JAMES PETRAS : Greek P.M. – Zionism and the IMF’s Last Best Friend

“Like Mubarak, George Papandreou combines servility to his imperial mentors with arrogance and brutality to his Greek subjects. As the Egyptians demonstrated it will take the Greek people more than marches and occasional strikes to bring down an entrenched client of the empire. But it can be done as was exemplified in Cairo!”

By James Petras / My Catbird Seat -  27. Feb, 2011 

Greek P.M. George Papandreou

In the midst of the Arab uprisings throughout the Middle East, at a time when even the European (EU) has publically condemned Israel’s blockade of Gaza and its illegal land seizures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou promised a visiting delegation of American Jewish leaders, that he would do everything possible to undermine EU opposition and promote Israeli economic, diplomatic and political interests in Europe.

US Zionists, recently returned from a visit to Athens described Papandreou as by far the most amenable (‘servile’) European leader they have met in recent memory. Papandreou’s slavish submission to Israeli interests includes his promise, to a delegation of U.S. zionist notables, to use his influence to pressure the new Egyptian military junta to continue to uphold the Mubarak agreements with Israel (European Jewish Press 2/11/11). These include the continued blockade of Gaza and support of Israel’s military assaults on Lebanon, Syria and Palestinians. In other words Papandreou is openly supportive of Egypt’s past collaboration with Israeli clandestine assassinations and kidnapping of Arab militants.

Papandreou demonstrates a greater interest in promoting Israel’s exports to the European market, than the country he ostensibly represents. He promised a delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations “to integrate Israel into the European market” (European Jewish Press 2/11/11) while he shrinks the Greeks economy by 10% between 2009-11 and doubles unemployment from 8% to 16%. Papandreou’s gross servility to Israel and the American Zionist power structure is manifested in his cordial reception and recent agreements with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and his foreign minister, the notorious Zionist-fascist Avigdor Lieberman – the same Lieberman who advocates wholesale expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank. No Greek Prime Minister, since the Zionist state was founded, has exhibited such a bizarre display of active collaboration with Israel’s colonial claims in the Middle East. No European leader has so eagerlyanticipated and implemented the demands of American Zionist organizations with such zeal.

What is most striking about Papandreou’s servility to Israeli and American Zionist interests, is that it takes place when most of the rest of the world, from Europe, Turkey, Lebanon, Latin America, to North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia) and the vast majority of Arabs are moving toward isolating Israel. In other words, Papandreou is embracing a pro-Israel policy which is alienating Europe, isolating Greece from over a hundred million Arabs and undermining Greek agricultural (citrus) exports to the EU market.

Papandreou’s perverse and highly prejudicial foreign policy is matched by his extraordinary adherence and enforcement of the debt payment policies dictated by the IMF and the bankers of the EU and the US. His behavior is particularly shameless at a time when the next Irish government is threatening to declare a debt default if payments are not reduced. In his eagerness to ingratiate himself with the overseas bankers, Papandreou has systematically extracted billions of euros via a 20% reduction in wages, salaries and pensions and transferred it to the coffers of the banks. In the process Papandreou’s policies have doubled the unemployment rate, shrank the economy and undermined any future growth for the next decade. Papandreou rejected the Argentine formula, which in the face of a similar crises in 2001-02 , defaulted rather than deepen poverty. Under President Kirchner, Argentina renegotiated its debt, shaving bond payments by 75% and imposing a moratorium. As a result, Argentina recovered from the crises and maintained a growth rate of 7% for over a decade while reducing unemployment from 22% to less than 6%.

If Papandreou acts as a submissive messenger boy for Israel and its Zionist fifth column in America, he features prominently as the eager and aggressive “bill collector” for the overseas banks. He will go down in historical infamy as a willing accomplice of Israeli war crimes, an upholder of its unequal treaties with Egypt in his foreign policy and the enforcer of financial predators who impoverish millions of Greeks at home.

Having decimated the Greek economy via transfers of billions abroad and undermined economic relations with the Arab countries, Papandreou offers to sell Greece’s most lucrative transport, ports energy and communication companies to Chinese, Israeli and Wall Street investors and speculators. It is ironic that George Papandreou the son of former Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou should reverse each and every one of his father’s policies, especially with regard to the Middle East.

In 1981 after Andreas Papandreou was elected he invited me to Athens to discuss policies and programs of his future government. The first thing he told me was the importance of supporting the Palestinian struggle and how he had a successful meeting with Yasser Arafat, who regaled him with a prized pistol, which he displayed to me. A year later when I returned to Greece to direct and develop a research center, he invited me for a swim. We were accompanied by a dozen underwater security guards, patrolling offshore, against a potential assassination plot by Mossad, according to the prime minister, in reprisal for his solidarity with the Palestinians in Lebanon.

A few days later over 50,000 Greeks led by Culture Minister Melina Mercuri marched in solidarity with the Palestinians and in repudiation of Israel’s role in the bloody massacre of 2000 women and children in Sabra and Shatila. The contrast of the two generations of Papandreou’s could not be more stark; while Andreas saw Greece as a bridge between Europe and the Arab East, George sees Greece acting as a pimp for Israeli business interests in Europe and as a lobbyist for its dominance in the Middle East. The Zionists have lost an old client in Mubarek and gained a new one in Papendreou.

Like Mubarak, George Papandreou combines servility to his imperial mentors with arrogance and brutality to his Greek subjects. As the Egyptians demonstrated it will take the Greek people more than marches and occasional strikes to bring down an entrenched client of the empire. But it can be done as was exemplified in Cairo!

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles. His latest book is War Crimes  in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America(Atlanta:Clarity Pres 2010)

More from James Petras

JAMES PETRAS : American Zionism against the Egyptian Pro-Democracy Movement

JAMES PETRAS : EGYPT — SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ,THE CIA AND MOSSAD

World cheers as the CIA plunges Libya into chaos

By David Rothscum with Axis of Logic Editorial Statement

David Rothscum Reports. Axis of Logic

Sunday, Feb 27, 2011

Editorial Statement

Libyan leader and chairman of the African Union, Muammar Gaddafi, says that a one state solution is the key to the Palestinian question. Gaddafi addressed the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2009.

The sudden demonization of Qadaffi in the corporate media and much of the alternative media is reminiscent of the demonization of Saddam Hussein, comparing him to Adolph Hitler, etc., preparatory to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Whatever faults Hussein might have had, he led a far more progressive and civilized society than what Iraq has today. Fidel Castro and President Hugo Chavez are being maligned by the corporate/government media and much of the well-intentioned but naive alternative media as being indifferent to the people who have died in the Libyan crisis. But in fact, this is what Fidel stated about the Libyan crisis:

"The riots in Libya were inspired by the United States. Every hour an invasion by U.S. troops could be expected. US will send them to 'protect the Libyan people'. But in reality, they need only the Libyan oil."

And on February 25, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro also warned of a U.S. invasion of Libya followed by President Chavez' statement:

"Go Chancellor Nicholas: Give another lesson to the pitiyanqui far right! Viva Libya and its independence! Qaddafi is facing a civil war!!"

At Axis of Logic, we have been perceived as "Qaddafi lovers" because we publish some material like the article below. This is a superficial assessment of our position on Libya. We do our best to examine all information available to us regarding the crisis in Libya and withhold judgement in the midst of a fluid and dynamic time in Libyan history. The alternative media has been flooded with opinions by western "analysts" and writers about what is happening in Libya. Most have joined the corporate media's demonization and condemnation of Muammar Qaddafi for brutal repression of the Libyan people, likening him to Egypt's former dictator, Hosni Mubarak. David Rothscum offers an entirely different perspective and his in-depth investigation and report below deserves a careful and fair reading.

- Les Blough and
Paul Richard Harris
Axis of Logic Editors

---

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apologized to African leaders on behalf of Arab nations for their involvement in the African slave trade. “I regret the behavior of the Arabs… They brought African children to North Africa, they made them slaves, they sold them like animals, and they took them as slaves and traded them in a shameful way. I regret and I am ashamed when we remember these practices. I apologize for this,” Gaddafi said on Sunday at the Second Afro-Arab summit in Sirte, Libya, Reuters reported. - News Rescue, Press TV

How was Libya doing under the rule of Gadaffi? How bad did the people have it? Were they oppressed as we now commonly accept as fact? Let us look at the facts for a moment.

Before the chaos erupted, Libya had a lower incarceration rate than the Czech republic. It ranked 61st. Libya had the lowest infant mortality rate of all of Africa. Libya had the highest life expectancy of all of Africa. Less than 5% of the population was undernourished. In response to the rising food prices around the world, the government of Libya abolished ALL taxes on food.

People in Libya were rich. Libya had the highest gross domestic product(GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita of all of Africa. The government took care to ensure that everyone in the country shared in the wealth. Libya had the highest Human Development Index of any country on the continent. The wealth was distributed equally. In Libya, a lower percentage of people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.

How does Libya get so rich? The answer is oil. The country has a lot of oil, and does not allow foreign corporations to steal the resources while the population starves, unlike countries like Nigeria, a country that is basically run by Shell.

Like any country, Libya suffers from a government with corrupt bureaucrats that try to gain a bigger portion of the pie at the cost of everyone else. In response to this, Kadaffi called for the oil revenue to be distributed directly to the people, because in his opinion, the government was failing the people. However, unlike the article claims, Kadaffi is not the president of Libya. In fact he holds no official position in the government. This is the big mistake that people make. They claim that Kadaffi rules over Libya when in fact he doesn't, his position is more or less ceremonial. He should be compared to a founding father.

The true leader of Libya is an indirectly elected prime-minister. The current prime-minister is Baghdadi Mahmudi. Calling Khadaffi the leader of Libya is comparable to calling Akihito the leader of Japan. Contrary to what your media is sketching, opinions in Libya vary. Some people support Gadaffi but want Mahmudi out. Others want both out. Many just want to live their life in peace. However, effort is taken to sketch the appearance of a popular revolt against the supposed leader of Libya, Gadaffi, when in fact he is just the architect of Libya's current political system, a mixture of pan-Arabism, socialism, and Islamic government.

Videos of Pro-Gaddafi protests are disappearing from Youtube as we speak. "Pro Gaddafi Anti Baghdadi Mahmudi demonstrations in" and "Pro Gaddafi protests in front of Libyan embassy London"  are gone [i.e. stating "This video has been removed by user."]. [Moreover] Youtube deletes any video containing gore normally, except when it's from Libya. Apparently more traumatizing to it's viewers than chopped up bodies are Libyans who do not jump on the bandwagon and enter the streets to force Gadaffi out.

Are the protesters in Libya comparable to the protesters in Egypt and Tunisia? Not at all. The governments reaction is more violent, and obviously excessive violence is being used. However let us look for a moment at the actions of the protesters. The building of the the general people's congress, the parliament of Libya, was put on fire by angry protestors. This is comparable to protesters putting the United States Capitol on fire. Do you think that for even a moment the US government would sit idly by as protesters put the US capitol on fire?

The riots erupting now are not secular youth desiring change, or anything like we saw in Egypt and Tunisia. A group calling itself "Islamic Emirate of Barka", the former name of the North-Western part of Libya, has taken numerous hostages, and killed two policemen. This is not a recent development. On Friday, the 18th of February, the group stole 70 military vehicles after attacking a port and killing four soldiers.Unfortunately, a military colonel has joined the group and provided them with further weapons. The uprising started in the eastern city of Benghazi. The Italian foreign minister has raised his fears of an Islamic Emirate of B.enghazi declaring itself independent.

So where does this sudden uprising come from? The answer is that the same groups the US has been funding for decades are now taking their chance to gain control over the nation. A group recently arrested in Libya consisted of dozens of foreign nationals that were involved in numerous acts of looting and sabotage. The Libyan government could not rule out links to Israel.

Great Britain funded an Al Qaeda cell in Libya, in an attempt to assassinate Gadaffi. The main opposition group in Libya now is the National Front for the Salvation of Libya. This opposition group is beingfunded by Saudi Arabia, the CIA, and French Intelligence. This group unified itself with other opposition groups, to become the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition. It was this organization thatcalled for the "Day of Rage" that plunged Libya into chaos on February 17 of this year.

Tony Blair this afternoon met with Col Muammar Gaddafi in a tent in the Libyan desert on the first leg of his African farewell tour. They met at makeshift campsite outside the city of Sirte, a 35-minute flight from the capital Tripoli. On this visit, Qaddafi told Mr Blair he seemed "exhausted", as the two leaders lunched in a tent on remote farmland.Photo: David Blair, Telegraph

It did this in Benghazi, a conservative city that has always been opposed to Gadaffi's rule. It should be noted that the National Front for the Salvation of Libya is well armed. In 1996 the group tried to unleash a revolution in the eastern part of Libya before. It used the Libyan National Army, the armed division of the NFSL to begin this failed uprising.

Why is the United States so opposed to Gadaffi? He is the main threat to US hegemony in Africa, because he attempts to unite the continent against the United States. This concept is called the United States of Africa. In fact, Gadaffi holds all sorts of ideas that are contrary to US interests. The man blames the United States government for the creation of HIV. He claims that Israel is behind the assassination of Martin Luther King and president John. F. Kennedy. He says that the 9/11 hijackers were trained in the US. He also urged Libyans to donate blood to Americans after 9/11. Khadaffi is also the last of a generation of moderate socialist pan-Arab revolutionaries that is still in power, after Nasser and Hussein have been eliminated, and Syria has aligned itself with Iran.

The United States and Israel however have no interest in a strong Arab world. In fact it seems that elementary to the plan is bringing Libya to its knees through chaos and anarchy. In late 2010, the United Kingdom was still propping up the Libyan government through lucrative arms sales. Nothing is a better guarantee to destroy Libya than a bloody civil war. The tribal system that is still strong in Libya is useful to exploit to generate such a war since Libya has historically been divided into various tribal groups.

This is also why the Libyan government responds by importing mercenaries. Tribal allegiances go before allegiance to the government, especially in Benghazi, and thus the central government has no control over the eastern part of the country anymore. The alternative to mercenaries is a conflict between the various ethnic groups. Gadaffi has tried for 41 years to make the country more homogeneous, but opposition groups funded by outside forced will take little more than a few days to put the country back into the 19th century, before the region was conquered and unified by Europeans. The violence is indeed excessive, but everyone seems to forget that the situation is not the same as in Tunis and Egypt. Tribal ties play a far greater role, and thus the conflict will unfortunately be bloodier.

Please remember at all times that the violent Libyan civil war unfolding now is not comparable to the revolutions seen in Tunisia and Egypt. Both of these revolutions involved peaceful protesters suffering from poverty, in opposition to their corrupt governments. The chaos in Libyan consists of a mixture of tribal conflicts, conflict over oil revenue (since most oil is in the east of the country), radical islamists opposed to Gadaffi's system of government, and outside destabilization by Western funded exile groups.

Gadaffi took control in a bloodless coup from a sick monarch away for medical treatment 41 years ago. His ideology is based on unification and he attempted to peacefully merge his country with Egypt and Syria. It would take a miracle for the violence unfolding now to lead to a single stable democratic government in Libya, with full control over the entire country. The country is more than twice the size of Pakistan, but with 6 million inhabitants. Endless deserts divide many of the cities in the nation. If anything we should ask ourselves how many more nations will be shattered into pieces in the coming months, as the world cheers.
PART II
If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... Al Qaeda.

How did Al Qaeda start? Al Qaeda grew out of the Afghan Arabs in Afghanistan that the CIA trained at Camp Peary. A Amongst these men were many Libyans. These Libyans who had fought in Afghanistan eventually created the Libyan Islamic Fighting group. As explained on Wikipedia and in my earlier report on Libya, they were funded by MI6 to assassinate Gadaffi in 1996.

Unlike the US that keeps you in prison forever without even receiving a trial, the Libyan government made the mistake of showing mercy. Theyreleased 90 members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting group in 2008.It gets weirder. On the day of the "Day of Rage", Libya had released 110rehabilitated members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting group.These were men, part of an organization linked to Al Qaeda who plotted to overthrow the Libyan government.

As I explained earlier, the "Day of Rage" was called for by an organization that is funded by the CIA. Seems like a bit of incredible coincidence that the day of rage was planned to be on the same day that violent nutcases would be released who wanted to turn Libya into a second Afghanistan.

So, Gadaffi holds a speech and says that Al Qaeda is behind the uprising in his country. And we consider him to be a schizophrenic autistic nutcase of course. He says that he will fight until the end, and we consider him the next Hitler. He holds a speech to a massive group of people clothed in green, and we tell ourselves they were simply being bribed.

Make no mistake, the United States are using Al Qaeda to overthrow governments, yet again. As reported by CNN:

"Al Qaeda's North African wing has said "it will do whatever we can to help" the uprising in Libya, according to a statement the militant group posted on jihadist websites.The statement by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was posted Thursday, said SITE, a terrorist-tracking organization based outside Washington.
[...]

In 2006, al Qaeda documents found by U.S. forces in Iraq showed that per capita, Libya surpassed other Arab nations in the number of citizens joining al Qaeda. The regime's fear was that the terror group would bring its fight back to Libya."

We saw the same thing in Kosovo, where Al Qaeda was being used to terrorize the Serbs. As reported by the National Post:

Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has been active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO.

The claim that al-Qaeda played a role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s came from an alleged FBI document former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic presented in his defence before the Hague tribunal last week. Mr. Milosevic faces 66 counts of war crimes and genocide.

Although Hague prosecutors have challenged the veracity of the document, which Mr. Milosevic identified as a Congressional statement from the FBI dated last December, Balkan experts say the presence of al-Qaeda militants in Kosovo and Bosnia is well documented.

Today, al-Qaeda members are helping the National Liberation Army, a rebel group in Macedonia, fight the Skopje government in a bid for independence, military analysts say. Last week, Michael Steiner, the United Nations administrator in Kosovo, warned of "importing the Afghan danger to Europe" because several cells trained and financed by al-Qaeda remain in the region.

The parallels are striking to what is happening in Libya, with veterans of the Afghan war against the Soviet Union popping up again, this time leading the charge against Gadaffi:

"Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan," said James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia and an expert on the Balkans. "Milosevic is right. There is no question of their participation in conflicts in the Balkans. It is very well documented."

The arrival in the Balkans of the so-called Afghan Arabs, who are from various Middle Eastern states and linked to al-Qaeda, began in 1992 soon after the war in Bosnia. According to Lenard Cohen, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University, mujahedeen fighters who travelled to Afghanistan to resist the Soviet occupation in the 1980s later "migrated to Bosnia hoping to assist their Islamic brethren in a struggle against Serbian [and for a time] Croatian forces."

Whatever way you want to put it, Libya is a thorn in the eye of our globalist elite. It has been claimed that there are 5 countries on the planet left without a Rothschild controlled central bank: Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya. I don't necessarily think you can boil the conflict down simply to having a Rothschild controlled central bank or not. However, considering the fact that by now, Sudan has split in two, Libya is under mob rule and South Korea is upping it's propaganda offensive against the North Korean government where demonstration are breaking out for the first time in the history of the nation, the list is at least a little unnerving.

It's important to note that Libya was in fact recently beginning to introduce Islamic banking to the nation. In Islam, usury is illegal. Banking families like the Rothschilds and the Warburgs of course derive all their wealth (except for the wealth they've simply stolen) from usury. Islam has the concept of Musharakah. It abolishes the idea of a fixed interest on a loan. Instead money is paid back only if the enterprise makes a profit. Seems like an excellent idea, regardless of your religious beliefs.

The US puppet president won't rule out military intervention in Libya. Big oil is watching a dream come true as oil production in Libya (where no foreign companies have a hand in oil production) plunges, and anxiety drives the price up even further. Ships are of coursealready in the area, and have been for a while. It's all incredibly convenient. Reuters has reported that Venezuela's foreign minister said it looked like some western powers wanted to break up and occupy the Mediterranean nation for its oil.  Fidel Castro has said the same thing.

After invading you can then choose to leave the country in ruins with no oil production at all, or you can occupy the country and hand the oil to your buddies. Oil companies are predatory entities. In fact the United States overthrew the government of Iran for simply nationalizing the oil.

Egypt meanwhile isn't the slightest bit more free than it was under Mubarak. It has simply turned into a military dictatorship.  The US simply replaced an old unruly puppet with a new one.

Of course it's not difficult to unleash riots in the Middle East. As long as people have entertainment and food, they're quiet and not much of a nuisance. Take away either, and you get an angry public. The global genocide through starvation unleashed over the working classes of the world is the result of food speculation in the US.

The Brzezinski clique currently in control of the United States has found a far more effective way of dealing with its enemies. Instead of directly fighting them, they create anger in these nations, and then use the people themselves to sow chaos. The first attempt in Iran failed. Now the US has chosen to create examples in vulnerable countries first, to help mobilize the people in less vulnerable nations.

It's the most genius solution to defeat your enemies with. Contrary to the neoconservative approach, the whole world now supports your operation. If the carnage gets excessive enough, people around the world will beg their own governments to intervene in these 3rd world nations. If you thought that after Iraq further military intervention in the Middle East had become impossible due to a lack of popular support, it seems you were wrong. The Brzezinski approach has opened up this possibility again.

Are the uranium bombs going to be used in Tripoli next? Is Tripoli going to be another Fallujah? Only time can tell. The world will probably praise Obama as Tripoli is contaminated for generations to come. In fact, getting rid of Gadaffi by turning Tripoli into another Fallujah could even ensure that Obama is reelected.(Light editing, photos and related comment added by Axis of Logic)


Source:David Rothscum Reports

© Copyright 2011 by AxisofLogic.com

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