Complotto di Obama e NATO per un putsch militare in Grecia?
– Quando le tensioni sociali e la crisi capitalista si acuisce i movimenti e partiti di “sinistra” si spostano ancora più a destra:
– in tutta Europa la “sinistra” sta preparandosi a unirsi ai governi per attuare le misure d’austerità, e difendere gli interessi dell’elite finanziaria europea.
– I cosiddetti partiti di “sinistra” provengono dalla media borghesia e dalla burocrazia statale e sindacale, ostile a qualsiasi movimento indipendente della classe operaia contro l’establishment politico e il sistema capitalistico, che essa difende.
o il maggior sindacato del privato, GSEE, non ha indetto alcuna azione di lotta, vedrà a seconda degli sviluppi politici;
o risposta simile da quello del pubblico, Adedy, che ha indetto uno sciopero di 3 ore per martedì, limitato ai dipendenti statali di Atene e Salonicco.
– Durante le manifestazioni di massa del 21 ottobre, membri del sindacato stalinista PAME, assieme a rappresentanti dello stalinista KKE, hanno formato tre file di fronte al parlamento per impedire ai lavoratori di entrare.
o Il partito del capitalismo di Stato, SEK (Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori di Grecia): il nuovo governo è una vittoria della classe operaia, e sarebbe “una umiliazione per Nuova Democrazia”.
o SEK fa parte della coalizione Antarsya (Cooperazione della Sinistra Anticapitalista per il Rovesciamento, che chiede un “fronte unito” di sindacati, Partito comunista stalinista di Grecia (KKE), Syriza (Coalizione della Sinistra Radicale) e di altre forze cosiddette di “sinistra”.
o Xekinima, la sezione greca del Comitato per una Internazionale dei lavoratori (CWI) minimizza il significato del nuovo governo greco, come se nulla fosse cambiato: “il nuovo governo perseguirà la stessa politica finora perseguita”. Chiama anch’essa ad un Fronte unito illudendo i lavoratori che questa sinistra possa adottare un programma socialista e combattere per un cambiamento sistemico.
– Tutti costoro fungono da copertura di sinistra alla dittatura delle banche, ed hanno accettato l’isolamento e la sconfitta degli scioperi, a volte anche con la repressione statale.
– Syriza e KKE fanno parte integrante dell’establishment politico greco; Syriza collabora con il Pasok a livello locale, ha offerto una coalizione anche a livello federale; non è entrata nel governo di unità nazionale non per principio: rimanendo opposizione può fungere da valvola di sfogo alla rabbia popolare.
– In Germania, il partito Die Linke, fratello di Syriza, pretende di essere il solo ad avere “una soluzione costruttiva e possibile alla crisi” della Grecia: che comprenderebbe la nazionalizzazione delle banche insolventi e la stampa di euro per finanziare le casse statali,
o il che rappresenterebbe solo un ulteriore salvataggio del sistema bancario e un attacco ai lavoratori con una iperinflazione.
o Consigli simili anche da altri gruppi di “sinistra”, come Attac-France, che ha dichiarato che aumenterà gli sforzi per elaborare futuri modelli di UE;
o NPA (il Nuovo Partito Anticapitalista, fratello del gruppo OKDE-Spartakos in Grecia) ha pubblicato le dichiarazioni di questo e di altri gruppi.
o Anche SWP, British Socialist Workers Party, chiede la “riforma” dei trattati di Maastricht e di Lisbona;
o posizione simile del sito pablista International Viewpoint.
– Durante il recente vertice G20 di Cannes, i sindacati dei paesi partecipanti hanno emesso una dichiarazione congiunta con le associazioni padronali in cui si sottolinea che “ora la priorità deve essere data con fermezza alla creazione di un ambiente favorevole all’impresa e alla creazione di posti di lavoro”, il significato concreto: i tagli sociali imposti in Grecia, Italia, Francia, GB e USA, etc.
– La proposta di referendum dell’ex primo ministro greco, Papandreu, è stata una manovra per forzare la mano all’opposizione conservatrice di Nuova Democrazia perché approvasse le nuove misure d’austerità;
o i governi occidentali hanno condannato come irresponsabile l’idea stessa di dare alla popolazione la possibilità di esprimersi su queste politiche.
– Papandreu, temendo l’intervento diretto dei militari, anche con un colpo di Stato, ha improvvisamente rimosso l’intero stato maggiore. (il mese scorso il ministro Difesa greco, Beglitis, stretto alleato di Papandreu, ha definito la gerarchia militare come “uno Stato dentro lo Stato”.
– Per non allertarli, Papandreu non ha chiarito ai lavoratori quale pericolo temesse.
– Il direttore del quotidiano finanziario tedesco Handelsblatt, Steingart, ha riconosciuto che il piano di “salvataggio” per l’economia greca è in realtà un altro salvataggio delle banche a spese dei lavoratori greci, costretti a pagarlo con tagli occupazionali, salariali e di welfare; le misure acuiranno la depressione economica e aumenteranno il debito della Grecia … Steingart metteva in guardia dal rischio di un colpo di Stato dei militari greci; i due grandi quotidiani americani, NYT e Washington Post, non hanno fatto parola della manovra di Papandreu contro lo stato maggiore.
o Secondo Wsws se in Grecia era in preparazione un putch militare, data la posta in gioco, avrebbe potuto realizzarsi solo con il consenso delle maggiori potenze europee e degli Usa. ( almeno 8 i colpi di Stato militari in Grecia nel XX sec; l’ultima giunta militare – al potere con il cosiddetto colpo dei colonnelli, dal 21 aprile 1967 al 1974 – era targata USA: guidata da Papadopulos …
[1]
– Merkel, Sarkozy e leader UE hanno lanciato un ultimatum alla Grecia:
o niente ultima tranche da €8MD se Papandreu non viene destituito e sostituito da un governo di unità nazionale (“tecnico”) capeggiato da un agente fidato del capitale finanziario, l’ex vice-presidente BCE, Lucas Papademos.
– Il nuovo regime è stato imposto in Grecia dall’elite finanziaria anche come risposta allo sciopero generale di due giorni e alle grandi manifestazioni di massa in Grecia 3 settimane fa’.
– Il mandato del nuovo governo di grande coalizione greco (il socialdemocratico Pasok, il conservatore Nuova Democrazia (ND) e il Raggruppamento Popolare Ortodosso, di estrema destra (LAOS): attuare i nuovi tagli imposti dalla Troika …
Papademos ha chiarito di non essere legato dall’impegno di indire nuove elezioni a febbraio; i partiti della coalizione hanno concordato di non disturbare con il confronto politico il processo di imposizione delle misure di austerità.
[1] Georgios Papadopulos, ex collaboratore dell’occupazione nazista negli anni Quaranta, poi nell’esercito greco, addestrato negli Usa, principale collegamento tra CIA e KYP (l’intelligence greca), per 15 anni lui stesso sui libri paga della CIA. Il colpo venne fatto seguendo le direttive del piano Nato, Prometeus. I crimini della giunta militare vennero perpetrati con il consenso dell’Amministrazione liberal-democratica di Lyndon B. Johnson.
The Greek “left” backs regime-change
– Greek and European trade union[e]s as well as the so-called “left” parties are tacitly or openly supporting the newly installed technocratic government in Greece. They are functioning as a left cover for the dictatorship of the banks and seeking to dissipate opposition in the working class.
– The European financial elite imposed the new regime in part in response to the two-day general strike and mass demonstrations that shook Greece three weeks ago. PASOK Prime Minister George Papandreou’s proposal on October 31 that the new austerity measures dictated by the European Union[e] and the International Monetary Fund be put before the voters in the form of a popular referendum, essentially a maneuver on his part to force the conservative opposition New Democracy to sign on to the measures, was universally denounced by Western governments and the media.
– The very notion that the people should have a say in the implementation of policies that will impoverish millions to prop up the banks was condemned as the height of irresponsibility.
– Over the same period, Papandreou suddenly sacked the entire top military leadership of Greece, indicating that he feared the direct intervention of the military, possibly in the form of a coup. (See: “Are Obama and NATO plotting a military coup in Greece?”)
– German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and the EU leadership issued an ultimatum that Greece would not receive the 8 billion euros in bailout funds needed to avoid a default on its debt and would be thrown out of the euro zone unless Papandreou was removed and replaced by a “national unity” government headed by a trusted agent of finance capital.
– The new “technocratic” government, headed by former European Central Bank Vice President Lucas Papademos, has defined its mandate as the imposition of the new round of cuts in jobs, wages, pensions and social programs demanded by the EU, the IMF and the banks. The government is a grand coalition of the social democratic PASOK party, the conservative New Democracy (ND) party, and the far-right People’s Orthodox Rally (LAOS).
– In agreeing to take up the post of prime minister, Papademos made it clear that he was not bound by pledges to hold new elections by February and that the coalition parties had agreed not to inject “politics” into the process of imposing the austerity measures. This de facto ban on political dissent will doubtless be used to criminalize any popular resistance to these attacks. The autocratic character of this government and its origins in the maneuvers of the international financial elite mark a major step towards authoritarian forms of rule, not only in Greece but across Europe and internationally.
– In response to this de facto coup, Greece’s main private-sector trade union[e] confederation, GSEE, has not called a single action. It declared on November 2 that it had no position on government coalition negotiations and said it would base decisions on whether to call strikes on “political developments.”
– ADEDY, its public-sector counterpart, has responded in similar fashion. It called a token three-hour strike for next Tuesday, limited to government workers in Athens and Thessaloniki. This action, which will do nothing to prevent the government from pushing through its attacks on public-sector workers, is designed to give the union[e] some political cover while it collaborates with the new regime, and to allow the anger of the workers to find harmless expression in a toothless protest.
– The pseudo-left parties are, if anything, more explicit in signaling their tacit support for the new government. Under the headline “Resistance Pushes Out Greek Leader,” Greece’s state capitalist Socialist Workers Party (SEK) argues that the imposition of this deeply reactionary government of the banks is an achievement of the working class. According to them, the new coalition is even “a humiliation for New Democracy.”
This is a treacherous effort to blind the working class to the dangers it faces and leave it completely unprepared for the intensification of repression that is coming.
– The SEK is part of the Anti-capitalist Left Cooperation for the Overthrow (Antarsya) coalition, which is calling for a “united front” of the trade union[e]s, the Stalinist Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) and other so-called “left” forces. Its writings are not only an attempt to deceive the workers, they are also a signal of readiness to join a government of “national unity” or an alternative “left” coalition which would be no less ruthless in implementing further austerity measures.
– While it is not as enthusiastic as the SEK, Xekinima, the Greek section of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), is downplaying the significance of the new government. Pretending nothing has changed, they wrote on Tuesday: “The policies the new coalition government will pursue will be the same as those that have been pursued up until now.”
– Xekinima is not only calling for a “united front,” it is promoting the illusion that organizations like the KKE, Syriza and the trade union[e]s—which it calls the “left”—could adopt “a socialist programme and fight decisively for systemic change.”
– All of these organizations played a critical role in providing political cover for Papandreou and supported the isolation and defeat of workers’ strikes, in some cases by means of state repression, when they threatened to seriously impact the Greek economy and weaken the regime.
– As for the trade union[e]s, they have done everything in their power to demobilize and demoralize the working class. When protests nevertheless got out of control, the union[e]s worked to defend the state against the workers. At the mass demonstrations on October 21, members of the Stalinist PAME union[e], together with representatives of the KKE, stood in three rows in front of the parliament building to bar angry workers from entering it.
– Syriza and the KKE are an integral part of the Greek political establishment. Syriza not only collaborates with PASOK at the local level, it has repeatedly offered a coalition at the federal level. While Syriza has initially refused to take part in the new government of national unity, this is not a principled decision. They felt it was necessary at this point to ensure that there is a loyal opposition to serve as an escape valve for popular anger.
– As statements of the SEK and Xekinima show, the so-called “left” may be preparing for an alternative government. The chairman of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, recently called for all the “progressive and democratic forces” to join together. Although Tsipras left it unstated, such a coalition would have to include at least large sections of PASOK to be powerful enough to govern. Nor can it be ruled out that if given the chance Syriza would join the current government at a later stage.
– The “left” parties’ indifferent response to the de facto coup that has installed the new government shows that they have no principled differences with this government. Significantly, Syriza had criticized Papandreou for sacking the Greek military chiefs, bolstering forces in the Greek political establishment pressing for a military coup.
– These right-wing policies are rooted in the class interests that the so-called “left” parties represent. Drawn from the affluent middle class and the state and trade union[e] bureaucracy, they are bitterly hostile to any independent movement of the working class against the political establishment and the capitalist system which it defends.
– They move ever further to the right as social tensions and the capitalist crisis deepen. All across Europe, so-called “left” tendencies are preparing to join governments to implement social cuts and defend the interests of the financial elite.
– Syriza’s sister party in Germany, the Left Party, has claimed to be the only organization with a “constructive and viable solution to the crisis” in Greece. According to the party’s left figurehead, Sarah Wagenknecht, this solution includes the nationalization of insolvent banks and the wholesale printing of euros to fund state budgets. These measures, based on a fatal underestimation of the fundamental and systemic character of the global economic crisis, would, if enacted, mean a further bailout of the banking system and the destitution of the working class in the form of hyper-inflation.
– Capitalist governments often nationalize insolvent banks in order to transfer the burden of the banks’ debts to the public. An inflationary policy of printing money would lead to a massive decline in the value of wages and savings.
– Similar advice to the EU and the banks is being voiced by several so-called “left” groups. Attac-France declared on November 1 that they would intensify their efforts to work on future models for the European Union[e].
– The statements of this group and others were published by the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA), the French sister party of the OKDE-Spartakos group in Greece.
– The sister organization of the Greek SEK, the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP), also calls for the “reform” of the European Union[e] Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, not their abolition. As part of its defense of the European imperialist institutions, the British SWP supported proposals for a Greek debt “haircut” that were attached to the new round of austerity measures in Greece.
– The Pabloite web site International Viewpoint takes a similar standpoint in an article of November 2, in which it announces a discussion on whether to “get out of the European Union[e] or transform it from within.”
– Any such “transformation” would, as the trade union[e]s have made clear, aim to refashion European economic life in the interests of big business.
– During the G20 summit in Cannes earlier this month, the union[e]s of the participating countries published a joint statement with the employers’ associations in which they stressed that “priority now has to be put firmly on creating an environment conducive to enterprise and job creation.”
– What this means can be seen in the massive social cuts being carried out in Greece, Italy, France, Britain, the US and internationally.
Copyright © 1998-2011 World Socialist Web Site – All rights reserved
Are Obama and NATO plotting a military coup in Greece?
– The sudden dismissal of the Greek military’s high command Tuesday night, amid international uproar over a proposal for a referendum on an EU debt plan, has all the hallmarks of an action taken to preempt the threat of a military coup.
– A measure of this political magnitude would not have been taken lightly. At the very least, one must assume that Prime Minister George Papandreou had strong reason to believe that his government, and possibly his own person, was facing an imminent threat from the country’s military.
– The Greek minister of defense, Panos Beglitis, a close political ally of Papandreou, summoned the four highest-ranking Greek military officers—the chiefs of the general staff, the army, navy and air force—to a hastily convened meeting to announce that they were being removed from their posts and replaced by other members of the Greek military brass.
– Last month, Defense Minister Beglitis was quoted by the EU Observer web site as describing the Greek military hierarchy as “a state within a state.”
The Greek government should make public what it knows about the conspiracies of this “state within a state” and with whom it was allied. Given the record of Papandreou’s PASOK party, however, this is exceedingly unlikely. The last thing that it and its pseudo-left apologists want is to alert workers to the dangers they confront.
– A number of daily papers in Europe have raised the question of whether the sacking of the high command was aimed at preempting a military coup. These include both the Telegraph and Daily Mail in Britain. Among the more blunt pieces written on the matter came one from Gabor Steingart, the editor of Germany’s main financial daily, Handelsblatt.
– Under the headline “If I were Greek”, Steingart acknowledges that the supposed rescue plan for the Greek economy is in reality another bailout of the banks at the expense of Greek workers, who will be compelled to pay for it through the wholesale destruction of their jobs, wages and social conditions. These measures will only deepen the country’s depression and indebtedness, laying the groundwork for even more terrible austerity demands in the future.
– Comparing the plan to the “shock” treatment implemented in the former Soviet Union[e], Steingart writes: “If I were from Greece I would be amongst those who are alert and worried. I would keep a wary eye on that military machinery which governed the country until 1974 and which might lie in wait for an opportunity for revenge. We know from many countries: Dr Shock is an enemy of democracy.”
– The manner in which this affair has been covered—or rather censored from coverage—in the US media is telling. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post, the two publications that function as the newspapers “of record” within the US political establishment, have printed a word about the extraordinary shakeup within the Greek military command.
On Tuesday, the Times web site posted an article on Greece predicting that the Papandreou government was about to fall. The assessment would have clearly served as an explanation and justification for a coup taking place under conditions of a political breakdown. But, apparently, what the Times editors expected to take place didn’t happen. It recalls the newspaper’s premature celebration of the short-lived overthrow of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez in 2002.
Now the media silence suggests that the editors at the Times and Post are desperately scrambling for a political line on what they clearly regard as a highly sensitive matter.
– One thing is certain, if a military coup was being prepared in Greece, given the stakes involved, it could only have developed with the approval of the major European powers—Germany, France and Britain—and, of course, the United States.
– While the history of Greece is replete with the military’s interventions in politics—no less than eight coups in the 20th century—the last military junta, which seized power on April 21, 1967 and ruled until 1974, bore the clear stamp, “Made in the USA”.
– The so-called “colonels’ coup” followed two years of political instability that began with the Greek King Constantine’s removal of the government of Georgio Papandreou—the current prime minister’s grandfather—after he had himself attempted to replace the military command.
– The leader of the coup, Col. Georgios Papadopoulos, was a former collaborator with the Nazi occupation of Greece in the 1940s, who in the postwar period entered the Greek army and received intelligence training in the US. He became the main liaison between the CIA and the KYP, the US-founded and US-funded Greek intelligence agency. Papadopoulos himself had been on the CIA payroll for 15 years.
– The coup was carried out under the guidelines of a NATO contingency plan known as “Prometheus.” This plan was supposedly designed to forestall a communist takeover by the military seizing control and rounding up all those considered subversives.
– The junta imposed martial law, suspending basic democratic rights. It soon imprisoned some 10,000 people, including political leaders, trade union[e]ists, social activists, students and others suspected of opposing its counterrevolutionary agenda. Thousands were tortured. The junta’s police beat political prisoners with rubber hoses, shocked them with electricity, sexually violated them and ripped nails from their fingers. One of the junta’s most infamous torturers is said to have kept a red-white-and-blue symbol of US aid on his desk and to have told his victims, “Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the US. You can’t fight us, we are Americans.”
– These hideous crimes were carried out with the direct aid and approval of the liberal Democratic administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
In his first press conference after seizing power, Papadopoulos defended the ferocious repression unleashed by the junta. “We are facing a patient on the operating table,” he said. “Unless he is tied to the table, he cannot be cured of his illness.”
No doubt such logic has a great deal of appeal today within international financial circles, where Papandreou’s proposal to submit a program of drastic austerity measures to a popular referendum has been denounced as “irresponsible,” if not insane.
– The Greek prime minister made the proposal based on his own political calculations, which have nothing to do with democracy. However, the very idea that working people would be allowed to vote on whether to accept massive social cuts in order to bail out the banks provokes the intense anger and dismay of the financial aristocracy in every country.
– The brutal character of these measures and the immense social inequality that lie at their heart cannot be imposed by democratic means. The “patient” must be “tied to the table”.
– In 1974, when the military last ruled Greece, during a period of economic and political upheaval that spanned the globe, two of the other countries cited as the next dominos likely to fall in today’s European sovereign debt crisis—Spain and Portugal—were also ruled by fascist military dictatorships. The same was true for most countries in Latin America.
The events in Greece signal that the age of the colonels and generals is returning. Under conditions of the deepest crisis of global capitalism since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the old mechanisms of bourgeois democracy can no longer contain ever mounting class antagonisms and international tensions.
– While the threat of dictatorship manifests itself first in the weaker capitalist economies, it is like a disease that spreads from the extremities to the heart. There is no country in the world where working people can afford the illusion that “it can’t happen here.”
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