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Le Monde: Ellada, agapi mou

ELLADA, agapi mou,

je me sens profondément humilié dans mon philhellénisme quand un journal ose titrer que la Grèce est un « pays peut-être moins “européen” qu’il n’y paraît » et que le contenu de cet article est un mauvais résumé d’une histoire que les auteurs n’ont pas vécue ; je suis humilié comme Français que des compatriotes fassent si mal de l’histoire et nourrissent le mythe du Grec menteur et poniros.

Je ne reviendrai que sur quelques points. Si la Grèce n’est pas un pays européen, qui mérite ce titre ? Le barbare germain ou la perfide Albion à laquelle son plus grand poète, Byron, reprochait déjà de piller le pays d’Homère ? Plus Européenne l’Angleterre qui ne veut d’aucune solidarité européenne et surtout pas de celles qui lui coûteraient de l’argent ? N’est-ce pas elle qui a ramené en Grèce l’armée et le roi, à la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, déclenchant un cataclysme que le pays allait payer très cher, pays qui peut pourtant se targuer de la résistance la plus exemplaire face à l’occupant nazi. Il n’y a pas si longtemps qu’est née l’idée d’Europe et je doute que l’on puisse distribuer des brevets d’européanisme. L’idée comme son contenu géographique est à construire et n’est pas une donnée intangible.

V. Giscard d’Estaing a fait rentrer la Grèce en Europe parce que, dit-il, la démocratie et la culture venaient de ce pays. Soit, même s’il y aurait beaucoup à dire sur cette démocratie athénienne, esclavagiste et impérialiste… Mais l’accent est mal mis, car le problème n’est pas de savoir où est née la démocratie, le problème est de reconnaître que la culture grecque, disons gréco-romaine, est le seul ciment commun dans une histoire faite de rivalités et de guerres mondiales. Cette fameuse culture grecque a nourri la Renaissance, les lettres comme les arts, nos classiques du XVIIe s. et a fécondé les élites du XVIIIe s qui ont bouleversé le monde. Le XIXe s. a joué un rôle fondamental dans la diffusion des arts et des lettres grecques engendrant un courant « néo-classique » que l’on retrouve à Edimbourg,- qui en fut l’un des centres et où l’on voulut construire un Parthénon — , mais aussi à Ratisbonne, où le Walhala, célébrant la victoire des Allemands sur les troupes napoléoniennes, est une réplique d’un temple grec.

L’art contemporain à partir de 1900 s’est construit en réaction contre le « classicisme » et l’on ne peut que s’en réjouir, car la leçon de l’art grec était celle de la concurrence et de la liberté. La culture de nos élites s’est modernisée et le latin, comme le grec, ne sont plus que marginalement enseignés dans nos écoles. Loin de moi l’idée de vouloir en refaire la culture de l’élite, qui se nourrit aujourd’hui de diversités littéraires ou artistiques dans un contexte mondialisé : cela est fort bien et l’un des acquis essentiels de ce que l’on appelle la « post-modernité ». Mais ces transformations n’affectent nullement la place de la Grèce au centre de l’Europe, car il s’agit d’un des foyers les plus vivants et les plus brillants de la culture européenne : des individualités remarquables dans tous les domaines, et pas seulement en poésie, une école de peinture originale de Théophilos à Tsaroukis en passant par Engonopoulos, des philosophes comme Kastoriadis..Regardez qui est traduit en Grèce : Vernant, Foucault et Derrida ; regardez où sont formées les élites : dans le milieu historien, l’EHESS a joué un grand rôle et vous trouvez en Grèce une génération de remarquables historiens participant au renouvellement de la discipline.

Alors tous des menteurs et des voleurs qu’il faut défendre parce que dans le temps ils ont inventé le mot de démocratie ? Il y aurait bien d’autres choses à mettre dans la balance : la philosophie (à l’occidentale), l’histoire, le théâtre… Il y a aujourd’hui dans ce pays des hommes et des femmes parmi les plus cultivés et les plus policés que je connaisse ; je ne supporte pas que des « barbares » les mettent au banc de l’Europe. Quant aux fraudeurs minables, dans quel pays n’en trouve-t-on pas, qui ont dilapidé des dizaines de milliards à date récentes ?

Il ne s’agit pas de savoir si la Grèce est plus ou moins européenne, puisque les fondements même de l’Europe ne s’entendent pas sans l’hellénisme ; rappelons qu’Europe est une princesse phénicienne enlevée par des Crétois et engendrant un des premiers conflits entre l’Occident et l’Orient. Europe a donc aussi des racines orientales, un mythe bien utile dans ces temps d’hybridation des populations. L’Europe n’a pas pour ciment des banques et des banquiers, elle a pour ciment une culture, et la culture hellénique est un des éléments qui nous unit ; hélas, il y a en a bien peu !

Vive la Grèce, et ne laissons pas des technocrates mettre à genoux des amis et des frères, encore moins les humilier et nous humilier.

Ellada, agapi mou
par ETIENNE ROLAND, Ancien directeur de l’Ecole française d’Athènes, professeur émérite d’archéologie grecque, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
“le Monde” 16.11.11

HellenesOnline | 17 / 12 / 2011 | Tags: Ettiene Roland, Grèce | Comments 1

Turkey: The “Evasive Neutral”—Again?

Andrew Bostom.

Despite the ominous global and regional threat posed by an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul announced several months ago, Saturday April 29 that Turkey will not allow the United States to launch any attacks on Iran from the Inchirlik airbase.

And now as reported July 25, 2008 at MEMRI’s Turkish Media Blog (from Turkish Daily News, Gazeteport.com, July 25, 2008) “Iranian President Ahmadinejad To Visit Turkey Late August.” The invitation to Iran’s purveyor of apocalyptic, Jew-hating nuclear genocide was made by Turkey’s own “counterpart,” President Gul:

Iran‘s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to pay a visit to Turkey next month at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul. Discussions on both the program and the content of the visit have started and a date will be set soon. But there is still a possibility that the visit might be postponed if the government collapses in case the Constitutional Court rules to shut down the AKP.

The two neighboring countries have boosted economic, trade, energy and security ties in recent years and the energy ministers of the two sides recently signed a preliminary agreement on transferring Iranian natural gas through Turkish territory and allowing Turkish companies to develop three Iranian natural gas fields in southern Iran. According to Turkish media a couple of agreements focusing on economic relations would be signed during the presidential visit.

Turkey’s close energy and trade ties with Iran are not welcomed by the United States, which argues that they would encourage Iran not to cooperate with the international community to solve the nuclear program issue.

I am reminded of Frank Weber’s observations of Turkey’s utterly duplicitous role during World War II from his seminal “The Evasive Neutral,” when the “Republic” failed to side with the Allies against the Nazis, until it was meaningless (i.e., “declaring war” against Italy and Germany in February, 1945). Instead Turkey, exploited its “neutrality” in attempts to pursue local hegemonic goals, which only became fully apparent with Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

…Turkey, though bound to Britain and France in a mutual assistance treaty since October, 1939, broke her pledge to them on numerous occasions and declared war against Germany and Italy only in February, 1945, when the fighting was all but over…Throughout the Second World War, Turkey was a non-belligerent but not an ineffective bystander. By diplomacy alone, she maintained her territorial integrity against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. She took expensive lend-lease equipment from Britain and gave only over-priced commodities in return. She deprived Germany of an Arab alliance and withheld her own alliance for the highest price. She emerged from the war with her land unscathed…

Turkish diplomacy during the war was a brilliant accomplishment by all standards except those of honesty and integrity. Only thirty years later, when they invaded Cyprus, did the Turks reveal that, after all, they had been dissatisfied with what diplomacy had gained them.

From the “It’s Getting Better All The Time”—NOT—File, July 26th, 2008, Andrew Bostom

HellenesOnline | 07 / 04 / 2011 | Tags: Turkey | Comments 1

A Tale of Two Cities

By Ruhan van Vuuren

Today there is a large debate in the West over the role of the church when it comes to the governance of the state. Many people believe that we cannot have a legal system and a civil society without the integration of religious principles. History is a wonderful thing as we can learn so much about our present by reflecting on the past. I would like us to turn our attention to the tale of two cities.

By the 6th century BCE there were two cities, Athens and Jerusalem. Athens was based in Western Europe and Jerusalem in the Middle East. Both enjoyed the fact that they had access to the Mediterranean and even though the Greeks in the 6th century BCE were religious, the legal system in Athens was based on secular reasoning and logic. Jerusalem on the other hand was undergoing a series of reforms under King Hezekiah and reinstituting the Mosaic legal system. These laws were said to have been passed on by God himself. Life in Athens was based on Reason whilst life in Jerusalem was based on Religion.

So let’s examine what life would have been like in each respective city:

Government

In Athens the Monarchy was replaced by a social democracy. Many consider this to be the birth of democracy. Even though the Greeks were a religious society, under Plato’s laws, the Athenian priests were only to direct sacrifices and the role of religion was limited to tradition and pleasing the gods.

In Jerusalem the Monarchy was upheld and even considered to be supported by God. The Jewish priesthood was deeply integrated into the ruling elite in Jerusalem and acted as official counsel to the king. Likewise it was the king’s role to implement religious laws, build temples and punish all those who participated in idolatry.

Legal system

In Athens the concept of trial by Jury was invented. This provided fair trials for all citizens and the punishment for a crime had to be on par with the crime itself.

In Jerusalem people were executed by the elders in their community and the punishment was often not on par with the crime itself. For instance, children were legally executed for being disobedient to their parents and and Jewish citizens were stoned for marrying someone from a different race.

Property laws

In Athens the social reform allowed for Individual Property law which meant that you and your property were protected under the law. This included the criminalisation of murder and theft.

In Jerusalem theft and murder was illegal because of religious law, however if someone took from you or murdered one of you own, then you could take from him or murder one of his own. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Social laws

In Athens you could live as you pleased as long as you didn’t impede on someone else’s person or property. Thucydides states it best: “And not only in our public life are we free and open, but a sense of freedom regulates our day-to-day life with each other. We do not flare up in anger at our neighbour if he does what he likes.”

In Jerusalem as series of social laws existed which if not adhered to, resulted in public execution. This included marrying a foreigner (Num 25:6-9), committing a homosexual act (Lev 18:22), blasphemy (Lev 24:10-23), not being a virgin on your wedding night (Deut 22:20-21), following another religion (Deut 17:2-5), approaching the tabernacle (Num 1:48-51) or working on a Saturday(Ex 35:2-3).

Slavery

Even though slavery existed in Athens, it became illegal to sell yourself or your family into slavery if you became bankrupt. Many historians believe this is one of the first movements by a government to move away from a system of slavery.

In Jerusalem various slavery laws are enforced (Lev 25:44-46) and female slaves are to be treated exceptionally harshly (Ex 21:7-11)

Foreign Policy

Athens sought to work with their neighbours in improving their living conditions. Thucydides wisely stated that their democracy was to be an example for other nations to follow and that they had hoped that their freedom and prosperity would inspire other nations to live like they did.

Israel was instructed by their God to invade and destroy it’s neighbouring countries, pillaging, raping and murdering those citizens that opposed them (Num 31:7-18). Foreigners were forced to pay interest on loans and all foreign slaves were treated much harsher than the locals. If anyone married a foreigner then they could both be stoned.

In Conclusion

In comparing these two cities during this period we have to acknowledge that Athens still had it’s own problems. Slavery was still practiced and Athens later went through a period of invading and colonising their neighbouring areas. Internal disputes and political infighting weakened the state further. They were a young democracy and you can argue that they existed in a time when the world was not ready for it yet. However their successes and advancements in regards to social justice, democracy and equality still live on today.

Finally, in order to give us an insight into the ideas created by a secular society, we turn to Thucydides who gives the following speech at Pericles’ funeral:

Our city is thrown open to the world; we never expel a foreigner…. We are free to live exactly as we please, and yet, we are always ready to face any danger…. We love beauty without indulging in fancies, and although we try to improve our intellect. this does not weaken our will…. To admit one’s poverty is no disgrace with us; but we consider it disgraceful not to make an effort to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect public affairs when attending to his private business…. We consider a man who takes no interest in the state not as harmless, but as useless; and although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it. We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling block in the way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to acting wisely….

By Ruhan van Vuuren, 7 May 2009

HellenesOnline | 22 / 09 / 2010 | Tags: Athens, Jerusalem, Philosophy | Comments 1

The King’s Torah: a rabbinic text or a call to terror?

By: The Forward and Daniel Estrin

The marble-patterned, hardcover book embossed with gold Hebrew letters looks like any other religious commentary you’d find in an Orthodox Judaica bookstore – but reads like a rabbinic instruction manual outlining acceptable scenarios for killing non-Jewish babies, children and adults.

The prohibition ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder’ applies only “to a Jew who kills a Jew,” write Rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and attacks on them “curb their evil inclination,” while babies and children of Israel’s enemies may be killed since “it is clear that they will grow to harm us.”

“The King’s Torah (Torat Hamelech), Part One: Laws of Life and Death between Israel and the Nations,” a 230-page compendium of Halacha, or Jewish religious law, published by the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in Yitzhar, garnered a front-page exposé in the Israeli tabloid Ma’ariv, which called it the stuff of “Jewish terror.”

Now, the yeshiva is in the news again, with a January 18 raid on Yitzhar by more than 100 Israeli security officials who forcibly entered Od Yosef Chai and arrested 10 Jewish settlers. The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, suspects five of those arrested were involved in the torching and vandalizing of a Palestinian mosque last month in the neighboring Palestinian village of Yasuf. The arson provoked an international outcry and condemnation by Israeli religious figures, including Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, who visited the village to personally voice his regret.

Yet, both Metzger and his Sephardic counterpart, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, have declined to comment on the book, which debuted in November, while other prominent rabbis have endorsed it – among them, the son of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Sephardic Jewry’s preeminent leader. Also, despite the precedent set by previous Israeli attorneys general in the last decade and a half to file criminal charges against settler rabbis who publish commentaries supporting violence against non-Jews, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has so far remained mum about “The King’s Torah.”

“Sometimes the public arena deals with the phenomenon and things become settled by themselves,” Justice Ministry spokesman Moshe Cohen told the Forward.

A coalition of religious Zionist groups, the “Twelfth of Heshvan,” named after the Hebrew date of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, has asked Israel’s Supreme Court to order Mazuz to confiscate the books and arrest its authors.

“You open the book, and you feel that you read a halachic book. And it’s a trap,” said Gadi Gvaryahu, a religious Jewish educator who heads the coalition. It was, in fact, “a guidebook [on] how to kill,” he charged.

Family members who answered phone calls placed to the homes of both authors said they did not wish to comment.

In 2008, author Shapira was suspected of involvement in a crude rocket attack directed at a Palestinian village. Israeli police investigated but made no arrests.

Co-author Elitzur wrote an article in a religious bulletin a month after the book’s release saying that “the Jews will win with violence against the Arabs.”

In 2003, the head of the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, was charged by then-Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein with incitement to racism for authoring a book calling Arabs a “cancer.”

In 2006-2007, the Israeli Ministry of Education gave about a quarter of a million dollars to the yeshiva, and in 2007-2008 the yeshiva received about $28,000 from the American nonprofit Central Fund of Israel.

“The King’s Torah” reflects a fringe viewpoint held by a minority of rabbis in the West Bank, said Avinoam Rosenak, a Hebrew University professor specializing in settler theology. Asher Cohen, a Bar Ilan University political science professor, thought its influence would be “zero” because it appeals only to extreme ideologues.

But the book’s wide dissemination and the enthusiastic endorsements of prominent rabbis have spotlighted what might have otherwise remained an isolated commentary.

At the entrance to Moriah, a large Jewish bookstore steps from the Western Wall, copies of “The King’s Torah” were displayed with children?s books and other halachic commentaries. The store manager, who identified himself only as Motti, said the tome has sold “excellently.”

Other stores carrying the book include Robinson Books, a well-known, mostly secular bookshop in a hip Tel Aviv shopping district; Pomeranz Bookseller, a major Jewish book emporium near the Ben Yehuda mall in downtown Jerusalem; and Felhendler, a Judaica store on the main artery of secular Rehovot, home of the Weizmann Institute.

The yeshiva declined to comment on publication statistics. But Itzik, a Tel Aviv-area book distributor hired by the yeshiva who declined to give his last name because of the book’s nature, said the yeshiva had sold 1,000 copies to individuals and bookstores countrywide. He said an additional 1,000 copies were now being printed.

Mendy Feldheim, owner of Feldheim Publishers, Israel’s largest Judaica publishing house, said he considered this a “nice” sales figure for a tome of rabbinic Halacha in Israel. He said his own company, which distributes to 200 bookstores nationwide, is not distributing “The King’s Torah” because the book’s publishers did not approach the company.

Prominent religious figures wrote letters of endorsement that preface the book. Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, son of former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, blessed the authors and wrote that many “disciples of Torah are unfamiliar with these laws.” The elder Yosef has not commented on his son’s statement.

Dov Lior, chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba and a respected figure among many mainstream religious Zionists, noted that the book is “very relevant especially in this time.”

Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, one of the country’s most respected rabbinic commentators, initially endorsed the book, but rescinded his approval a month after its release, saying that the book includes statements that “have no place in human intelligence.”

A handful of settler rabbis echoed Goldberg’s censure, including Shlomo Aviner, chief rabbi of Beit El and head of Yeshivat Ateret Yerushalayim, who said he had “no patience” to read the book, and spoke out against it to his students.

Previously, Israel has arrested settler rabbis who publish commentaries supporting the killing of non-Jews. In addition to Ginsburgh, the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva head, in 1994, the government jailed Rabbi Ido Elba of Hebron for writing a 26-page article proclaiming it a “mitzva to kill every non-Jew from the nation that is fighting the Jew, even women and children.”

“The atmosphere has changed,” said Yair Sheleg, senior researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, who specializes in issues of religion and state. Previous governments took a tougher stance against such publications, he said, but “paradoxically, because the tension between the general settler population and the Israeli judicial system is high now, the attorney general is careful not to heighten the tension.”

It is not uncommon for some settler rabbis, in the unique conditions of West Bank settlement life, to issue religious decrees, or psakim, that diverge from normative Jewish practice. In 2008, Avi Gisser, considered a moderate rabbi from the settlement of Ofra, ruled that Jews may violate Sabbath laws and hire non-Jews to build hilltop settlements. And In 2002, Yediot Aharanot reported that former Israeli Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu sanctioned Jewish harvesting of Palestinian-owned olive trees.

Contact Daniel Estrin at feedback@forward.com

Published 11:01 22.01.10 Latest update 18:43 21.03.10

HellenesOnline | 02 / 09 / 2010 | Tags: Israel, RELIGION | Comments 1

Jean-Luc Godard: “We should thank Greece”

Jean-Luc Godard has cancelled his trip to the Cannes Film Festival, where he participated with his new film “Film Socialisme”.

2010 marks the 50th anniversary of his first film, “Breathless.” (À bout de Souffle)”

In a laconic letter that he sent to the french newspaper “La Liberation”, the filmmaker made a reference to the financial issues of Greece.

“Due to problems the Greeks would be familiar with, I unfortunately cannot be at your disposal in Cannes,” he said.

“I’d walk to the ends of the earth for the festival,” he added, “But alas I will not be taking a single step further. Sincerely, Jean-Luc Godard.”

In its original French, the statement read: “Suite à des problèmes de type Grec, je ne pourrai être votre obligé à Cannes.“Avec le festival, j’irai jusqu’à la mort, mais je ne ferai pas un pas de plus. Amicalement. Jean-Luc Godard.”

In another interview to the `Les Inrocks`magazine Godard said the following:

“We should thank Greece. It was the West which has a debt to Greece. Philosophy, democracy, the tragedy … We always forget the link between tragedy and democracy. Without Sophocles there isn’t a Pericles. Without Pericles there isn’t a Sophocles.
The technological world in which we live in owes everything to Greece. Who invented logic? Aristotle. If this and that, therefore that. This is what the dominant powers use all day, making sure that there is certainty and no contradiction, so that we can continue being rational. Hannah Arendt had said that logic takes us away from totalitarianism. So everybody owes money to Greece today. Greece could ask for a trillion copyrights to the contemporary world and it would be logical to give them to her. Immediately.
Greeks are accused of being liars … It reminds me of an old syllogism that I learned in school. Epaminondas is a liar, or all the Greeks are liars, therefore Epaminondas is Greek. We have not advanced much. “

(Excerpt from an interview to `Les Inrocks`magazine on May 18, 2010.)

A.Antoniadis | 19 / 05 / 2010 | Tags: Cannes, CULTURE, Economic Crisis, Film, Hellas Greece | Comments

Greek Tragedies

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Draping the Acropolis with a hammer-and-sickle banner might seem a stupid public relations stunt—especially as a bankrupt Greece seeks to reassure foreign capitalist investors to save Hellenic socialism.

But then the news coming out of Greece these days gets a little more bizarre each day—fire-bombings, murders, riot, and mass shutdowns of all government services. All this chaos, of course, is streamed live to the world on the eve of the life-saving tourist season.

Indeed, no one can quite figure out the Greek enigma. Necessary austerity measures may well ensure recession. Yet any slowdown precludes enough economic growth to pay off exorbitant public debt. High interest is necessary to attract risk-prone investors, but will probably ensure that some $140 billion in loans—over $12,000 for every Greek in the country—can never be wholly serviced. Strikes and demonstrations come at just the time when workers need to be more productive on the job. Greek officials talk of reducing, not eliminating, annual deficits, at a time when budget surpluses, not further borrowing, are needed to restore financial sanity.

And the more the world learns about the peculiar financial culture of this tiny nation of 11 million—14 monthly pay periods, a retirement system that can be conned to draw pensions in one’s 50s, endemic tax-cheating—the more it is baffled by the fiery rioting and protests of those in the streets who want others to ensure they keep getting their bonuses.

Greece, of course, is not quite unique. Britain and the United States are running historically unprecedented peacetime deficits and imploding their retirement and health care systems. In California, we see the same Greek phenomenon of extravagantly paid and pensioned public employees demanding higher taxes from a shrinking private sector that is fleeing an overtaxed state.

Elsewhere in Europe, sun and socialism are having a rough go of it as well in Portugal, Spain, and Italy. The late-night dinner, the double commute to ensure siestas, and a laid-back “tomorrow” joy of living seem to lead both to lower worker productivity and greater claims on entitlements.

All that said, the violent reaction to bad news in Greece is unique. But it is not so surprising given Greece’s own turbulent past. Hundreds of insular valleys, 6,000 islands, and jagged coastlines, often cut off by mountains, help to explain the original emergence of 1,500 independent city-states rather than a unified nation—and a fierce tradition of agrarian independence as well as the birth of democracy. Given the mountainous Balkans and a prominent position in the southeastern Mediterranean, a European Greece itself was always especially vulnerable to the whims of the great, and usually hostile, eastern empires.

Greece inherited a tradition of top-heavy secular and religious bureaucracy as part of a millennium-long Byzantine Empire. But four centuries of Ottoman occupation gave to Greece an abiding disrespect for its government, a sense that the state was an adversary. Istanbul’s western, Christian, and European colony kept its language, its sense of nationalism, and its religion largely through a strong sense of tribal solidarity—and often by moving up into the inaccessible mountain refuges to escape Muslim tax-collectors and recruiters.

Greece has always had an ambiguous relationship with Western Europe. The Franks, remember, sacked and nearly ruined Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Greek frontline opposition to Islam meant that a beleaguered and nearly extinguished Orthodox Christianity could not afford to experiment with a Reformation. And the vast distance from Gibraltar ensured that the Greeks, an adventurous sea-faring people, nevertheless missed out on the great age of maritime exploration, which was driven by the Europeans with accessible Atlantic ports.

History and geography were no kinder to Greece in the 20th century. The Great Powers that emerged victorious from World War I both encouraged and betrayed the ill-fated “Great Idea” of restoring Hellenism to Asia Minor, which ended in the savage slaughter at Smyrna in 1922.

Mussolini invaded Greece in October, 1940, and stalled in the face of fierce Greek resistance—only to be bailed out by Hitler, who looted and starved Greece during the ensuing brutal Axis occupation. And when the United States drew the line at Turkey and Greece to halt postwar Soviet expansion into southern Europe, communist infiltration from the north prompted a savage civil war that killed even more people than the famines of World War II. To NATO’s American realpolitik planners, an unpopular, authoritarian, anti-communist government was preferable to a socialist, neutral, and democratic Greece.

Geography is fixed, and so even in the post-Soviet era of globalization, Greece is not quite free of foreign turmoil. The ongoing Islamization of a once secular Turkey threatens again to turn formerly somnolent territorial disputes out in the Aegean into a regional crisis—especially as the Greek population ages and shrinks and the demography of its neighbors to the east and south grows and becomes younger. A divided Cyprus is only temporarily dormant. Greece still struggles with the aftermath of Yugoslavia—both its own past unpopular sympathies with the brutal Milosevic regime in Orthodox Serbia and running disputes with the new Muslim and Slavic nationalist states on its northern borders.

In all these crises, as those in the past, conspiracies abound. A nefarious, but nebulous foreign “they” seems in the Greek mind always to lurking in the shadows. And in such a Manichean national landscape of villains and heroes, either the government, the Church, or the “rich”—or, alternatively, the “communists” and the “agitators”—hoodwinked the noble people into doing what they in retrospect should not have.

The sum of all that tragedy is sometimes greater even than its parts, and explains in part why today Greeks are both dependent on and suspicious of foreign “help”; why they both complain about, and yet demand, a cumbersome bureaucracy; why they rage at northern Europe and the United States, even as they seek to become integrated within the West; and why such a creative, rational, and capable people so often turn feisty and full of misdirected rage at its own self-inflicted miseries.

Will Greece survive as a modern, prosperous European state? In one sense, it is hard to see how—given the overwhelming debt, the structural flaws now apparent in the European Union monetary system, and the violent rather than rational popular responses to the crisis. And yet, given its tragic past, the current financial meltdown of 2010 pales in comparison to the Ottoman occupation. It certainly is minor when seen against the slaughter of a million Greeks in Asia Minor, the endemic starvation during the German occupation, the savagery of the civil war, and its frontline vulnerability during the Soviet-American standoff.

Greece survived all that, as it will the present crisis, because in the end Greeks in extremis so often prove an heroic people. That is hard to remember in our present exasperation with the ongoing depressing spectacle in Athens, but it is nevertheless a historical truth.

Mr. Hanson, who lived in Greece for two years, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of the recently released “The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern,” as well as “Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom.”

HellenesOnline | 13 / 05 / 2010 | Tags: Economic Crisis, Hellas Greece, Victor Davis Hanson | Comments 1

Clash of the Titanic bore

I love sword and sandal epics, especially cheesy Italian ones, like the 1959 extravaganza, the Giant of Marathon. In these films, muscular proportionality is directly proportional to moral rectitude and ancient Greece is a Technicolor Arcadia of the righteous, assaulted by the minions of the Axis of Evil. In that world, scantily clad damsels can still appear demure, regardless of the amount and extent of the tapering of the variously phallic shaped tridents, swords, spears, or serpent-monsters that entwine or entangle themselves between their legs. Men speak in deep, decisive tones and experience no emotional conflict save a steely resolve to defeat the horrors that the Earth and the Gods throw at them and have perfectly styled hair. All this takes place before a stylized backdrop of bleached pristine columns, lush green countryside, and happy, loin-cloth clad, bronzed and oiled peasants. These are the type of people that one could easily locate in textbooks of ancient Greek history and identify as ‘authentic’ denizens of that time.

‘Hercules: The Legendary Journeys,’ starring a wild-haired Kevin Sorbo, who looked eerily like ancient Greek descriptions of the Celts that sacked the Oracle at Delphi in 279 BC marks, in my considered opinion, the end of the sword and sandal epic. For it was this nefarious program that first ushered in the contagion that has plagued Hollywood depictions of ancient Greece ever since: the tendency to make ancient Greeks appear medieval and/or anything but ancient Greek-like, as long as anachronisms abound. Scenes are dark and gloomy, as if filmed in the Teutoburger forest home of the ancient Germanic tribes rather than fair, sun-drenched Hellas. Buildings are primitive, as if they belong to the troglodytes of Stonehenge rather than to the instituters of beauty as architectural doctrine. This bizarre reversal of the portrayal of ancient Greece and all its pomps reinforces the view that Ancient Greece is in fact a construct purveyed by the West in order to serve its various purposes. The white, pure bleached marbled, noble, logical, and dispassionate philosophers and selfless, eminently rational, democratic patriots that have hitherto supposedly formed the basis of Western Civilization have now given way to conflicted, tortured, irrational and violent testosterone fuelled fighters who seem barely to be capable of resolving their own personal issues than to be able to relate and contribute to the polis and citizenry at large in any meaningful way.

The latest Hollywood offering in the way of sword and sandal is as inane, uninspiring and anachronistic as its predecessors, Troy, which featured hierophants dressed in the manner of Orthodox priests is not a patch on the remake of Clash of the Titans. As if to rub in the western appropriation of Greek heritage further, so that it is cleansed of any ‘inferior’ modern Greek connotations and thus rendered palatable to the English-speaking world, none of the actors speak in anything approaching a Greek accent. The sight of a semi-psychopathic Perseus brooding (actually not quite, he has it all worked out and there don’t appear to be any emotional or moral conflicts within the film) over such weighty conundrums as whether the Gods should be defied by mankind, with him, the demi-god at their head, and doing so in an Australian accent, makes our chests swell with patriotic pride and our sense of aesthetics shatter. Similarly, the Gods, with their shiny armour and bedraggled Viking beards look more like Norse deities than the denizens of Olympus. Zeus looks like Odin and his brother, the smoky and not so creepy Hades who manifests himself in blackness and terror, hisses his way around statue–defiling soldiers and the implausible plot in a manner strangely reminiscent of Lord Voldermort. Indeed, one is astounded and somewhat disappointed about the fact that Io, a sexier version of Hermione Grainger, and serial stalker of Perseus, does not assist him to extend his sword and shout “Expelliarmus.”

If there is a central premise to the film, it is one of iconoclasm and Götterdämmerung. That the Celestial beings can be dethroned is evidenced by the fact that the Olympians bested the Titans and in turn can be defeated by men. The ‘benign’ Gods apparently feed upon the adulation of their creations, while the ‘evil’ Gods feed on their fear. Thus both are parasites and must be destroyed, as should be their prophets and adherents, symbolised by the hysterical priest/prophet Prokopion (the name of a place, not a name) who looks more like an Indian Guru than anything else. The entire sub-plot involving the zealots of the Gods and their leader Prokopion is reduced to a practical pointlessness as the building confrontation between their desire to sacrifice Andromeda to save Argos, and Andromeda’s survival, is finally negated by her none too conflicted decision to just accept her fate and become mythological lunch. Is the conflict between Perseus’ dual nature as deity and human the stuff of Christological disputes, with Perseus inclining towards Aryanism through the rejection of his divinity? Probably not. Aussie Perseus lcks the sophistication to even be tempted towards a dilemma in this regard. Instead, he is quite happy to proclaim his belief in mankind, rejecting the Gods and all their doings, while at the same time not being averse to enlisting the assistance of unlikely and totally anachronistic supernatural beings: the Arabian Jinn, who appear in the form of gnarled tree-trunks and who also apparently have a nodding acquaintance with the Olympians, or even using Olympian weapons. Consequently, the film’s central message, that mankind can make it on its own without being in the thrall of other beings is conveyed with the crudity of early Soviet Bezbozhnik propaganda and ultimately, is rendered unintelligible through the paradox of Perseus selfless acts performed through self-obsession. Perseus destruction of the ‘Titan’ Kraken is only effected through the use of the powers of another Titan, Medusa, a tragic figure in Greek mythology and a true victim of the Gods, for whom however, the film evokes no pity.

Perseus’ tale truly could be portrayed as one highlighting the frailty of the human condition. His mother was effectively raped by Zeus, and he was brought up as a bastard child, albeit in a King’s court. Even his heroic exploits are subject to the guidance of the Gds, and he is their unwitting hand in the persecution and destruction of others, in order to carry out their designs. In the latest remake of the film, however, there is none of this. Even the previous 1981 film conveyed some passion, though admittedly taking license with the myth. Remember how Perseus did everything out of love for the beautiful Andromeda? How he saw her only while sleeping but was condemned to fall for her even if it meant his own demise? Remember how Thetis was the patron Goddess of Joppa and she got her toga all in a wad because Cassiopeia had the nerve to compare her own daughter’s beauty to the Goddess herself? Remember how Burgess Meredith found the confused Perseus and aided him in his quest? Forget about it all. Also forget Calibos, the tortured love-struck son of Thetis, (remarkably like the Shakespearean Caliban from The Tempest) whose arrogance caused him to be transformed into a creature hideous to behold and shunned by humanity. His tragedy is to have his love taken from him and be murdered by her lover. Though he is a vile villain, his plight stirs sympathy in the viewer. The Calibos in the remake, is actually Acrisius, Perseus step-father, who is nothing more than an unintelligible and deformed beast. His extreme violence renders his final words of humanity to Perseus as he dies at his hand: “Don’t become like them (the Gods),” as implausible and ludicrous as Perseus’ adopted father and protector “Spyro”.

Is it a sign of the times that Hollywood blockbusters are big on special effects and short on themes and messages? Notably, the pace and amount of words in dialogue these days seems to be restricted to a bare minimum, as if audiences cannot bear the intensity of emotion and human communication of yesteryear. This is a pity when this approach is applied to the portrayal of Greek myths. Greek myths formed corpus of inspiration through which the Greeks explored myths of mortality, hubris, the frailty of the human condition, fate, love and the extremities of passion. The latest Hollywood rendition of Perseus, far from even being possessed of the capacity to in any way explore these issues, achieves exactly what the Gorgon intended: it turns us into unmoved stone.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

HellenesOnline | 09 / 05 / 2010 | Tags: ancient greek history, CULTURE, Film | Comments

How The World Really Is: UN, IMF, Vatican, et.al.

Who Owns the World?

by ANONYMOUS

[Ednote: we have not researched this email and do not know if this is true. It is simply food for thought and could possibly apply in the future]

1. The IRS is not a U.S. Government Agency. It is an Agency of the IMF. (Diversified Metal Products v. IRS et al. CV-93-405E-EJE U.S.D.C.D.I., Public Law 94-564, Senate Report 94-1148 pg. 5967, Reorganization Plan No. 26, Public Law 102-391.)

2. The IMF is an Agency of the UN. (Blacks Law Dictionary 6th Ed. Pg. 816)

3. The U.S. Has not had a Treasury since 1921. (41 Stat. Ch.214 pg. 654)

4. The U.S. Treasury is now the IMF. (Presidential Documents Volume 29-No.4 pg.113, 22 U.S.C. 285-288)

5. The United States does not have any employees because there is no longer a United States. No more reorganizations. After over 200 years of operating under bankruptcy its finally over. (Executive Order 12803) Do not personate one of the creditors or share holders or you will go to Prison.18 U.S.C. 914

6. The FCC, CIA, FBI, NASA and all of the other alphabet gangs were never part of the United States government. Even though the “US Government” held shares of stock in the various Agencies. (U.S. V. Strang , 254 US 491, Lewis v. US, 680 F.2d, 1239)

7. Social Security Numbers are issued by the UN through the IMF. The Application for a Social Security Number is the SS5 form. The Department of the Treasury (IMF) issues the SS5 not the Social Security Administration. The new SS5 forms do not state who or what publishes them, the earlier SS5 forms state that they are Department of the Treasury forms. You can get a copy of the SS5 you filled out by sending form SSA-L996 to the SS Administration. (20 CFR chapter 111, subpart B 422.103 (b) (2) (2) Read the cites above)

8. There are no Judicial courts in America and there has not been since 1789. Judges do not enforce Statutes and Codes. Executive Administrators enforce Statutes and Codes. (FRC v. GE 281 US 464, Keller v. PE 261 US 428, 1 Stat. 138-178)

9. There have not been any Judges in America since 1789. There have just been Administrators. (FRC v. GE 281 US 464, Keller v. PE 261 US 428 1Stat. 138-178)

10. According to the GATT you must have a Social Security number. House Report (103-826)

11. We have One World Government, One World Law and a One World Monetary System. *

12. The UN is a One World Super Government. *

13. No one on this planet has ever been free. This planet is a Slave Colony. There has always been a One World Government. It is just that now it is much better organized and has changed its name as of 1945 to the United Nations. *

14. New York City is defined in the Federal Regulations as the United Nations. Rudolph Gulliani stated on C-Span that “New York City was the capital of the World” and he was correct. (20 CFR chapter 111, subpart B 422.103 (b) (2) (2)

15. Social Security is not insurance or a contract, nor is there a Trust Fund. (Helvering v. Davis 301 US 619, Steward Co. V. Davis 301 US 548.)

16. Your Social Security check comes directly from the IMF which is an Agency of the UN. (Look at it if you receive one. It should have written on the top left United States Treasury.)

17. You own no property, slaves can’t own property. Read the Deed to the property that you think is yours. You are listed as a Tenant. (Senate Document 43, 73rd Congress 1st Session)

18. The most powerful court in America is not the United States Supreme Court but, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. (42 Pa.C.S.A. 502)

19. The Revolutionary War was a fraud. See (22, 23 and 24)

20. The King of England financially backed both sides of the Revolutionary war. (Treaty at Versailles July 16, 1782, Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80)

21. You can not use the Constitution to defend yourself because you are not a party to it. (Padelford Fay & Co. v. The Mayor and Alderman of The City of Savannah 14 Georgia 438, 520)

22. America is a British Colony. (THE UNITED STATES IS A CORPORATION, NOT A LAND MASS AND IT EXISTED BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND THE BRITISH TROOPS DID NOT LEAVE UNTIL 1796.) Respublica v. Sweers 1 Dallas 43, Treaty of Commerce 8 Stat 116, The Society for Propagating the Gospel, &c. V. New Haven 8 Wheat 464, Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80, IRS Publication 6209, Articles of Association October 20, 1774.)

23. Britain is owned by the Vatican. (Treaty of 1213)

24. The Pope can abolish any law in the United States. (Elements of Ecclesiastical Law Vol.1 53-54)

25. A 1040 form is for tribute paid to Britain. (IRS Publication 6209)

26. The Pope claims to own the entire planet through the laws of conquest and discovery. (Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493)

27. The Pope has ordered the genocide and enslavement of millions of people. (Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493)

28. The Pope’s laws are obligatory on everyone. (Bened. XIV., De Syn. Dioec, lib, ix., c. vii., n. 4. Prati, 1844)(Syllabus, prop 28, 29, 44)

29. We are slaves and own absolutely nothing not even what we think are our children. (Tillman v. Roberts 108 So. 62, Van Koten v. Van Koten 154 N.E. 146, Senate Document 43 & 73rd Congress 1st Session, Wynehammer v. People 13 N.Y. REP 378, 481)

30. Military Dictator George Washington divided the States (Estates) into Districts. (Messages and papers of the Presidents Vo 1, pg 99. Websters 1828 dictionary for definition of Estate.)

31. “The People” does not include you and me. (Barron v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore. 32 U.S. 243)

32. The United States Government was not founded upon Christianity. (Treaty of Tripoli 8 Stat 154.)

33. It is not the duty of the police to protect you. Their job is to protect the Corporation and arrest code breakers. Sapp v. Tallahasee, 348 So. 2nd. 363, Reiff v. City of Philadelphia, 477 F.Supp. 1262, Lynch v. N.C. Dept of Justice 376 S.E. 2nd. 247.

34. Everything in the “United States” is For Sale: roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water, prisons airports etc. I wonder who bought Klamath lake. Did anyone take the time to check? (Executive Order 12803)

35. We are Human capital. (Executive Order 13037)

36. The UN has financed the operations of the United States government for over 50 years and now owns every man, women and child in America. The UN also holds all of the Land in America in Fee Simple. *

37. The good news is we don’t have to fulfill “our” fictitious obligations. You can discharge a fictitious obligation with another’s fictitious obligation. *

38. The depression and World War II were a total farce. The United States and various other companies were making loans to others all over the World during the Depression. The building of Germanys infrastructure in the 1930′s including the Railroads was financed by the United States. That way those who call themselves “Kings,” “Prime Ministers,” and “Fuhrer,”etc could sit back and play a game of chess using real people. Think of all of the Americans, Germans etc. who gave their lives thinking they were defending their Countries which didn’t even exist. The millions of innocent people who died for nothing. Isn’t it obvious why Switzerland is never involved in these fiascoes? That is where the “Bank of International Settlements” is located. Wars are manufactured to keep your eye off the ball. You have to have an enemy to keep the illusion of “Government” in place. *

39. The “United States” did not declare Independence from Great Britain or King George. *

40. Guess who owns the UN?

* Caveat Redemptor – Verify for yourself

http://www.cephas-library.com/nwo/nwo_how_the_world_really_works.html

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi/noframes/read/119955

HellenesOnline | 03 / 05 / 2010 | Tags: Controversies | Comments

Greece: The Curse of Three Generations of Papandreou’s

In each of the three decisive moments of recent history, Greece has been pulled backwards from a chance for social transformation, political independence and freedom from external tutelage by one and another of the Papandreou family.
. 03.21.2010

The three periods promising new vistas for the Greek popular movements include:

(1)The period following the defeat of the Nazi occupation army and its collaborator puppet regime by the Greek partisan resistance, backed by its liberation army (ELAS-EAM) and its civilian allies. (1944-1945)

(2)The decisive electoral defeat of the rightwing New Democratic Party in 1981. The majoritarian vote for the Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) together with the Communist Party controlled nearly two-thirds of Parliament. Inheriting a “broken and bankrupt and non-viable” capitalist economy from a discredited and crushed Right, PASOK received a popular mandate to socialize the economy.

(3)The world capitalist crises of 2007 –2010 and in particular, the bankrupt and highly indebted Greek capitalist state-led to the election of George Papandreou (Junior) in 2010 on a platform of “social change” and increased social welfare. He attracted working class and trade union support on the bases of creating a new modern and more just society.

Between Revolution and Reaction: The Role of George Papandreou (Senior)

In the wake of one of Europe’s greatest anti-fascist partisan led victory, the Greek resistance movement, backed by over 2 million partisans advanced toward the liberation of the capital city of Athens in October 1944. With scant support inside the country, George Papandreou was propped up by imperial British warplanes and tanks and the rightwing monarchy in exile. Acting as Prime Minister he ordered the disarmament of the Resistance and backed the British military assault on tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators in Constitution Square in Athens killing and wounding hundreds of Greek freedom fighters. Papandreou presided over the military recruitment of numerous ex-Nazi collaborators and Monarchists, financed and armed and commanded by British and later US generals. He later served as a cabinet minister in regimes which launched a vicious assault on the mass leftist popular movements. They turned what was a joyful moment of liberation into the beginning of a squalid period of savage repression and the restoration of all the upper class scum from pre-war Greece, along with their pro-Nazi collaborator colleagues. Greece was turned into a client state of the US, ruled by a series of externally subsidized kleptocratic police states, which retained their rule by inflating a patronage based bureaucracy, divorced from modern industry.

Andreas Papandreou and the Demise of the Right (1981)

Subsequent to the demise of the military junta (1967 – 1974) the Greek Right came to power, retaining much of the old state apparatus and propping up a wealthy but dysfunctional ruling class living off monetary transfers from the EEC. The pillage of state resources, the bankruptcy of most of the private sector firms, the backwardness of the agricultural sector, the closed and authoritarian nature of public and private institutions, led the vast majority of the working class, students, farmers and unemployed to provide a massive electoral victory for Andreas Papandreou. The combined vote of the Socialist and Communist Parties was over 60% and provided a clear majority to legally transform the society and economy. Moreover, Andreas Papandreou’s program promised to “socialize the economy”, modernize the countryside and break from imperial domination. In particular he promised to terminate membership in NATO, and US military base agreement.

Given the fragmentation, demoralization, dispersion and decadence of the Right, political opposition to a socialist advance was at a minimum. Given the private sectors’ high indebtedness to the state banks, the Papandreou government did not even require legislation to expropriate the firms: it could ask for loan repayments or the keys of the firm.

Papandreou rejected the option of transforming the moribund capitalist system: he offered new loans, forgave debts and intervened to restore private ownership by auctioning the firms to new private (foreign) owners. At the time I was an adviser to Papandreou. When I asked him why he didn’t socialize the indebted firms, he answered that “because of the crises, it is not the time to transform the economy; it would have to wait till the economy got on its feet”. When I replied that he was elected to change the system precisely because of the crises and that once capitalism was restored the political and economic opposition would be more formidable he replied “that the ‘economy’ is too weak to sustain a socialist regime”; he added that “the working class is only interested in consumption not investing to modernize the economy”.

In practical terms Papandreou restored capitalism despite its moribund condition, increasing the public debt in the process. During his first term in office over eighty percent of Greek public opinion was in favor of closing the US military bases and their intelligence operations in Greece. Through balcony demagoguery and false promises to act “in the future”, Papandreou maintained the bases. Similarly, Papandreou repudiated the vast majority of voters who elected him to withdraw from NATO by engaging in inconsequential “criticism” … from within. Worse still Papandreou stayed in the European Economic Community, accepting transfers and loans in exchange for lowering trade barriers. This began the process of windfall short term gains in consumption and state spending on a patronage based bloated bureaucracy in exchange for the decimation of the backward industrial and agricultural sector. Papandreou used EEC transfers to buy votes via subsidies to farmers, short term wage gains to workers and huge tax write offs and loans to business elites. Deficits and debts grew, while the productive apparatus to sustain consumption withered. Patronage was Papandreou’s “alternative” to social transformation. The EEC was willing to finance Papandreou and put up with his dysfunctional economic policies because he was destroying and undermining the social movements for change which originally brought him to power.

While Andreas Papandreou was denouncing NATO in front of mass meetings he was holding weekly consultations with the US Ambassador confirming his loyalty to the military alliance….During the first year of his government (1982 – 1984) when I directed the Center for Mediterranean Studies and was an unofficial advisor to Papandreou I would be leaving by the backdoor of his house in Kastri while the US Ambassador was entering through the front door. After awhile, I realized that he borrowed leftwing critiques to justify rightwing policies. A practice for which he became a virtuoso … of deception. More recently a State Department official once commented to me that he preferred George Papandreou the younger over his father: “the same conformist policies”, he commented “without the demagogy”. Over the years, Andreas empty rhetoric and pro NATO practice converted an entire generation of militant socialists into cynical opportunists and social climbers, who sacrificed class solidarity for patronage, lucrative posts in the EEC bureaucracy for social transformation. The post-junta generation, the student idealists from the Polytechnical struggle became the corpulent functionaries of the NATO state.

George Papandreou (Junior): History as Farce (Three Times Over)

Like his family predecessors George Papandreou was elected in October 2009 in the midst of the most profound world capitalist crises since the 1930’s. Greek finances were ‘under water’; the economy was in a free fall; the public treasury was empty; capitalism was literally bankrupt and the rightlist parties were disgraced and discredited.

During his electoral campaign Papandreou promised a modern social welfare state with a priority for social investments in public health, education and ameliorating poverty. Once in office, true to the Papandreou tradition, he did an about face. Striking an indignant posture he claimed to “discover” that the Greek treasury was empty and the country was over indebted and that the only solution was to slash living standards by reducing salaries, and savaging wages, social programs and pensions in order to pay the foreign bankers. Like his familial predecessors no effort was made to collect back taxes from the rich or embargo the secret foreign accounts of the bankers, corporate executives, ship owners, stock speculators, consultants, investment brokers who swindled Greek taxpayers and pensioners of billions of Euros. No effort was made to recover the debts owned by the private sector to the state financial institutions. On the contrary Papandreou turned to the Wall Street swindlers – Goldman Sachs (who,in 2001, facilitated the pillage of public loans for private gain) – for advice and support.

Like his grandfather, faced with mass unrest, he turned to the imperial powers for guidance and direction. In effect Papandreou surrendered Greek sovereignty and economic policy making to Merkle, Sarkozy, Obama and the IMF. They formulated the most draconian class based austerity program in recent European history. The EU and US policymakers, finding a most docile and submissive client in Papandreou, insisted on one, two three many rounds of cuts in living standards, over a 4 month period (December 2009 – March 2010), reducing Greek living standards below the levels of the early 1980’s. The socialist trade union leaders’ initial weak, token protests encouraged Papandreou and his economic and finance ministers to push harder for greater concessions, hoping to satisfy “the market” – a euphemism for the financiers and speculators.

After thirty years of rightwing and PASOK patronage politics, tax free rides for their business clients and lending to kleptocratic dysfunctional ‘investors’, Papandreou, ever responsive to the foreign bankers and their imperial political mentors, escalated the repression of the social movements and trade unions. In contrast he flew to Paris, Berlin and Washington promising more cuts in social budgets, begging for financing to bail out the corrupt state and Greece’s decadent ruling class.

October 2009 appeared as another historic opportunity to launch a new post-capitalist state, putting an end to the bankruptcy of the klepto-speculator economic system and its discredited rightist supporters. Instead October turned into a political nightmare. The Papandreou regime and its parliamentary robots went far beyond even the previous rightist regimes – in eroding living standards, it handed over the design, direction and enforcement of the retrograde socio-economic policy to the EU and Washington, who in defense of their financial elites are determined to extract the last pound of flesh from the public and private, working class.

Papandreou’s policy is to “save the economy” … by destroying it. In the midst of a deepening recession his regime is reducing spending and incomes and increasing regressive consumption taxes; a sure formula to turn a recession into a chronic depression. The historic mission of the Papandreou regimes is to embrace the empire to save the rich, no matter how many dead anti-fascists, how many disenchanted workers, how many immiserated pensioners have to pay the price.

Conclusion

The political history of the Papandreou family is a Greek tragic-farce; the tragedy of a people who fought the good fight again the Nazis and their collaborators only to be savaged by the rising new Anglo-American rulers. The heroic Polytechnical University student struggle (1973) against the US backed military dictatorship ended up witnessing the rise of a pseudo-populist demagogue (Andreas Papandreou) who promised democratic socialism and ended up socializing the private debts of capitalist kelptocrats. And now the last (hopefully) in the line of imperial sycophants (George Papandreou) who promised progressive changes and imposed regressive policies, while handing over the keys to power to his overseas imperial overseers. Beyond the political idiosyncrasies of Greece, the history of Greek Social Democratic regimes illustrate their historical role as the saviors of capitalism in crises. They are allowed, by the foreign and domestic elites, to come to power because they have the popular backing to implement the harsh reactionary policies which the established discredited rightists are too weak to impose. In embracing and enforcing their unpopular and retrograde polices, the Social Democrats, profoundly alienate their working class and lower middle class supporters – they commit political suicide. But for Social Democrats, the Papandreou’s of Europe, they served their purpose: they turned back the tide of radical or revolutionary change. They sacrificed their regimes but saved the capitalist state.

The most hopeful and promising change today is that the Papandreou –PASOK mystique has evaporated; even the most loyal socialist trade union official dares not raise their hand to stay the movement … nor do they dare point a revolutionary way out … So the general strikes will continue … the anarchists will launch their missiles … the levels of popular anger is rising … and the struggles will continue

James Petras | 22 / 03 / 2010 | Tags: capitalist economy, Economic Crisis, Hellas Greece, Papandreou, pasok | Comments 1

The US and China: One Side is Losing, the Other is Winning

Even a cursory read of a single issue of the Financial Times (December 28, 2009) illustrates the divergent strategies toward empire building. On page one, the lead article on the US is on its expanding military conflicts and its ‘war on terror’, entitled Obama Demands Review of Terror List. In contrast, there are two page-one articles on China, which describe China’s launching of the world’s fastest long-distance passenger train service and China’s decision to maintain its currency pegged to the US dollar as a mechanism to promote its robust export sector. While Obama turns the US focus on a fourth battle front (Yemen) in the ‘war on terror’ (after Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan), the Financial Times reports on the same page that a South Korean consortium has won a $20.4 billion dollar contract to develop civilian nuclear power plants for the United Arab Emirates, beating its US and European competitors.

On page two of the FT there is a longer article elaborating on the new Chinese rail system, highlighting its superiority over the US rail service: The Chinese ultra-modern train takes passengers between two major cities, 1,100 kilometers, in less than 3 hours whereas the US Amtrack ‘Express’ takes 3 ½ hours to cover 300 kilometers between Boston and New York. While the US passenger rail system deteriorates from lack of investment and maintenance, China has spent $17 billion dollars constructing its express line. China plans to construct 18,000 kilometers of new track for its ultra-modern system by 2012, while the US will spend an equivalent amount in financing its ‘military surge’ in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as opening a new war front in Yemen.

China builds a transport system linking producers and labor markets from the interior provinces with the manufacturing centers and ports on the coast, while on page 4 the Financial Times describes how the US is welded to its policy of confronting the ‘Islamist threat’ with an endless ‘war on terror’. The decades-long wars and occupations of Moslem countries have diverted hundreds of billions of dollars of public funds to a militarist policy with no benefit to the US, while China modernizes its civilian economy. While the White House and Congress subsidize and pander to the militarist-colonial state of Israel with its insignificant resource base and market, alienating 1.5 billion Moslems (Financial Times – page 7), China’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew 10 fold over the past 26 years (FT – page 9). While the US allocated over $1.4 trillion dollars to Wall Street and the military, increasing the fiscal and current account deficits, doubling unemployment and perpetuating the recession (FT – page 12), the Chinese government releases a stimulus package directed at its domestic manufacturing and construction sectors, leading to an 8% growth in GDP, a significant reduction of unemployment and ‘re-igniting linked economies’ in Asia, Latin America and Africa (also on page 12).

While the US was spending time, resources and personnel in running ‘elections’ for its corrupt clients in Afghanistan and Iraq, and participating in pointless mediations between its intransigent Israeli partner and its impotent Palestinian client, the South Korean government backed a consortium headed by the Korea Electric Power Corporation in its successful bid on the $20.4 billion dollar nuclear power deal, opening the way for other billion-dollar contracts in the region (FT – page 13).

While the US was spending over $60 billion dollars on internal policing and multiplying the number and size of its ‘homeland’ security agencies in pursuit of potential ‘terrorists’, China was investing $25 billion dollars in ‘cementing its energy trading relations’ with Russia (FT – page 3).

The story told by the articles and headlines in a single day’s issue of the Financial Times reflects a deeper reality, one that illustrates the great divide in the world today. The Asian countries, led by China, are reaching world power status on the basis of their massive domestic and foreign investments in manufacturing, transportation, technology and mining and mineral processing. In contrast, the US is a declining world power with a deteriorating society resulting from its military-driven empire building and its financial-speculative centered economy:

1. Washington pursues minor military clients in Asia; while China expands its trading and investment agreements with major economic partners – Russia, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.

2. Washington drains the domestic economy to finance overseas wars. China extracts minerals and energy resources to create its domestic job market in manufacturing.

3. The US invests in military technology to target local insurgents challenging US client regimes; China invests in civilian technology to create competitive exports.

4. China begins to restructure its economy toward developing the country’s interior and allocates greater social spending to redress its gross imbalances and inequalities while the US rescues and reinforces the parasitical financial sector, which plundered industries (strips assets via mergers and acquisitions) and speculates on financial objectives with no impact on employment, productivity or competitiveness.

5. The US multiplies wars and troop build-ups in the Middle East, South Asia, the Horn of Africa and Caribbean; China provides investments and loans of over $25 billion dollars in building infrastructure, mineral extraction, energy production and assembly plants in Africa.

6. China signs multi-billion dollar trade and investment agreements with Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Bolivia, securing access to strategic energy, mineral and agricultural resources; Washington provides $6 billion in military aid to Colombia, secures seven military bases from President Uribe (to threaten Venezuela), backs a military coup in tiny Honduras and denounces Brazil and Bolivia for diversifying its economic ties with Iran.

7. China increases economic relations with dynamic Latin American economies, incorporating over 80% of the continent’s population; the US partners with the failed state of Mexico, which has the worst economic performance in the hemisphere and where powerful drug cartels control wide regions and penetrate deep into the state apparatus.

Conclusion

China is not an exceptional capitalist country. Under Chinese capitalism, labor is exploited; inequalities in wealth and access to services are rampant; peasant-farmers are displaced by mega-dam projects and Chinese companies recklessly extract minerals and other natural resources in the Third World. However, China has created scores of millions of manufacturing jobs, reduced poverty faster and for more people in the shortest time span in history. Its banks mostly finance production. China doesn’t bomb, invade or ravage other countries. In contrast, US capitalism has been harnessed to a monstrous global military machine that drains the domestic economy and lowers the domestic standard of living in order to fund its never-ending foreign wars. Finance, real estate and commercial capital undermine the manufacturing sector, drawing profits from speculation and cheap imports.

China invests in petroleum-rich countries; the US attacks them. China sells plates and bowls for Afghan wedding feasts; US drone aircraft bomb the celebrations. China invests in extractive industries, but, unlike European colonialists, it builds railroads, ports, airfields and provides easy credit. China does not finance and arm ethnic wars and ‘color rebellions’ like the US CIA. China self-finances its own growth, trade and transportation system; the US sinks under a multi-trillion dollar debt to finance its endless wars, bail out its Wall Street banks and prop up other non-productive sectors while many millions remain without jobs.

China will grow and exercise power through the market; the US will engage in endless wars on its road to bankruptcy and internal decay. China’s diversified growth is linked to dynamic economic partners; US militarism has tied itself to narco-states, warlord regimes, the overseers of banana republics and the last and worst bona fide racist colonial regime, Israel.

China entices the world’s consumers. US global wars provoke terrorists here and abroad.

China may encounter crises and even workers rebellions, but it has the economic resources to accommodate them. The US is in crisis and may face domestic rebellion, but it has depleted its credit and its factories are all abroad and its overseas bases and military installations are liabilities, not assets. There are fewer factories in the US to re-employ its desperate workers: A social upheaval could see the American workers occupying the empty shells of its former factories.

To become a ‘normal state’ we have to start all over: Close all investment banks and military bases abroad and return to America. We have to begin the long march toward rebuilding industry to serve our domestic needs, to living within our own natural environment and forsake empire building in favor of constructing a democratic socialist republic.

When will we pick up the Financial Times or any other daily and read about our own high-speed rail line carrying American passengers from New York to Boston in less than one hour? When will our own factories supply our hardware stores? When will we build wind, solar and ocean-based energy generators? When will we abandon our military bases and let the world’s warlords, drug traffickers and terrorists face the justice of their own people?

Will we ever read about these in the Financial Times?

In China, it all started with a revolution…

James Petras, January 3rd, 2010

James Petras | 04 / 01 / 2010 | Tags: Capitalism, China, USA | Comments 1