The Best Student, Greece in NATO

The Best Student, Greece in NATO

           by Kostas Isychos (from ThePressProject)

 

In the history of peoples, since ancient times, empires, in order to keep under the yoke of exploitation over peoples, maintain the manipulation of information and their own "truth" and the cold war instability between neighboring countries and peoples, so that their interventions empower, perpetuate, manipulate their "subjects".

Even modern intellectuals have alluded in few words great historical truths concerning the exploited and exploiters: "The more you rely on forces outside yourself, the more you are dominated by them." (Harold Sherman, American author).

The "basket" for NATO has no "bottom"

The "basket" for public health, financial support for the weak is a fraud.

The percentage of citizens who lose their lives from Covid-19 is more than triple in Greece compared to the average of 7.3 deaths in the 30 countries of the European Economic Area (EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway).

In Wordlometers' table of Europe's countries with the highest death rate per million population, Greece overtook Italy and Belgium to rank 17th overall in Europe and 11th among EU countries.

Greece also has the sad first place in cases with 758.5 infections per 100,000 inhabitants, well above Austria which comes second with 580.4.

Public health is in absolute abandonment, health is handed over in our country to private interests obsessed with ideological neoliberal dogmatism. The popular strata are essentially marginalized in terms of public health, especially in the Greek region.

The thoughtless funds for NATO equipment, which do not serve the national defense but the American empire

Pentagon spending has totaled more than $14 trillion since the start of the war in Afghanistan, with a third to a half of that total going to military contractors. With the unorthodox NATO-Russia war in Ukraine, the explosion of weapons production for the first time since the second world war takes on a global dimension.

Much of these weapons sales contracts – a quarter to a third of all Pentagon contracts in recent years – have gone to just five major companies: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. The $75 billion in Pentagon contracts that Lockheed Martin received in fiscal year 2020 is far more than one and a half times the entire budget for the State Department and Agency for International Development for that year, which totaled $44 billion.

Arms manufacturers have spent $2.5 billion on lobbying firms over the past two decades, employing an average of more than 700 lobbyists annually over the past five years. That's more than one for every member of the US Congress.

Many companies take advantage of and exploit diplomatic conflicts between countries, making the most of conflict situations by aiding the conditions of a war – which require speed of delivery and often entail less strict oversight, control and transparency – to overburden costs or engage in a clear-cut process. fraud. In 2011, the congressional Committee on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan estimated that waste, proven fraud, and abuse totaled between $31 billion and $60 billion.

As the US shrinks the size of its military footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan, exaggerated estimates of the military "challenges" China could pose have become the dominant dogma and the new rationale of choice in arguments for maintaining its budget Pentagon at unprecedented historically high levels. Military "contractors" will continue to profit from these inflated, trickle-down costs. If one deals with the lobbies of the military armed and prominent members of the US Congress and other officials of the US government then the affairs of "Qatargate" in the EU, are a minimal introduction to the voracious imperialist gangrene of Washington and the vassal countries that follow it. .

The case of the new Turkey-Greece arms race

This is a complex issue that must be considered from several parameters.

F-35 and F-16 viper, a false dilemma for the people of Turkey and Greece

The "recycled" analysts of the mainstream media echo in Greece, repeat again and again the same dilemma : when we receive the F-35s, since we already have the French Rafales and the upgraded F-16s, the Turks will get their first upgraded Viper F-16s..."

They tell us that Greece's alleged "superiority" over Turkey in the air will be indisputable. Until then, the Turkish missiles of short and medium as well as long range as they say, how many will there be? How is their productions in drones treated? With Israeli air defense systems ….that Greece will buy.

The arms race will not stop here. If Turkey too (doesn't talk about it) since it will have three operational nuclear power plants in a few years, how easily will it be able to acquire tactical nuclear weapons, since its ally Pakistan already has them and the know-how is easily given?

Then Greece is forced to acquire nukes?

This debate has no end and if it does... it means the end of the two countries and the two peoples (at least)....

The deterrent defense capability of Greece is necessary but without a methodology, public involvement of the defense production systems it has (marginalized but it is) is a discussion that is not happening because simply the warmongers, their contractors, their advertisers, the entangled media, the systemic politicians and “officials" dominate, manipulate consciences and take advantage of the well-meaning patriotism of the people. Those of us who express anti-imperialist, peace-loving, patriotic and internationalist arguments find ourselves in the absolute ostracism of the mainstream media. It’s not only in Greece but in many NATO member countries.

In need of economic transparency in every field of national defence costs

In the case of the two countries, we have one of the two countries (Turkey) questioning international law, the international treaty of the sea and directly threatening to occupy another country's territory (islands, etc.), among other rhetoric .

In the case of Greece by partisan parties ( New democracy and Syriza) we have its entanglement , its confinement and its dogmatic obsession with the NATO and American axis, completely ignoring the new geopolitical reality of the emerging multipolar world. It multiplies the US military power on Greek soil to the maximum by multiplying US bases targeting Russian territory with an emphasis on the black sea, targeting Crimea (the soft underbelly of the Russian south)

The current Greek government, like the previous ones, remains reverently committed to the "services" of American imperialism. It is no coincidence that in the pre-election scandal-mongering "agenda" of the three parties (ND, SYRIZA, PASOK) these topics (NATO, Bases, NATO-Russia war) are not mentioned even as titles, since the agreement between them is deafening!

The Greek government, taking advantage of an existing multiple danger from Turkey, avoids using aggressive peace diplomacy.

A necessary initiative of peace and cooperation of countries and peoples of the Mediterranean

The preparation for a Mediterranean forum for the implementation of international law, the essential protection of the environment, the international treaty of the Sea, the fair exploitation on all sides, with absolute preservation of the ecosystem, of the marine and underwater wealth for the benefit of the peoples and countries of Mediterranean with the obligatory participation of Palestine. The explicit and binding avoidance of hostilities, the non-disputing of the territorial integrity of the Mediterranean countries, as expressly stated by the founding charter of the UN and under the supervision of the UN (and not the global border guard, NATO). Such an agreement would also foresee the dynamic involvement of non-aligned and independent countries with the binding consolidation and signing of multiple peaceful agreements by all parties.

The case of the countries that have not signed the international convention of the UN on the sea (UNCLOS) brings Israel and Turkey to the fore. The elites of these countries are completely connected to the reckless race of production, export of weapons systems.

The preservation of extreme nationalism, historical revisionism, religious fundamentalist exploitation (Zionism, extreme Islamism with the simultaneous development of extreme Christian and non-Christian sects in Europe, Eurasia and the Balkans) constitute the necessary explosive cocktail in a region of the planet where state entities experience continuous disaster (Libya, Iraq, Palestine, Yemen) or other countries like Syria are marginalized by external attacks and invasions (Jihadists, USA, Turkey, etc.)

The theory of permanent chaos, instability, multiple conflicts is at the top of Washington's agenda. Maintaining its global hegemony is at the heart of this strategy.

With these "thorns" being calculated , a Greek, Balkan, Arab initiative could isolate the most warmongering, adventurist, nationalist forces in all countries (including Turkey and Greece). To guarantee the participation of all without exclusion. Again here the role of public diplomacy can play a pivotal role.

The diplomacy of the peoples for Peace, the people's diplomacy, for the disarmament and equal multiple cooperation of all the peoples in the Mediterranean is an unread chapter in the official Greek diplomacy. Eminent personalities of art, culture, sports, as well as peoples collectives and peace movements with an anti-imperialist and anti-war orientation are also a necessary chapter in today's complex conflict diplomatic reality. This "weapon" for the hegemony of peoples against NATO-like, warmongering choices is more necessary than ever.

Of course, the deterrence capacity of our country is necessary. But this is not limited to necessary, justified military expenditures, which is not done... (where the domestic public defense industry has been completely marginalized by memorandum and post-memorandum mandates with the leadership of the IMF and the European Ventral Bank....). Something that in Turkey is exactly the opposite, since it has climbed into the top 20 countries as a country exporting defense systems (radar, drones, transport vehicles, etc.)

The chapter "National defense and armaments" is monopolized by "our" political service class that simply turns into the best customer of NATO, the USA and their war industries. It is not only happening today but since the time when Greece was transformed after the civil war tragedy into an "American protectorate"

It would be of great interest if a journalistic investigation took place in Greece to identify the lobbyists of the war industries who approach high-ranking officials of both the governments (in the post-colonial period) and the respective leaderships of the armed forces. Such an investigation presupposes independent and investigative journalism, media that have secured their detachment from powerful financial interests. When investigative journalism without interference from "above" will be the dominant fact, this fight is conducted by the majority of journalists and not the one that usually "flood” the mainstream media.

This does not mean that corruption "hits" everyone. We have convictions against former ministers (and not only of National Defence). Did they act alone? They did not have support from but personally (here one needs to consider whether the surveillances were carried out to protect transparency and institutions, or to secure the "pie" within the nucleus of a government...? The institutional protection of legal data in Greece throughout the post-colonial period is completely weakened. The EU is the true dimension of financial capitalism. Greece is a small copy of it. Those who insist on "European values" would do well to decode the whole picture...so that all of us know, understand, so that we can resist, fight for the essence of democracy and not the "pseudo-democracy" of the oligarchs , the media owners and managers, the owners of football teams, the ship owners, the bankers who in many cases are the same persons. Coincidence? On the contrary. Today's capitalism in its global dimension has common denominators in many countries.

Kostas Isychos is a former deputy of the Greek parliament and national defense minister .

He is the alternate secretary of the International Friends of Crimea club

He heads the REDH chapter in Greece . ( REDH is the international network for the defense of humanity founded by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez with more than 30 chapters in Latin America and the world ).

He is a member of the political secretariat of Polular unity on Greece

Original article in Greek

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