Greek Independence

Interview with Liana Kanelli an independent MP elected under the flag of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) for the last twelve years in four consecutive elections.  Ms. Kanelli has been a journalist for 36 years and holds a degree in law. By Moira Dalgetty, our correspondent in the Edinburgh of the South.

 

What do you see as being the historical/political context for the situation Greece is now in?

 

LK: To understand what’s happening in Greece now, you have to go back 40 years or more.  You have to know that this country, this nation, are the  people about whom Winston Churchill  said after the Second World War: “Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks”, and this should never be forgotten.

 

We gave our blood for independence, we fought with no money, no weapons.  We built an anti-Nazi front in which not only the Communist Party but 95% of the Greek people took part in, we delayed the invasion in Russia, we practically helped our western allies to win the war.  But then, after everything that happened in the Middle East at that time, after the king that was imposed on us, we ended up being a country that had lost half its population to famine after the civil war in addition to those killed during the Second World War, whilst in the rest of Europe there was prosperity and re-building after the war, with the Germans getting away without paying us reparations.
To keep all the money they made out of the war with their Anglo-Saxon partners, capitalists that had made all the money using the German need for war – now this information is in the public domain, everyone knows that I’m telling the truth since it can be confirmed – we spent another 4 years in a dreadful, British-motivated civil war until we became an American ‘protectorate’ :  we were handed to the Americans by the British.  So, when Europe was rebuilding its future, here in Greece we were practically torn apart, having lost half of our population as I have said between soldiers and civilians  under German occupation, then in addition our youth that left to work in German factories as gastarbeiters.

 

And then, when we started having some hopes of being something like a so-called very conventional type of democracy, we had the Cyprus case and then a dictatorship for seven years.  When our young people overthrew the dictatorship, then we started living and breathing.  Democracy came, then hope came, and loans came, and we closed the wounds of the civil war or at least we tried to, and we became little by little a modern society where people fought in the streets for their rights, using the experience of not being dependent, but finally we were betrayed from the inside as always happens.

 

The ruling class betrayed us just 30 years after the restoration of the so-called democracy. To save our necks from the dictatorship, we lost half of Cyprus.  Then we became part of NATO and the EU and are now being portrayed as a rogue economic state because this suits the big money interests and the bullies of capitalism all over the world.  We are an example of very tough-fighting, hard-working people and we have to be taught our lesson  – OBEY.  This is the case historically – we have to obey the new world order, the disguised international monetary dictatorship of the banks.

 

How do you interpret what is happening now?

 

The Greek people have already defaulted.  Rights, gains, salaries, laws that we paid for with our own blood – all of this has been taken from us.  Now they have started asset-stripping, as they call it,  because Greece is in a strategic area, very rich, with oil – which is black gold – but with real gold too, which is the sun, the beauty, the history, the sea, the smiling  people,  the cosmopolitan attitude, being between east and west, with culture and dreams – it’s a very expensive piece of land that costs a lot to take possession of.  So they have to strip the morale from the people, and the value of the land, so that they can buy cheaply, and I think that they need it as a very luxurious base to create the so-called pre-announced Great Middle East which starts from Tunisia and ends up on the frontiers of Afghanistan and China.  And they need to be able to come here and rest when they invade Syria and Iran.  This is the case, and I think that they are going back to the Second World War, but this time in modern terms and with modern weapons – stock markets, CDSs, hedge funds – these are the Messerschmitts and the Panzers of the new, modern world.  We are going back to neo-colonialism, we are going back to new slavery, because what is a slave today?  It’s  just a working person laboring under “modern” ideas, deprived of our rights as human beings.Now the same capitalists come to Greece to take poor people  to Switzerland, Germany, Malaysia and China to work for Chinese salaries and live in Indian prosperity.

 

What thoughts do you have about Scotland as it goes toward a referendum on independence?

LK:
I’ve been watching Scotland for three-and-a-half decades as a journalist specializing in foreign affairs.  I’ve always been in love with  ideas about an independent Scotland, and I think the Scots should fight for that. We, the Greeks and Scots, are very similar, and you could teach your Scottish children about Messolonghi*.  For an exodus, you need to sacrifice something, and it’s not civilized to accept being unable to decide what’s happening for yourselves.  You will not be independent if you don’t get out of the EU, which has turned into a den of capitalist wolves.

 

My youth was spent living through a junta, and I can’t see a difference between that and what’s happening today.  Practically, juntas are more civilized, because at least they do not disguise themselves – they wear their uniforms and they show their weapons; they don’t wear ties and suits, playing the democrats around financial Camelots.   You have to be independent and choose your friends and your enemies of your own free will and not out of the needs that somebody else creates for you.  And as far as joining the Euro is concerned – watch what’s happening to us!  You will end up enslaved to bankers who live a lot further away than London.
*Messolonghi,  declared a sacred town of immortal heroes due to its important role in the Greek Revolution against the Turks, where the poet and Philhellene Lord Byron fought alongside the Greeks in their struggle for freedom.

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  1. It appears that the endgame for G

    reece is in play.

    There have been rumours of a programmed default at the end of March.

    These have been circulating around some very connected “city” blogs for a few days.

    Today they have hit the dead tree press and the Sunday Telegraph is carrying a piece to the same effect. He may have just climbed on the bandwagon but, I think not.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9091021/Germany-drawing-up-plans-for-Greece-to-leave-the-euro.htm

    I am quite sympathetic to the Greek position and will return here to post some more, after I have had my breakfast. I make it a rule never to drink my morning nuclear in front of the computer as the crap I see on the web MSM usually means my keyboard get showered in soggy bread crumbs and brown liquid.

  2. Aucheorn says:

    She is giving us a real warning here, “Stay away from the EU” Which I wholeheartedly endorse.

    Once we get our our Independence from the shackles of Westminister why should we voluntarily put on the far more confining and dangerous chains of the EU.

  3. Right back now.

    I will not comment on the historical perspective, except for a very simple and significant analytical point.

    The Greeks have fought and died in the hundreds of thousands to be Greek. How they define that is their right.

    Now to the money.

    Greece has had a peculiar way of running its economy; a Greek way. Greeks are not Germans, Britons or any other nationality. Their economy reflected their views on and even philosophy of life.

    A nudge here, a wink there, a little local respect here and a connection there.

    So when the EU came along and the Germans and French Banks desperate to stuff Euros down the throats of Greeks at knock down interest rates, who were the Greeks to say, thanks but no thanks.

    Did they take the money and create a mini Ruhr or Detroit, no. They took the money and used it to enhance their lives. A new house, a new car, holidays in this new Europe, new olive groves a plenty.

    It was a Faustian deal. The Germans were outraged that the Greeks didn’t give too much thought about repaying their financial profligacy, the German one that is. The Greeks knew exactly what they were doing; working to live (or retire) and not living to work. The French were pissed off that someone else should enjoy such a great lifestyle and even angrier that the Germans had seduced them into financing it.

    The bubble had to burst sometime and burst it has.

    One great big problem here, It is far to big to repay (even the dogs in the street know that).

    So, devalue the Drachma. Can’t do that and the Germans have ensured that Greece can’t go back to it without leaving the EU( see my earlier post)
    or

    Default.

    Default is not unknown and a number of countries have defaulted in recent years and all have emerged stronger after a bit of internal unrest, perhaps even less than what is happening daily on Greek streets?

    Instead we have a half way house of further debt being given to Greece to repay loans they can’t repay in the first case and imposed undemocratic economic measures to make it even more impossible tp repay the original debt. The Greeks are revolting and burning things down which is what the bankers wanted all along. What we are not seeing is the all the money going into Greece goes right back to the lenders. The real problem with Greek debts is not the bebt of the Greeks but the exposure of the idiotic banking system which created the unrepayable debt in the first place. This has all been a defelection exercise to hide that and give the Central bankers time to work out what to do to get themselves out of their hole.

    The denoument to that one is coming soon.

    Incidentally, and I stand to be corrected but, was there not an agreement for War reparations to Greece from Germany not agreed but suspended, with the accord of the Greek Government, whilst Germany was going through the problems of reunification? Was this debt not abrogated by Greece as part of the accession agreement to the Euro or the EU?

    Who was in control of the Greek Government and the Greek Finace Ministery at these times?

    Which organisation “aided” Greece to make its case for inclusion in the Euro, by way of off book transactions and “hunt the Queen” card tricks. Who is the current Finance Moinister of Greece?

    Answer on a €100 note to The Chief Executive, Goldman Sachs, New York for your prize of a €5.

  4. Oh I forgot, good luck to Greece and the Greeks. They have survived worse conditions and will pass though this one.

    I am not so sure about the EU though, not as it is currently formed anyway.

  5. Alan McCombes says:

    Interesting quote from Churchill for those who’ve ever read Louis de Berniere’s novel, Captain Correlli’s Mandolin, which borders on racism in its outlandish falsification of the history of Greek resistance in WW2.

  6. John Souter says:

    Who would have believed the 21st century version of blitz-krieg would be waged by the use of speculation backed by computed digits and Monopoly money?

    This is the financial shamans version of the neutron bomb – the one that supposedly annihilated all life forms but left the real estate and assets untouched and ripe for the victors spoils. Not a bad result for a threat backed by nothing more than a myth and a lobotomised propaganda machine.

    Was this a conspiracy or a cock-up? Is Greece merely a tactical test case to test a greater strategy? Iceland blew up, but it wasn’t part of the EU and didn’t play the game choosing instead to let their banks go to the wall. And, anyway Iceland was too small to be treated as a test case. ( Though strangely the money men have already decided Iceland can come back into the funny money club if it wants to – perhaps the club doesn’t want any country to survive and progress outwith the clubs ‘largesse’ of debt and interest?)

    Ireland and Portugal for the moment have played into the austerity pack of socialising real costs in order to pay real interests for computed Monopoly debts that circled only within the speculators and did nothing for their real productive economies. So for the present, they will be allowed to continue paying the pawn fee while the broker decides whether to sell their pawned assets or keep them in escrow.

    Until that is Greece succumbs or is subdued and the tactic is proved successful; then the PIIGS will be transformed to exactly one letter less than the acronym and given the same neutron treatment. Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy are already on the conveyor. The new Baltic and eastern European entrants have little in the way of reserves or financial clout to be able to withstand the ‘new’ club rules. Then on to France and the UK, both of whom, for the moment, are claiming the role of self sufficient internal and external gualeiters while in reality they are in just as much, if not more, hock to the Financial Storm Troopers as the countries they’re victimising.

    Some economists argue this isn’t a moral issue, purely an exercise in fiscal control. They might have a point if the money, the debt and usury charged were real and thereby creating real hardship for the alleged investors. But there not. It’s electronic Monopoly money that hasn’t even incurred the cost of the paper it isn’t printed on.

    If we allow this idiocy to win even a tactical skirmish we may as well write off the last five hundred years, democracy and the advance of civilization; and gird our loins with the sackcloth of feudal serfdom to serve the alchemy of the Overlords of Financial Funny Money.

    Whether through ignorance, incompetence or prior recruitment to their cause this is exactly what our political masters and their technocratic gualeiters want. There’s a lot of ‘profit’ in it and it would make their lives so much easier not to have to spin their way through the demands democracy places on them.

    For now we still have a choice. Either the easy way of apathy, or we take a myth by its mythical horns, expose it to the ridicule it warrants and deserves, then carve out for ourselves, our communities and our nations a real life based on our real values.

    In the real world, the Greeks are our neighbours.

    1. Good job I read all the comments first as was just about to add a link to your post on Golem which is good and you have posted above.

      1. John Souter says:

        Sorry about that CH – actually I wrote it on BC then diddled it over to Golem.
        I thought it fitted in with the propaganda text.

  7. Robert says:

    The Greek problem is first of all a problem of a corrupted, ineffective and parasitic national elite. And there can’t be solution to the economic and financial problems without this question being settled first.

    Euroland can try to put pressure on so that these elite change, but ultimately it’s a problem which only the Greeks themselves can solve. Thus it is urgent that the Greek socio-political system leaves the 19th century to enter the 21st. And that will happen via four measures:

    1. A change of electoral system to break the pork-barrelling generated by the current electoral process
    2. The creation of a land register allowing taxes to be effectively levied
    3. An end to the privilege of the “Sword and the Aspergillum”: 50% reduction in the Greek military budget and normal taxation of the Church
    4. An aggressive policy of taxation and legal proceedings against the rich Greek mafia in London.

    These 4 measures can be prepared by the current Greek government with Euroland’s help and set in motion after the April elections. They would constitute a formidable electoral challenge for April 2012, which would widely mobilize Greek public opinion. And with dates of implementation: the end of 2012 for the electoral reform, 2013 for the reduction of the military budget and taxation of the Church, 2014 for the land register and the repatriation of Greek wealth invested in the City of London.

    1. John Souter says:

      Robert – all substantive points and part of a potential cure.

      But the fact no ‘cure’ is being initiated or even discussed is indicative to me that the parasitic finance scam must be handled first,

  8. Robert says:

    Off topic – the suppressed McCrone report and Scotland’s oil. When the nationalists back in the Seventies used the slogan Rich Scots or poor British they had a point

    http://auldacquaintance.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/mccrone-deja-vu/

  9. David Smillie says:

    I feel someone needs to defend Greek politicians, who have now become Europe’s whipping boys. It is not true, as some (including Greeks) have asserted, that they just blew all the european money and there is nothing tangible to show for it. In fact there has been very considerable investment in transport infrastructure throughout the country which will benefit Greek society and economy for decades to come. Athens was the most polluted capital city in Europe (the nephos – smog) but with the building of the metro lines, tram system and proastiakos (suburban railway) it is now a civilised modern capital. Add to that the new Athens airport, new motorways in the eastern Peloponese and Thessaly and rural development initiatives like LEADER and PESCA and you have a society that modernised at breakneck speed as was obvious to those of us who spent time in the country. It also meant that Greece became more expensive for tourists. Some of the spend was unwise and inefficient – for example the new high speed railway between Athens and Patras (which it never reached), but Greece will benefit given a fighting chance. The EU is right to put pressure on those politicians to clean up their act. The ordinary peaople need protection from the awful consequences meantime.

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