Syria(l) killers

Every Friday, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia , residents and guests (I imagine most of them Americans) can watch amputations and if they are "lucky" and executions too.

by Kostas Vaxevanis

With a horrific rite that includes gruesome functions for the "sensitive" stomach of a democratic Westerner, the executioner raises his axe and lets it drop to the end of the one being accused of stealing . A heartbreaking cry sounds before the blood starts to flow everywhere , reaching sometimes as the crowd attending the medieval exemplary punishment.

Each year , the Riyadh regime, the U.S. allied royal family, executes about 80 people who may have been accused of adultery , homosexuality , religious waiver or whatever else one mullah chooses, who however does not annoy the democratic sensitivities of President Obama, as he did not (also) for former presidents.

The UN, the international organizations and of course the U.S. government have not identified in the oilfields of Saudi Arabia no violation of human rights that will require some intervention. In contrast, the IMF commends Saudi Arabia for the economic miracle that is a carrier.

In 2011 , Saudi Arabia made ​​a military intervention in neighboring Bahrain, where Shiite protesters protesting against tyrannical Sunni regime. Bahrain also a U.S. ally in the region, has a tradition to torture and anti-democratic features, but does not employ the American fleet docked in its ports.

The U.S., however, are bothered by the tyrannical Syrian regime and the undemocratic regime in Iran. If what is happening in Saudi Arabia was happening in Syria, the U.S. would require, in the name of Democracy, to bomb Assad with nuclear weapons. And I imagine there would be many allies who would agree.

In 2003, the attack on Iraq was not only for biological weapons which of course did not exist, but it turns out now that the argument for their existence was a conscious lie to get the Americans in the region. In Afghanistan the Taliban fell, but the burqa and the lack of democracy remain. The modern international legitimacy, is a set of considerations, an offsetting of interests, an ostensible Republic of military generals and the cynicals of the so-called stability.

In Syria there is apparently an authoritarian regime, as in the 90% of the Arab world. There is also a civil war, which is maintained by the U.S. policy. With this perception of foreign policy the whole adventure in the Middle East in the 50's started. When the U.S. and Great Britain as evidenced by the documents of the CIA, threw the elected government of Mohammed Mosantech. In order to control the oil in the region, raised to power puppets, who later turned into beasts against them. The democratization of the Middle East, never moved forward, not because some in the area are born and remain undemocratic, but because those who wanted to control them did not allow it.

Throughout this geopolitical game, the position of the Greek government, first and foremost the very Vice-President's, shows what it is. Another slavish obeisance to the argument of the merely one way from which we can not escape. For some reason, the roads chosen by Mr. Venizelos, always are marking the one-way, with the pointer staring at powerful interests.

When the Samaras - Venizelos government formed, I risked a prediction. That Venizelos will require the Foreign Ministry with the sole purpose to use it as a lifejacket for his political survival. He knew very well that the national issues to be opened directly (Skopje, Cyprus) and the International ones, his willingness to contribute to international 'legitimacy' in a similar way that has helped in the Greek case, making ordered laws and by lump, would make him indispensable, so he would be kept politically alive.

Evangelos Venizelos, confirmed the predictions with cynicism as always, interspersed with nonsense of legal and democratic necessity. With the known  "kindness", he is ready to give permission to kill thousands of people so as to stay alive and popular with the transatlantic allies and not only with some "bad" publishers. He is changing track  in the game, hoping that will win a bonus.

In this war, even the Parliament of the traditional U.S. ally, Britain decided to vote "no." Obama himself is still being skeptical. But Samaras and Venizelos vote "yes" in deciding to become Syria killers too. Ultimately they are nothing other than serial killers started from their own country.

I, personally, am 'glad' that over the centuries democracy is evolving around the world and in extension in Greece, from where it was created!! Of course all people totally agree to it including Mr Obama, the U.N and all humanitarian organizations ... CONGRATULATIONS!

source: http://www.koutipandoras.gr/41980/syria-l-killers.html

related: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/453240/20130403/saudi-arabia-chop-square-beheading.htm

http://greeceandworld.blogspot.gr/2013/08/venizelos-nee-turkoglou-changes-in.html

Greece flirts with tyranny and Europe looks away

Kostas Vaxevanis speaks to journalists as he awaits the beginning of his trial in Athens. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

Greek democracy is in peril and much of the fault lies with the EU's hard stance

• • Nick Cohen
  • The Observer, Sunday 4 November 2012

When those madcap Scandinavian satirists awarded the Nobel peace prize to the European Union, they let everyone in on the joke by praising its commitment to "reconciliation, democracy and human rights". If the committee's 2012 citation were anything other than a spoof, you would have read denunciations of the rise of oppressive state power and neo-Nazism in Greece from concerned Euro commissioners long before now.

The EU denounces threats to freedom of speech in Viktor Orbán's Hungary with vigour. European politicians worry with good reason about the fate of independent institutions that stand in the way of the rabble-rousing regime. They notice the fascistic element in the new Hungarian right's flirtations with antisemitic and anti-Roma hatreds and its willingness to indulge the revanchist fantasy that Hungary can regain the lands it lost after the First World War. On the fate of Greek democracy there is silence, however, although there is much that Europe's leaders might talk about.

You spot the pressure points of a failing state by looking at what it censors. In the case of Greece, the authorities' prosecution last week ofKostas Vaxevanis showed that he had hit a pressure point with the accuracy of a doctor sticking a needle into a nerve. While Greeks live with austerity without end, while Greek GDP has shrunk by 4.5% in 2010 and 6.9% in 2011, and will shrink by a predicted 6.5% this year and 4.5% in 2013, the list of the names of 2,000 Greeks with bank accounts in Switzerland Vaxevanis published, suggested that the well-connected were escaping the burdens that fall on the masses.

"Instead of arresting the tax evaders and the ministers who had the list in their hands," thundered Vaxevanis in a call to arms that stirred the blood, "they're trying to arrest the truth and freedom of the press."

His acquittal on privacy law charges, though welcome, was less important than it appeared. It did not mean that freedom of the press was secure in Greece. Even in good times, independent journalism has rarely been a force in the land. Most Greek TV stations and newspapers are owned by either the state or plutocratic corporations, neither of which likes seeing corruption exposed. The leftwing daily, Eleftherotypia, which for all its faults and flirtations with terrorism at least challenged the oligarchs, filed for bankruptcy last year.

Few of the employees of the remaining Greek news organisations reject the notion that they should keep quiet in the interests of holding on to their pay cheques. The state is hounding too many of those who do. "We still have freedom of expression recognised by the law at a theoretical level," said Asteris Masouras, one of the free speech monitors at Global Voices. "On a practical level, well..." And he proceeded to give me a list of instances of menacing forces intimidating reporters that would go on into the New Review section if I ran it in full.

Where to begin? How about the self-defeating austerity policies the troika of the European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund have forced on Greece? The authorities used an old warrant to arrest Spiros Karatzaferis, after the journalist threatened to reveal confidential emails, that might have explained how the troika's alleged "rescue package" had pushed the country into depression.

Police brutality is another pressure point, undoubtedly. The Greek left makes persistent allegations of collaboration between the supposed forces of law and order and the thugs in the neo-Nazi Golden Dawnmovement. The Guardian ran reports that the police had beaten up anti-fascist demonstrators after they had confronted Golden Dawn. Yes, I know leftists call everyone "fascists" from headteachers to their mums and dads, but as Golden Dawn is building a mass movement while marching under a swastika, the term is correct on this occasion. The following day, Greek state TV replaced Kostas Arvanitis and Marilena Katsimi, the presenters of its morning news show, after they told managers they planned to follow up the Guardian's claims. Another state TV reporter, Christos Dantis, has joined the ranks of the vanishing journalists. His editors assigned him to cover the celebrations of the centenary of the liberation of Thessaloniki from Ottoman rule. He was about to report on popular protests against the presence of the Greek prime minister and president in Greece's second city when his masters turned off the camera and cut to a more amenable hack.

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