“Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are”
Folk proverb
By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
In a grocery store, if you want to be hired, they will ask you where you worked and what you did, they will ask your former employers how you did.
One would expect a candidate for president of a party of the left to have a minimal party term, to have at least a minimal involvement in social, trade union or other struggles, to have a minimal familiarity with the ideology and political ideas and theories of the left.
Mr. Kasselakis is running for President of SYRIZA without possessing any of the above. According to his biography, he worked at Goldman Sachs, the American CSIS and dealt with the naval business https://www.syriza.gr/article/id/144528/9.-Stefanos-Kasselakhs.html. What exactly he did in the first two jobs he mentions is not known and some strongly question the description he gives us of the third activity. All this is interesting, but why have these activities prepared him to lead a party of the left?
Yesterday we referred to one of the jobs that, by his own admission, Stefanos Kasselakis did, before attempting to “depart” to SYRIZA, when he was working at the American bank Goldman Sachs (www.konstantakopoulos.gr/26155), protagonist in the economic and social disaster of Greece since 2009-10.
At the center of the American War Party
Today we want to refer to the second – according to his statement – employer of Mr. Kasselakis, namely the American Center for International and Strategic Studies (CSIS). CSIS is one of the six largest and most belligerent think tanks in the United States. In the past, the hawks of American politics, such as the criminal and murderer of Cyprus Henry Kissinger and the strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, had their headquarters here. These think tanks have largely replaced the CIA in the analysis of various problems, with the purpose of presenting opinions, promoting them through the press, and promoting them through parliamentary hearings to serve the policy of the US military-industrial complex. That’s why the American war industries bravely finance them to “push” American policy in the direction of more wars and war spending (www.liberationnews.org). In some cases, CSIS also fabricated alleged evidence, such as on alleged North Korean military facilities (www.thenation.com/ ).
According to the clues of the 2020 annual report, CSIS is funded by the following philanthropic and philanthropic organizations: With over half a million dollars the “pride” of the American aerospace industry, Northrop Grumman Corporation. With sums exceeding 200,000 dollars, General Atomics, which manufactures, among others, the Predator drones for the CIA, our well-known and not exceptional Lockheed Martin and SAIC, which provides intelligence services to the American armed forces. Bechtel, Boeing, Cummins, General Dynamics, Hitachi, Hanwha Group, Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., Mitsubishi, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Qualcomm, Inc., Raytheon, Samsung, SK Group, Hyundai Motor, Oracle, BAE Systems.
At this time CSIS is very worried. Why is he worried? Is peace coming too soon to Ukraine and are there many restrictions on the use of Western weapons for attacks deep into Russian territory due to fears of nuclear escalation (www.csis.org ). Think tanks like the one worked by, as Kasselakis says, have dominated the public debate about Ukraine in the West and have decisively contributed to the outbreak and continuation of the war (quincyinst.org/) promoting the views, but also the interests of the American war industries that have been hoarding over the last two years from the destruction of the Ukrainian people and Ukraine. Their policy has also brought humanity closer than ever to nuclear holocaust, has accelerated climate change and made it impossible to take action against it (which requires global cooperation).
What are the members of the Central Committee of SYRIZA thinking (we hear that it is “presidential”, but we will be sure tomorrow) who are preparing to agree with the Kasselakis candidacy. Does a stint at banks like Goldman Sachs, institutions like CSIS and next to naval giants help one become a follower of socialism and the left? And when exactly did Mr. Kasselakis become a socialist and a leftist?
Does a stint at organizations like Goldman Sachs and CSIS convince SYRIZA Central Committee officials that the said junior, if elected to the position of SYRIZA President or Prime Minister of the country, will serve Greek and not American interests?
And because we are somewhat damaged and are not influenced by lotuses, we try but fail to forget that the Americans caused the greatest Greek disasters since they took over to rule us (1947): Civil War, Dictatorship, Pogrom of Greek Turkey, Cyprus, Memoranda (together with Europeans this).
Abolition of military service and separation of state and Church
Mr. Kasselakis has told us very few concrete things as to what should be done in Greece and what SYRIZA should do (which, of course, unfortunately happens to most of the candidates in this stupid and deeply anti-democratic, American-inspired process imposed by Tsipras in his inept party and which is now in danger of ending it). One of the specifics that Mr. Kasselakis said is that he wants to abolish military service and go to a professional army.
Since the time of ancient Athens, the draft army has been one of the main foundations of the democratic state. In fact, in the current conditions of Greece and the threats it faces, not only is the army of the lotteries imposed, we also need the reactivation of the Pallaic defense.
Besides, one wonders if Kasselakis thought of these things himself or if his friends at CSIS recommended them to him. And he is not questioned by excessive suspicion. But because we have so far no indication that Kasselakis has been involved in any (except possibly CSIS) way with defense policy. What is this man? Athena springing forth in full armor from the head of Zeus? And if so, who is Zeus?
Professional armies are needed by those who want to bully us or those who want to send our armies to support the American, British, French and other colonial wars. Those who have such plans would certainly increase the salaries of the military as suggested by (suddenly so specific) Kasselakis. A professional army is certainly better suited to the needs of a Greece under an American protectorate, as we have become today (truly, Mr. Kasselakis has something to say about this, as and the other candidate Presidents of SYRIZA?)
It is interesting that Mr. Varoufakis also has opinions about a professional army. He, too, like Mr. Tsipras, the former negotiator of Greece went to the Americans (who from the beginning supported the Memoranda and the IMF and otherwise) to help him get rid of them and of course they helped him (and Greece together) , just as the rope helps the hanged man.
I wonder if the other of the few concrete things that Kasselakis said, namely the separation of Church and State in Greece, also comes from CSIS. I also wonder if there are, and if there are, what are the international forces that seek the separation of Church and State in us, but not in them? And I question them not for any other reason but because I don’t know internal forces in the country that raise such a question now and consider it so urgent? Would it be more interesting for Mr. Kasselakis to tell us his views on the accuracy, on the huge ecological problems and so many other acute problems of a country that, under the leadership of Mr. Mitsotakis (who was also supported in the past by the current candidate for President of SYRIZA!!!) is collapsing at a very high speed.
The kidnapping of the Greek Left
And since he is interested in defense issues, why doesn’t he deal with hot current affairs? Does he agree with sending new weapons to Ukraine? Does he agree with the Greek defensive suicide organized by Mitsotakis with the dismantling of anti-aircraft defenses? Does he agree with the demilitarization of the eastern Aegean islands under the guise of Ukraine?
These are matters of life and death for the Greek people and their state. But neither Kasselakis nor most of his co-candidates have anything to say to us. But if they don’t have something to say about the most basic issues, they will sink whatever President they produce. Unfortunately for them and for us, the leaders of SYRIZA do not seem to have any awareness of the situation the country is in, they are worried about themselves and not about it and therefore cannot find what language to speak to the people to arouse them. Against them, Kasselakis, with the organized nothingness of advertising, prevails, no matter how much they underestimate him. SYRIZA would have to become a real Left again to face him.
All indications are that the Kasselakis operation is a sort of “aggressive takeover” of SYRIZA, one assumes, given the candidate’s track record (and the information traded in the journalistic and political market), by a group of naval and US interests. However, if he finds suitable ground, it is because he appears as the best candidate to complete the course of ideological and political decline that SYRIZA entered a long time ago, certainly not through the responsibility of Kasselakis.
In our next article we will examine for what deeper reason the world establishment wants to completely humiliate and prostitute SYRIZA, which once said a very big, historic ‘No’, even if it didn’t serve it in the end. We will also examine in which global strategy of big Capital what is happening in Greece fits and especially the method of “grabbing identities” by creating so-called left and so-called anti-globalization nationalists of the right, so that the radical questioning of a system that accumulates dire problems and threats to lead to its much needed rational, progressive and humanitarian transcendence.
Also read
Six war mongering think tanks and the military contractors that fund them
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