Greece’s Broken Democracy and the Fightback from the Streets

the fightback begins

by our Balkan Affairs correspondent

What was meant to be Greece’s “Economic Miracle” has ended up being a catalogue of scandals, tight executive control, no government oversight and shocking examples of corruption and tragic incidents that has led to many deaths. But there had to come a point where the masses fought back and that point has finally come.
European authorities promote Greece as a “post crisis success story”. Yet Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ right-wing government relies on spyware and the flagrant misuse of EU subsidies and is now overseeing a brutal cost-of-living crisis.
On the night of his election victory on 7 July 2019, new prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared that Greece was “returning to normal.” Leader of the right-wing New Democracy party, Mitsotakis promised a government of the “best and brightest” and drew a line under the previous four years of Syriza rule, vowing to erase its legacy piece by piece.
More than six years on, Mitsotakis’s tenure has become a cesspool marred by corruption, financial mismanagement, illegal surveillance, cover-ups, abuse of European Union funds, manipulation of the justice system, and a tightly controlled propaganda machine financed through state resources. It’s something that hasn’t  been seen since the fall of the military dictatorship. 
Mitsotakis came to power promising to break with that past, but his premiership has extended it. The first major crack in his stage managed image came in 2022, when the Predator spyware scandal blew open. Investigations showed hundreds of people, ordinary citizens, journalists, opposition figures, and even his own ministers ,under surveillance through a toxic mix of illegal spyware and “legal” phone taps, just after he put the intelligence service under his direct control. The trail led straight to his office. The head of the National Intelligence Service resigned, but no political figures have been prosecuted, and the government hurriedly shut down the parliamentary inquiry in what the opposition called a blatant whitewash.
Barely six months after the Predator revelations, the Tempe train crash on 28th February 2023, shattered what was left of Mitsotakis’s myth of competence. 58 people, mostly students, were killed when a passenger train slammed head-on into a freight train on the Athens–Thessaloniki line, Greece’s worst rail disaster in living memory. From the first hours, the government tried to shrink the story to a single “tragic human error,” throwing an overworked stationmaster to the wolves. Years of warnings about dead signalling systems, understaffing and stalled safety upgrades were brushed under the carpet.
Nearly three years on: no prosecutions, no real consequences. The families of the deceased have become the standard bearers for their dead relatives , staging mass rallies on the anniversary of the disaster and constantly attacking those responsible in the media and in Parliament . One would think that this level of anger and outrage would lead to electoral punishment , but in June 2023 , New Democracy cruised to an easy victory thanks to a divided left wing opposition and so New Democracy became the default government of the country.
Armed with this renewed mandate, Mitsotakis treated the result as a license to rule without restraint. The OPEKEPE scandal, named after the state agency that channels EU farm subsidies , exposed a subsidy system riddled with made up agricultural projects. Billions in EU funds were routed through this machinery while auditors were pushed aside and agency heads who questioned irregularities were removed.
A European investigation describes a systematic, organised fraud operation using OPEKEPE to siphon off Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funds. Brussels has already hit Greece with a €392.2 million fine and a five per cent cut to future farm subsidies for years of non-existent oversight. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back . After enduring wildfires in the Summer , floods in the Winter , crippling austerity measures, the scandalous actions of the Greek Coastguard who left boats filled with asylum seekers to their fate resulting in many deaths and anger over the Government’s support of Israel’s actions in Gaza: public servants started holding regular strikes, followed by the transport sector and finally the agricultural sector. General strikes have become a regular monthly occurrence and when news of the five per cent cut hit the farmers, they took to the streets, literally . 
This last month they have been blockading the main motorway between Thessaloniki and Athens. Blockading the port of Piraeus. Using their vehicles to bring cities to a standstill . Storming the main airport of Crete and disrupting flights. And when the police try to break up their rallies , they are pelted with anything that comes to hand , even overturning police vehicles as the police flee for their lives . And in the week beginning 15th December, a convoy of tractors numbering hundreds are heading to central Athens and Constitution Square for what will surely be a massive show of public support and a showdown with the infamous riot police.
These actions have not affected opinion polls , this is direct action completely separate from party politics and tribalism. It is the Greek people vs a tyrannical regime that plan to hold onto power until the next scheduled elections in 2027 . Few believe they will last that long , even with the Government’s international friends in the European Union, the USA and Israel. The time has come for a price to be paid and the writing is on the wall . 

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…

Shops piled high with festive gifts. Streets festooned with Santas, reindeer, angels and tinsel. Children eagerly waiting for their new toys. Yes it’s beginning to look like Christmas...and it certainly is for the rich who rule the Western world celebrating the birth of the founder of Christianity. For the rich this largely consists of rocking around the Christmas tree snorting coke and drinking themselves silly for days on end. For working people it’s a welcome break from the drudgery of life under capitalism – a brief moment when those who produce all the wealth of this country can stop and enjoy the life the billionaires take for granted every day of their own worthless lives. For others, the homeless, unemployed and destitute victims of the capitalist crisis, it’s just another day of despair. The festive clichés of the politicians and the princes of the church are meaningless to them.
It’s not surprising that Jesus seldom gets mentioned, even by those who claim to worship him. The spirit of Christmas has long been reduced to exchanging gifts and cards, gluttony and drinking. Our rulers now leave Jesus of Nazareth to the tame clergy who reserve their most pious platitudes for the supposed birthday of the ‘Prince of Peace’ in December.
Starmer may be an atheist but many of his cohorts say they are Christians. Back in November 2022, the now deputy premier, David Lammy, stood at the pulpit in St Martin-in-the-Fields in London to tell us that Jesus Christ was the inspiration for his politics as well as his lifelong faith. The then Shadow Foreign Secretary was delivering Christian Aid’s annual lecture on the need for a new, multilateral, and moral approach to international development. But then, and even now, he seems to have forgotten that the Nazarene drove the money-changers out of the Temple and said “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God”.
On Christmas the King, the Prime Minister and the Pharisees of the Established Church will lead the chorus in meaningless calls for peace on earth and good will toward to all men. This shouldn’t surprise us. Donald Trump now likes to be thought of as the “President of Peace” – even though he’s done nothing to deserve that acclaim or the Nobel Peace Prize he so fervently desires.
But we are not like them. We stand for genuine peace and real socialism. Peace because only the oppressors and exploiters want war. Socialism because it is essential to eliminate exploitation, unemployment, poverty, economic crisis and war. That’s our Christmas message!

The Trump Trajectory

A frisson of fear swept across the corridors of power in London and the European Union on the publication of Donald Trump’s national security strategy last week.
It admits that “after the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country. Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.  Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex”. 
But as the Chatham House imperialist think-tank put it “saving the harshest critiques for Europe’s current trajectory, the 33-page grand strategy pushes commercial ties, strategic stability with Russia, and a strong US hand in Latin America”.
The “Prince of Peace” as Trump styles himself these days tells us that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over”. His strategy upholds the concept of  “America First”  defining the national interest solely as the interest of the ruling class. And while it rejects the old theories of global domination
it declares that the main priority of the United States is to “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere” – which in Trump-speak means the entire Americas from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
The Trump administration seeks to “Make America Great Again”, largely at the expense of its own allies, and boost American manufacturing through tariffs and protectionism while using secret diplomacy and economic blackmail to achieve its goals. Gone are the days of the “special relationship”, the “new world order” and the “project for the new American century”. British and Franco-German imperialism believed that accepting American leadership would give them a share of the spoils. But they didn’t get much out of the fall of the Soviet Union  or the forever wars that followed in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and the Arab world. Now they’re going to get nothing.
This is what American “isolationism” means. It’s the other side of the reactionary coin – the thinking of those sections of the American ruling class that realise that world domination is beyond their grasp and so seek to restore their hegemony in the Americas  and much of the Global Southwhile maintaining their control of the global oil and energy market.
Whether Trump’s national security strategy becomes the programme for the rest of his term of office remains to be seen. In Washington the isolationists now have the upper hand. The deep state war-mongers are down – but they are definitely not out...

The History of an Idea

  by Ben Soton

The West - The History of an Idea by Georgios Varouxakis, Princeton University Press 2025, 512 pp, Hbk: £35:00

The West is more of an idea than a place  and in this book Georgios Varouxakis traces its history. The concept of ‘The West’ can be traced through a series of historical events; the Greco-Persian Wars of the fifth century BC; the division of the Roman Empire into East and West in the fourth century AD and with the Empire of Charlemagne in the ninth century becoming Western Christendom. The idea crystallised in the 18th  and 19th centuries with the Enlightenment and the development of liberty and democracy. There has to be some reference to geography as it is a point on a map; its core is Western Europe and later came to include North America and Australasia. 
According to Varouxakis the idea of the ‘West’ was developed by the French philosopher Auguste Comte.  Comte developed the idea of Occidentalism in which he saw The West as in the vanguard of humanity that, due to its superiority, had been given a leadership role over the rest of the world. Although Comte was a critic of imperialism his ideas have been used to justify actions of imperialist powers from the 19th century onwards whilst the ‘West’. as distinct from Europe, stood in opposition to Russia – which then and still today was seen as Eastern and despotic.         
Varouxakis traces how the idea of the West evolved from the 19th  and 20th centuries to today’s modern world.  He explains how Russia became excluded from the West and how the whole concept came unstuck during the First World War when Turkey and Russia joined the fray. Germany claimed to be defending the West against ‘Asiatic’ Russia while the Entente Powers pointed to the German alliance with Ottoman Turkey. These problems continued through the inter-war years with talk of the decline of the West while toward the end of Second World War the entry of the United States led to increasing talk of the ‘Atlantic Community’ as distinct from the West.  The chapter on the Cold War covers the twists and turns of European and American foreign policy; both in relation to the socialist camp and towards each other.  
The Second World War has often been viewed as a conflict between pro and anti-Enlightenment ideologies with liberalism, represented by Anglo-American and French imperialism,and socialism led by the Soviet Union having their roots in the 18th century ‘Enlightenment’.  Fascism, on the other hand, is opposed to the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution. 
This is touched upon in the chapter on the post-Cold-War era which states there is a traditional West based on classical civilisation and Christianity and a modern West based on the Enlightenment. It  has even been said that the Cold War was a conflict between the two pro-Enlightenment ideologies of socialism and liberalism – a conflict between liberty and democracy.  
The chapter on the post Cold War era focuses on Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations and the End of History by Francis Fukuyama. Huntington believed that with the end of the Cold War the West faced new challenges from rival civilisations, which he lists as Islamic, Orthodox, Hindu, Japanese and possibly African and South American. Fukuyama simply claimed that fall of the Soviet Union was the final triumph of the West.            
This book is a history of the idea and not a critique of it. However the twists and turns around what constitutes the West indicate serious flaws with the concept. Some of worst conflicts in history have been between Western powers; not just the first and second world wars but also the Napoleonic wars, the Thirty Years War and the Hundred Years War to name but a few. In living memory the ‘West’ has been used as a euphemism for US-led imperialism and the self-styled Western ‘democracies’ who have been more than willing to support feudal tyrants opposed to secularism or socialism to maintain their hegemony over much of the Global South.

Requiem for a War-Criminal

by Ben Soton

What’s it like to sit down and talk to a mass murderer? To have a chat with Harry Truman, Benjamin Netanyahu or in the case of the film Nuremberg, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring.
The film is based on the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist by Jack El-Hai and its main focus is the relationship between the US Army Psychiatrist Dr Douglas M Kelly, played by Rami Malek and Hermann Göring, played by Russell Crowe.
When reviewing this film it is worth comparing it to a previous incarnation; the two-part mini-series Nuremberg released in 2000. In the earlier version all twenty-two defendants were mentioned. In this film there was only mention of five; the lead defendant Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Julius Streicher, Admiral Karl Doenitz and the head of the German Labour Front, Robert Ley. 
At the Nuremberg Nazi war-crimes trial the prosecution team was drawn from all four members of the victorious Grand Alliance – the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France. In this film only two of the prosecutors are depicted –Justice Jackson from the USA, played by Michael Shannon and Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, played by Richard E Grant, from Great Britain. Russell Crowe gives an excellent depiction of Herman Göring as a vanquished foe who has lost none of his arrogance emanating from being Hitler’s deputy.
But this is more than just a court-room drama.The film includes a scene where footage of the atrocities committed in the concentration camps is screened as evidence in the trial of the top Nazis to remind the audience, now far-removed from the dark days of the 1940s, of what the Allies were up against in the Second World War.
The psychiatrist Dr Kelly tries to get inside  Göring’s head and is asked to use his understanding to aid the prosecution. He initially argues against this on the grounds of doctor-patient confidentiality. However he then goes on to give information about his interviews to a not unattractive British journalist played by Lydia Peckham while planning to use the information to write a book.
But Kelly’s views on the Nazis were not popular with the US military establishment. He was sidelined and later replaced by Dr Gustave Gilbert, played by Colin Hanks. Although he later became the head of the Department of Psychology at Berkeley his book 22 Cells in Nuremberg did not give him the fame he had hoped for. Though this did not affect his post-war career he  had a drink problem and committed suicide in 1958.
In the final analysis Kelly claimed the Nazis were not unique and that there are people like them in every country, including the United States. On this point he has been proved right more times than I can count.

Same old story...

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves,  says Labour is cutting NHS waiting lists, the cost of living and government debt while boosting productivity, investment and growth. But this week’s budget contained few surprises with spending plans that had largely already been floated in the media by Starmer aides eager to prepare the public for a mediocre financial review that does next to  nothing to end austerity or reverse the decline in the living standards of working people. 
Sure there were some sweeteners in the Reeves budget like the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap. The state pension will rise by 4.8 percent – £440 a year – and by £575 for people on the newer pension scheme.  And the national living wage and national minimum wage will also be increased.
Starmer & Co call on everyone “to make a contribution” to protect public services and help people struggling with the cost of living. But in reality workers will continue to bear the burden of the capitalist crisis in higher taxes and further cuts to what’s left of the public services.

A step too far...

“Trial by jury is a cornerstone of our democracy and an essential safeguard against authoritarianism “ says Jeremy Corbyn. “It is truly frightening that such a fundamental freedom is now under attack. Once rights are lost, they are not easy to win back. We must resist this with all we’ve got”. 
But, incredible it as it may seems,  the Starmer Government is indeed thinking of scrapping jury trials in England and Wales for all but the most serious of cases. Starmer’s deputy, the Justice Minister David Lammy,  is proposing to massively restrict the ancient right to a jury trial by only guaranteeing it for defendants facing rape, murder, manslaughter or other cases passing a public interest test.
The plans, obtained by BBC News, are allegedly an attempt to end unprecedented delays and backlogs in the courts. But juries are founded on the principle of a fair hearing and a trial of one’s peers. They are considered by many, including legal professionals, to be the cornerstone of our criminal justice system. Judges and barristers have joined in the chorus of opposition to this attack on jury trials forcing Lammy to think again.  He now says that “no final decision” had been made amid rumours of a U-turn in favour of  more modest plans for jury-less super-magistrate courts to hear to cases likely to receive a maximum sentence of three years that was originally floated in the independent review by Sir Brian Leveson. 
Abolishing jury trials would clearly dismantle a core constitutional safeguard that has existed for more than eight centuries. It is the first step towards a police-state. But, at the moment,   it also seems to be a step too far for the bourgeoisie as whole to take if the response of the legal community is anything to go by. 

Dramatic Developments in People’s China

by John Maryon 

China's plan to double Per Capita GDP and reach the personal income level of a moderately developed nation in 10 years is a remarkable ambition. The success of the current 14th  Five Year Plan has raised technical excellence to a level that will lay the basis for China's progress.  Currently the average people’s income is equivalent to approximately £13,500.  However a direct comparison is difficult because prices for most things are much lower in the Asian nation. In meeting its goals China has had to face difficult challenges which have included Covid and trade wars imposed by the United States. It has however managed to exceed a yearly five per cent target.  Under the wise leadership of the Communist Party of China the people can look forward with confidence to the future.
China has the second largest world economy in terms of GDP but in reality when measured in real industrial output it is way ahead.  China has comprehensive trading relations with over 150 countries. It has developed its infrastructure and is able to employ advanced logistics to achieve great efficiency. To avoid threats by imperialists to contain China the  People’s Republic has started seasonal operations on the Arctic sea route and each year thousands of cargo trains transverse between Asia and Europe. Stable development with its partners and friends is enhanced through the Belt & Road Initiative. Education continues to play an important role in China's development with the number of university graduates exceeding 12 million each year. The number of engineers trained each year exceeds that of Germany, Japan and the USA combined. 
China takes a long term approach to investments by supporting projects which will achieve great potential in the future rather than a short term get rich quick project of little lasting value. No wonder they are able to play such a major role in Green and sustainable development.  In the USA today companies are more likely to use their profits to buy back share stock rather than to invest in the future. 
The American response to China's rise has not been to invest, embark upon joint development projects or talk constructively about co-operation. It has  been one of aggressive attempts to cripple and destroy China – or anyone else who in their panic mode they may regard as a threat. The new Comac 919 Chinese commercial aircraft  has been a major target in the West's trade war against competition from Asia. The aeroplane is seen as a direct competitor to Boeing and Airbus. Currently the plane uses Western LEAP 1C engines but with threats to restrict supplies Chinese engineers are now developing their own alternatives. The biggest obstacle however to its success is the refusal to quickly certify the aircraft to fly on important international routes by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency.   Attempts to hold back progress are doomed to failure as China is responding by developing its own engines and control systems and is all ready selling to non-Western markets. Development work on an advanced larger long range aircraft, such as the Comac 929, which will have Chinese engines and avoid Western supply chain threats, is well underway. 
On 23rd October recommendation documents for the 15th Five Year Plan were adopted by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The proposals focus on high quality development, rather than just economic expansion, as a step towards achieving a leading position in modernisation by 2035. Particular emphasis will be given to sustainability, green growth and technological innovation. 
The documents recognise the demographic challenges that lie ahead and makes provision for health care and social support for an ageing population with increased  investment. The impact of artificial intelligence and further automation upon the job market is taken into account.  In the early stages of building socialism the basic needs include more tons of steel and greater electricity generation. As the economy develops and industry expands, the new phase of socialist progress demands quality development with limited carbon emissions and full respect for the environment.  For society to advance progressive evolving social policies that  reinforce a true socialist ethos are also absolutely essential. 
Efforts by the imperialist states to stifle China's economic, technical and industrial growth are increasing every day. Under American pressure the craven politicians of many leading Western nations, without thought, respect or accountability rush to find favour with their masters in Washington. They replace mutually beneficial trade, diplomacy and co-operation with insulting, ill-conceived and often illegal actions that harm trade, destroy trust and make the world a more dangerous place.  I can imagine future history students being shocked as they learn how Europe's second-rate imperialist states collapsed from self-inflicted stupidity.  The banning of quality and trusted Huawei equipment and its replacement with more expensive Western alternatives is justified by claiming, without convincing evidence, that it is a security risk. The very recent debacle in Holland in which the Dutch government was forced to hand back Xperia to its Chinese owner shows how nasty little schemes can come unstuck. 
People's China has grown from being a poverty-stricken country humiliated by colonial forces to become a powerful modern socialist state. This has been made possible by the leadership of its Communist Party. With the aid of its successful Belt & Road Initiative it is now helping others to throw off their own colonial legacy and advance forward.  The lies of the Western media are shown for what they are with every success that is achieved.