Ruthlessness
Today's, May 19, 2012, main headline on the first page of the International Herald Tribune, the "Global Edition of the New York Times", reads: "Greek politician confronts E.U. [European Union]". The caption of the picture of the politician accompanying the article reads: "Alexis Tsipras, the new rising star of Greek politics, says his goal is to persuade creditors to change politics in Europe". [Emphasis added].
When I first met Alexis Tsipras, the young engineering colleague of mine [he is half my age], as an older person I, instinctively, told him that he had entered a world where he had to deal with "ruthless people". His answer was: "I know that and I am prepared".
Ruthless people?
– Let us start at the top; the US economic elites:
David and his kin. For example, take his brother Nelson and the massacre at Attica. Or, the killing of Latin American striking workers by the tender youths of the family who mowed them down with machineguns, so that these tender youths could gain the necessary … experience. Will Alexis Tsipras ever have anything to do with the Rockefellers? Definitely yes! With the "Council on Foreign Relations" of New York, or (and mainly) with the COS (Chief of Station) in the US Embassy in Athens. An intellectually and physically ruthless pack of humans; tools in the hands of the US economic elites.
– Move to the next level below, the "shadow on society" (according to John Dewey and Noam Chomsky) of the above elites; the politicians:
Take the most recent one, Obama of the murderous drones, who surpassed even W. Bush in cruelty. Will Alexis Tsipras ever feel the wrath of this Obama or the next Obama? Probably he does, this very minute (May 20, 2012) at Camp David, where Obama and the group of his drooling "admirers"; Angela of DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), Medvedev (of the USSR), Cameron (Obama's "Lieutenant"), etc, are deciding the fate of Greece, Spain, etc.
– On down to the proxies of the US all over the planet:
Does Frau Merkel give a shit about the humans committing suicide in Greece, in Italy, in Spain, in Portugal, and maybe in Ireland, driven to desperation by her handiwork as a mail-carrier for the US elites? Or does she feel anything for people, searching in garbage for food? It seems that she cares more about the choice of color for her "multiform" attire.
– Finally, we reach down to the level of the Greek political scene:
The political Right in Greece has a history which is almost parallel to that of Franco's Spain. Franco's "Holocaust" in Spain reached 200,000 dead in Franco's Christian Catholic hands. (See: "The Spanish Holocaust", by Paul Preston). The Greek "Holocaust" (1944 to the early 1960s) reached more than 160,000 dead in the Christian Orthodox hands of the leaders of the Greek political Right (under the "supervision" of the UK and the US). Of course, this was not simple ruthlessness, but deep moral decay.
The epigones of those Greek leaders are today the leaders of the Greek Right who are desperately trying to stop Tsipras. At this moment, the main figure of the Greek Right is Antonis Samaras, a graduate of Amherst College and a room-mate, at Amherst, of George Papandreou, the "socialist" Prime Minister of Greece, up to a few months ago, and an "opponent" [!] of Samaras at that time. Of course, the Greeks, even Merkel, are small-fry compared to the US juggernaut, in relation to the pain caused by its ruthlessness, or moral decay, unfortunately, not excluding that the Greek or German soldiers can, also, urinate on corpses.
So, Samaras picked up the thread of his forebears and started hurling against Tsipras the usual stuff: from the "hammer and sickle" all the way up to the accursed "anarchism". His primary weapon: the Greek mass media.
The Greek mass media
To live, today, in Greece and follow the Greek mass media, especially the television, is not only a psychological martyrdom, but also a great disappointment and wrath about the fact that there are Greeks, especially young Greek politicians, who declare that they are Greek patriots fighting for the Greek ideals and such shit, but in reality they are simply instruments of a foreign power: the US and its minions (Merkel, Cameron, Pronti, et al).
So, if the primary source of propaganda are the TV channels, it is justifiable to linger over them a bit. In essence, in Greece there are two state channels and four privately-owned ones. The state channels, especially an early morning program, have a modicum of dignity and honesty. The private channels are the familiar Goebbelian institutions.
Before the June 6 elections it was mainly the 8 o'clock TV-news, of the private channels, that did the Goebbelian job; an infuriating experience. Now, after the elections, this experience is not only infuriating, but nauseating to the point of suffering even physically and it lasts almost 24 hours. The sole target: Tsipras!
As usual, there are two sources of "effluent" on the TV screen: the journalists themselves and the politicians with their supporting "experts", "intellectuals", etc.
Here is a very brief sketch of some journalists of the private TV channels:
– There is the journalist whose name was on a sign on the famous iron gate of the Polytechnic (of the 1973 student uprising) put up there by urban guerillas that read: "P… you will be next", which describes the quality of the man.
– There is the journalist who used to be in the upper echelons of the (Stalinist) Communist party and now is the mouthpiece of the most obnoxious private TV channel of the Greek Right.
– There is this rather emaciated lady, again in a private TV channel, whose presence on the tube oozes cruelty, impudence, and hate. As a journalist she has been "tormenting" ordinary Greeks for decades.
– There is this little brat, in another TV channel, whose idiocy surpasses even his moral depravity.
– There is this rather psychotic man whose facial expression when he attacks the Lefties, during the TV news on a private channel, is that of a madman.
– And so on…
No need to delve in the "quality" of the politicians of the Greek Right. The only new thing is that their maniacal and rather "standardized" attack against Tsipras, on TV is not only stupid and boring, but also ceaseless through the course of the day.
A rare breed
Alexis Tsipras (37) is a civil engineer. A graduate of the Polytechnic of Athens. For almost a century, since the turn of the 20th century, the graduates of the Polytechnic, especially those in civil engineering and in mechanical engineering, have been considered to be a "rare breed". To understand how come such a notion of an "elitist" group was created, one should begin with the brutal entrance exams for the Polytechnic; an abnormal practice. I entered the Polytechnic in 1950. At that time, out of a Greek population of 10 million only 60 students were admitted to the School of Civil Engineering of the Polytechnic. Thus, it was almost inevitable to consider those 60 persons as belonging to a "rare breed"; a ridiculous notion. However, their training, their contact with math, etc helped them to be, in their majority, serious, rational, and honest.
Tsipras as a Polytechnic graduate has the above "virtues" and in addition has the rare experience of participation in the Greek Left movement since the age of sixteen.
My estimate is that he is "prepared" to face the "ruthlessness" of the elites, Greek or other.
The Olympic Flame
What follows is an excerpt from my ZNet Commentary "Nazi Olympics", of April 18, 2005:
Brundage in his Report writes: "… there appeared in the stadium the last of a relay team of 3,300 runners who had carried the Olympic fire (sic) day and night across seven countries… from the fields of Elis, Greece, site of the ancient Olympic Games". It so happens that the ancient Greeks had no Olympic fire, torches, relay teams, etc.
"The man who was most responsible in 1936 for such pseudo-classical trappings… as the torch run… was Dr. Carl Diem, the internationally renowned scholar and administrator". (Mandell, p. 283). Diem's contribution to the success of the 1936 Nazi Olympics, especially the torch run with the Olympic flame, was tremendous, which consequently resulted in a tremendous triumph for Hitler and his Nazi scum. Diem was never a member of the Nazi party, probably because his wife had a Jewish grandparent. Of course, Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl contributed their utmost to Hitler's flame-and-torch theatrical propaganda triumph. Leni Riefenstahl had posted cameramen along the route of the flame, though (unfortunately) her recommendation to have the runners in the nude was not approved. However, the Bulgarians succeeded in solving the sartorial problems of the flame festivities. In Sophia, Bulgaria's capital, "Jeweled, brocaded metropolitans of the (Christian) Orthodox Church somehow contrived a religious ceremony out of the arrival, sojourn, and departure of a bogus symbol of classical paganism". (Mandell, p. 133).
The success of the "flame" trick of the Nazis would not have been possible without the contribution of the advanced technology of the Friedrich Krupp Firm in Essen (the war criminals that made Hitler's cannons) which built a complicated stainless steel torch with a chemically sophisticated system of ignition. Also, the optical firm Zeiss of Jena built the spherical mirror that used the rays of the sun to start the flame in Olympia of Greece. (I wonder if the mirror used for the 2004 Olympics was the original Nazi one).
A few days ago, of the year 2012 [!], there was a repeat of the "flame" travesty in Athens. The "flame" is on its way to London. The fiesta took place at the all-marble stadium of Athens, while one in three Athenians are living below the poverty level or they have a problem of survival.
Is this (the "flame") an insignificant detail? Definitely not!
The Nazis
Immediately after the May 6 elections in Greece, the Greek Nazis celebrated their entrance in the Greek Parliament by inviting the Press, so that their Fuehrer could talk to them. When the Fuhrer enter the room with the journalists one of his bodyguards (or something) ordered the journalists to stand up.
Again this from my ZNet Commentary "The 'Drama' of the Greek elections", of May 11, 2012:
Fortunately, the lumpen Nazis, themselves, offered the solution for eliminating this anomaly, of having Nazis in the Greek Parliament. The solution: a single word of the language of the classical Greeks, which has been heard all over the planet in the news and in videos in the Internet. Te word: "egerthiti" ("stand up").
When the Greeks, all the Greeks, saw and heard that stocky representative of the Greek Nazi virility hollering "egerthiti" (actually mispronounced as "egerthi-to" by him) they laughed their heads off. The ridicule is unbelievable. There is nothing the Greek Nazis can do to change the mind of the Greeks about the "egerthito!" scene.
A coup of weeks ago the Greek Nazi Fuehrer, according to the Greek Constitution, as a leader of a parliamentary party had the right to visit the Greek President. When the Fuehrer enters the room in the presidential mansion, where the Greek reporters were waiting to do their job, all the reporters sat cross-legged on the … floor!
I do not know if this was included in the evening news played in … Peoria, but for the Greeks it was not an insignificant detail.
The exponential
Once more back to the International Herald Tribune, this time of May 12, 2012:
We read: "When you have Greece and Spain happening [the debt disasters] at the same time, the problem becomes exponential and very dangerous" … [Emphasis added].
What if it is not the economic stuff that becomes "exponential", but it is the uprisings of men and women from Greece to Peoria that become exponential?
Yesterday (May 21) Tsipras visited Paris, where he met with people of the French Left. This moment, in the evening news, we see that he is in Berlin where he is meeting people from the German Left.
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