tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52117576055977267712024-03-05T07:48:03.233-08:00In Defense of Greek WorkersΑντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.comBlogger177125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-46257935353273374512016-03-08T13:57:00.001-08:002016-03-08T13:57:28.241-08:00Partial transcript of the speech by Greek PM, Alexis Tsipras, during Supreme Council of Greek-Turkish Cooperation, Smyrna<div style="text-align: center;">
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I would like, in my turn, to warmly thank the Turkish PM, my <i>friend</i> Ahmed. As he himself said earlier, we have been meeting very frequently lately. [...] We have highlighted the significant prospects presented by energy cooperation and the great importance of paths for natural gas, of the TAP and TANAP pipelines, the great importance of our cooperation in Tourism [...] Of course, no one can ignore the fact that the future of Greek-Turkish relation goes through major challenges, such as coping with the great crises we are facing, and specifically the refugee crisis. [...] </div>
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In order to obtain a better life, [refugees] become victims of traffickers and many of them lose their lives in the Aegean. So we, the two governments, me and Ahmed, are here today, so we can commonly declare that what is going on in our sea is a shame to our values and our civilization.</div>
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We are not here to materialize a plan imposed on us by some of our partners. We are here to solve a problem that concerns <i>us</i>, our values, our civilization. And this problem will be solved through <i>our </i>partnership. No one will dictate to us how we' ll solve it. We know how it should be solved and are determined to cooperate to resolve it. </div>
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We are also here to declare our conviction that the ceasefire in Syria should be respected, that the grounds for reconciliation and democracy should be emplaced, through the effective fight against terrorism and oppression, since we are against terrorism and oppression, no matter where it comes from; and at the same time [we are here] to make a common effort in order to strike against the networks of traffickers. I consider it unacceptable to have the ability to have such important and high-tech weapon systems in a race for armaments we had all the previous years [...] and at the same time, these high-tech systems can't locate smugglers, who are left undisturbed trafficking in people in our seas.</div>
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So this is unacceptable, and we cannot let it go on. [...] But I want to be clear: Greece and Turkey are not, at this moment, the causes of the problem central Europe is facing--as it receives, through our countries, the flows of tens of thousands of refugees and immigrants. Greece and Turkey are giving shelter to thousands of people. Turkey is hosting more than two and a half million --of course, other countries as well, Jordan, Lebanon-- and Greece is hosting tens of thousands of people, and despite the extremely tough financial circumstances it is facing, it has offered humanity and warmth --especially the citizens of our islands, where, during the last year more than 800,000 refugees have crossed through.</div>
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So I want to emphasize that Greece and Turkey will continue to show humanity and hospitality to the persecuted, but they will not be countries that will accept the permanent stay of all these people pursuing a better life who wish to --and are entitled to-- claim asylum in Europe. Therefore, and in the context of the EU, we jointly propose a mechanism for legal entry of the refugees, the people, who, according to International Law, are entitled to international protection -- a permanent flow toward the countries of the EU -- taking measures, at the same time, against illegal points of entry and against the network of traffickers.</div>
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I also wish to highlight that the further implementation of the Agreement for reentry provides a clear message to the immigrants coming from third countries --that is to say, not countries at war-- such as those who have tried to exploit the refugee flow, whereas they came from North African countries: [the message is] that at this moment there is neither the political will nor the capacity for them to cross into Europe. This is a reality, and we are obliged to tell them about this reality with honesty, so that this burdensome, for our countries, flow stops or decreases. And of course, in this direction, one should add the decision taken today by the relevant ministers, concerning the substantial upgrading of network communication of our two port authorities, whose first duty and priority is the salvaging of people in the Aegean, and their second is the location of traffickers and the decrease of flows.[...]</div>
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Q & A: I want to say that yesterday, Ahmed submitted an interesting proposal. Its basic logic is to strike against the model of trafficking. Of course, we need to examine this proposal, particularly as regards its legal aspect, but as regards its ethical side, we need to clarify something: This proposal argues that we should discourage the people who are entitled to cross into Europe from going through the exploitation of traffickers and from using the Aegean, at the risk of losing their lives. And, at the same time, that we should open a legal and controlled path, so that an equivalent, constant and sufficient number can apply for asylum here in Turkey, in a trustworthy apparatus responsible for relocation, and cross, in a safe and legal manner, from Turkey to countries of the EU. My view is that this proposal is very interesting, it changed the landscape at the meeting yesterday, and I think we will have the chance in the future [...] to take important decisions. But I think that yesterday we made an important first half step, which we are completing today, and then we have to make another leap on March 17.</div>
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Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-13050365052259422492016-01-24T02:27:00.001-08:002016-01-24T02:44:37.095-08:00AKEL, "Marxism-Leninism", and the "solution of the Cyprus problem"...<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>From the "unofficial" visit of the GS of AKEL to Mehmet Davutoglu, 23 January 2016, Turkey</i></td></tr>
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Interview with <b>Toumazos Tsielepis</b>, Head of AKEL Committee on the Cyprus Problem, <a href="http://www.reporter.com.cy/politics/article/27831/toymazos-tzielepis-na-broyme-tin-lysi-kai-meta-to-kostos">16 January 2016</a>:</div>
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On imperialist war in the Middle East as an auspicious conjuncture for the solution of the Cyprus Problem:</div>
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- "<i>It is true that <b>at this moment, there is a conjuncture that is advantageous to the efforts for a solution</b>. All the international players have an interest in a comprehensive solution of the Cyrus issue, like never before. The same goes for the rational interests of Turkey, though its current leadership is unpredictable</i>."</div>
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On the need for cash liquidity the solution will imply:</div>
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- "<i>Our job is to find the solution. </i><b><i>When we find it, we need to come up with a final cost and then address that to the international community, asking for its aid so this solution can be implemented. The international community must procur us with the money, either as a gift, or as low-interest, long-term loans. It goes without question that in that case there cannot be a Memorandum logic at work, because then the Federal state would be mathematically led to collapse!</i>"</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Entry to British Sovereign Base in Dekeleia, Cyprus. Written into the Cyprus Republic's Constitution of 1960</i></td></tr>
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- On why the "International Community" [sic] should support the cost of the solution given its own financial problems: </div>
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"<i>The Cyprus problem is a political problem giving the international community a headache for the last 50 years. It should be dealt with as such: with political, not with economic and Memorandum-like terms. The solution to the Cyprus problem is linked to major political, but also economic interests. Doesn't the <b>EU</b> have an interest in the solution to the Cyprus problem? <b>Doesn't it, for instance, desire the natural gas of the Eastern Mediterranean in a manner that puts</b> <b>an end to its dependence on Russia</b>? Doesn't the solution to the Cyprus problem work in the interests of <b>the Southeast wing of</b> <b>NATO</b>? The 10 or 20 billion that may be necessary for funding the solution is small change for the <b>international community</b>. On the contrary, <b>the benefits it will reap are infinitely larger</b></i><b>.</b>"</div>
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From <a href="http://www.newsbomb.com.cy/politikh/story/639925/tsavoysogloy-gia-episkepsi-kyprianoy-thetiki-i-thesi-toy-akel-sto-kypriako">statements of Mevlut Çavosuglu</a>, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affrairs, after his meeting with AKEL GS Andros Kyprianou, 23 January 2016:<br />
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"<i>Asked how he views AKEL's positive views on a solution to the Cyprus Problem given that in 2004 it had voted against the Annan Plan, the Turkish minister stated that back in 2004, the leadership of AKEL was Mr. Christofias, who had different views, and added that today's AKEL leadership has a different position</i>."<br />
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P.S.: <a href="http://www.akel.org.cy/en/?p=1489">AKEL describes itself as a "Marxist-Leninist" party</a>...</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-44892398708503946962016-01-20T06:05:00.001-08:002016-01-20T12:02:28.127-08:00Greece, its "geography", and imperialist war<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Greece: The birthplace of theater and Trojan horses</i></td></tr>
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"<i>Greece can offer <b>military bases for logistical support or for naval maintenance in Suda [Crete] and elsewhere.</b> <b>Drones and aircraft can also operate from Greek military bases</b>. You can also contribute with<b> information as the refugee crisis offers the opportunity to collect data from interviewing these people, but also of using biometric data</b>. <b>If NATO decides to send military trainers in Iraq, Greece can participate</b>. What is important is for Greece to utilize its geography.<b> Imagine if the Cyprus issue is resolved. Then, Cyprus and Crete can become two mighty military bases</b></i>"!!!</div>
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This what <b>James Stavrides</b> stated in his interview with "Vima" newspaper. Stavrides is Greek-American, a <b>retired admiral of the U.S. Navy, a former Commander of NATO in Europe, and today, the Rector of the Fletcher Law and Diplomacy School at Tufts University, Boston.</b> He thus gave a comprehensive picture of what the country's bourgeoisie, its governments, including that of SYRIZA-ANEL, are negotiating; how much deeper they plan to embroil the people in imperialist plans, aiming at the geostrategic upgrading of the local business groups, in order to claim a piece of the exploitation of resources and transportation avenues.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>James Stavrides</i></td></tr>
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Stavrides was in Athens after the invitation of the <b>Constantinos Karamanlis Institute</b>, to give a talk on "International Security in the 21st Century". During his stay in Athens he met, among others, with the <b>PM Alexis Tsipas</b>, as well as with the <b>Minister of Defense Panagiotis Kammenos</b>, and the <b>Chief of the Army Staff, Ev. Apostolakis.</b></div>
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It doesn't bear reminding that, during the SYRIZA-ANEL government, the leadership of the Ministry of Defense has publicized plans to install a new NATO base in Karpathos island, while the existing installations of the wolfpack in Suda remain and even expand. <b>Kammenos</b> himself characteristically stated in the summer: "<i><b>We are ready to offer installations, our armed forces, but also major military bases in the region of the Southern Aegean, so as to expedite the forces of the Alliance (i.e., NATO) in the development of the war against terrorism, and so as to guarantee energy avenues and fuelling</b></i>".</div>
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Kammenos took care, indeed, to praise the "usefuleness" of Crete for imperialist planning: "<i><b>Crete</b>, with its extensive, high-quality and high operation-value installations, and its unique, Alliance-wise, naval installations, its units of logistical support and repair for naval units and weapons systems, <b>is a giant aircraft carrier</b> with a key location. <b>it controls the maritime commercial and energy avenues, linking the Black Sea and the Red Sea, and constitutes the frontline of the Western world</b> against an expanding field of instability, which <b>threatens the European continent more and more</b></i>"...</div>
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A day before Stavrides's interview was published in "Vima", a day before he indicated that <b>Greece can "contribute" to information gathering by essentially questioning refugees and migrants</b>, the Greek Minister of Defense was providing another governmental assurance that the government will meet this demand: "<i><b>Concerning information, information on terrorism is now a part of military information, and for this reason, as you know, we are founding the Service of Military Information in the Greek Ministry of Defense</b></i>".</div>
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Where will all this be "utilized"? Stavrides was clear in his interview. For instance, <b>concerning Syria, he underlined that it is "indisputable" that a "peace force" will need to be sent there</b>. On the Mediterranean more broadly, he said: "<i>NATO must begin with a realist operation plan for the South (...) The Alliance will look deeper into naval matters. Its largest borderline is the Mediterranean, and yet it doesn't make the necessary investments, the ones it needs to operate from sea and air. NATO has already started using unmanned aircraft to monitor the Mediterranean. Additionally, <b>I believe that the Alliance will participate more actively in the struggle against the Islamic State. This doesn't mean it will send 100,000 troops, but maybe 10,000 troops, to take over the training initially of the Iraqi Armed Forces in order to recapture Mossul, and perhaps, later, the training of the Kurds</b>. We will need to reinforce NATO infrastructures, with a greater access to military bases in Greece, Italy and Southern France. I don't think NATO has really woken up yet. The refugee crisis and the Islamic State will change that</i>."...</div>
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<i><a href="http://www.rizospastis.gr/story.do?id=8746310">Rizospastis</a></i>, 20 January 2016.</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-57246301234606987512015-12-25T07:54:00.000-08:002015-12-25T09:43:08.490-08:00Manolis Anagnostakis-I speak.../These lines/Poetics<div style="text-align: center;">
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<b>I speak...</b></div>
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I speak of the last trumpet calls of the defeated soldiers<br />
Of the rags from our holiday clothes<br />
Of our children, selling cigarettes to passers-by<br />
I speak of the flowers that have wilted on the graves and are rotting under the rain<br />
Of the houses that gape, windowless, like toothless skulls<br />
Of the girls begging, showing the wounds on their breasts<br />
Of the barefoot mothers crawling in the debris<br />
Of the flaming cities, the corpses piling in the streets<br />
The pimp poets, trembling in thresholds at night<br />
I speak of the endless nights when the light is lessened at dawn<br />
Of the loaded tracks and the steps on wet cobblestone<br />
I speak of the prison yards and the tears of those condemned to death.<br />
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But most of all I speak of the fishermen<br />
Who left their nets and followed on His footsteps<br />
And when He got tired, they did not seek rest<br />
And when He betrayed them, they did not denounce<br />
And when He was glorified, they averted their eyes<br />
And their comrades spat on them and crucified them<br />
And they, peaceful, take the road that has no end<br />
Their gaze undarkened, unbent<br />
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Standing up and alone inside the terrible desert of the crowd.<br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Mikis Theodorakis, Maria Farandouri, Petros Pandis sing "I speak", 1973.</span></b></div>
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<b>These lines</b></div>
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These lines may be the last<br />
The last of the last to be written<br />
Because future poets are no longer alive<br />
Those who were to speak all died young<br />
Their sad songs became birds<br />
In another sky, where a strange sun shines<br />
Wild rivers were born and they run into the sea<br />
And you can't tell their waters apart<br />
In their sad songs, a lotus sprang<br />
so we may be born in its juices, younger.<br />
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Manolis Anagnostakis reads "These lyrics", two recordings.</div>
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<b>Poetics</b></div>
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-You are betraying Poetry again, you 'll say<br />
Man's most sacred manifestation<br />
You are using it again as a means, a beast of burden<br />
for your dark pursuits<br />
Being fully aware of the damage<br />
your example does to the youth.<br />
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- Tell me what you didn't betray<br />
You and those like you, all these years<br />
Selling your belongings one by one<br />
In international markets and popular fairs<br />
Left without eyes to see, without ears<br />
to hear, with sealed mouths, so you don't speak.<br />
What human sacred are you charging us with?<br />
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I know. You' ll say: rhetoric and preaching again.<br />
Well, yes! Rhetoric and preaching.<br />
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Words must be hammered like hobnails<br />
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So the wind doesn't take them away.<br />
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Manolis Anagnostakis reads "Poetics".Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-73523637755958858762015-09-17T04:59:00.002-07:002015-09-17T05:10:01.858-07:00Aleka Papariga-On "the unity of the Left" and the KKE alliance politics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Aleka Papariga</b></div>
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<b>From "The Alliance Politics of the KKE and the Critique to 'Left Unity'"</b></div>
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<b>In <i>Contemporary Right-Wing Opportunism</i>, Publication of the CC of the KKE, Synchroni Epohi, Athens 2008.</b></div>
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The purpose of this article is to encode, as much as possible, the objective differences between these two propositions for an alliance [the alliance politics of the KKE and the notion of "Left Unity"]. Alliances, it should be understood, are not based on agreement on terms and slogans or general ideas, but on issues of strategic importance and orientation, on the issue of alternative power.</div>
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For the KKE, alliance politics is a permanent, not a conjunctural policy. We struggle to make it materialize, to foreground it and to popularize it, independently of the existence of the subjective preconditions for its materialization at the political level. For the KKE, the creation of an alliance is an issue of struggle, of developments in the correlation of forces, of radical reorderings within political and social consciousness, such that they can bring changes to the composition of the political landscape. Ultimately, the level of the movement will play a determining role in this all-important issue. Of course, we are not simply waiting for possibilities to drop on our hands like overripe fruit. We take initiatives, and first of all we foster dialogue within the people, with radical popular forces, with social agents acting in a positive direction; we follow developments, we try to assist positive trends.</div>
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The advancement of the policy of alliance is not exclusively dependent on the volition of the KKE; it also depends on the character and nature of the other political parties and movements. It can't be forced. One of the most important factors that assists the speeding up of alliances of strategic significance proposed by the KKE is the the force and power of the Party, the level of the movement, and above all the state and the role of the worker movement and its degree of politicization.</div>
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Alliances formed under the pressure of situations, and having as their basis only a goal of immediate currency, disconnected from prospects, alliances that hide their head in the sand, ignoring basic differences, will have an adverse effect on the movement--the site where what every side says and does is ultimately verified in practice.</div>
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I underline this because we have all been witness to SYN [Coalition of the Left and of Progress, Core Group of SYRIZA] demagoguery (particularly prior to elections) as to who is responsible and who is not concerning the fact that there is no alliance with the KKE. SYN is not interested in explaining differences or at least engaging with the arguments of the KKE. Because if it did, then it would become clear that the issue is not whether we need an alliance or not, but what kind of alliance we need. This fact alone suffices to show that SYN's critique of the KKE is not characterized by honesty and reliability. I add that the Congress documents of SYN underline that no collaboration with the KKE is possible -- something forgotten at election time.</div>
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SYN's goal in the pre-election period was not collaborating with the KKE but using such collaboration as an electoral card so as to blackmail emotional votes, in order to make it to the Parliament. After all, in the pre-election period, it set as its goal, besides obtaining 3%+ of the vote, to change the correlation of forces, i.e., to be the third ranking party with the KKE as fourth. This goal does not bother us. But the issue is that you can't ask for a collaboration while you pursue the weakening of your ally.</div>
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The main opponent of "the unity of the Left" or "antineoliberal unity" is the strategy of the KKE. It would be best for SYN to quit whining about this issue.</div>
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<b>The Unity of the Left or Antineoliberal Front</b></div>
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Let us momentarily leave aside the issue of who advocates the Unity of the Left, since there is an issue of reliability, honesty, will and ability to respect agreements. Let us momentarily also leave aside our experience, the suffering we have been through because of the forces constituting SYN in the recent past, during the constitution and brief life of the Coalition of the Left and of Progress, undertaken with the initiative of our Party in 1989. Let us leave aside the tragic experience of the period of 1990-1991, full of events that became publicly known, and which extent up to the present. The principal and basic issue is that, if we look at the present and not the past, the proposal for a Unity of the Left is opposed to the proposal for an Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Monopoly Democratic Front [the KKE precedent to the policy of "Popular Alliance"].</div>
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The proposal for alliance (if one were to surmise that it is really addressed at the KKE and is not a propaganda trick] is nothing but a proposal for the management of the existing system, aiming at improving the social face of bourgeois power.</div>
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Perhaps the use of the term "unity" is not accidental, since it denotes a single political vehicle, a unitary political formation, which abolishes, by definition, the coexistence of collaboration and autonomy. Our interpretation is reinforced by the fact that SYN's "partners" openly pose the issue of the desirability of the evolution of existing parties to mere "tendencies" within a unitary political vehicle [nb: this formally materialized in 2012].</div>
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This discussion is not new. It was there in the period of EDA [United Democratic Left, 1951-1977], which began as a coalition but ended as a unitary Party. It was introduced by the opportunist tendency that argued that the KKE is unnecessary, that it can be replaced by EDA. This ultimately hurt EDA itself, as well as the policy of alliances, in ways that were broad and long-term.</div>
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The term "Left" is used basically with political criteria; there is no clear and determinate understanding of its social base, based on the social and class articulation and stratification of Greek society. They are also really fond of speaking of new movements. Things are clear, though this is not always admitted: there is opposition, fear, and even revulsion at everything related to the working class and its vanguard revolutionary role. Throughout Europe, the term "new social movements" is deployed to signify contempt and even active opposition toward the worker movement.</div>
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The term "antineoliberal front" is more clear as to its content. The analysis it involves basically points at the way a policy is exercised, the means of managing the economy. It doesn't point at the political -- the capitalist -- system. This is why they come up with demands, struggle goals, with propositions, that ultimately do not express an alternative, but a policy of blunting the most extreme forms of accumulating problems. They objectively buttress the dominant policy. At best, they can be characterized as utopian and groundless. In practice, they come into opposition with popular interests, and thus are truly dangerous as left-wing alibis.</div>
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Let me give a characteristic example: they link dealing with unemployment with the increase of investments, the better management of EU aid packages, at most with decreasing labor time which they don't see as a universal right. Neither SYN nor its allies want to see or can see that today, the increase of investments doesn't simply not deal with unemployment but, under conditions of capitalist restructuring, increases it dramatically. Investments, under conditions of free capital movement, free labor markets, services and commodities, conditions of increasing productivity aiming at surplus profit and capitalist competitiveness, have only one result: the destruction of forces of production, particularly of labor forces, and the eclectic development of sectors of the economy and of the service economy that bring maximum profit, while other sectors stagnate or even regress. Though they pretend to be supporters of capitalist unification, they don't consider the fact that investors have no problem locking up profitable enterprises to move them abroad so they can make even bigger profits.</div>
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They don't see, either, that the decrease of labor time does not bring an increase of jobs on its own, since the basic laws of the capitalist market and of the specific mode of production are still operative: surplus value, the capitalist use of new technologies, the falling rate of average profit and its consequences in aggressive measures to reduce, as much as possible, the price of labor power and of living labor; the utilization of reserve labor forces to decrease wages and social benefits, to manipulate and buy off the workers.</div>
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They also hide or at least cannot see that EU resources are not given to be managed freely by every nation-state, but that what will be invested in is predetermined. Indeed, a large part of EU funds is ultimately returned to the EU, and particularly to the powerful capitalist countries, as they take up the role of furnishing us with raw material, machines and commodities linked to investments in Greece. EU aid packages, for instance, led, among other things, to the increase of the Greek trade deficit for agricultural products.</div>
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The issue is not exclusively investments, but who owns the means of production and what purpose development serves. The issue is not exhausted by the increase of GNP, but by who benefits and who loses by such increase.</div>
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SYN's mistaken views have led it to a politics of compromise, inevitably at the level of the movement too. Examples and proof abound. They can be found in the fact that SYN agreed to things like the following:</div>
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- Flexible labor relations</div>
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- The logic wherein the possible is based on competitiveness and the sustainability of a competitive economy</div>
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-The coexistence of private business and the state in sectors like health and education, something that effectively voids its alleged positions on public funding, though it sees such funding as crucial for dealing with problems</div>
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- Privatizations, including its propaganda in favor of a "smaller state sector"</div>
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- The EU Agricultural Policy, including a critique of its revision</div>
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- The lack of a policy of defending the self-employed</div>
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- Most characteristically, the stance toward PASOK, where the main weight of criticism is that PASOK didn't respond to calls for dialogue and collaboration. At the same time, and despite their complaints about the central policy of PASOK, they did not hesitate to collaborate with it in the Trade Unions, in the self-employed and farmer movements, in Local Administration. This shows adventurism, aimed at gaining positions of power through "blood transfusions", but it also suggests the existence of a choice to create the preconditions for a more general collaboration with Social Democracy. The "Unity of the Left" is the hallway to the collaboration with PASOK, the move from the "small Left" to the "big Left."</div>
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Most of the times, SYN does not explain compromise at least as the result of an estimation of the balance of forces, as a maneuver or a simple tactic; it trumpets it as the modern, innovative and antidogmatic response to contemporary problems.</div>
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Of course, in the last period, SYN, along with the other tendencies collaborating with it [the tendencies constituting SYRIZA] are criticizing capitalism. But their criticism is from the standpoint that assumes that capitalism can be rectified through progressive modernization. Their most radical positions are a mere layer of "left" rhetoric, not the change of policy; they remain far from constituting a resolution to the problem of power.</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-74579520509961416582015-08-26T07:16:00.002-07:002015-08-26T07:51:11.028-07:00Whose class interests does SYRIZA 2.0 SAY it represents?<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Peoples_Party_at_Columbus_Nebraska.jpg/400px-Peoples_Party_at_Columbus_Nebraska.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="175" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/41/Peoples_Party_at_Columbus_Nebraska.jpg/400px-Peoples_Party_at_Columbus_Nebraska.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Yesterday, and after meeting with representatives of ESEE and GSVEE, the leader of SYRIZA 2.0, aka "Popular Unity", <a href="http://www.iskra.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21841:laiki-enotita&catid=81:kivernisi&Itemid=198">Panayiotis Lafazanis made the following statement</a>, which is very interesting from the standpoint of the kind of class consciousness it represents, and, of course, the class consciousness it addresses and solicits:</div>
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Within the context of the mandate I have received from the President of the Republic [<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">as "third Party", despite never having been elected as such</span>], I had the honor to meet two of the greatest Confederations of our country, GSVEE and ESEΕ. It was especially honoring to me that we sat and talked and exchanged views with honesty, for quite some time, I would say. </blockquote>
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It was a meeting of many hours, but also a substantial and productive exchange of views. What I derived from it is of course well-known, but I will repeat. <b>The Memoranda have two great victims in Greece: the first and great victim is of course our youth</b>, which is unfortunately compelled to migrate in order to survive; <b>the second great victim of the Memoranda are medium and small businesses. Medium and small businesses have been placed in the gallows, in the guillotine. </b>With the Memoranda, austerity, tax raiding, lack of cash flow [bank closure was implemented while Lafazanis and other members of "Popular Unity" were in the government cabinet], the robber bank system, which becomes constantly more rapacious, under these conditions, <b>medium and small businesses cannot survive</b>. They have no future whatsoever. And with them, of course, the Greek economy, Greece and the Greek people have no future.<br />
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At this point, the message we are sending is that the country must be rid of the Memoranda, austerity and national dependence. And this is what Popular Unity guarantees [<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">lol</span>] in light of the elections. <b>We call on medium and small businessmen, all those working in the medium and small business, <u>businessmen and workers</u>, to support Popular Unity in its antimemorandum struggle</b>, its consistent [<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">lol</span>] antimemorandum struggle. With Popular Unity, Memoranda will be over [see <a href="http://indefenseofgreekworkers.blogspot.gr/2015/08/being-panayiotis-lafazanis-honest.html">same man's statements when he was in SYRIZA</a>] and a path of recovery and economic reconstruction, centered on small and very small businesses, medium and small businesses, can open.</blockquote>
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Some very simple and commonsensical observations, from a Marxist standpoint, regarding the <b>stated</b> goals of "Popular Unity":</div>
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1. There is no reference whatsoever to the working class as a "victim of the Memoranda" and of austerity. Workers do not exist in Greece.</div>
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2. There is in fact no reference to class exploitation and class struggle, which is logical given #1.</div>
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3. In fact, Lafazanis states explicitly that there are no classes, since he calls on <b>both businessmen and their workers/employees</b> to a common "struggle against the Memoranda" (ie, he calls on them to vote for him--that's what "struggle" means in social democratic parlance).</div>
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4. It is clear from the above statement and its first three constituents that "Popular Unity" <b>aims explicitly at a capitalist and not a socialist organization of production</b>. The "reconstruction" and "recovery" of which it speaks are explicitly based on helping small capitalists survive against banks and monopolies. </div>
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5. In other words, <b>the stated [<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">careful! It is of course not the actual</span>] economic program of Messrs Lafazanis, Stratoulis, Lapavitsas, Kouvelakis, et al. is absolutely identical to that of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_(United_States)">U.S populists in the 1890s</a>, some fifteen years before Lenin wrote "Imperialism".</b></div>
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In honor of that vintage feel, our illustration is from the matrix of "Popular Unity", the People's Party of the US, founded in 1891 and dissolved in 1907.</div>
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Oh, forgot, Messrs Lafazanis and Co. call this "socialism for the 21st century"....</div>
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Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-70909749627832493232015-08-25T06:46:00.001-07:002015-08-25T06:57:33.611-07:00The Europarliament Group of the KKE on the dangerous developments in Ukraine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150825/ukraine-flag-day.jpg?itok=t7wFxZVf" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150825/ukraine-flag-day.jpg?itok=t7wFxZVf" height="177" width="320" /></a></div>
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In a letter addressed to the President of the Europarliament, Martin Schulz, the Europarliament group of the KKE has condemned the adoption of a reactionary law imposing Mass Media censorship in Ukraine as well as the initiative of a Czech MEP, known for his anticommunist activity. The letter is as follows:</div>
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"With the present letter we would like, first of all, to denounce the new, reactionary law of the Ukrainian government, which imposes a regime of censorship on the Mass Media, publishing, films and every cultural and artistic creation, in the name of "protecting national security" and preventing the "fomenting ethnic hatred." This law constitutes another dangerous element of the politics of the forces that seized power after the intervention of the USA-EU-NATO in Ukraine, which took place in the midst of competition with Russia and the antipopular schemes of the Ukrainian bourgeoisie.</div>
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This is another strike of the Ukrainian government against the people; supported by fascist forces, the government continues to bomb Donbas and has banned the CP of Ukraine, while abductions, persecution and threats against communists and other workers and racist murderous attacks by fascist shock troops continue.</div>
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The EU bears grave responsibility for these dangerous and worrisome developments as it has rewarded the reactionary government of Ukraine by recently ratifying the Agreement for the connection between the EU and Ukraine.</div>
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In addition, the Czech MEP of the EPP J. Stetina has – as we have been informed - anounnced his invitation to A. Biletsky, leader of the Neonazi Azov military battalion, in the context of an event he is organizing in the Europarliament in the Fall. The announcement of this event in the Europarliament has already caused a wave of protest by political parties and social organizations.</div>
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These reactions are due to the fact that Α. Βiletsky is a known fascist, the leader of the Social-National Congress that is part of Ukraine's Right Sector. The activity of Biletsky and of the fascist groups he heads is no other than murderous attacks in the Donbas region, against workers in the area. He stands accused of war crimes while he is also known for his racist and fascist views, his revolting theories on Aryan superiority. </div>
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With this invitation, MEP J. Stetina is continuing, obviously, his anticommunist activity, which is very old. He was a protagonist in the proposal to ban the Communist Youth of Czech but also the CP of Bohemia-Moravia. Those machinations were defeated through the struggle and the exposure of communists, the Czech people and the global mobilization for solidarity to Czech communists.</div>
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With this letter, we emphasize our complete opposition to the dangerous developments in Ukraine, the flaring up of state repression and anticommunism, the curbing of basic democratic rights, the open encouragement and sheltering of fascism and its murderous hordes. We state that such an event in the Europarliament as the one planned with the participation of Α. Biletsky or other Nazis who lead racist attacks is a major provocation, is damnable and must be cancelled with your own intervention as well."</div>
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<a href="http://www.902.gr/eidisi/eyrovoyli/73815/i-eyrokoinovoyleytiki-omada-toy-kke-ga-tis-epikindynes-exelixeis-stin#.VdwZ46Qo1jk">902</a></div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-28748529571739810312015-08-23T23:45:00.001-07:002015-08-24T05:57:57.119-07:00This is not a hoax: Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of cynical hucksterism<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.ravenmimura.com/images/full/Huckster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ravenmimura.com/images/full/Huckster.jpg" height="238" width="320" /></a></div>
From Akis Gavrielides'* "<a href="https://nomadicuniversality.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/%CE%AE%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%BD-%CF%84%CE%B5%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AC-%CE%BF-%CF%84%CF%83%CE%AF%CF%80%CF%81%CE%B1%CF%82-%CE%AD%CE%BD%CE%B1%CF%82-%CE%BB%CE%B1%CF%8A%CE%BA%CE%B9%CF%83%CF%84%CE%AE%CF%82/">Was Tsipras ultimately a 'populist' who 'reneged on his promises'?</a>"<br />
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As I have already argued in the past, it is time we throw the concepts of promise and acceptance, that is, the concept of a contract, to the garbage bin as tools for the understanding of politics. These are concepts of moral(istic) and legal descent, that don't help us understand the motion of the multitude. It is also time to get rid of an idea with a long past, especially in the discourse of the Left and of social movements: the concept of a demand, and the conception of political discourse as a "plan" that "materializes." Politics is elsewhere; politics doesn't mean that some sovereign subjects meet and delegate to some other, "even more sovereign" subject, the "materialization" or the "satisfaction" of some of their demands [...] This is the scenario of classic bourgeois political philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries, based on the model of the market and of contracts.</div>
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[...] This schema is desperately inadequate. It can account only for normality, normalcy, accountability -- that is to say, non politics. Politics is not communication; or at least, it is not, and it is not desirable or possible that it becomes, communication based on rules where all messages are transparent, regulated and distortion-free. Politics is that which escapes, that which is not planned. It is noise, the parasite. What is politically interesting is that which deconstructs, not that which institutes palliative equivalences.</div>
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Perhaps, someone might say: OK, but this is all "theoretical". Even if it is correct, it doesn't cancel out the fact that SYRIZA was elected proclaiming to be against austerity, was voted for it, but we still have austerity. Isn't this inconsistency? And isn't there a danger that SYRIZA's voters will think "everyone is the same" and thus be led to resignation, disappointment, demobilization?</div>
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My response to this is the following: The question of whether a party or a politician "kept their promises" or "deceived the people" is a question posed by the political system, not by the multitude. </div>
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But from my perspective, this question is not really important. For me, what is crucial is that the specific "promise" circulated, was subjected to the judgment of citizens and was approved. Even if it did not "materialize", its approval was not futile. Discourse creates results not only when it is "applied", but also when it is simply said.</div>
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The elections, the referendum and their results were worth their while, whatever followed them. What follows depends on an infinity of factors which are unpredictable and cannot be controlled fully by anyone, not even by the "sovereign". Besides, anyway, these processes posited in public discourse a political desire that did not exist anywhere before; it became known that this political desire exists, and is indeed a majority one. [...] No one can now pretend not to know this. </div>
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Was this enough?</div>
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Even this question is beside the point. To answer it, we would have to define clearly a threshold, a norm on the basis of which the adequate and the inadequate could be judged. </div>
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[...]</div>
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* The author works as a translator in Brussels, Belgium. He publishes in SYRIZA's "Avgi" and in John Milios' periodical, "Theseis."</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-70286913909504048242015-08-21T11:51:00.001-07:002015-08-21T12:33:00.562-07:00Being Panayiotis Lafazanis: Honest, Reliable, Consistent Leader of the New New Left<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://left.gr/sites/left.gr/files/styles/large/public/lafazanis_58.jpg?itok=enO-sXdb" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://left.gr/sites/left.gr/files/styles/large/public/lafazanis_58.jpg?itok=enO-sXdb" height="178" width="320" /></a></div>
<u>Panayiotis Lafazanis, Interview with "<a href="http://www.iskra.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19879:synentefksi-lafzani&catid=71:dr-kinitopoiisis&Itemid=278">Eleftheros Typos" [Free Press]</a>, <b>14 March 2015:</b></u><br />
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Q: <i>You had stated last October that a SYRIZA government will "abolish the Memorandum and its implementation laws in one night, with one legal act, just as they were dictatorially imposed." What has changed, Mr. Minister, and you forgot about this statement? Was the raw reality stronger than the pre-election wishes of your party or do you think the government has backtracked in many of its commitments when faced with the lenders?</i></div>
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A: <b>There is no statement of mine that we will abolish the Memorandum in one night; it only exists as a total distortion of what I have said at different times</b>. Personally, <b>I always underlined, indeed, that Memoranda and their implementation laws must be abolished by a government in which SYRIZA will participate not "dictatorially", but with normal parliamentary procedures</b>, with respect to the Parliament and with a full observance of the Parliamentary Regulations and Constitution. <b>The first act of our new government was to immediately stop the implementation of the Memorandum that was in process. The austerity measures and the taxes that the ND-PASOK government was about to implement were thrown in the garbage. Our commitment for full abolition of the Memoranda and their implementation laws is still wholly valid</b>; and <b>this commitment, despite the great post-election difficulties and the blatant blackmail from abroad, will be fully honored in the next few months</b>. <b>The full abolition of memoranda is a position equivalent to SYRIZA's identity</b> and the precondition for a new, consistent, progressive, developmental course and prospect for the country.<br />
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<u>Panayotis Lafazanis, Parliament speech, approximately 1 month before interview, <b>10 February 2015</b>, 0:23-2:14 of video:</u><br />
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"<b>A question haunted the atmosphere before the elections </b>[of January 2015]<b>. And to be honest, I saw it even in those who were decided to vote for SYRIZA. They would say: "<i>If SYRIZA wins, will it implement its radical pre-electoral program? Or will it follow the beaten path of all previous governments, that said one thing before elections and did another after elections?</i>" I think that for a lot of the skeptics, whether they are well-meaning or not, this question has been reliably answered by the Prime Minister's programmatic statement. But if there are still skeptics concerning the government's consistency, and I can see a number here [smirk] --in fact supporters of the Memoranda-- who are worried that we will implement even a part of the Memorandum --70, 60, 50%-- so, since I see a number here, let me assure you: Don't worry, gentlemen.</b> <b>The Memoranda and the Troika are over. Cause you are really worried [smirk]. The Memoranda and the Troika are over</b>."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<u>Panayiotis Lafazanis, <b>17 April 2013</b>, SKAI News: </u><br />
<u><br />
</u></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/t3YgxYMC8Co" width="560"></iframe><br /></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b>- "The Memorandum and its implementation laws, Memoranda in general and their implementation laws, will be abolished, terminated, thrown in the garbage."</b><br />
<b><br />
</b> <b>- "So you will do this by law?"</b><br />
<b><br />
</b> <b>- "There is no other way, is there? These are laws. [...] The Memoranda were imposed by laws, dictatorially, in one night."</b><br />
<b><br />
</b><u> Panayiotis Lafazanis, Mega Channel,<b> 29 December 2014</b>, 0:40 into video:</u><br />
<u><br /></u></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pL9KV1q74ek" width="560"></iframe><br /></div>
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"<b>The pro-Memorandum governments are now over. Just as the Memoranda and their implementation laws are over. This stuff is all over for Greece</b> [...] <b>We will terminate the presence of the Troika in this country</b>." </div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-88255436379819260012015-08-20T00:20:00.000-07:002015-08-20T00:20:08.633-07:00Comment of the KKE on the intensification of the phenomenon of migration and the government-EU measures<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150819/greece-migrants.jpg?itok=_NliO6NK" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150819/greece-migrants.jpg?itok=_NliO6NK" height="177" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
August 19, 2015</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
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In its comment on the intensification of the phenomenon of migration and the government-EU measures, the Press Office of the CC of the KKE notes:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"<i>The KKE had warned, in a timely fashion, that the drama of thousands of persecuted and entrapped refugees and migrants flooding the country, especially the islands of the Aegean, cannot be dealt with through the patched-up measures of the SYRIZA-ANEL government, which, like the previous governments, is looking for "solutions" within the path of the EU migration policy.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>The KKE calls on the worker and popular movement to take the lead, intensify its solidarity, isolate racist manifestations and the phenomena of exploitation of refugee needs. The movement should demand: the abolition of the rules of the Dublin and Schengen Treaties, the obtainment of obstacle-free and secure transport of refugees to EU member states, which are their real destination, the immediate hiring of necessary personnel for the services of first reception and refuge, the creation of human reception and hospitality spaces, the abolition of the participation of our country in the imperialist plans of the US-NATO-EU, the non participation in imperialist intervention in other countries, the disengagement from Euro-Atlantic organizations</i>."</div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.902.gr/eidisi/politiki/73535/sholio-toy-kke-gia-tin-diogkosi-toy-metanasteytikoy-fainomenoy-kai-ta-metra">902 </a>Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-90195098488278717912015-08-14T12:01:00.002-07:002015-08-14T12:20:29.949-07:00Nicos Ploumbides: The letter, the body, the life<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://xyzcontagion.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/1952-03-14-cebdceafcebacebfcf82-cf80cebbcebfcf85cebccf80ceafceb4ceb7cf82-ceb5cf80ceb9cf83cf84cebfcebbceae-ceb3ceb9ceb1-cf85cf80cf8cceb8.jpg?w=540&h=778" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://xyzcontagion.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/1952-03-14-cebdceafcebacebfcf82-cf80cebbcebfcf85cebccf80ceafceb4ceb7cf82-ceb5cf80ceb9cf83cf84cebfcebbceae-ceb3ceb9ceb1-cf85cf80cf8cceb8.jpg?w=540&h=778" width="222" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://xyzcontagion.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/1952-03-14-cebdceafcebacebfcf82-cf80cebbcebfcf85cebccf80ceafceb4ceb7cf82-ceb5cf80ceb9cf83cf84cebfcebbceae-ceb3ceb9ceb1-cf85cf80cf8cceb8.jpg?w=540&h=778">Ploumbides' letter, 14 March 1952</a></td></tr>
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14 March, 1952. Nicos Belloyannis, Dimitris Batsis, Nicos Kaloumenos and Elias Argyriades have been sentenced to death as enemies of the state and Soviet spies. A letter arrives in the offices of the newspaper "Proodeftiki Allagi" [<i>Progressive Change</i>]. It is signed by member of the KKE CC and PB and director of the party's organizational structure in Athens and Piraeus, Nicos Ploumbides. He is in hiding from the revanchist post civil war Greek state. It is published two days later. The letter reads (transcription follows original notation):</div>
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<br /></div>
<blockquote>
Dear General Editor,<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I am sending you a copy (handwritten) of a letter I have sent to the lawyers of my comrade, Nicos Belloyannis, and I beg you to publish it. I give you and the GREEK PEOPLE my promise to present myself and stand trial if the death sentence on Belloyannis is repealed.</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Sincerely,<br />
Nicos A. Ploumbides<br />
Member of the CC of the KKE<br />
Athens, 14 March 1952 </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
---</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<a name='more'></a>To Mssrs Tsoukalas and Galeos<br />
Belloyannis' Attorneys in Law </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Honorable gentlemen, </blockquote>
<blockquote style="text-align: justify;">
It is known that the masterfully plotted trial of my comrade, Nicos Belloyannis, has been imposed by the American colonialists of our country. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
It is also known that Belloyannis has been convicted NOT because he was guilty of a specific act but because he is a brave and committed militant of the people, a member of the CC of the KKE, a communist. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The plotters of the trial did not dare openly state that they are condemning Belloyannis for his ideas, but FORMALLY justified their decision by appealing to fake evidence and by evoking the testimony of the Police Security, to the effect that Belloyannis was the leader of the illegal apparatus of the KKE. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
To prove whether Belloyannis's condemnation had been planned or not by the Americans and the government, to save the HERO of the Greek people Belloyannis, to give the government and the Council of Reprieve the possibility to maintain an honest and dignified stance as individuals and as members of a nation, and to eliminate the formal aspect of the condemnation of Belloyannis, </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
I STATE </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
1) The leader of the illegal apparatus of the KKE <u>was me</u>, NOT Belloyannis. I take ALL responsibility for this position and for my actions. After this statement, any insistence on executing Belloyannis is UNJUSTIFIABLE, UNJUST and blatantly MURDEROUS. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
2) As I don't want anyone to think that I am playing tough guy from a safe position, I PROMISE to present myself to authorities and to stand trial if the death sentence of my friend and comrade N. Belloyannis is repealed. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Use the present as you see fit (Council of Reprieve, Press, etc). </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Sincerely.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Nicos Ploumbides,</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Member of the CC of the KKE </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
P.S. Regarding the authenticity of my signature, beyond my writing hand, which many know, I am also adding my fingerprint. </div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Athens</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
12 March 1952</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: justify;">
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The letter did not save Beloyannis and the other three, who were executed on 30 March, 1952. A few months later, on 25 November of the same year, Ploumbides, who chronically suffered from consumption, was arrested, tried, and condemned to death by execution. He waited for his death in the sanatorium "Sotiria" [Salvation]. Before the execution, he refused to cover his eyes, sang the Internationale, and shouted "Hail Greece, Hail KKE." He fell to the bullets of the execution squad on 14 of August, 1954, 61 years ago today.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic0gQXOoaqX1qwIgt0TcTki0aR537GNgBcvPxPifhfhOBwhOnKuTs-pq5r0iVlquVqi59nWGwzd7UUtW8XTetcGcg9DduqmQT387IPKXtC9zz7A3fO-mQbVvGMfzngRvvHbo6OEr_VIUMe/s400/DSC03137.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic0gQXOoaqX1qwIgt0TcTki0aR537GNgBcvPxPifhfhOBwhOnKuTs-pq5r0iVlquVqi59nWGwzd7UUtW8XTetcGcg9DduqmQT387IPKXtC9zz7A3fO-mQbVvGMfzngRvvHbo6OEr_VIUMe/s400/DSC03137.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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He was a teacher by profession.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OHpn4h5QjZs" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
"Nicos Ploumbides"</div>
Music: Thanos Mikroutsikos<br />
Lyrics: Manos Eleftheriou<br />
Vocals: Maria Demetriade<br />
From the album <i>Hymns for Murderers</i>, 1977.<br />
<br />
What am I doing in this country<br />
with mercenaries and Praetorians<br />
begging for your glory on my knees<br />
knocking on your door in the heavens?<br />
<br />
These small rhymes are like breadcrumbs<br />
from poets' symposia and late night gatherings<br />
they are whispered by snitches in the street corners,<br />
where I am going to get caught like a fish<br />
<br />
We started on a long journey<br />
and the night is poisoning our kisses<br />
What world is propping us up? What theater stage?<br />
Tonight, when they are putting Ploumbides to trial,<br />
The wolves and the dogs entwined?Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-79356345550650754072015-08-14T09:49:00.001-07:002015-08-14T14:46:07.336-07:00What is "the Left"? Ten remarks<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://sxoliastesxwrissynora.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/71.jpg?w=650&h=347" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://sxoliastesxwrissynora.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/71.jpg?w=650&h=347" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">SYRIZA MPs sleeping in Parliament during "fast-track" imposition of the third Memorandum by their Party</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><b>What is "the Left"? Ten Remarks</b></div><div style="text-align: center;">Originally published in Greek, in <a href="http://leninreloaded.blogspot.com/2014/06/blog-post_6471.html">Lenin Reloaded</a>, 21 June 2014</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">1. In Greece, "the Left" exists since 1951, and the foundation, during that year, of the United Democratic Left (EDA). As a category of political thinking, it had no significance in the country in the period before the 1950s. "Anarchism" was far more important as a designator of ideology at the beginnings of the Greek worker movement than "the Left" -- not to mention the significance, for an anti-bourgeois politics, of terms like "Bolshevism" and "Third International". Structurally, the precondition for the birth of "the Left" was the self-censorship of the self-designation of a sector of the population as "communist" as a result of state terror. "The Left" is born under conditions of state repression as a defensive misnomer and as a pseudo-apellation for purposes of self-protection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">2. The defeat of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), in combination with state terror and repression, however, also created the preconditions for the pseudo-category of "the Left" (as a nominalist abstraction, rather than as a concrete designator of a tendency <b>within</b> a worker-socialist party -- a use with an entirely different genealogy) to acquire its own substantive meaning. It created, to put it more simply, the possibility for a section of the communists to <b>really</b> (and not just superficially) make the transition to "democratic ideology", which in conditions of unshakeable capitalist domination necessarily means the transition to the side of bourgeois democracy. "The Left" is the product of the effective surrender of a section of the communists to the victorious bourgeois state.</div><a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">3. Economically speaking, "the Left" signifies the demand for "a more just distribution of wealth", or of the "social product". It <b>never</b> means the struggle to change the mode of production, never the change of relations of production, never the socialization of the means of production. Already in 1875, Karl Marx showed, in his <i>Critique of the Gotha Program</i>, how contradictory the very concept of a "fair distribution" of wealth within capitalism is. The cultivation of the delusion that the stakes of "the Left" were ever anything more than this vague demand for a "fairer distribution" was something enabled by the compulsory co-existence, under the regime of state terror of the 1950s, of social democrats and communists. This coexistence was used to foster confusion and generate pleasant placebos for a disarmed and defeated movement.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">4. Because "the Left's" ultimate demand is "fairer distribution" of capitalist accumulated wealth, the Left is by definition on the side of Reform against Revolution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">5. Because the financial crises of capitalism render the margins for satisfying the demand of "fairer distribution" extremely narrow, "the Left" can have no economic content that is different from that of bourgeois parties in such periods. It can acquire such a content only in periods of economic development of the rates of capitalist accumulation, always under the precondition that it has in its grasp means of exerting pressure such that it is allowed to appear as a "provider" for the working class and a "negotiator" on its behalf. But the subversion of actually existing socialism means that no such means exist, either during financial crises, or during periods of capitalist development. Consequently, "the Left" cannot be expected to obtain an economic content that differentiates it from any bourgeois political formation in the near future either.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">6. Given the absence of a distinct economic content in the category of "the Left", both in Greece and abroad, the term evolved, beginning in the 1960s and in the 1970s, into a category of the <b>superstructure</b>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">7. The first fundamental sphere within which "the Left" obtained a content was <b>aesthetics</b>, in all its forms. For this reason, it remains far more easy today to locate a "Left" cinema, poetry, painting, imagery, rhetoric, than a "Left" economic program that would be distinct from bourgeois economic programs at large. After the 1960s, "the Left" became predominantly an <b>aesthetic category</b>; a proposition for an aesthetic.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">8. The second fundamental sphere in which "the Left" obtained a content, during the same period, and as it was being disseminated in the terrain of aesthetics, was "social rights", conceived as individuated rights based on "difference". These, inevitably, are rights that presuppose a norm they simultaneously question. All the social movements "the Left" created since the 1950s are determined by this contradiction between the non-questioning of the existence of a norm --the acceptance of the stability and the sustainability, effectively, of the capitalist mode of production-- and its questioning on the ideological and rhetorical level; as well as by the derivative contradiction between the rejection of normativity <i>as such</i> and the effort to make it more "inclusive" than it has been in the past.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">9. In periods of recession, the victories of "new social movements" do not so much disappear as reveal themselves as mirages; for no deviation from the necessities of capitalist accumulation is possible, so "social rights" are either revealed to be devoid of substance or utterly "safe" for the social system, even during periods of social repression. This is the era in which gay marriage can be perceived as a far less radical demand than the right to a home or to medical care, because the latter have a cost for capital, whereas the former only demands "ideological adjustment" in the bourgeois state.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">10. "The Left" is the essential and organic aspect of the "Great Illusion" of an important sector of middle and lower strata; these strata derived erroneous conclusions concerning the nature of the capitalist system by limiting their observations to the period in which the rhythms of economic development and the pressure made possible by actually existing socialism allowed the demand for a "fairer distribution of the social product" to have some limited practical consequences for everyday life and its quality in western societies. Today, the only utility of "the Left" is to advance confusion concerning the real nature of a category that is far more historically important and substantive --Social Democracy-- and to assist in the reproduction of the intellectual and technocratic elites who use it to win popular legitimacy, thus leading to its ever higher delegitimation in the eyes of popular strata, with all the serious political consequences this may have for the conversion of the latter to Reaction. It goes without saying that the entire debate, in Greece and abroad, concerning what "the real Left" is and what political party "really" expresses something <b>devoid of any real economic content</b> is definitionally disorienting; the only purpose of such debate is the perpetuation of the political paralysis and impotence of the lower social strata.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-43890914896670921792015-08-12T02:16:00.001-07:002015-08-12T03:24:19.489-07:00Comment of the KKE on the taxation of MP income<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150811/kke-kthrio-5.jpg?itok=68cOEZ2h" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150811/kke-kthrio-5.jpg?itok=68cOEZ2h" height="177" width="320" /></a></div>
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Using the government legislation [on taxing MP income] as an opportunity, the KKE reiterates its position for a drastic reduction of monetary compensation for Members of Parliament, for the abolition of a tax-free bracket for them, for the full abolition of MP pensions and other income related to the function of a Parliament member.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Instead of this, the government signs the slaughter of remaining labor rights and at the same time tries to dazzle and distract, by announcing a reduction of the wages of the MPs and other cadre of the government, while fully retaining parliamentary rights to monetary compensation, in an effort to make the new Memorandum more palatable.</div>
<a href="http://www.902.gr/eidisi/politiki/73205/sholio-toy-kke-gia-tin-forologia-ton-voyleytikon-apozimioseon#.VcoegYyQLxg.twitter">902</a>Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-15107525322187927382015-08-11T13:09:00.001-07:002015-08-11T14:21:15.349-07:00Announcement of the KKE on the Third Memorandum the Government signed with the Institutions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150811/kke-kthrio-6.jpg?itok=ipiAdLwU" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150811/kke-kthrio-6.jpg?itok=ipiAdLwU" height="177" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The third Memorandum, agreed upon with the Institutions by the SYRIZA-ANEL government, and coming to the Parliament for approval, must face the greatest possible reaction on the part of workers and the entire people. It contains measures of such harshness and cruelty that no government in the past dared implement, fearing popular reaction. This is the great contribution of the SYRIZA government to the system. Using the fairytale of the "left government" and of the "Prime Minister who tried but was prevented", the government is moving ahead with the implementation of barbaric measures, that were permanent demands of big capital and of EU directives, and that demolish whatever was left standing of worker and people's rights.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The third Memorandum and its accompanying implementation laws include the continuation of all previous Memoranda and the commitment that anti-popular measures will be implemented to the letter. It contains new, painful measures on labor rights, insurance, the self-employed, small and middle farmers, making their survival even more difficult. At the same tie, it contains the implementation of measures aiming at the improvement of competitiveness and profitability of capital, the concentration of wealth into even fewer hands, through privatizations, OECD directives, the recapitalization of banks, the further liberalization of the energy market, the fund to which 50 billion euros worth of state property will be deposited.</div><a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">In fact, the third Memorandum constitutes a permanent threat against the people, who will be constantly blackmailed to new sacrifices to achieve the goals of primary surpluses, fiscal austerity and, above all, capitalist recovery. After al, the Council on Fiscal Policy, which has already been voted for as a prerequisite, can introduce new cuts in popular income at any time if the goals of the government and the institutions are not attained.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The people now has concrete and indisputable evidence showing that no government cannot even bring some basic relief to the people, far less adopt a pro-people policy within the framework of the EU and the capitalist economy. Given that the SYRIZA-ANEL government, like the previous ND-PASOK governments, considers the capitalist path to development as the only path, the agreement for a new Memorandum was only a matter of time. With its policy, the government effectively legitimates the previous governments, constituting, along with ND, PASOK, and Potami, a parliamentary front for the ratification and implementation of the new, barbaric measures.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The responsibility of the cadre of the so-called "Left Platform" of SYRIZA is vast. After it disseminated a spate of delusions to left-wing and radical people concerning the SYRIZA government, after supporting all the steps toward the new Memorandum (the agreement of 20 February, the 47 page Tsipras proposal, etc.), it now differentiates itself, continuing to support the government. Its proposal is the --equally futile for the people-- policy of a capitalist Greece with a national currency, advocated by reactionary forces, albeit with a different starting point: Schauble, other fascist and extreme right forces of euroscepticism in Greece and Europe. They are hiding the fact that exit from the euro alone, without disengagement from the EU, without radical changes in economy and power, will lead to the same result from a different path: to the bankruptcy of the people, at the time when certain sectors of capital are multiply benefitted.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The time has come for the people to resist, take its fate in its own hands, use its own power, which until now it has left unused, hoping in a future government management, that would supposedly solve its problems for it. But all the governmental alternatives within the walls of capitalism proved a nightmare for the people. If the people consents today, if it does not resist, then the worst is ahead; it simultaneously runs the risk of losing valuable time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The KKE says to the people that there is hope. The Memoranda, poverty, unemployment, the exploitation of the people for the benefit of a few are not the only path, nor can it be a future for the people and for the coming generations. What is now necessary is the organization and reinforcement of struggle against the third Memorandum and its measures. It is the reinforcement of class and radical forces in the worker-popular movement, for the abolition of anti-worker and anti-people laws, the satisfaction of contemporary needs, in a rupture with the EU, capital and their power.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">What is needed is a common path, support and strengthening of the KKE, that never lied to the people, has always stood by their side and today proffers the only realistic pro-people path: the total disengagement from the EU, the unilateral cancellation of debt, the socialization of monopolies, of the wealth of the country, with the people itself in power.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_573207083"></span>902<span id="goog_573207084"></span></a></div>Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-5174842311405224932015-08-08T04:06:00.001-07:002015-08-10T04:30:06.607-07:00Interview with Dimitris Koutsoumbas, GS of the KKE, 8/8/2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150808/dhmhtrhs_koytsoympas_14.jpg?itok=dMCC2y1c" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150808/dhmhtrhs_koytsoympas_14.jpg?itok=dMCC2y1c" height="177" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.902.gr/eidisi/politiki/73079/synenteyxi-toy-dimitri-koytsoympa-stin-efimerida-ton-syntakton">Interview of Dimitris Koutsoumbas, GS of the KKE, with Tassos Pappas of "Newspaper of the Editors" (<i>Efimerida ton Syntakton</i>)</a>:</div>
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Q: - You say that whether on the drachma or on the euro and with Memoranda, the people will suffer under present conditions. Is it possible that this line demobilizes citizens since the prospect you offer does not seem to have contemporary relevance?</div>
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A:- You are grossly mistaken. The political proposal of the KKE is and remains contemporary. The other proposals, those of the current and the former governments, are the ones pointing to a "Neverland" of exit from the crisis in the interests of the people. Those are proposals that satisfy only big capital and its sectors. The proposals of the other parties refer either to new agreements of the Memorandum type or simply to a change of currency through Grexit. Both proposals, adopted for different reasons by the present government and other parties on the one hand, and by Golden Dawn and various extraparliamentary formations on the other, are mathematically calibrated to lead the people to total bankruptcy. The KKE proposal, conversely, is the only realistic and authentically pro-people proposal, since it links disengagement from the Eurozone and the EU to a comprehensive plan and program for the economy and society, including the socialization of the concentrated means of production, national central planning, abolition of the debt, with the people organized and determined, in the framework of an authentic worker-popular power. The people can move in this direction actively, utilizing the experience of what the KKE has been saying yesterday and says today, in plain language.</div>
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Q: - Obviously, you are watching developments within SYRIZA. Could the KKE, under certain preconditions, begin discussion with a sector of SYRIZA, meaning that sector that argues for a return to the national currency and a different organization of Greek society?</div>
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A: - If you are referring to leading SYRIZA cadre, who bear very heavy responsibility for why we got here; cadre that supported SYRIZA's political strategy, that sold and continue to sell false hopes and delusions, arresting the radicalization of the movement; cadre and groups that are selling the capitalist path to the drachma and the integration into a different imperialist alliance as an allegedly pro-people solution, and indeed as a path that leads to the overturning of social relations and to popular prosperity through "ruptures" like those we saw in the last six months, I answer unequivocally that no such prospect of a common path exists. Of course the worker-popular forces that supported SYRIZA, as well as other parties, are a different issue. To them, the KKE is addressing a call for discussion and the adoption of a common path.</div>
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Q: - Are you perhaps afraid that a party to the left of SYRIZA, coming from within SYRIZA, will create problems for the KKE?</div>
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A:- The Lafazanis-style parties you have in mind always play the role of bulwarks against worker-popular awakening, radicalization, against the anti-monopoly and anticapitalist orientation of the popular movement and its social alliance. In previous decades, they became known as "KKE of the interior", as EAR, as Synaspismos and as SYRIZA. They are political adventurists, with contradictory and impossible policies, whose only contribution is to make the people and the country, as well as the movement, waste valuable time.</div>
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Q: - Voices against German hegemony are getting thicker in Europe. Do you believe this will go on? Is it possible for the strategy of austerity, as expressed by Germany and its satellite countries, to get defeated?</div>
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A: - The strategy of austerity is advocated by Germany and its satellites, as you say, but it is also advocated by France, by Italy, by the "friends" of Mr. Tsipras. Hollande advanced a maelstrom of anti-people measures in France and continues to do so, while Lagarde of the IMF, where the USA is dominant, is taking a leading role in the demolition of whatever insurance rights have been left standing. We can't simply speak about Schauble in Greece while forgetting Hollande, Renci, Cameron, Le Pen, Lew, all of whom are asking for the advancement of economic slaughter against our people, and against other peoples.</div>
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All these years, it has been proven that competition between imperialist centers, the struggle of Germany against the USA, of Germany against France, etc., have nothing to do with the protection of popular rights, but with who will guarantee more profits for their own corporate groups, who will hegemonize Europe and the world. The debate about "austerity" is embedded in this context.</div>
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Q: - Why is it that in a Europe in crisis, where workers are cruelly attacked by dominant policies, we don't have strong forces of questioning the capitalist model? Why is socialism, as you conceive it, unpopular? People's consciousness is still burdened by 1989 and the failure of "actually existing socialism".</div>
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A: -There is no doubt that the socialist-communist ideal suffered a world-historical defeat in 1989-1991, through the subversion of the USSR and of other socialist countries. It was a defeat and a setback still paid for by the peoples, by the international labour and communist movement. And that continues to be a burden on mass awakening and the social emancipation of the people and their movements.</div>
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But we believe that historical setbacks, errors, weaknesses, ought to teach all of us. The movement, the working class, the people, ought to be able to extract valuable conclusions for the present and future. This is the only way in which they will be able to build a new society, without the mistakes of the past. And to reinforce the tendency toward radicalization, toward the comprehensive questioning of the capitalist path, that is now rotten and that can only give birth to crises, wars, poverty and exploitation.</div>
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The KKE works consistently in this direction. And we are optimistic, despite the great difficulties we have to deal with.</div>
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Q: - Some polls show that the stance of the KKE "sent" some of your voters to support "No" in the Referendum. Did you make the wrong choice?</div>
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A: - Given the fact that the SYRIZA-ANEL government refused to even submit the KKE proposal for a real Referendum question to the vote in Parliament, it was clear to us that our goal was not to collect votes but to launch a five-day campaign for a No to the ECB-EU-IMF proposal and a No to the government proposal, that was leading to a new Memorandum. This was very quickly proven, since the 62% that voted No was seized by Mr. Tsipras and the other parties, except for KKE, and converted into a big Yes to the new Memorandum.</div>
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The call of the CC of the KKE is already resounding with the people: with those who voted for No thinking it meant a rupture with Memoranda, the EU, the monopolies and their power; with those who cast an invalid ballot, a blank ballot, or abstained from the vote, authentically challenging the path followed in a radical fashion, rejecting the government's deceptions; and even with those who voted Yes, caving under the big blackmail-type dilemmas. To all of them, the KKE extends its hand for a common struggle.</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-84192682769626330942015-08-01T02:06:00.001-07:002015-08-01T02:06:58.700-07:00The KKE denounces the new crime in the West Bank<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.koolnews.gr/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/vrefos-650-800x547.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.koolnews.gr/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/vrefos-650-800x547.jpg" height="218" width="320" /></a></div>
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The KKE denounces the murder of a Palestinian infant, tragically killed in an arson by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The Press Office of the CC notes in its comment: "This event is a result of the constantly rising aggression of the state of Israel in the region. Part of the share of the responsibility for the perpetual crime against the people of Palestine belongs to the EU, the USA, but also the Greek government, all sustaining and extending political, financial and military cooperation with the murderous state of Israel."</div>
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<i><a href="http://www.rizospastis.gr/story.do?id=8539165">Rizospastis</a></i>, 1 August 2015.Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-23451368000394782102015-07-20T06:20:00.002-07:002015-07-20T06:23:22.239-07:00Homo Orientalis, Homo Occidentalis<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://images.watchit.gr/?h=305&w=600&src=http://www.newsit.gr/files/Image/2015/07/16/metanastes/omonoia4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://images.watchit.gr/?h=305&w=600&src=http://www.newsit.gr/files/Image/2015/07/16/metanastes/omonoia4.jpg" height="162" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Syrian refugees, Omonoia Plaza, Athens, 17 July 2015</td></tr>
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"The East" is the name of a lie; the lie of the West. Consciousness of the lie is the only path to truth. The East reveals the lie in which western (wo)man lives -- a (wo)man less human the more s/he thinks s/he is human, more than other humans -- a human protected from dehumanization, the deprivation of human identity, because s/he is white and "civilized." The East reveals the need of the western (wo)man for the lie, their identification with the lie. The foundation of the lie is the belief that exploitation does not poison consciousness; that there is a "spontaneous" expression that is not based on exploitation within societies dominated by capitalist relations of production. The western (wo)man is the one who benefits from the fruit of such exploitation but refuses to acknowledge it. It is the (wo)man who has forgotten the East, does not wish to know about the East, and yet pretends to "know" what exploitation is. The western (wo)man is the one who may accept debating capitalism but does not wish to speak of imperialism. Because for that (wo)man, "capitalism" is not something that concerns the East, that is baptized in its blood; its protagonist and its victim, western (wo)man believes, is, once again, western (wo)man. Like imperialism, western (wo)man is a parasitic entity dreaming of being the universal subject: dreaming that his/her fantasy is reality, his/her desires are a moral law, the satisfaction of their Ego a moral demand, their pleasure the historical end justifying the means of martyrdom for others. The world, which is not western (wo)man, will keep turning into hell for as long as every human being does not rebel against the infamy of being "western" -- nothing more than western.</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-15810954872017927402015-07-20T05:51:00.001-07:002015-07-20T05:57:01.528-07:00What would the KKE do if it were in SYRIZA's place?<div style="text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-original/public/Media/20121118/KKE-POREIA--POLYTEXNEIOY-5.jpg?itok=vrW96jXO" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-original/public/Media/20121118/KKE-POREIA--POLYTEXNEIOY-5.jpg?itok=vrW96jXO" height="186" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>What would the KKE do if it were in SYRIZA's place?</b></div>
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<i><a href="http://www.rizospastis.gr/page.do?publDate=19/7/2015&id=15907&pageNo=14">Rizospastis</a></i>, 19 July 2015</div>
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We often hear the following, well-intentioned question: "What would you have done if you were in the place of the SYRIZA government"?</div>
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The question is not illogical. But we must place it in the right perspective.</div>
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If we, the KKE, were in the "place" of SYRIZA, meaning the place of bourgeois management, the place of defending capitalist interests, in search of winning back profits, seeking to use the advantages conferred on capital by membership in the EU, the EZ and Euroatlantic alliances and NATO; if we were in the "place" of taking up a government that is a tool of the power of monopolies; if we were in the "place" of negotiating on behalf of Greek capitalism by sitting in the roundtables of the EU, the EZ and other imperialist organizations;</div>
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if we were in that "place", we would not do anything more or less than what SYRIZA is already doing. We could not help but have the same dilemmas: should we continue inside the euro or opt for bankruptcy, whether controlled or uncontrolled, and a drachma-based Greek capitalism? We would weigh what is more to our capitalism's interest and choose accordingly. And that's what SYRIZA did.</div>
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But if we were in that "place", we would no longer be a Communist Party, the party of the working class and the popular strata; we would have become a different party, unable to struggle on their behalf.</div>
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That is what we have explained since 2012, when workers were inviting us, with good intentions, to "enter" a coalition government with SYRIZA, to support it, or at least to tolerate it on 5 or 10 issues.</div>
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We explained, back then as well, that every government of bourgeois management, for all its intentions, declarations and self-stylings, for all its pursuits, is objectively forced into a specific anti-popular path. Because that kind of government is not the product of rupture with capital, its power, the imperialist organizations, the EU, etc.</div>
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Today, the illusion and delusion that things could have been otherwise collapses before our very eyes, no matter how much various and sundry try to cover up the truth with the tatters of a caricature of rupture, of the "national currency", the capitalist "reconstruction of production", the "honest compromise"; no matter how much they try to put back the make-up and resell it, trying to entrap those who are angry, those who are disappointed with SYRIZA's policy, back into the sheep pen of the shipowners, the medicine industrialists, the US and German capitalist centers supporting Grexit.</div>
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But let us turn the question around:</div>
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What would have happened if there was a radical change in the correlation of forces, to the advantage of the working class and poor popular strata, if in place of a government of bourgeois management, a government that is a mere tool of capitalist power, one had a real worker-popular government, a tool of worker-popular power, in which communists would of course play a determining role?</div>
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Such a governmental power would not be trapped in the dead-ends of an antipopular negotiation with the imperialist organizations of the EU, the ECB and the IMF. It would not even start the kind of process we have lived through in the past five months.</div>
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First of all, because it would not acknowledge the entire existing institutional and legal antipopular and antiworker framework, nor the memorandum-related and non-memorandum related laws; it would not acknowledge the measures supporting capital, protecting its profits, the outrageous privileges of corporate groups. It would abolish all of that; it would topple it. It would also not recognize commitments to the EU, the ECB, the IMF and NATO, nor the "obligations" deriving thereof. It would abolish the participation of the country in these imperialist groups. It would disengage it from them.</div>
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It would not leave the keys to the economy, the production units, the services, energy, infrastructure and banks in the hands of business groups, capital and monopolies. It would undertake a series of immediate steps, launching the process of socialization and the organization of the economy on the basis of scientific central planning. It would thus open the path for the utilization of the productive capacity of the country, using as a criterion not the profit of corporate groups and capital, nor capitalist exploitation, but the satisfaction of worker and popular, of broader social needs. This path will allow us to exit the crisis in the interests of workers and the people. It will furnish the possibility to develop, equally and commensurably, sectors that are currently restricted because of commitments to the EU (e.g shipbuilding, sugar, meat production).</div>
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Such a power would not acknowledge public debt, nor the obligation to pay it back. It would declare its unilateral abolition.</div>
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Such a power and government would be a product of a broad worker and popular mobilization and the participation of the workers and popular strata in the exercise of power, through new institutions that will derive from their subversive struggle, replacing the rotten institutions of the bourgeois political system and the "democracy" of monopolies.</div>
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Such a power and government would immediately sign mutually beneficial agreements with other states, to import medicine, food, energy. Because it would not have the commitment to participate in imperialist organizations like the EU, NATO, etc.</div>
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This is the place for which we are struggling today.</div>
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The whole struggle of communists is oriented in that direction. It aims to change the correlation of forces to the benefit of the working class and the poor popular strata, in order to change the path the country is following; in order to abandon the capitalist path to development, whether that presupposes the euro or the drachma, along with its crises, its immiseration, its exploitation, its right-less life, the adaptation of popular and worker needs to the limits imposed by the profit of corporate groups, its commitment to participate in capitalist unions and imperialist alliances.</div>
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This is the reason why today, the KKE calls the people not simply to resist the new antipopular and antilabor attack of capital, the SYRIZA-ANEL government, the EU; but to use its struggle as a launching pad, to turn it into a step for the bolstering of the worker movement, the reinforcement of the Popular Alliance; for the strengthening of the anticapitalist and anti-monopoly orientation of the movement, the targetting of the real enemy--the monopolies, capital, employers and their governments, their parties, their international allies: the EU, the USA, NATO. This is the only way path to the change of the correlation in the interest of the people. It is the only path that allows the people to form a strong, determined force, capable of blocking the antipopular offensive today, and to topple it tomorrow, imposing its own exit plan. In this process, workers will be able to attain success and victory--smaller and larger. And that is the criterion with which they must stand in front of the ballot box, if and when this happens again: how will their vote help, bolster the effort to change the correlation of forces in order to help the people rise up, organized and determined to put their future in their own hands.</div>
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Χ.</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-56867461230664146052015-07-17T21:54:00.000-07:002015-07-18T00:24:29.087-07:00The poisonous politics of SYRIZA's Left Platform<div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_c2pt_iSeZcnhweQF5EeplqiWBwPuFF8x4so2XaO7xD8hsOtnG-TaNKiyN_z0PPg9qdC-jtbgLX1lA4us6VtmigNLEIHwgcER5-UKrElvXTD9gJSqaeyl65BCqXqEsOpu520wnlF2rht/s320/1932-spd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB_c2pt_iSeZcnhweQF5EeplqiWBwPuFF8x4so2XaO7xD8hsOtnG-TaNKiyN_z0PPg9qdC-jtbgLX1lA4us6VtmigNLEIHwgcER5-UKrElvXTD9gJSqaeyl65BCqXqEsOpu520wnlF2rht/s320/1932-spd.jpg" width="197" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"It is both them who are at fault!" SPD Poster, 1932.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The KKE has long argued that the role of the Left Platform is not at all, as it has pretended, to "radicalize" SYRIZA, or, in another of its formulations, to "pressure it to the Left", but rather to: a) bolster illusions that this is possible and even desirable for SYRIZA and the Left Platform itself; b) hence, prevent those who buy into the illusion from making a real left turn toward KKE; c) assist in the overall effort to create a fracture within the KKE -- hence regularly hosting and promoting those who have been expelled from the KKE in more recent years, including venomously anti-KKE initiatives like "Ergatikos Agwnas" (Labor Struggle), as well as other, increasingly anti-KKE formations like ANTARSYA, in a broad "more left than SYRIZA, but still anti-KKE" alliance.<br />
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</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yesterday, "<a href="http://iskra.gr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=21377:soultanidou-mnhmonio&catid=83:aristera&Itemid=200">Iskra</a>" --the name is true to the pompous self-styling characteristic of Left Platform cadre, which is the definition of "labor aristocracy", i.e intellectuals and trade unionists who have seized the opportunity to transform their often communist past into an asset and a key to state appointment-- published an article by SYRIZA CC and Left Platform member Christina Soultanidou which, for the first time in my count, openly admits to the fundaments of the Left Platform's <b>real </b>role. Following is the relevant passage:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: justify;">"<i>If the government does not change its policy, even at the last moment, SYRIZA will have unwittingly contributed to the greatest success of the system. It will have converted the vast majority of the Parliament into a mechanism for the imposition of Memoranda, and the only non Memorandum parties, according to the political map that derives from the electoral process of January 2015, will be <b>the</b> <b>KKE</b> <b>and</b> <b>Golden</b> <b>Dawn</b>.</i>"<br />
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Note the poisonous admixture of cynical deception and unwitting candor here:<br />
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a) The false binary between "pro- and -anti Memorandum" parties is fully sustained. This despite the fact that ND was itself "anti-Memorandum" under the George Papandreou government only to become fanatically pro-Memorandum when it won entry into government cabinets, or that SYRIZA has followed exactly in the same footsteps, as the KKE has long warned would happen.<br />
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b) This deception is transferred now onto Golden Dawn, which the Left Platform has to admit, as everyone admits, is a fascist party. How can a fascist party be "anti-Memorandum"? What is being asserted here, if one accepts the idiotic binary that catapulted SYRIZA to power, is that Golden Dawn is currently to the "left" of SYRIZA! For Golden Dawn, this is effectively promotion and endorsement from the "left"!<br />
<br />
Of course, "pro- and anti- Memorandum" means <b>nothing</b> if it does not mean "for or against the ruling class of Greek capitalists who have endorsed and abetted the systematic attack against labor rights and the economic sovereignty of the country". Given that history has never seen a fascist party that is against its own ruling class, it is absolutely self-evident that Golden Dawn's current rhetorical posture is patently false, as it was in Hitler's NSDAP, a party that posed as "anti-capitalist" even while it was being funded by the major capitalist monopolies of Germany against the communists. Which is precisely what Golden Dawn has been doing, at least in the Perama dockyards, where it was expressly set to destroy communist influence on trade unions on behalf of Greek shipowners. Incidentally, though the KKE has submitted a full proposal for the abolition of all Memoranda and Implementation Agreements since 2012 (and again, after the January 2015 elections), Golden Dawn has never done anything but give grand speeches about "traitors"...<br />
<br />
These fundamental aspects of history and of current Greek experience are intentionally hidden so that<br />
<br />
d) The poisonous and expressly anti-communist "coupling" of fascists and communists that Social Democracy has always undertaken is put in place. But<br />
<br />
e) This can't be done without also openly admitting that the Left Platform's concern is <b>to stop SYRIZA voters from turning to the KKE,</b> "one of the two extremes" that SYRIZA's capitulation lets emerge as allegedly commonly "anti-Memorandum" parties, though Golden Dawn is not at all really "anti-Memorandum" and though KKE is only "anti-Memorandum" to the extent that it is an anti-capitalist, because it is a communist, party.<br />
<br />
I invite anyone to argue against the incontrovertible fact that this ostensibly "equal distance" gesture toward fascism and communism <b>openly endorses fascism as preferable</b>, by falsely ascribing an anti-capitalist character to it and by simultaneously slandering communists through false implicit association with fascism.<br />
<br />
The treacherous privileging of fascism in what poses as an "equal distance" policy in the Left Platform member's argument becomes even more apparent a few lines later:<br />
<br />
"<i>With such a situation in the Parliamentary system, and while the lives of citizens will be inevitably mortgaged by the third Memorandum, it is not at all impossible for Golden Dawn to emerge as a powerful voice for anti-Memorandum policy, with everything this implies as a consequence for the movement, the situation in Greek society, the possibility of disengagement from Memoranda, and more than anything, for democracy</i>."<br />
<br />
"Equal distance" is thus patently <b>not</b> equal distance. <b>One</b> of the poles of fascism and communism is always privileged from the standpoint of the craven Social Democrat, and that is fascism. And it is fascism, most basically, because it is the Social Democrat herself who refuses to reveal what fascism really is, it is the Social Democrat <b>herself</b> who confers on it a false "anti-systemic" image she then bewails will "dupe" others!!! The rotten, despicable role of Social Democracy in circumstances of acute capitalist crisis and the crisis of political legitimation that follows it could not be more apparent.<br />
<br />
But even this is not enough for the Left Platform. Soultanidou goes on to explain why this morbidly ludicrous group does not quit its Parliament seats despite its ostensible disagreement with SYRIZA's "leadership" (they are in fact an organic aspect of that very leadership, as several of them are founding high cadre members of the party):<br />
<br />
"<i>Thus, in my view, it is NECESSARY for the 39 MPs of SYRIZA who did not vote for the first Memorandum legislation, and who will not vote for Memorandum laws to stay in the Parliament: so that there is a left anti-Memorandum expression of the people in the Parliament. For unfortunately, it has been proven that the KKE cannot express this people beyond its existing electoral percentage."</i><br />
<i><br />
</i> In simple English:<br />
<br />
a) A false binary is used to conflate fascists and communists<br />
<br />
b) This conflation creates an imaginary role for "Left Platform" Social Democrats<br />
<br />
c) This imaginary role consists in supposedly preventing left voters from turning to fascism<br />
<br />
d) While this is precisely what is endorsed by "Left Platform" Social Democrats through refusal to expose fascist collusion with the ruling class and its interests (but then, who would expose a collaborator? SYRIZA and Golden Dawn compete as all bourgeois parties compete, in terms of who will get the endorsement of "servant of the bosses")<br />
<br />
e) Fascism's prospects are actively endorsed, albeit as a "threat"<br />
<br />
f) Communism's prospects as an alternative to another Greek fascist dictatorship are actively pronounced nil.<br />
<br />
This is the politics of the "left of SYRIZA" that US media like <i>Jacobin</i> embellish, falsify and promote. Unsurprisingly, it is exactly the same politics the "right of SYRIZA" (infamously anti-communist journalist and SYRIZA MEP Kouloglou) promotes:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OMod9KKR0UI" width="560"></iframe><br />
</div><br />
It is incumbent for <b>friends</b> <b>of</b> <b>the</b> <b>Greek</b> <b>people</b> rather than accomplices of poisonous and internationally dangerous Social Democrats to expose and denounce the Left Platform's dishonest and politically reactionary stance before it can do more damage than it already has done; before the Social Democratic conspiracy against a communist and for a fascist alternative to its own rule has borne its fatal fruits.</div>Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-22186277311471974942015-07-17T06:41:00.001-07:002015-07-17T07:04:36.812-07:00PAME: We denounce the plans of the SYRIZA Government to attack the demonstrators using riot police forces<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MifF3RY355U/VabOUV4VMEI/AAAAAAAAIKM/hrjc2ddDLg8/w1161-h774-no/%25CE%25A0%25CE%2591%25CE%259C%25CE%2595_%25CE%25A3%25CE%25A5%25CE%259B%25CE%259B%25CE%2591%25CE%259B%25CE%2597%25CE%25A4%25CE%2597%25CE%25A1%25CE%2599%25CE%259F%252811%2529_20.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MifF3RY355U/VabOUV4VMEI/AAAAAAAAIKM/hrjc2ddDLg8/w1161-h774-no/%25CE%25A0%25CE%2591%25CE%259C%25CE%2595_%25CE%25A3%25CE%25A5%25CE%259B%25CE%259B%25CE%2591%25CE%259B%25CE%2597%25CE%25A4%25CE%2597%25CE%25A1%25CE%2599%25CE%259F%252811%2529_20.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">July 15, 2105 PAME demonstration</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
PAME salutes the thousands of workers, unemployed, pensioners, young workers and students, the women, the self employed and small farmers who took part massively at the demonstrations of PAME on July 15th, all over Greece. The demonstrations send a message of struggle, not disappointment, of militancy, not defeatism, against the new brutal measures of the 3rd Memorandum of the SYRIZA Government.</div>
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We denounce the upgraded provocation plan of the Government of SYRIZA, to use the oppression forces of the riot police, alongside with parastate mechanisms during the enormous demonstration of PAME in Athens, on July 15th. This was a plan that aimed to break the demonstration of PAME, to intimidate the workers and the popular strata.</div>
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At the same time when, inside the Greek Parliament, we watched the formation of a new alliance among the bourgeois political parties between the social democratic SYRIZA, the liberal ND, the far right-wing ANEL and the social democratic PASOK and POTAMI, outside the parliament, we witnessed dark mechanisms attacking the people. There is no doubt that the imposition of such brutal, anti-worker policies demands the escalation of state and employers’ oppression. The repressive action of July 15th is not an isolated incident. It is part of the prerequisites of the new anti peoples’ agreement for the attack against the workers-people’s movement. It means direct intervention against the trade union organizations and their demands. They have planned escalating authoritarianism through new measures in order to prohibit and contain trade union action. They are preparing new trade union legislation to block the rise of class struggle.</div>
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We call on the trade union organizations to be on high alert to cancel these plans. We respond to the big capital, the Government of SYRIZA and its mechanisms, with organization and the strengthening of the class struggle. We reject wage or pension cuts, the abolition of workers’ rights. We raise demands based on the contemporary needs of the working class.</div>
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We continue to strengthen our struggle against the war they declared upon us!</div>
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Translation emended from English text at <a href="http://pamehellas.gr/index.php/en/homepage/92-press-releases/5264-on-the-great-demonstrations-of-july-15th-we-denounce-the-plans-of-the-syriza-government-to-attack-the-demonstrators-using-riot-police-forces">PAME</a>.</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-81314326787406674352015-07-17T06:27:00.002-07:002015-07-17T06:33:22.077-07:00The attack on PAME was planned<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.rizospastis.gr/getImage.do?size=medium&id=494057" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.rizospastis.gr/getImage.do?size=medium&id=494057" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Police attacks the PAME rally at the "Fix" juncture</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The attack on PAME was planned</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://www.rizospastis.gr/page.do?publDate=17/7/2015&id=15905&pageNo=5">Rizospastis</a></i>, Friday, 17 July 2015</div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Tsipras government has been exposed following the police attack, on July 15, against the PAME rally. The attack took place as the Parliament was discussing the third Memorandum. Besides immediate experience, the collection of data regarding the attack leads to the conclusion that the attack was well planned. The police acted on a command plan and with the clear goal not only of emptying the area outside the Parliament, but of beating protesters far away from the Parliament. A characteristic example is the attack by police "Delta" teams, which took place at the "Fix" juncture, kilometers away from the Parliament, and at a time when the protesters were folding up their banners.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
All the data leads to the same conclusion: well before the attack, groups of 6-7 members were spotted spread around the Syntagma plaza. At about 9 pm, i.e, at the time in which Parliament discussion was scheduled to start, a group placed near the Grand Britania hotel began throwing stones at police forces that were placed near the flower stores. As streets were empty of protesters, both toward Panepistimiou street, which was empty, and toward Georgiou street, which was empty as well, the police opted to turn the initial small group of supposed anarchists toward the main body of the protest, using tear gas for that purpose. </div>
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What followed was a mass hurling of molotov cocktails, which had evidently been stored in nearby spots. This time, the Police responded by throwing any chemical it had, while, at the same time, flash bombs began to be thrown at the main body of the protest. </div>
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<br /></div>
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PAME forces on Amalias street, heading toward Syntagma plaza, began to move toward Zappeion and the Olympian Zeus columns in orderly fashion. From that point on, police and "anarchists" functioned as a single team. They attacked the body of the protest in order to disperse it. They did not achieve that, and the protest got to the "Fix" juncture in discliplined formation. At that point, the "Delta" force of the police abandoned any pretext (i.e, that they were supposedly chasing "anarchists") and brutally attacked PAME protesters. The cool attitude of the demo safeguarding team prevented the worst from happening, leaving the government exposed for the fact that one of the prerequisites of Memorandum implementation, the repression of the worker movement, was pursued under its own command.</div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-71893281686972593522015-06-27T07:57:00.001-07:002015-06-27T07:57:30.553-07:00The Proposition of the Parliamentary Team of the KKE on the content of the Referendum<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FcHZgmxfKHQ" width="560"></iframe><br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
The KKE calls on the Greek People to reject both proposals [Eurogroup's and government's] and to adopt the proposal of the Parliamentary team of the KKE which states:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
"The government is proposing conducting a referendum with the question of whether the people approve or disapprove the proposal for an agreement submitted by the EU-IMF-ECB.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The Parliamentary team of the KKE believes that the issues that should be put to the people's judgment are the following:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
NO to the EU-IMF-ECB and to the government's proposals.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Disengagement from the EU, Abolition of Memoranda and of all anti-popular implementation measures thereof."</div>
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<br /></div>
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The proposition, submitted by the Parliamentary Team of the KKE in quorum, was read in the Parliament by Thanasis Pafilis, member of the CC and Parliamentary Representative of the party, during his statement on the issue of the anti-constitutional character of the Referendum posed by Ev. Venizelos of PASOK.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://www.902.gr/eidisi/politiki/70409/i-protasi-tis-ko-toy-kke-gia-periehomeno-toy-dimopsifismatos-video">902</a></div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-73194980570610175032015-06-25T15:09:00.000-07:002015-06-25T15:09:01.514-07:00Women in the Greek Resistance<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/srIOmvpZzl8" width="560"></iframe></div>
Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-51906245294309029802015-06-23T04:42:00.001-07:002015-06-23T04:47:31.958-07:00Kostas Varnalis-The Fateful<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU_IOjBwKQGQH62W4oP5Smm4KTCVFnfMJ-gPnv-ImhTY2qXyjpJRCCpll2bT3gYZf__0ZD3O8R8aWSqbzVTmXtznVUbylIwD8HcwdlVuRG_UZTMybQrZIE4i1unU9VGY0oKIAApL9JH1M/s200/barnalis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU_IOjBwKQGQH62W4oP5Smm4KTCVFnfMJ-gPnv-ImhTY2qXyjpJRCCpll2bT3gYZf__0ZD3O8R8aWSqbzVTmXtznVUbylIwD8HcwdlVuRG_UZTMybQrZIE4i1unU9VGY0oKIAApL9JH1M/s200/barnalis.jpg" /></a></div>
<b>Kostas Varnalis</b><br />
<b>The Fateful</b><br />
(1922)<br />
<br />
In the cellar of the tavern<br />
surrounded by smoke and swearing<br />
(the music barrel screeching upstairs)<br />
our whole crew was drinking yesterday.<br />
Yesterday, like every night,<br />
so the poison could be swallowed.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
One grabbed the other<br />
and once in a while, spat on the floor.<br />
O! What great suffering<br />
the suffering of life!<br />
No matter how hard the mind tries<br />
it cannot remember a happy day.<br />
<br />
Sun and blue sea,<br />
and depth of the wayward sky!<br />
O! egg yolk-painted gauze of dawn<br />
carnations of the evening,<br />
you shine, you go dark far from us,<br />
without entering our hearts!<br />
<br />
One's father, paralyzed<br />
for ten years, a specter,<br />
the other's wife, short-lived<br />
is wasting away from tuberculosis at home<br />
Mazes' son in Palamidi<br />
and Yiavis daughter in Gazi.<br />
<br />
- It's our crooked destiny's fault!<br />
- It's God's fault, for he hates us!<br />
- It's our own heads' fault!<br />
- It's, first of all, the fault of wine!<br />
<br />
Whose fault is it? Whose fault is it?<br />
<br />
No mouth has found it<br />
or said it yet.<br />
<br />
So in the dark tavern<br />
we always drink with our backs bent<br />
like worms, and every heel<br />
squashes us where it finds us.<br />
Cowardly, fateful, lacking a will besides,<br />
we expect, perhaps, a miracle!<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xGNUNqYSvRw" width="560"></iframe><br />
Music: Mikis Theodorakis<br />
Voice: Grigoris BithikotsisΑντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5211757605597726771.post-37964189395229631262015-06-18T03:53:00.001-07:002015-06-18T03:58:03.495-07:00Lesbos Labor Center Announcement against the new NATO base in the Aegean<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150615/epitroph-eirhnhs-lesvou.jpg?itok=hvx6asrf" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.902.gr/sites/default/files/styles/902-normal/public/Media/20150615/epitroph-eirhnhs-lesvou.jpg?itok=hvx6asrf" height="177" width="320" /></a></div>
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In the 66 years since the creation of the imperialist mechanism of NATO, humanity has experienced dictatorship, war and terrorism. This was and remains the role of such a mechanism, whose goal is to serve the interests of the plutocracy -- who created it in the first place -- and to repress and murder the peoples. The governments of our country, worthy supporters of capital all these years, not only did not oppose imperialist plans, not only chose to remain passive observers in all the wars close or far from our "neighborhood", but actively participated in them, since they sent the army outside our borders and offered military bases to assist the butchers of the peoples, to provide Americans, the EU and NATO with their attack base.</div>
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The SYRIZA-ANEL government continues in the same route, following the same successful recipe of defending the profits of monopolies and of opening new markets. Proclaiming allegiance to the Americans, the Defense Minister P. Kammenos announced the creation of a new NATO base in an island of the Eastern Aegean, following the permanent US demand for a base to be used by unmanned spy aircraft. It must be indifferent to the people, to the workers, whether the base will be in Rhodes, in Icaria or in Karpathos, which is the most likely scenario. What must be of concern to us is that the government is speedily moving ahead with the further involvement of our country in the belligerent plans of the USA, NATO and the EU in the broader Middle East and African region. In the name of supposedly fighting terrorism and "jihadists", but also in the name of supposedly "protecting Christian populations", the government offers earth, sea and sky to the imperialists, allowing the transformation of the Aegean into a battleground, since the new base will create an axis from Cyprus to Suda (Crete) and Karpathos, from where they will be able to control everything, but also create a new "entry gate" in the region, according to their conflicting monopoly interests.</div>
<br />
Let us not allow the creation of any new base.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The islands of the Aegean must not become an attack base for the butchers of the peoples.</div>
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Let us make canceling their plans a people's affair.</div>
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We demand, here and now:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- The withdrawal of the proposal for a NATO base in the Eastern Aegean.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- The removal of all foreign military bases.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- No involvement of our country in the imperialist plans of the USA, NATO and the EU.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- Disengagement from the war-mongering Euroatlantic organizations.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
- No involvement in imperialist interventions in other countries. Immediate return of all our military forces to the country.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- No tolerance for the new government measures.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
- Neither land nor water for the murderers of the peoples.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
- No NATO base at all in the Aegean sea.</div>
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<a href="http://www.902.gr/node/69547">902</a>Αντωνηςhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05403240713076869920noreply@blogger.com0