Middle Nation Book Discussion | Killing Hope by William Blum (Chapter Three)

Okay. This is going to be chapter three. We're starting chapter three on page 50 of Killing Hope by William Blum, the 2012 edition. Again, my Internet is not great, so I'm gonna go ahead and just record this. Chapter three, Greece, 1947 to early nineteen fifties, from cradle of democracy to client state.

Because as you know, the historical myth anyway, is that democracy started in Greece, ancient Greece. Okay. So here's the book. Jorge Sempran is a Spaniard, a Frenchman, a novelist and film writer, former communist, former inmate of Buchenwald. He was at the infamous Nazi concentration camp in 1944 with other party members, communist party members when they heard the news.

This is a quote from Sempren. For some days now we had talked of nothing else. At first, some of us thought it was a lie. It had to be. An invention of Nazi propaganda to raise the morale of the people.

We listened to the news bulletins on the German radio broadcast by all the loudspeakers, and we shook our heads. A trick to raise the morale of the German people, it had to be. But we soon had to face up to the evidence. Some of us listened in secret, to the allied broadcasts which confirmed the news. There was no doubt about it.

British troops really were crushing the Greek resistance. In Athens, battles were raging. British troops were retaking the city from the ELAs forces, district by district. It was an unequal fight. ELAS, had neither tanks nor planes, but radio Moscow had said nothing, and this silence was variously interpreted.

The British army had arrived in Greece during October 1944, shortly after the bulk of the Germans had fled. An evacuation due in no small part to ELAS, the People's Liberation Army founded during the course of nineteen forty one, nineteen forty two on the initiative of the Greek Communist Party. ELAS and its political wing EAM cut across the entire left side of the political spectrum numbering many priests and even a few bishops amongst its followers. The guerrillas had rested large areas of the country from the Nazi invaders who had routed the British in 1941. Elas and EAM partisans could be ruthless and coercive towards those Greeks who did not cooperate with them or who were suspected of collaboration with the Germans.

But they also provided another dramatic example of the liberating effects of a world war. The encrusted ways of the Greek old guard were cast aside. In their place arose communities which had at least the semblance of being run by the local residents. Inchoate institutions and mechanisms which might have been the precursor of a regenerated Greek society after the war. Education perhaps geared towards propaganda, but for the illiterate education nonetheless.

Fighting battalions, of women housewives called upon for the first time to act independently of their husband's control, a phenomenon which spread irrepressibly until EAM came to number some one to 2,000,000 Greeks out of a population of 7,000,000. A very large number of people. This was hardly the kind of social order designed to calm the ulcers of the British old guard, Winston Churchill for one, who had long regarded Greece as their private manner. The great man, meaning Churchill, was determined that the Greek king should be restored to his rightful place with all that implied. And the British military in Greece lost no time in installing a government dedicated to that end.

When it says and all that implied, just means that Churchill and the UK wanted to reinstall the monarchy in Greece, reinstall the king so that Greece would remain as it was described earlier, the private manner of the British. Monarchists, quizlings, and conservatives of all stripes found themselves in positions of political power. Predominant in the new Greek and Greek army and police, members of EAM and Elas found themselves dead or in prison. In the early days of the war, when defeating the Nazis was the Allies overwhelming purpose, Churchill had referred to ELAS as quote, those gallant guerrillas, and ELAS's supporters had welcomed the British in early November nineteen forty four with a sign reading, we greet the brave English army, signed EAM. But the following month, fighting broke out between ELA S and the British forces and their Greek comrades in arms, many of whom had fought against ELAS during the war and in the process collaborated with the Germans.

Others had simply served with the Germans. The British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, acknowledged in August 1946 that there were 228 ex members of the Nazi security battalions whose main task had been to track down Greek resistance fighters and Jews. There were 228 ex members of the Nazi security battalions on active service in the new Greek army, the one that was reformulated by the British. Further support for the campaign against ELAS came from the United States Air Force and Navy which transported more than two British divisions into Greece. All the while, the war against Germany still raged in Europe.

In mid January nineteen forty five, ELAS agreed to an armistice, one that had much of the appearance and the effect of a surrender. There is disagreement amongst historians as to whether ELAS had been militarily defeated or whether the communists in the ELAS and EAM hierarchy had received the word from Stalin to lay down the gun. If the latter were the case, it would have been consistent with the noted agreement between Stalin and Churchill in October 1944 whereby spheres of influence in Eastern Europe were allocated between the two powers. In this cynical, as Churchill acknowledged, in this cynical monopoly game, Britain had landed on Greece. In other words, Greece was supposed to be and agreed between Stalin and Churchill, Greece was supposed to be given admission to the British sphere of influence.

Churchill later wrote that Stalin had quote, adhered strictly and faithfully to our agreement of October and during all the long weeks of fighting, the communists in the streets of Athens, not one word of reproach came from Pravda or Ezvestia, nor as Jorge, Semprem noted from Radio Moscow. In other words, while the British were routing the communists in Greece, communist Russia, communist Soviet Union had nothing to say about it because it had already been agreed upon that they were gonna hand Greece over back to the British. It's essential to remember professor, D. F. Fleming has pointed out in his eminent history of the Cold War that Greece was the first of the liberated states to be openly and forcibly compelled to accept the political system of the occupying great power.

It was Churchill who acted first and Stalin who followed his example in Bulgaria and then in Romania, though with less bloodshed. A succession of Greek governments followed, serving by the grace of the British and The United States, thoroughly corrupt governments in the modern Greek tradition, which continued to terrorize the left, tortured them in notorious, island prison camps, and did next to nothing to relieve the daily misery of the war torn Greek people. There are few modern parallels for governments as bad as this, CBS's chief European correspondent Howard k Smith observed at the time. Mind you, this government, as bad as it is and that and that has few parallels in terms of how bad it is, this government is one that has been installed by the British and by the Americans. Essentially, it's a it's a British and an American Western European occupation of Greece to replace the Nazi occupation of Greece.

So it's one group of white Westerners occupying it instead of another group of white Westerners. So you see now what I've talked about before, the fact that there is no such a thing as a white, western, Anglo Saxon or whatever you want to call it, sense of fraternity, sense of brotherhood or this myth of white nationalism. They've been tearing apart each other for centuries and that's their favorite pastime and they never have stopped doing it. Greece was dominated and occupied by Germany and then it was the Germans were kicked out and some of the people, the Greek people who helped to kick them out themselves then got repressed by the Americans and by the British. So the the the Greek communists fought against German occupation and succeeded, and then they fought against British occupation and lost.

Because again, the Germans were doing what they were doing without any outside support whereas the British were doing it with American support and with the tacit approval or even the explicit approval of the Soviet Union whom would otherwise have been expected to support them being communists. In the 1946, the inevitable occurred. Leftists took to the hills to launch phase two of the civil war. The communists had wrenched Stalin's strangulating hand from their throats for their very survival was at stake and everything that they believed in. The British were weighed down by their own postwar reconstruction needs and in February 1947 they informed The United States that they could no longer shoulder the burden of maintaining a large armed force in Greece nor provide sizable military and economic aid to the country.

Thus it was that the historic task of preserving all that is decent and good in Western civilization passed to the hands of The United States. Several days later, the State Department summoned the Greek charge d'affaires in Washington and informed him that his government was to ask The US for aid. This was to be affected by means of a formal letter of request, a document it turned out to be written essentially by the State Department. So the State Department is going to the Greeks and telling them, you have to ask us for aid and this is what you're gonna say. We'll draft the letter for you.

You have to ask us for aid and here's how you'll say it. Here's how you'll ask it. The text of the letter, the charge d'affaires later reported, quote, had been drafted with a view to the mentality of congress. It would also serve to protect the US government against internal and external charges that it was taking the initiative of intervening in a foreign state or that it had been persuaded by the British to take over a bad legacy for them. The note would also serve as a basis for the cultivation of public opinion which was under study.

In July, in a letter to Dwight Griswold, the head of the American Mission to aid Greece, AMAG, secretary of state George Marshall said, it is possible that during your stay in Greece, you and the ambassador will come to the conclusion that the effectiveness of your mission would be enhanced if a reorganization of the Greek government could be affected. If such a conclusion is reached, it is hoped that you and the ambassador will be able to bring about such a reorganization indirectly through discrete suggestions, and otherwise in such a manner, that even the Greek political leaders will have a feeling that the reorganization had been affected largely by themselves and not by pressure from without. So this is what he's saying. You will talk to the Greek ambassador and explain to him that this is how we need to reorganize the government, but you have to be very clever and tactful in the way you do it so that the Greeks themselves actually believe that they're doing this reorganization by their own initiative. And that somehow the way that they reorganize the government or the way that they think they're reorganizing the government just happens to be exactly the way that we want the government to be reorganized.

The secretary spelled out further guidelines for Griswold, a man of a man the New York Times shortly afterwards called the most powerful man in Greece. During the course of your work, you and members of your mission will from time to time find that Greek certain Greek officials are not, because of incompetence, disagreement with your policies, or for some other reason, extending the type of cooperation which is necessary if the objectives of your mission are to be achieved. You will find it necessary to effect the removal of these officials. This is again something that you see over and over again. In fact, we we just had an example, a very famous example where Joe Biden is determining who will be the prosecutors in Ukraine before the war, saying basically that The United States can control who holds office in your country.

And that determine that determination will be made exclusively upon the basis of whether or not they agree with the policies that The United States wants to see implemented in your country. These contrivances, however, were not the most cynical aspects of America's endeavor. Washington officials well knew that their new client government was so venal and so abusive of human rights that even confirmed American anti communists were appalled. Stuart Alsup for one. On twenty third February nineteen forty seven, the noted journalist had cabled from Athens that most of the Greek politicians had, quote, no higher ambition than to taste the profitable delights of a free economy at American expense.

The same year, an American investigating team found huge supplies of food aid rotting in warehouses at a time when an estimated seventy five percent of Greek children were suffering from malnutrition. So difficult was it to gloss over this this picture that president Truman in his address to congress in March 1947 asking for aid to Greece based on the Greek request, the Truman doctrine speech, attempted to preempt criticism by admitting that the Greek government was quote not perfect and that it had quote made mistakes. Yet somehow, by some ideological alchemy best known to the president, the regime in Athens was nevertheless, quote, unquote, democratic, and its opponents, were the familiar terrorists, quote, unquote. Now I'll just reiterate here that this government that is so blatantly to to the point where you can't even cover it over, to the point that even anti communists are pointing out how corrupt and how abusive and how brutal and how incompetent the Greek government is. This is the government that The United States and The United Kingdom installed over Greece against the will and wishes of the population themselves and against the will and wishes of the factions within Greece who had most strongly fought against the Nazis.

There was no mention of the Soviet Union in this particular speech, but that was to be the relentless refrain of the American rationale over the next two two and a half years. The Russians were instigating the Greek leftists so as to kidnap yet another quote unquote free country and drag it kicking and screaming behind the iron curtain. The neighboring communist states of Bulgaria, Albania, and particularly Yugoslavia, in part motivated by old territorial claims against Greece, did aid the insurgents by allowing them important sanctuary behind their borders and furnishing them with military supplies. Whether substantial or merely a token amount is a debatable question. The USSR however, in the person of Joseph Stalin, was adamantly opposed to assisting the Greek quote unquote comrades.

At a meeting with Yugoslav leaders in, early nineteen forty eight, a few months before Yugoslavia's break with the Soviet Union, described by Milovan Gilles, second in command to Tito, Stalin turned to the foreign minister, Edward Cardelz, and asked, do you believe in the success of the uprising in Greece? Cardelz replied, if foreign intervention does not grow, and if serious political and military errors are not made. Stalin went on without paying attention to Cardelge's opinion, if if, he said, no. They have no prospect of success at all. What do you think the great that that Great Britain and The United States, The United States, the most powerful state in the world, will permit you to break their line of communication in the Mediterranean?

Nonsense. And we have no navy. The uprising in Greece must be stopped and as quickly as possible. That was Stalin's position with regards to his communist comrades in Greece. He was fully in favor of them being completely eliminated because he thought that it was an unwinnable uprising by the by the Greek communists.

And he was probably right. The first major ship loads of military systems under the new American operation arrived in the 1947. Significant quantities had also been shipped to the Greek government by The US while the British ran the show. By the end of the year, the Greek military was, being entirely supported by American aid down to and including, its own, clothing and food. The nation's war making potential was transformed.

Continual increases in the size of the Greek armed forces, fighter bombers, transport squadrons, airfields, napalm bombs, recoilless rifles, naval patrol vessels, communication networks, docks, railways, roads, bridges, hundreds of millions of dollars of supplies and equipment approaching a billion dollars in total since the end of world of the World War, and millions more to create a quote secret army reserve fighting unit composed principally of the ex members of the Nazi security battalions referred to earlier. So again, this is an important thing to bear in mind when you look at what's going on in Europe today with the heavy militarization and the increasing emphasis on building their military capacity and focusing on their military capacity, their military capabilities, their arsenal, their weaponry and so forth, as well as all of the talk that's going on throughout Europe with regards to reinstating conscription, very similar to what was happening in Greece at the end of World War II. And notably, The US again was reconstituting and increasing the strength of the Greek military using in part former Nazis. The US military mission took over the development of battle plans for the army from the ineffective Greek generals. In other words, now you have the US military commanding the Greek army.

The mission related Greek military writer, Major Edgar Obalance, took a tough line and insisted that all its recommendations be carried into effect at once and in full. Eventually, more than 250 American army officers were in the country, many assigned to Greek army divisions to ensure compliance with directives. Others operated at the brigade levels. Another 200 or so US air force and navy personnel were also on active duty in Greece. So again, you have here the Greek military being essentially commanded by the Americans.

All military training methods and programs were quote revised, revitalized, and tightened up under American supervision. Infantry units were made more mobile with increased firepower. Special commando units were trained in anti guerrilla tactics, training in mountain warfare augmented by some 4,000 mules shipped to Greece by The United States. At at American insistence, whole sections of the population were uprooted to eliminate the gorillas natural base of operations and source of recruits just as would be done in Vietnam twenty years later. And I'm sure that if we look at case by case we'll see that they've done it in countries all around the world.

Both on the ground and in the air American support was becoming increasingly active according to C. M. Woodhouse, the British colonel and historian who served in Greece during the mid nineteen forties. And the theoretical line between advice, intelligence, and combat was a narrow one. The Greek leftists held out for three terrible years.

Despite losses of many tens of thousands, they were always able to replenish their forces, even increase their numbers. But by October 1949, foreseeing nothing but more loss of lives to a vastly superior destruction machine, the guerrillas announced over their radio a ceasefire. It was the end of the civil war. The extent of American hegemony over Greece from 1947 onwards can scarcely be exaggerated. We have seen marshals directives to Griswold and the American management of the military campaign.

There were many other manifestations of the same phenomenon of which the following are a sample. In other words, these are the following are samples of American control and management of Greece following 1947. In September 1947, Vice Prime Minister Konstantin Saldares agreed to the dissolution of the government and the creation of a new ruling coalition. In doing so, said the New York Times, Saldarus had surrendered to the desires of Dwight P. Griswold and to US ambassador McVeigh and also to the king.

Before Taldarus addressed the Greek legislature on on the matter, on the dissolution of the coalition government, McVeigh stepped in to make a change to the speech. So even the words that the man said to announce the dissolution of his own government, that speech was written by the Americans, as of course was the decision to dissolve the government. Over the next several years, each of the frequent changes of prime minister came about only after considerable American input, if not outright demand. One example of the latter occurred in 1950 when then American ambassador Henry Grady sent a letter to prime minister Venice laws threatening to cut off US aid if he failed to carry out a government reorganization. Same thing that they were doing in Italy.

Remember when they they they use aid as a as a as an extortion tool, as an instrument of extortion. They'll give you aid so that they can threaten to cut off the aid. They give you support so that they can threaten to cut off that support. They give the aid for the purpose of creating a dependency which they can then use to manipulate and extort you. Venice laws was compelled to step down, obviously.

The American influence was felt in regard to other high positions in Greek society as well. Andreas Pappandro, I'm not sure how I'm pronouncing that, excuse me, later to become prime minister himself, has written of this period that, quote, cabinet members and army generals, political party leaders, and members of the establishment all made open references to American wishes or American views in order to justify or to account for their own actions or positions. In other words, anything and everything that they did, they would say, the Americans told us to do it. Before undertaking a new crackdown on dissidents in July 1947, Greek authorities first approached ambassador McVeigh. The ambassador informed them that the US government would have no objection to preventative measures if they were considered necessary.

Reassured, the Greeks went ahead and rounded up 4,000 people in one week. An example of what could land a Greek citizen in prison is the case of the EAM member who received an eighteen month sentence for printing remarks deemed insulting to Dwight Griswold. He had referred to the American as quote, the official representative of a foreign country, which is exactly what he was. In the economic sphere, Andreas Papandrew noted, The United States exercised almost dictatorial control during the early nineteen fifties requiring that the signature of the chief of the US economic mission appear alongside that of the Greek minister of coordination on any important documents. So this is Greek Greek at this point is a colony of The United States and everything needs to be signed off upon by an American official.

And the Americans are the ones who are giving the orders. They're running the military and they're running the government. Earlier American management of the economy may have been even tighter. A memorandum from Athens dated September I'm sorry, dated 11/17/1947 from the American Mission to Aid Greece to the State Department in Washington read in part, quote, we have established practical control over national budget, taxation, currency issuance, price and wage policies, and state economic planning, as well as over imports and exports, the issuance of foreign currency, and the direction of military reconstruction and relief expenditures. Well, that covers everything.

So as of November 1947, every aspect of the Greek economy was under the control of The United States, which would later then be transferred over to the IMF as is very well explained by Ioannis Verfakis, the former Greek finance minister. There was moreover the creation of a new internal security agency because of course there was, Named and modeled after the CIA because of course it was, KYP in Greek. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere including systematic torture because of course they were. By the early nineteen fifties, Greece had been molded into a supremely reliable ally slash client of The United States. It was staunchly anti communist and well integrated into the NATO system.

It sent troops to Korea to support The United States pretense that it was not simply an American war. It is safe to say that had the left come to power, Greece would have been much more independent of The United States. Greece would likely have been independent as well of the Soviet Union to whom the Greek left owed nothing. Like Yugoslavia, which is also free of a common border with the USSR, Greece would have been friendly towards the Russians but independent. When in 1964, there came to power in Greece, a government which entertained the novel idea that Greece was a sovereign nation, The United States and its Greek cohorts, as we shall see, quickly and effectively stamped out that heresy.

Okay. That's the end of chapter three. So we're now going to be on page 58. We'll start on page 58, the next reading, Insha'Allah. I don't have a lot of commentary on this one.

Think most of it really speaks for itself. It's just I'll re emphasize here the importance, the immense importance of understanding this history. You must understand this history. This gives you a level of sort of intellectual experience, if not lived experience. You have the intellectual experience of having witnessed as if you've lived much much longer than you actually have lived.

When you know the history, when you've learned the history, it's as if you're much much older than you are because you have knowledge of things that happened before your lifetime and in places that you've never been. You're you're able to learn about the behavior, the policies, the tactics, the strategies that The United States has used time and time and time again. And in fact that they've never stopped using, that they continue that they are that they have continuously used over the decades and are using right now. And that enables you to recognize when it's happening because it is happening. And you can see even the fact that there is no real partition between 1947 in Greece and 2024 in Greece.

There's no partition between there. That this is one continuous experience of American domination and the same in Italy and the same in any of these countries except for when and where we see that there actually has been a genuine independent movement and a genuine decolonization movement that has succeeded. But when and where those have succeeded, then of course we will see examples of American attempts to interfere, attempts to undermine, attempts to subvert, attempts by the Americans to sabotage any successful independence movement, any successful attempt by any country anywhere to wrestle control over its own policy, to wrestle its own autonomy from the grip of The United States. As I've said before, we've seen we see that with all of the countries of BRICS. There isn't a country in BRICS and there isn't a country, for example, I've talked about this before, there isn't a country that is part of the Belt and Road Initiative of China.

There isn't a single country that hasn't experienced so called protest movements. Sometimes very disruptive protest movements, very often that come along with a chance for overthrowing the government. Governments where states that are part of the Belt and Road Initiative or states that are part of BRICS, those are being highly targeted and nonstop, continuously targeted by The United States with interference and subversion. And we're we're by going through this book, you start to see the methods that they use, the tactics that they use, and then you can see it when it's playing out before your eyes today. And when you have that context, when you have that historical context, you you have that historical knowledge, then you won't make the mistake of thinking that this isn't what it appears to be.

In other words, you will recognize that this is Western, this is American interference. That's exactly what it is. You won't make the mistake of thinking that it's some kind of a conspiracy theory to think that this is somehow American interference because it's far more of a conspiracy theory for you to believe. It's much more unbelievable. It's much more far fetched and fantastical for you to believe that somehow, America isn't doing right now, what they've done, everywhere always.

That somehow magically America has completely changed, and they have no interest, for example, in what happens in Bangladesh and whether the government changes or doesn't change in Bangladesh. They're impartial about it. They're indifferent about it. Or they're they're impartial and indifferent about which way the government goes in South Africa, or in Kenya, or in Rwanda, or in Indonesia, or in Malaysia, or anywhere else. There's no such thing as America being indifferent about which way a government goes.

There's no such thing as America being indifferent about which way a society goes or which way a state goes. So when you when you're aware of that and you know how they behaved, then like I said, you can recognize it when they're doing it today and they are doing it today. And if you don't recognize it, then they will get away with it. But if you recognize it, then you might be able to stop it from happening by making sure that you yourself, if you're from one of those countries that's being targeted by The United States, you can try to make sure that your own people, your own family and friends and colleagues and so forth are aware that what they're witnessing in their country is very likely and almost undoubtedly American interference and subversion, and propaganda and indoctrination and black PR to try to control the opinion of the population and mislead you. I mean, I think that the intensity and the diffusion of propaganda is higher now than it has ever been in history because of social media, because of the Internet, and because there are so many fake news organizations, news websites, news outlets and so forth.

It's so easy for intelligence organizations, intelligence agencies and so on. They can set up a news site, a so called news site that makes you think or or a Telegram account or a YouTube channel or a Twitter account or so on, that's purportedly giving you news from the ground, from this, that, or the other country. You think that the person, you know, who who has a picture of themselves on their profile picture with a balaclava and they're claiming themselves to be, you know, proudly Muslim or what have you, proudly resistance, proudly pro Palestinian, or this and that and the other, and you think that they're providing you news from the ground. You think that they're sitting somewhere in Amman. You You think that they're sitting somewhere in Cairo.

You think that they're sitting somewhere in Jakarta. You think they're sitting somewhere in Dhaka. You know? But actually, that person is sitting in the basement of a building somewhere in Washington DC. And it may be all even the same person.

It's very easy to do now. It's much easier to do now and to spread that propaganda all around the world in seconds, instantaneously. So again, I'll just repeat. So you have to be aware of what America has done in the past and how they've done it so that you can recognize it when it's being done to you. We'll start with chapter four inshallah tomorrow, and that's going to be about The Philippines, nineteen forties to nineteen fifties, America's oldest comedy.