in the discussion in a less strident manner.’
Dan

The sarcasm in vngelis' postings is unpleasant and uncomradely. S/He is constantly trying to associate those who disagree with him as fake lefts, supporters of quislings or appeasers of fascism. This is not an appropriate style for this discussion
Dan

Being labeled a terrorist here….
Both sought to "expose" the true character of the "neofascist" state by provoking it into battles with the revolutionary brigades; both resorted to acts of individual terror, assassination and bomb throwing in an attempt to short circuit the process of winning the majority of the class. These were the Italian Red Brigades and the German Red Army Fraction.
Dan

Sorry Comrade Gelis, I strongly disagree with your views. If Greece is swallowed up by workers from across the world I will not mourn but as joe hill put it: organize
Stu

From a primitive xenophobe to whether I am …Greek
I guess the question to Comrade Gelis and to all of us are you Greek (or wherever you are from) first or a communist revolutionary first? If the former than Comrade Gelis' comments fit and present a radical nationalist view. If the latter then we are internationalists and the borders drawn and maintained by the oppressors mean nothing to us.
Stu

In some ways, there is a similar issue here in California, and we see it very concretely here in Oakland, where I live. My own neighborhood, for instance, used to be 90% people born in this country; now it is a mixture of Asians, Latin Americans, one block which is primarily Iraqis, etc. (My own personal attitude is that this polyglot really makes things interesting.) Yes, there is competition for jobs. Also, I understand that some of the immigrants receive certain government services that native born people who are in equal need don't, and this does create some resentment. My attitude is that everybody should get these services.

If it is really true that Greece's economy is really, actually being strained by the numbers of immigrants, then I think the movement should demand that the EU help provide for them. But what I feel most strongly is this: How can any movement that is fighting for a better society take the attitude towards immigrants of "You can drown in the sea. You can go back home and be bombed to death. You can go back home and starve." No working class movement can take that attitude and move forward. It is inevitable that if it does, it will turn to nationalism and some sort of racism and/or sexism as well as homophobia, etc.

John Reinmann


My son has worked on building sites in Greece where the lingua franca of the site was English because of the range of nationalities working there. The description of the working conditions was like something from a century ago. He is also scathing of the commonplace racism he experienced there.
Felicity Dowling


Walters other American friend a lawyer who did a stint with Healys outfit (under Wohlforth) in the USA prior to the Greenstein mob that took over and now prints the Financial Times for the USA has ditched the Trade Unions and on the WSWS website goes round attacking the nationalism of everybody but not the American transnational corporations that rule the world… for which Walters has defended vociferously.
A CAPITALIST WORLD GOVERNMENT IS A UTOPIAN ILLUSION, BUT IF IT WERE IN THE OFFING, IT WOULD PROBABLY BE MORE SOMETHING TO BE WISHED FOR THAN SOMETHING TO BE FEARED. YES, I VALUE THE ELIMINATION OF WAR MUCH MORE THAN THE PRESERVATION OF GREEK NATIONAL CULTURE. YOUR VALUES ARE FUNDAMENTALLY WARPED--IT GOES MUCH DEEPER THAN A MERE POLITICAL DIFFERENCE.
SRD



Conclusion

Even in the ex-stalinist states when the USSR was starting to collapse the old national antagonisms resurfaced. National culture,  national traditions etc re-emerged. How could that be when it was already buried as we had the creation of ‘soviet man’?

To now have Americans and Brits arguing that the destruction of nation states (under whatever guise they come up with or whatever tinpot theory they concoct) is something progressive without the nation states volunteering to commit national hara-kiri or even allowed a vote on it indicates how fast they have degenerated into a new world order of globalism. Anyone voicing these views (erasure of nations) should be automatically excluded, but what we see is that like 60’s samizdat in the old USSR we now have a similar thing developing in the West where any views deemed ‘nationalist’ are banned from the ‘open’ ‘alternative’ ‘anti-capitalist’ ‘socialist’ media outlets which are the twin side of the corporate media.

PS
Under any rules of democracy (not of course Anglo-American) one would be allowed the right of reply prior to being ‘suspended’ or the same  rules would apply to the person who made the allegations. But of course under globalist rules all norms of basic democracy no longer apply. This indicates the neo-fascist nature of ‘debates’. One has to first fit into a schema before being able to respond and once labeled for not answering in the pre-conceived schema one is labeled accordingly: ‘anti-semitic’ ‘racist’ ‘homophobic’ not necessarily in that order. But we don’t precisely live in a democracy any more but an Orwellian new world order…As I have also other things to do than waste my time answering American provocateurs I send my reply to the allegations but do not confirm I am willing to respond or have time to do so…

VN Gelis
August 2013