Tag Archives: Greece
James O’Keefe Goes Undercover in Greece During Financial Crisis
As you can see in today’s news, the Greek parliament just effectively disenfranchised the voters who recently enacted opposing austerity reforms in their country. Last night, the Greek politicians voted to accept bailout terms from their European creditors while protestors and police lobbed Molotov cocktails and tear gas at each other in the streets.
In our latest undercover video, we predicted this outcome.
“It looks like a deal will be made,” said James O’Keefe in the video narration which was produced before the parliamentary vote was cast. “Greece will get a bailout. It will be business as usual… until the next time Greece can’t pay its bills. Not everyone is happy. And many feel betrayed by their Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.”
With banks closed and riots in the street, what’s truly scary is what’s happening in Greece could happen anywhere — even here in the United States. For example, the U.S. territory Puerto Rico just defaulted on a major debt payment.
“We are the first… you are the next,” said a Greek nationalist protestor. “You should think about that.”‘
So while you are thinking about what it will be like in the United States when we are finally forced to pay the bills we are racking up with one unbalanced budget after another, consider what the mainstream media refuses to show you, presumably for fear for their lives.
As we show in the video, the Greek communists, anarchists and even the far right wing neo Nazi party are all opposed to the referendum and many of their demonstrations get out of hand. One journalist explained to us on film that when the anarchists come, they put their cameras down so they don’t get beaten up.
“Whenever they come, don’t shoot ,” said one of the journalists. “And you never get close to them.”
“One day we burn, not only parliament, parliament, police stations,” said one of the anarchists we caught on hidden camera. “We attack the police stations, we burn them, so the building… maybe one day also the parliament will be all black.”
While it’s a bleak vision of America’s possible future, it’s important that people watch our video to see what could happen here when we become unable to pay our nation’s bills.
Also, we promised we’d show you what happened when James O’Keefe tried to vote in the Greek elections. As you’ll recall, James would have been allowed to vote in 19 out of 20 attempts in last year’s North Carolina election, we showed that dead people could vote in New Hampshire — and one of our reporters could have gotten away with voting in the name of former US Attorney General Eric Holder. If you’re even remotely curious about how tough or easy it is to cast a fraudulent vote in Greece, check out our latest video here.
Pro-Marxist Sells Greece to Moscow
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
The coverage of the economic disaster in Greece, a strategic NATO country, has mostly ignored the role of Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the growing global turmoil.
Reports continue to circulate that a new European Union (EU) bailout deal with Greece is possible, as Yanis Varoufakis, a self-described “erratic Marxist,” has resigned as finance minister. But these developments appear to be for the purpose of diverting attention away from the fact that Greece has already become, in effect, a satellite of Moscow.
The Greek regime is a Moscow-backed left-right coalition led by Alexis Tsipras, the pro-Marxist and pro-Russia head of Greece’s “Coalition of the Radical Left.” Tsipras, who presented himself as a moderate when he spoke at the Brookings Institution on January 22, 2013, was a member of the youth wing of the Greek Communist Party, the KKE.
The political party known as ANEL (The Independent Greeks) is supposed to be a “conservative” party in the ruling government and yet it is pro-Russian. This reflects Putin’s cultivation of right-wing forces throughout Europe and even in America.
Back from a recent visit to Russia, Tsipras is now counting on cheaper gas and increased Russian investment from Moscow. The prospect of Russian military bases in NATO territory—Greece—cannot be ruled out at this point.
Tsipras previously signed a memorandum that is designed to make 2016 into the “Year of Greece-Russia relations.”
After his coalition won the elections in January, Tsipras received a congratulatory call from President Obama. The two leaders “reviewed close cooperation between Greece and the United States on issues of European security and counterterrorism,” the White House reported.
That alleged “close cooperation” has been replaced by a Greek deal with Moscow.
It seems like just another foreign policy disaster under President Obama, except in this case the stakes are huge. NATO notes that “Greece is strategically located in the Southern region of the Alliance, in close vicinity to South Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa.”
But other than expressing a vague hope that European leaders would devise a plan to allow Greece “to return to growth and debt sustainability within the Eurozone,” Obama has been AWOL on the crisis, leaving it mostly in the hands of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The subject of reports and even a book suggesting she is a Russian agent, Merkel knows full well that Tsipras and Putin have been undermining the NATO alliance at a time when the West fears a Russian invasion of another former Soviet republic.
For example, in the report, “Stop Putin’s Next Invasion Before It Starts,” Terrence K. Kelly of the Rand Corporation argues that “The United States needs to seriously consider stationing forces in Eastern Europe to support the nation’s commitment to protect the independence of the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania—NATO members all—against the specter of Russian aggression.”
Some news organizations have alluded to Russia’s role in the current crisis. “Russian President Vladimir Putin feted Tsipras in St. Petersburg last month as bailout negotiations took place in Brussels,” noted Michael Birnbaum and Griff Witte in The Washington Post.
During that meeting Tsipras discussed energy and the “Greek Stream” gas pipeline project with Russian Gazprom chief Alexei Miller during a meeting in St. Petersburg. In fact, Russia and Greece signed a deal to construct a Turkish pipeline across Greek territory. Tsipras also met with representatives of the new development bank for BRICS countries, referring to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, “who expressed their intense interest in cooperating with Greece,” one report noted.
“Russia has its eye on Athens, trying to break European unity to put an end to economic sanctions imposed over its actions in Ukraine,” Birnbaum and Witte noted in the Post.
But the situation is far more serious than the Post lets on. Syriza’s 40-point program includes undermining NATO, the global battle against Islamic terrorism, and Israel:
- Closure of all foreign bases in Greece and withdrawal from NATO.
- Withdrawal of Greek troops from Afghanistan and the Balkans. No Greek soldiers beyond our own borders.
- Drastically cut military expenditures.
- Abolition of military cooperation with Israel. Support for creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.
Syriza, a Greek political party, is a member of The European Left (EL). Member Parties of the EL are described as “socialist, communist, red-green and other democratic left parties of the member states and associated states of the European Union (EU) that work together and establish various forms of co-operation at all levels of political activity in Europe, based on the agreements, basic principles and political aims laid down in the EL Manifesto.” The chairperson of EL is Pierre Laurent of the French Communist Party. Tsipras is the Vice-Chairperson.
In addition to the support from these international Marxist political parties and groups, Tsipras met with the leftist Pope Francis on September 19, 2014. Tsipras said, “We pleaded with him to continue struggling against poverty and to speak in behalf of the dignity of humans as well as the structural causes behind poverty which are the inequality in the distribution of wealth and the rampant behavior of the financial markets. …we agreed that the dialogue between the Left and the Christian Church must go on. We may have different ideological starting points; however, we converge on common values, like solidarity, love for the fellow human being, social justice, and our concern regarding world peace.”
“For the first time ever the head of the Catholic Church will meet a leader of the radical Left,” is how Tsipras described the meeting with the pope at his “Change Europe” website.
In their book, EUSSR, Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov argued that the European Union was itself a project of the old Soviet Union, and that the EU has always been subject to manipulation by Moscow and its agents. Based on this analysis, what’s happening in Greece is part of a process of pulling Europe as a whole to the left and away from the United States.
The eventual goal, some observers say, is the removal of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, a development that would strike a mortal blow to the global capitalist system.
A Russian Link to the Charleston Massacre?
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), treated by the media as an objective source of information on right-wing “hate” groups, sent an email message to its supporters on Monday declaring evidence that the Charleston church shooter was “connected to [a] worldwide white supremacist movement.” This seemed like a big discovery. After all, the shooter, Dylann Roof, had declared in his alleged manifesto, that “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the Internet,” when it came to racist support groups for his planned massacre of black people. The drug-abusing 21-year-old was complaining about a lack of organized support for his views.
Had the SPLC dug up some new evidence? Indeed, where was the evidence that Roof was “connected” to a global plot? SPLC President Richard Cohen informed his supporters in this email begging for financial support that “through his symbols and writings, suspect Dylann Storm Roof has expressed sentiments that are uniting white supremacists across the world—from the United States to Europe to Australia.” His symbols and writings made him part of an international plot? Is this the best the SPLC can do?
Welcome to the world of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the media’s designated “experts” on right-wing extremism. The SPLC “tracks hate groups” is the usual claim in the media. In fact, it helped inspire an actual terrorist attack on the Washington, D.C. offices of the conservative Christian Family Research Council (FRC), after a gay militant discovered the location of the FRC on an SPLC “hate map.” A security guard was wounded before he succeeded in taking down the attacker.
“Thank you [for] supporting this vital fight against hate and extremism,” said Cohen in the fundraising letter exploiting the Roof case. They are desperate to add to their $245.3 million financial endowment.
At the top of the email message was a “DONATE” button. Readers were also told they could become a financial “partner” through a planned gift, or a “friend of the Center” through monthly giving.
On the same day that Cohen inflated the facts in the Roof case in a crass appeal for money, he and his associate, Morris Dees, had written an op-ed for The New York Times including similar exaggerations. The piece, headlined, “White Supremacists Without Borders,” insisted that the “themes” adopted by the killer were “signs of the growing globalization of white nationalism.” The term “globalization” can apply to just about anything on the Internet, since that technology is international in scope. That was good enough for those who procure and place op-eds at The New York Times.
“When we think of the Islamist terrorism of groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, we recognize their international dimension,” said Dees and Cohen. “When it comes to far-right domestic terrorism, we don’t.” Perhaps that is because the “evidence” of Roof’s international connections is thin, if not non-existent. Indeed, as noted, Roof complains in the manifesto about the absence of even local grassroots support for his cause in the supposedly racist enclave of South Carolina.
The only evidence of an international connection, not mentioned by Cohen or Dees, is that several in the media have determined through a simple search on the Internet that Roof’s website was hosted by a Russian server, apparently located in Moscow. At a time of news about Russian and Chinese hackers getting access to federal and other websites in the U.S., this seems mighty interesting and newsworthy. Does this mean that Russian interests had advance knowledge of Roof’s manifesto and murder plans? This seems worthy of follow-up, but is not mentioned by the SPLC in its Times op-ed.
The op-ed ignores the real hard evidence of the international connections of the white supremacist movement in the form of former KKK leader David Duke once traveling to Russia and meeting with Alexander Dugin, a one-time adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party. We reported on this connection back in March of last year. Duke called Dugin “one of the leading intellectuals of Russia’s patriotic movement.” The SPLC is aware of Dugin, having published an article noting that he “has close ties to the Kremlin” and “supports a Eurasian empire made up of Russia and former Soviet republics such as the Ukraine and set against ‘North Atlantic interests.’” But it calls him a “fascist,” rather than a staunch ally of Putin and advocate of Russian imperialism.
The SPLC did report previously on what it termed a “Russian White Nationalist Conference” held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in March of this year, with various foreign groups and individuals in attendance. Strangely, however, there is no evidence that the SPLC seriously investigated a possible Russian connection to any of this in the Dylann Roof case. Instead, it claims a foreign connection through images and themes he invoked, a very weak case to present to the Times’ readers.
Euromaidan Press, a voice for Ukraine’s anti-Russian activists, reported extensively on the St. Petersburg conference, even publishing the names of those attending the event. An article noted “…the prevalence of statements in support of Russia and Putin in particular as the true conservatives that can save the world,” citing “quotes from now infamous speeches of Putin’s in which he talks of the emergence of nationalism and conservatism as a natural expression of Russian patriotism.”
As we have argued in the past, however, Putin’s alleged conservatism is a grand deception, designed to lure conservatives around the world into supporting Russian aggression. Putin has never given up his old KGB and Soviet ways.
In their op-ed, Cohen and Dees said, “Europe has also seen the rise of a powerful, far-right political movement that rejects multiculturalism. The anti-Semitic Jobbik Party in Hungary and the neo-fascist Golden Dawn in Greece are prime examples. In Germany, there has been a series of murders by neo-Nazis. Britain, too, is experiencing an upswing of nationalist, anti-immigrant politics.”
Left unsaid in the case of Greece is that the new left-wing ruling party, Syriza, is pro-Russia and anti-Western, and that Vladimir Putin has promised financial assistance if the European Union balks at another economic bailout.
It turns out that the SPLC has been conned by the Russians in the past. SPLC staffer Mark Potok, described by the group as a “leading expert” on extremism, actually appeared as a guest on Putin’s TV channel, Russia Today. Embarrassed over this fact, the group later published a “Full disclosure” disclaimer, noting that Potok had appeared on an edition of Russia Today’s “CrossTalk” program to discuss the rise of militias in the U.S. The SPLC then belatedly began to take note of the channel’s anti-American propaganda and disinformation campaigns.
Potok, their expert, apparently didn’t understand—or didn’t care—that Russia Today TV was actually linked to Russia and the Russian government. His expertise is clearly lacking about Russian influence operations.
We see similar blindness regarding other threats.
“We know Islamic terrorists are thinking globally, and we confront that threat,” Dees and Cohen declare in their Times op-ed. “We’ve been too slow to realize that white supremacists are doing the same.” The SPLC has been way too slow to investigate the Russian connection to the white supremacists it claims to be so concerned about. There is certainly no evidence of what they have uncovered in that Times op-ed.
As far as Islamic terrorists are concerned, the SPLC turns things around by targeting the critics of radical Islam. A simple search of the group’s website brings forth several stories about the dangers allegedly posed by “Islamophobes,” not the terrorists themselves. Consider the article that begins, “In the weeks following the terrorist attacks in France, major players in the American anti-Muslim movement have unleashed a tirade of bigotry and renewed their energies in attacking the federal government. But not to be left out, prominent anti-immigrant figures and politicians have also joined the show.”
This is typical of how the SPLC operates. The problem is not radical Islam trying to kill Americans or others. Rather, the problem is the people who focus on the threat and want the federal government to protect the American people from the threat. Hence, Pamela Geller, later targeted in a terrorist attack on American soil, was an “Islamophobe,” according to the SPLC and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The term is usually applied to anyone who suggests taking the threat of Islamic terrorism seriously and takes action against it.
By attempting to orchestrate the coverage of terrorism in such a way as to ignore the threat posed by the terrorists themselves, the SPLC employs the tactic of “partisan tolerance,” meaning that the conservatives who want to protect America and its allies from Islamic terrorists or Russian aggression become the problem. This is why Dylann Roof must be transformed by the SPLC from a drug-abusing loner into a global right-wing terrorist. It is political exploitation of a national tragedy that confuses and misleads the nation.
It’s shocking that the major media continue to take the SPLC seriously. Liberal media bias helps explain, but not justify, this curious state of affairs. Another factor has to be laziness on the part of reporters, who don’t want to take the time to do their own research or work. It’s easier to cite the “experts,” even if they are frauds and con men.