By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
It’s religious to believe that a slight young man with a slingshot can defeat a heavily armed giant with a single stone.
No general, head of government, or national electorate can rationally calculate risking their fortunes and fates on such a disadvantageous ratio of force; on a lucky shot; and on an article of faith. Icons can motivate soldiers to ignore the odds of survival in a battle; they don’t win wars of attrition.
In the two hundred years since Greece freed itself of Turkish rule with Russian and British support, it’s to be expected that the Greeks would be obliged to count and counter the strengths of their enemies with the resources of their friends. Over the years this Greek calculation has required them to conceal, lie, cheat, fabricate, and steal from them all when their survival was at stake.
In retrospect of the 20th century, that has happened more often to the Greeks than to most other Europeans. In the outcome for them of the Balkan Wars, 1912-1913; World War I; the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-22; the Italian and German invasions of World War II; the Civil War of 1945-49; the military dictatorship of 1967-74, the Turkish invasion and occupation of Cypus from 1974; and the European bailout terms of 2015, the Greeks have suffered incomparable losses. Measuring by the European standard of destructiveness in war — civil war and invasion — only one country exceeds Russia (and possibly Serbia) in the frequency of violence, in the percentage losses of Gross Domestic Product, and in casualties per head of population: this is Greece. In the anti-Russian European alliance of today, no country has been as damaged by the violence and depredations of its own allies — the Turks, Italians, Germans, British, and Americans — as Greece.
That is, until the US and NATO allies decided on war with Russia to be fought to the last Ukrainian and to the end of the Ukrainian state. For the time being, though, the money which the US, the UK and NATO allies, and the International Monetary Fund have paid into the Kiev regime dwarfs the sums of reparations, compensation and aid paid to Greece.
Notwithstanding, in the current war none of these allies has concealed its role in the battlefield fight against Russia more clumsily than the Mayor of Athens, Kostas Bakoyannis (lead image, left) and his uncle, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (right). No communist party in Europe has been as outspoken as the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in its verbal attacks on Russia. No domestic oligarchs have put their capital to the aid of Russia as much as the Greek tanker fleet owners. No rocket forces commander has exchanged one anti-aircraft and missile defence system which works for another which does not as the Greek exchange of the Russian S-300 for the US Patriot.
These aren’t individual Greek faults or follies. They are contradictions which have political and economic reasons. But there is a standard of deceit below which not even the Greeks in their historic and current predicament should fall. This is when the Greeks deceive and cheat each other for self-enrichment, and for the benefit of the country’s enemies. The first of these is corruption; the second is treason. When the two are combined in the running of the state – election votes, parliamentary majority, formation of government, allocation of budget, military pacts, security service operations – and when all of this is camouflaged by the courts and the media, then the country is committing suicide.
Is this the present fate of Greece? Listen to the discussion between Slobodan Despot, Alexander Mercouris, and John Helmer.
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