Debts that cannot be repaid

SALONIKA, SATURDAY JULY 11, 1942.  Jewish men being drilled by Germans to determine if they are fit for forced labour.


THE Greek people have elected the left-wing Syriza party into office, signalling they've had enough of imposed austerity and unemployment, and though the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn remains menacing in third place, Syriza's victory is a gain for democracy itself.  The new left party will face a rough ride, confronting powerful enemies, and may yet be forced to compromise, but for now it carries the hopes not just of Greeks, but of young people particularly, and we can only wish it well.

Tomorrow, January 27, is the anniversary of another kind of left-wing victory, the day in 1945 when Soviet soldiers, belonging to the First Army of the Ukrainian Front, liberated Auschwitz camp in south-west Poland, where so many people had been killed. This day has been designated Holocaust Memorial Day, and there will be various commemorative events.

Many Greek Jews were in Auschwitz, as well as some Greek resistance fighters,both Jewish and Gentile, and they did not go quietly to their deaths.  On October 8,1944, realising the Nazis were destroying evidence of their crimes and would kill them because they knew too much, members of the sonderkommando, who had been employed to dispose of corpses to the crematoria, rose up in Auschwitz-Birkenau, killing several Nazi SS men and blowing up a crematorium with a home made bomb, before they were crushed.  Some 300-400 prisoners took part in this rising,and some tried to escape,heading towards the approaching Soviet forces. Among the rebels were about 60 Greek Jews, led by an ex-army officer called Joseph Barukh.

There had been Jews in Greece since ancient times, but their numbers were considerably increased after the expulsion from Spain, and the Inquisition. Sefardi Jews found refuge in the comparatively tolerant Ottoman Empire of which Greece was then part, bringing with them their skills and their own Judeo-Hispanic language, Ladino.
   
Salonika, or Thessaloniki , became the main centre of Sefardi people in the world, for over 400 years. Like Vilna in the north for Ashkenazim, Salonika was renowned for its scholars and yeshivot, but also had a distinctly Jewish working class, particularly in textiles, and in transport and the docks. At the beginning of the 20th century Jews formed more than half of Salonika's mixed population.  It was said the port came to a standstill on the Jewish sabbath.

The Salonika Jews lost live, homes and jobs after a fire in 1917, and their position declined after the Greco-Turkish war from 1918-22 brought Greek rule, and the arrival of thousands of Greeks expelled from the Turkish mainland. Antisemitism and economic recession caused many Jews to emigrate, including 500 dockers enticed with their families to Haifa, where they enabled the Jewish yishuv to ease its dependence on Arab labour.      

In 1941, when the Nazis occupied Greece there were approximately 76,000 Jews in the country, of whom 56,000 lived in Salonika. That winter, the Greek Jews, and indeed the population in general, suffered almost as badly as people elsewhere in eastern Europe. Besides the destruction wrought by bombing and invasion, there was famine. Greece was unable to exchange its produce - dried fruits, tobacco, and olive oil -  for wheat. In March 1942 the German occupiers allowed the British government and Red Cross to send wheat shipments to Athens, but in Salonika, 20,000 Jews starved and there was an outbreak of spotted typhus.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/27261-germany-s-unpaid-debt-to-greece-albrecht-ritschl-on-germany-s-war-debts-and-reparations

The German command for Salonika and the Aegean decreed in July that all Jewish males between 18  and 45 should be conscripted for heavy labour, though the Todt Organisation had difficulty finding three or four thousand men for railway construction among this debilitated mass of people.  On Saturday, July 11, 1942, or "Black Saturday," thousands of Jewish men dressed in their best sabbath clothes were rounded up and taken to the Salonika town square, where they were beaten and humiliated, forced to perform physical jerks in the blazing sun for hours, to decide who was fit for manual labor.

Thousands were then sent to do road work under harsh conditions. Many hundreds died, others  were murdered as they tried to escape. The Jewish community tried to help with food,medicines and clothing. Then in October the German officer responsible for dealing with the Jewish community in Salonika, Dr.Max Merten, let people buy exemptions, finally exacting a fine of 2,500,000 drachma from the community to stop the conscription.

It was an illusory respite. Eichman, or at least one of his henchman, visited Salonika, and the order came to deport its Jews. Many appear to have told themselves that Poland could not be worse than the forced labour gangs, others were  told they would be sent to the easier conditions of Theresienstadt. The first train, of forty box-cars, arrived in Auschwitz on March 20,1943. Following the selection 417 men and 192 women were admitted into the camp. 2,191 people killed in the gas chambers.


By mid-May,  the great bulk of Salonika Jewry had been deported, 42,830 people in sixteen trains.

Nowadays there are no more than about 1,500 Jews in Salonika. Many of their synagogues and institutions were plundered and destroyed.  Last year it was reported that Salonika Jews were suing the German government to try and recover some of the millions extorted by Dr.Mertens. He is said to have hidden a huge fortune. But they are owed far more than can ever be repaid.         


 http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/greekjewry.html 
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/.premium-1.579931

The Jews of Athens were less culturally distinct,and found it easier to disappear among neighbours, and only(!) two trainloads of them were taken away for the camps. Elsewhere, conditions varied. Sometimes Greek bishops and other leaders encouraged their followers to assist the Jews,and  the EAM-ELAS  resistance protected and recruited Jews. The city of Volos, which was in the Italian zone of occupation, had a Jewish population of 882, and many Jews from Salonika sought sanctuary there. By March 1944, more than 1,000 Jews lived there. In September 1943, when the Nazis took over, head rabbi Pessah worked with Archbishop Ioakim and the EAM resistance movement to find sanctuary for the Jews in Pelion. Due to their efforts, 74% of the city's Jews were saved. Of the more than 1,000 Jews, only 130 were deported to Auschwitz.

But all told, more than 80 per cent of the Jews of Greece perished at the hands of the Nazis, or of their Bulgarian allies in Thrace.

Meanwhile, what of the rest of the population?  The Nazi occupiers imposed a forced loan from Greece to finance their war effort, and plundered the countryside, leaving Greeks to starve while the food went to German armed forces. They were ruthless in punishing resistance.  

While we have been told repeatedly about Greece's debts for bailout,and some German newspapers have caricatured Greeks as lazy,  unproductive beggars spending their time in cafes, Greeks suffering the affects of austerity and joblessness have remembered wartime experience, or what they were told by their parents about life -and death - under German rule.

Here is John Psaropououlos, on April 25 last year:

On June 10, 1944, three Wehrmacht units converged on the village of Distomo in Nazi-occupied central Greece. They had received reports of black market activity in the area - a hanging offence under the Nazis, who stockpiled food to supply their armies overseas, leaving the local population strictly rationed. Instead of smugglers they found a dozen resistance fighters and rounded them up.

"A representative ran off and warned the resistance that was encamped three or four kilometres from the village," says Thanos Bouras, who was then 20 years old. "The resistance attacked, and they mortally wounded the German commander. A woman brought him some water. He thanked her, and said: 'The entire village [is] kaput, but don't harm this woman.'"

What followed was one of the worst Nazi atrocities in Greece during their three-and-a-half-year occupation. Angelos Kastritis, who was eight, remembers the Germans going house to house, bashing down doors and spraying interiors with machine-gun fire.
Kastritis' mother had told him and his father to make themselves scarce while she stayed home with her in-laws, believing that women and the elderly would not be harmed.
"When I returned I first saw my grandfather. The back of his head was gone and his brains had been splattered against a staircase. My grandmother was seated next to him [dead]. Inside the house I saw my mother… They had killed her execution-style, from behind."

Sture Linner, the Swedish head of the Red Cross in Greece, arrived in Distomo three days later. He described what he saw in his autobiography, My Odyssey, "For hundreds of yards along the road, human bodies were hanging from every tree, pierced with bayonets - some were still alive. In the village… hundreds of dead bodies of people of all ages, from elderly to newborns, were strewn around on the dirt. Several women were slaughtered with bayonets, their wombs torn apart and their breasts severed …"

Seven percent of the Greek population at the time of the war - over half a million people - was wiped out. Four-fifths of those were civilians and were killed in mass executions and punitive massacres like that at Distomo. But the single biggest killer was starvation, stemming from Germany's disastrous management of the Greek economy. Greece lost 97 percent of its exports. Agricultural production fell; infrastructure was systematically destroyed. A year into the occupation, Germany was so worried about a collapse of civil society that it let Britain and the Red Cross distribute food and aid.

Changing tones?
For decades, Greece's official position, that reparations for this disaster remain an open question, has contradicted Germany's - that the matter is closed.
But that may now be changing. On March 6, Greece's President Karolos Papoulias aired the subject during a visit from his German counterpart. "Greece never gave up its claims and a solution is negotiations as quickly as possible," he said.

A Greek foreign ministry source says that negotiations were given the go-ahead during Chancellor Angela Merkel's last visit to Athens, on April 11.
"The [Greek] government has sent the entire dossier to the Court of Audit for a legal opinion," said the source, on condition of anonymity. "As soon as that is delivered, talks will begin between foreign ministers."

But it isn't clear how much Greece will ask for. The Allies disagreed on the amount that Germany should pay in reparations after World War II and set up the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency  to distribute movable German assets among themselves - entire factories and blast furnaces were sawed to pieces and shipped.

Greece was awarded 2.7 percent of the fixed assets and 4.35 percent of the movable assets, says Hagen Fleischer, professor emeritus at Athens University, one of the world's leading experts on World War II reparations. "Some of this got to Greece and some didn't."

Fleischer's estimates will be detailed in a forthcoming book on the subject: "We might estimate that it was between 25 and 80 million dollars' worth [in 1938 dollars]," - roughly equivalent to the 2.7 percent share Greece was awarded.

For full article see:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/04/greece-pressures-germany-wwii-reparations-201442683740820822.html
See also:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/27261-germany-s-unpaid-debt-to-greece-albrecht-ritschl-on-germany-s-war-debts-and-reparations

Whatever the arguments about money, this is also about debts that cannot be repaid.

Resistance fighter returns to the fray

NOT  THAT HE EVER RETIRED!  A hero before he turned 19, Glezos has not given up in his 'Nineties. Protesting austerity in Athens.

ON this day, May 30, in 1941, two young men climbed to the top of the Acropolis, on the crag high above Athens, and tore down the Nazi swastika flag which had hung over it since April 27, 1941, when German forces took over the Greek capital.

For this defiant and heroic act, which inspired popular resistance to the Nazis in Greece and throughout Europe, Manolis Glezos and his comrade Apostolos Santas were sentenced to death in absentia by a Nazi court. Glezos was captured and tortured the following year, but he survived this and several other spells in captivity, both during and after the occupation.

WARTIME COMRADES Apostolis Santas and Manolis Glezos.

Now, at 91, Manolis Glezos is going to the European Parliament as a top figure of the left-wing Syriza party. He was elected with a record 233,000 votes and pledged to wage resistance to EU/IMF-imposed austerity -and fascism. Syriza beat the conservative New Democracy and left the fascist Golden Dawn in third place.


From his youth, -he was not yet turned 19 when he tore down that Nazi flag - Manolis Glezos has had a lifetime of struggle. As a result of his treatment at Nazi hands he was affected by tubercolosis. In 1943 he was arrested again by Italian forces, and the following year by Greek Nazi collaborators. He escaped in September 1944, but after the Greek civil war the right-wing regime which the Western powers had helped tried him as a leftist, and sentenced him to death.

After an international outcry this was reduced to life imprisonment in 1950. While he was still in prison he was elected to parliament as a left-wing MP in 1951 . He went on a hunger strike demanding the release of his fellow EDA MPs that were imprisoned or exiled in the Greek islands. He ended his hunger strike upon the release of 7 MPs from their exile. He was released from prison on July 16, 1954.

Apostolos Santas also suffered post-war imprisonment and exile, before escaping and gaining political asylum in Canada, where he died.


On December 5, 1958, Manolis  Glezos was arrested and convicted for "espionage", a common Cold War accusation. Released in 1962, after an international campaign, during which he was elected an MP again, he was one of the many rounded up overnight when the colonels junta seized power in 1967, carrying out a NATO contingency plan. He spent another four years in prison.

After the colonels' regime was removed, Glezos returned to politics, and was elected to parliament as a PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) MP, and then in 1984 to the European parliament. But in 1986 he withdrew from Parliament, to concentrate on developing grass-roots democracy. He was elected president of of a community council in Aperathu. In 2002, he formed the political group Active Citizens which is part of Coalition of the Radical Left, Syriza, and in 2012 he was elected a Syriza MP.


Between his political activities and periods of imprisonment Manolis Glezos managed to acquire qualifications in geology and civil engineering, applying them in developing techniques for flood control and preventing soil erosion.

Being a nonagenarian, not to mention a national hero, does not seem to have exempted Manolis Glezos from the police violence that has met austerity protests.  In March 2010, Glezos was participating in a protest demonstration in Athens, when he was hit in the face by a police tear gas canister. He was carried away injured.  In February 2012, he was sprayed with tear gas and arrested by riot police.

Manolis Glezos says he will remain in the European Parliament for a year, after which he intends to hand over to a younger person. Meanwhile he will bring with him memories not only of resistance, but of the way the Nazis occupiers plundered his country before they left.

“The German war reparations, which were never addressed by the current government, will be brought up by Manolis Glezos in the very first meeting of the European Parliament,” Syriza leader said in a statement before the election announcing the war hero's candidature. 

Glezos himself made clear in a statement together with composer Mikos Theodorakis that he is urging not just Greeks but all peoples to resist the impositions of fascism and finance capital.


http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/04/24/manolis-glezos-to-run-for-euro-parliament-on-syriza-ticket

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2014/05/27/greeks-send-resistance-fighter-manolis-glezos-91-to-ep-with-more-than-160k-votes/

http://cgtlehavre.ul.over-blog.com/article-mikis-theodorakis-et-manolis-glezos-appellent-les-peuples-a-s-unir-contre-la-finance-88167472.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manolis_Glezos

MANY HAPPY RETURNS!

Another anti-fascist veteran and nonagenarian celebrates almost a century on Sunday. Max Levitas is 99! 

Here is the message from the SEARCHLIGHT website:

Max Levitas took part in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 and has dedicated his life to fighting racism and supporting the labour movement in Tower Hamlets and internationally. He was a Communist councillor in Stepney, east London, for 15 years. Born in Ireland in 1915 he has never completely lost his Dublin brogue. Even today he is still a key activist in the pensioners’ movement.

A celebration ‘meeting’ is being held on Sunday 1 June, 2pm to 4pm, to celebrate Max’s 99th birthday, at the Idea Store, 321 Whitechapel Road, London E1 1BU. Nearest tube Whitechapel (turn left on leaving the station and it is on the left-hand side).

Please come and join us.

RSVP glynrobbins@aol.com. 

http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/ 

 

Grand old voice of Greek Resistance

HARD to keep a good man down. White-haired Manolis Glezos outside Greek parliament, where he was attacked with tear gas.

PICTURES like the one above, depicting riot police going for Greek veteran Manolis Glezos, have been circulating today in social networks and elsewhere, with captions suggesting this happened on Monday, when workers and students clashed with the police, and buildings were set ablaze overnight, as the Greek government pushed through new austerity measures in a stormy and angry parliament.

Ever a stickler for accuracy, I have checked, and the picture was taken in March 2010, when the then 88-year old ex-MP tried to stop them arresting a friend outside the parliament. The 'Socialist' Georgios Papandreou was still prime minister. Glezos, famous for tearing down the Nazi swastika flag over the Acropolis in 1941, had been a member of parliament in Papandreou's Pan-Hellenic Socialist party PASOK, but would not go along with its capitalist austerity measures.

No matter. Papandreou called at the weekend for MPs to support the IMF and EU backed package of cuts and privatisation, and today there is news that this is just the start.

"A new document from Greece's troika of creditors - the International Monetary Fund, EU and the European Central Bank - spells out how Athens will further have to punish the Greek people in return for more money.

"It calls on Athens to cut spending on drugs by another €1 billion (£840 million) and quickly sell off state assets. Government spending on medicines was cut by more than a quarter to €4.1bn (£3.4bn) last year. And the troika also demands that Greece slash its military spending". (we might not disagree with that part)

"The document came to light a day after Greek MPs passed a cuts Bill that lops 20 per cent off the minimum wage and will dump thousands of public-sector workers on the scrap heap".

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/115393

Manolis Glezis understands the anger of the young people on the streets. He sees a continuity with his courageous act of defiance in 1941. The octagenarian is still resisting.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9633000/9633164.stm

As he told the Guardian last year:

"Not since the German occupation have we been in such a difficult and dangerous situation," he laments, with an angry thump of his hand.

"Economically, democratically, the Greek people are seeing hard-won rights being wiped away. Unemployment is growing, shops are closing daily and decisions that are totally unconstitutional are being made."

On May 30, 1941, Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas climbed on to the Acropolis and tore down the swastika flag which the Nazi forces had hoisted over that symbol of ancient civilisation when they entered Athens on April 27, 1941. This heroic act of defiance, the first act of resistance, was an inspiration to the Greek people and all those under occupation.

Glezos paid for his defiance with arrest and torture, and it was not until September 1944 that he escaped from Axis captivity. His troubles were not over. Allied forces entering Greece were ordered to suppress any left-wing attempt to take over, and the civil war which followed the world war ended with a right-wing government sentencing Glezos to death on March 3, 1948.
Only an international outcry led to this being commuted to life imprisonment in 1950.

While still imprisoned, Manolis Glezos was elected a member of parliament in 1951, under the rubric of the United Democratic Left (EDA). He went on hunger strike demanding the release of his fellow EDA MPs that were imprisoned or exiled in the Greek islands. He ended his hunger strike upon the release of 7 MPs from their exile. He was released from prison on July 16, 1954. But on December 5, 1958 he was arrested and convicted for espionage, a common Cold War accusation.

He was released in 1962 after another international campaign, but when the colonels seized power in 1967, Manolis Glezos was inevitably among those top of their list for arrest, and he suffered yet another four years of imprisonment and exile.

After the restoration of democracy in 1974, Glezos participated in the revival of the EDA, and then in the elections of 1981 and 1985, he was elected an MP for PASOK. In 1984 he was elected a Member of the European Parliament, again for PASOK. But from 1986 Glezos turned to an experiment in grassroots democracy, being elected president of the Community Council in Aperathu, then setting up a local assembly to run the community. This lasted seven years.

In the 2000 legislative election Glezos stood as head of a left-wing colation, and in 2002 he formed an group called Active Citizens as part of it.

The present economic crisis has brought Manolis Glezos back to the scenes that impressed themselves on him in his earlier years, and to facing the historic issues of power behind the democratic facade.

Glezos has not forgotten the howls of the starving or the images of municipal carts carrying the corpses of those who, during the Nazi occupation, collapsed begging for food in the streets of Athens.

He knows not only because he was there; he counted them.

"I worked in the statistics office of the International Red Cross and every day I would note the deaths of around 400 people as a result of famine. We lost 13.5% of our population, more than any other occupied country, because all of our foodstuffs, our crops, were requisitioned [by the Wehrmacht]. For those two reasons alone Germany should help Greece."

"To this day, Greece remains the only country in Europe that never received reparations from Germany," added the former MP, who has long headed the National Council for the Reclamation of German Debt. "We never got back any of the antiquities that they took, or the buildings that they seized, or the tons of silver and nickel that they stole.

"If you take into account the enforced occupation loan, I estimate that they owe us around €162bn, plus interest."

Glezos, who has proposed that Berlin fund companies in Greece and scholarships for students bound for Germany by way of compensation, insists he is neither motivated by hatred nor revenge. He has many German friends and every year, he says, they descend on Athens to "try and right the wrong" by demonstrating outside the German embassy. But he is infuriated that Greeks are invariably typecast by the German media as lazy laggards when studies show them working the longest hours in Europe.

"The latest agreement to save Greece is all about saving banks and financial capital, not people," he says. "After the war, we won our freedom but we emerged as vassals, first of the English and then the Americans. Being indebted in this way keeps us in that subordinate role. Our new masters are the troika [the EU, IMF and ECB] and they have to go. Mark my words, the Greeks will play a pivotal role in resisting the policies they want to impose."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/02/greek-protester-resisted-nazis

The spirit of resistance is still alive, and that is good.
Working people across Europe are facing attacks on our living standards and rights. We need that inspiration once again.

Trade Unionists support Greek Resistance!

THERE'S a demonstration taking place outside the Greek embassy this evening, and trade unionists awakening from the holiday period to a renewed struggle are focussing attention on Greece. There in the face of massive resistance to austerity measures a banker-led right-wing "unity" government is entrusted by European Union capitalists with saving their economy by imposing their will. That's why a court case re-opening tomorrow has meaning for us all.

As Eric Lee of the international news link LabourStart says:

" If you're a trade unionist fighting to ensure that workers don't pay the price for the global financial crisis they didn't create, 2012 looks like it will be a challenging year.

"On Thursday 24 November 2011, the Greek police arrested Nikos Photopoulos, President of the power workers' union GENOP/DEI, along with more than a dozen of his fellow trade unionists. They will appear in court on Tuesday 10 January 2012 to face charges that could see them jailed for up to five years.

"They were protesting against part of the Greek austerity measures - the cutting off of power to people unable to pay a new property tax, levied regardless of income or wealth and added to all electricity bills. The new tax is just the most recent 'austerity' action by the Greek government. The abolition of the national minimum wage and the lowering of employer-paid taxes are next.

"Please take a moment to send a message to the Greek Prime Minister in support of the campaign Greek trade union confederation GSEE, which is calling for the charges to be dropped.

Just go HERE to send your message.

And please don't forget to pass this message along to your contacts, and to use your Twitter, Google+ and Facebook accounts to help us get the word out.

Thanks.

Eric Lee

The TUC has also endorsed a call for solidarity with Greek workers with this statement from the Greek trade unions:

NO TO THE PENALISATION OF TRADE UNION STRUGGLE

The GSEE stands in full solidarity with GENOP/DEI President Nikos Photopoulos and our other colleagues who await trial on 10 January 2012 because of the protest sit-in last November at the Company's computing headquarters to prevent the levying of the brutal emergency property tax via electricity bills as part of the devastating austerity imposed on Greek people.

We once more call on the authorities to refrain from penalizing trade union action and drop the charges against trade unionists who defend the right of citizens to unimpeded access to a vital public good that is doubly essential in these trying times of utmost hardship.

We note that the court hearing comes at a time when DEH-the Greek Public Power Corporation S.A., regardless of the extreme adversity endured by Greek families, callously announced new raises of 15-20% in the price of electricity as of January 2012 to compensate for its use of environment-polluting lignite.

We also note that this hearing precedes by a few days the new advent of the Troika team in Greece with renewed outrageous demands dictating the abolition of the National Collective Labour Agreement and the minimum wage, new wage and pension cuts, immediate mass lay-offs in the public sector and lowering employers' social security contributions.

We firmly reiterate that the GSEE unequivocally refuses any discussion that will undermine the National Collective Labour Agreement and the minimum wage which is the last bastion of protection for workers and will firmly oppose any such attempt.

The Greek trade union movement united will continue its struggle against every brutality directed against our income, our rights, our families, our lives and the future of our country.

GSEE - Greek General Confederation of Labour

http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-20449-f0.cfm

ISLINGTON branch of the public service union Unison has sent a delegation to the Greek embassy and circulated an international appeal which it is urging British trade unionists to support. It is forwarding the letter of support to the Greek power union GENOP:


Statement by the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples ( ILC)

Stop the prosecution of Nikos Photopoulos and his comrades from the GENOP-DEH union immediately!


We have just been informed by representatives of the Greek public power company union GENOP-DEH of the repression affecting 15 Greek members of the GENOP-DEH union:

On 24 November 2011, squads of riot police (MAT) stormed the power company’s offices in Mesogeion Avenue in Athens and violently cleared it of workers and trade unionists who had been staging a sit-in for a few days. The offices are responsible for cutting off the electricity supply to the thousands of working-class families that are refusing to pay the new property tax imposed by the Greek government by order of the Troika (IMF-European Commission-European Central Bank), which is being levied through the electricity bills. The same offices are in charge of cutting off the supply to the thousands of families which, due to the crisis, can no longer pay their bills.

On 30 November 2011, fifteen trade unionists, including GENOP-DEH General Secretary Nikos Photopoulos, appeared in court, charged with "obstructing the forces of order" and "obstructing the correct functioning of the public services". They face prison sentences of 6 months to 5 years without remission. On the eve of a new general strike called for 1 December by the trade union confederations GSEE and ADEDY, the government has decided it would be wiser to hold fire, and the court has postponed its ruling until 10 January 2012.

Throughout the world, the workers and peoples are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Greek workers and their trade union organisations as they engage in the battle against the Troika's barbaric plans being implemented by the Greek government. Their actions are legitimate, just as the actions of the Greek power workers and their trade union to prevent the power disconnections and to demand the withdrawal of the new tax imposed by the government are legitimate.

No worker, no labour activist and no democratic labour organisation can accept this threat of repression, which would be a blow against all labour and democratic rights .

This is why the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples has decided to inform all labour organisations around the world of these extremely serious facts, and to invite them to build on the efforts, in whichever form they see fit, to demand that the Greek authorities immediately drop the legal proceedings against the GEOP-DEH union members, and to express their solidarity with them.

The co-ordinators of the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples
Louisa Hanoune, General Secretary of the Workers Party (Algeria)
Daniel Gluckstein, National Secretary of the Independent Workers Party ( France )

Among those who have added their names in Britain are John McDonnell MP ; Neil Findlay Labour Member of Scottish Parliament ; Drew Smith Labour Member of Scottish Parliament Ian Hodson National President Bakers Food & Allied workers union BFAWU ; Alex Gordon President RMT ; Billy Hayes, General Secretary CWU; CJR Kitchen General Secretary National Union of Mineworkers ; Tim Wilson, National Chair, Napo ; . Tony Burke Unite the Union ; Helen Davies UNISON Nec ; Mike Calvert Deputy - Chair Islington Unison Dr. Nat M. Queen University and College Union Birmingham , Mick Hubbard, GMB ; Glyn Beagley King’s College London, Anthony Dooley, Ipswich Association, National Union of Teachers, Matt Wells PCS union Defra London Branch ; Nadim Mahjoub Teacher, LSE, Nick Phillips Vice-President Southwark TUC ; Michael Edwards Professor UCL London, Dr John J O'Dowd University and College Union (Glasgow University Branch) Health & Safety Representative, Henry Mott UNITE the UNION Southwark ; Helen Peters, UCU ; Rob Jackson University of Keele ; Roger MacKay President Ipswich & District Trades Union Council, John Calderon Hackney Labour Party ; Nick Kelleher, Secretary, Wolverhampton, Bilston & District Trades Union Council ; Ben Rickman, Secretary, Brent Trades Union Council, Lorraine Douglas ; Anne McCormack Branch secretary St Helens College UNISON ; Geoff Turner University and Colleges Union retired member Sheffield ; George Binette Camden UNISON Branch Secretary ; Ken Muller Assistant Secretary Isligton NUT ; Mark Hollinrake PCS/Unite Trade Unions ; Mark Hoskisson Secretary of Liverpool Trades Union Council ; Richard Morgan Sec Derbyshire Community Branch GMB Acting President, Derby Area TUC (DATUC) ; Marie Lynam, GMB Union ; Michael .Loughlin UCU Manchester University ; Jane Doolan UNISON Islington ; Rosemary Plummer Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap );Jenny Densham; Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Fiona Monkman Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Alex Wood Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Dean Ryan Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Jenny Mackley Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Andrew Berry Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Keith Facey Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Sonita Singh Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Yesim Senler Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Diana James Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Lynne Moffat Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Mark Lysaght Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Garwin Samlal Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Paul Murphy Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Alan Wylie Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Alan Rylatt Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); John Philpott Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Don Euripides Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ) ; Sean O'Neill Islington UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap ); Kuldip Binning UNISON Branch Committee ( pers cap);Jane Luke UNISON Islington ; Terry Luke UNISON Islington ; Jim Hollinshead (Liverpool John Moores University UCU ; John Williams Liverpool and North West UCU RMB ; M Sargent Secretary of Dover District trades council and RMT Dover ; Karl Rogers Learning Organiser – South TSSA Learning ; Prof. Philip Moriarty School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham ; Councillor Jim Mackechnie Glasgow City Council ; Fiona Monkman Islington Unison ; Councillor Richard Bertin Vale of Glamorgan Council ; Manchester University UCU Branch, Professor Anton Schütz School of Law Birkbeck College London Richard Carabine UCU Committee member & Health & Safety Rep Birkbeck College London ; Suriyakumari Lane Birkbeck College London ; ; Professor Costas Douzinas Birkbeck School of Law London ; Lucie Wibberley Barrister ; Fiona O’May, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh ; Randy Banks President of the University of Essex Local Association of UCU ; Louise Mauborgne Universioty of Leeds ; George Paizis ; Barry White National Union of Journalists ; Vince Mills Chair, Labour Campaign for Socialism, Scotland ; Graham Dyer UCU President SOAS, University of London ; Dr Alan L Bogg Senior Tutor, Fellow and Tutor in Law Hertford College, Oxford ; Keith Ewing School of Law King's College London ;Professor Bill Bowring Barrister, Birkbeck College London, International Secretary of the Haldane Society of Socialist lawyers ; John Hendy QC ; Liz Davies, Barrister ; Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers ; Nicola Kountouris Faculty of Law University College London ; Pete Keenlyside National Executive member, CWU ; John R Holmes Retired member of the Communication Workers Union

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Greek Prime Minister Papademos

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Freedom Flotilla wins Israeli friends as it faces Papandreou's piracy

THE latest Freedom Flotilla attempting to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza has won praise from Israeli peace campaigners, at the same time as running into a fresh obstacle in the form of the Greek coastguards. An attempt by one of the Gaza-bound "freedom flotilla" ships to defy the Greek government and escape from port was thwarted on Monday when armed coastguard officials caught up with the vessel and forced it back to shore.

The Canadian ship Tahrir burst out of Agios Nikolaos port in Crete at 6pm local time after supporters blocked the coastguard with manned kayaks.

"We have left port [and] are full steam ahead – coastguard boat about 5-10 [minutes] behind us," announced passengers on the ship's official Twitter feed as they raced towards international waters. But the faster coastguard boat caught up with the Tahrir and prevented it from going any further.

"Our boat has just been illegally boarded by armed members of the Greek coastguard and commandeered against our will," Dylan Penner, a member of Tahrir steering committee, told the Guardian by phone from the ship's deck. "This is conclusive evidence that Israel's unlawful siege on Gaza has now been extended to Greece."

The captain of a US ship, The Audacity of Hope, was arrested after a similar failed attempt to flee the port in Athens last week. There are reports now that a French vessel has set out.

The Greek government has banned all flotilla ships from leaving its ports, without explaining its reasons. The obvious conclusion many people are jumping to is that the Israeli government, possibly with US backing, has been able to take advantage of Greece's desperate economic condition to put pressure on, or bribe George Papandreou's government with promises of backing for US loans. But the Greek and Israeli governments have been moving towards an alliance for over a year and a half.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sent a message of thanks to Papandreou yesterday.

But from within Israel, organisations campaigning for a just peace and equality with the Palestinians issued a statement supporting the flotilla, and condemning the official propaganda campaign against it. The Israeli campaigners also condemned the Greek government for acting at Israel's bidding:

"We, Israeli organizations, Jews and Arabs, full-heartedly support Freedom Flotilla, aim of sailing to the Port of Gaza with the proclaimed goals of breaking through the sea and land siege and blockade of Gaza, which is a manifestation of a continuing occupation by Israel. We condemn the campaign of slander which the government of Israel is waging against the flotilla and those who take part in it. There is a very real reason to worry that such lies might be designed by the government as a pretext and justification in advance for further acts of violence against activists taking part in a legitimate political act of protest.

"The Gaza Flotilla is indeed a courageous act of political protest, an expression of worldwide solidarity with the Palestinian people and rejection of Israeli practices of oppressive occupation, as manifested in the continuing siege and blockade of Gaza and the imposition of collective punishment upon a mass of civilians.

"At present the Gaza Strip is little more than a giant open air prison where a million and half residents are held, deprived of their fundamental rights. It is the right of Gaza Palestinians to maintain direct contact with the outside world; it is their right to open and maintain sea port where vessels might freely dock and depart, to import and export all goods, for the benefit of their economy and in fulfilment of its needs. The Palestinians have all these rights – not one whit less than Israel has them. The state of Israel is obliged, under International Law, to put an end to its control over the Gaza Strip - indirect as well as direct - which is part of Israel's wider obligations to out an to the occupation of Palestinian territory and facilitate the independence of Palestine.

"We must reiterate that, contrary to the statements issuing from the government, the flotilla is acting non-violently in setting out to Gaza. Moreover, if attacked by Israel's armed forces it is with non-violence that activists on board intend to respond. A member of the flotilla 's International Coordinating Team specifically explicitly stated, when responding to assertions emanating from the security system in Israel, that “there are no weapons of any kind on board any of our boats – which could be confirmed by dozens of international media representative on board". Activists intending to take passage in the flotilla are undergoing non-violence training and sign clear personal commitment not to resort to violence.”

"The government of Israel is conducting considerable efforts to cause the flotilla to be regarded with fear, and to discourage people from taking part in it. So as to create a baseless atmosphere of fear, lies are knowingly spread lies regarding supposed preparations for violent resistance and alleged plans to kill soldiers, and peace activists taking part are accused of intending to run weapons into Gaza. At the same time, an unprecedented pressure is applied to international journalists, so as to deter them from covering the flotilla from on board. The continuing media campaign which is clearly designed to cause fear and hatred among the Israeli population, and there are grounds for suspecting that it is intended to provide justification in advance for the dangerous and harsh outcome liable to occur should the boats be violently taken over and harm comes to their passengers.

We strongly condemn the the Government of Greece for its decision of block the flotilla boats from leaving Greek ports in the direction Gaza. This decision is in violation of International Law concerning Freedom of the Seas, and is highly unreasonable. Reports in Israeli newspapers regarding contacts between the governments of Israel and Greece create the impression that Greece in fact caved in to political pressures of an unacceptable kind, applied by the government in Israel.

We call upon the Government of Greece to rescind forthwith its order, prohibiting the flotilla boats from leaving the ports of Greek, let them sail and ensure the safety of passengers and boats alike.

We call upon the Government of Israel and its armed forces to let the boats get to Gaza and deliver peacefully their cargo of humanitarian supplies.

We hope to witness the boats arriving in safely to their destination.

We call upon the Government of Israel to put an immediate end to the siege and blockade of Gaza. .

Alternative Information Center (AIC) * Coalition of Women for Peace * Combatants for Peace * Gush Shalom * Hithabrut-Tarabut * Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD) * New Profile *Rabbis for Human Rights* Ta’ayush: Arab-Jewish Partnership * Yesh Gvul

Social TV video of support demo outside Greek Embassy Tel Aviv on July 2 night, and extreme right counter-demonstration

http://tv.social.org.il/politics/2011/07/04/demo-embassy-of-greece

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Some Points about Georges Papandreou and PASOK

US-born George or Georges Papandreou is the third member of his family to be Greek Prime Minister. Leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) party since February 2004, in 2006 he became President of the Socialist International, and became prime minister in 2009.

PASOK and the Papandreous have combined nationalism and reformism to keep the post-junta military and the trade unions in tow, until the present economic crisis. In the mid-1980s they adopted a stance of friendship with supposed 'Third World' leaders and particularly the regimes in Iraq, Libya and Syria, and the leadership of the PLO.

George Papandreou's father Andreas, said to have been a Trotskyist in his student days before going to the United States, found employment for Michael Raptis (Pablo) and associates in Greece's foreign service. Raptis, once secretary of the Fourth International, and for a time an official in Ben Bella's Algeria, received a state funeral in Greece. Ironically his long-term antagonist Gerry Healy had also died there.

Although Andreas Papandreou upset Washington by his denial that the Soviet Union was imperialist and his readiness to meet Poland's Jaruzelski, he kept Greece within NATO, and allowed the US to keep its bases in Greece.

George Papandreou began strengthening relations with Israel eighteen months ago, at the same time as the Israeli state decided it could no longer rely on its alliance with Turkey. The flotilla organisers may have made a mistake in thinking they could sail safely from Greek waters.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/58955603/Yediot-Jun29-11-Alex-Fishman-IDF-Lied-About-Flotilla

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-s-big-fat-greek-wedding-1.370794