Greek PM Alexis Tsipras has accused Germany of using legal tricks to avoid paying Athens billions of dollars in World War 2 reparations. With Berlin saying it’s honored its obligations, Greece warns it could start seizing German property in the country.
With Germany refusing to budge from its position concerning the payment of war reparations, Greece’s Justice Minister said Wednesday that Athens could start seizing German assets.
Nikos Paraskevopoulos said he was “ready to approve” a Greek Supreme Court ruling in 2000 that would allow the appropriation of assets belonging to Germany’s archaeological school and the Goethe Institute. Proceeds from the property would be used to compensate the relatives of 218 civilians who were massacred by Nazi troops in a village in central Greece in June 1944.
"The law states that the minister must give the order for the Supreme Court ruling to be carried out.... I am ready to give that order," Paraskevopoulos told Antenna TV, AFP reported.
The issue of war reparations dating from the 1941-44 Nazi occupation of Greece is likely to increase already heightened tensions between Athens and Berlin. The two countries are already squabbling over Greek demands to renegotiate the terms of a €240 billion ($260 billion) bailout. However, with Germany showing few signs of leniency, the new left-wing Syriza government has decided to raise the issue of war reparations again with Berlin.
The issue of war reparations dating from the 1941-44 Nazi occupation of Greece is likely to increase already heightened tensions between Athens and Berlin. The two countries are already squabbling over Greek demands to renegotiate the terms of a €240 billion ($260 billion) bailout. However, with Germany showing few signs of leniency, the new left-wing Syriza government has decided to raise the issue of war reparations again with Berlin.
Central to Greece’s grievances was a loan the Nazis forced the Greek national bank to pay them of 476 million Reichsmarks, now worth roughly $12 billion. The loan was never repaid, while Greece is also seeking further reparations from Germany due to the destruction wrought upon the nation during the Nazi occupation.
"Germany has never properly paid reparations for the damage done to Greece by the Nazi occupation," Prime Minister Tsipras told the Greek parliament Tuesday. "The crimes carried out by the Nazis are still vivid, and we have a moral obligation to remember what the forces did to the country."
Tsipras says he will get a parliamentary commission to look into the matter, saying: "After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the legal and political conditions were created for this issue to be solved. But since then, German governments chose silence, legal tricks and delay.”
"And I wonder, because there is a lot of talk at the European level these days about moral issues: is this stance moral?" he said.
Germany says it paid Greece war damages of $25 million in the 1950s, equivalent to $220 million today, and also paid out 115 million Deutschmarks (a sum worth around $230 million today), to victims of Nazi crimes in the early 1960s.
Athens has said it always considered that money as only an initial payment and expected the rest of the money to be paid back following German reunification.
Iran’s foreign minister and chief negotiator in nuclear talks with the West declared victory for his country, stating that no matter how the negotiations end, Tehran has come out “the winner,” according to remarks made on Tuesday and presented in the country’s state-run press.
Javad Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister, stated in remarks before the country’s powerful Assembly of Experts, which recently installed a hardline new cleric as its leader, that the nuclear negotiations have established Tehran as a global power broker.
“We are the winner whether the [nuclear] negotiations yield results or not,” Zarif was quoted as saying before the assembly by the Tasnim News Agency. “The capital we have obtained over the years is dignity and self-esteem, a capital that could not be retaken.”
Zarif’s comments were accompanied by a host of bold military displays by Tehran in recent weeks, including the announcement of one new weapon that Iranian military leaders have described as a “very special” missile.
Meanwhile, Iran’s military continues to unveil a range of new strategic missiles and advanced weapons meant to project strength throughout the region.
Iran disclosed during military drills late in February that it is developing a missile capable of being fired from a submerged submarine. Top Iranian military leaders have described the missile as a “very special weapon,” according to IHS Jane’s, a defense industry news source.
“I believe that this weapon is a strategic weapon,”Admiral Ali Fadavi, the naval commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said on state television, according to Jane’s. “It has special characteristics.”
Fadavi declined to provide additional details about the missile. “I would like to keep this information for the future. It is a very special weapon and the Americans cannot even surmise how strong and effective this weapon is.”
On Tuesday morning, the commander of Iran’s navy previewed the unveiling of “advanced surface and subsurface vessels” that will soon be incorporated into the country’s fleet, according to the state-run Fars News Agency.
Iran has put great stock in its navy, investing significant resources to bolster the force and make it a principal player in key global shipping lanes, including around the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Oman, and the Caspian Sea.
Wall Street analyst Warren Pollock said six months ago that the “damage control (about the bad global economy) was going to start to wear off in 2015.” What are the signs the spin is wearing off? Pollock says, “Go to your super market, and that is a sign the damage control is wearing off. Prices are going up, and the quality of food is going down. The numbers of ounces on each package are going down . . . This is the damage control wearing off. A lot of people don’t have that purchasing power, and they won’t have that purchasing power in deflation or inflation. When framing an issue, why do we even frame it as inflation or deflation? Why not just talk about purchasing power? Ask our government, how come my purchasing power has gone away. Why do I have to take a seven year loan to buy a car?”
Pollock contends we are headed for a big failure and says, “For sure, and the small failures are expressing every single day, and they are absolutely noticeable if you care to notice them. . . . Look at the legislation they are passing. Look at changes to the law in terms of banking and derivatives. Before the mortgage blowup, we had changes to the bankruptcy law. Before student loans blew up, there were changes to the bankruptcy laws. Before derivatives blow up, there are changes to the law and how they are handled by the FDIC. They just did that in December. That’s predicting a coming derivatives market failure absolutely.”
“We might have a dramatic inflection point such as a nuclear reactor exploding or a war with Pakistan. That is an area where the press sort of leaked out the reality. They did this in a show called “Homeland,” and they were smacked down because they were talking about Pakistan. They were told not to talk about Pakistan.”
On the war question, Pollock says, “Absolutely, we are headed for war because there is no truth. Without truth, war is the greatest expression of failure that there can be. . . . I think we could see an inflection point this fall. You can see it in the politicking between Republicans and Democrats. You can see it in the rhetoric against ISIS. You can see it in relation to the changes in the laws in relation to the handling of derivatives. You can see it in the prices of food in your grocery store.”
Already, a scientific analysis of a massive database has found that the United States is not a democracy but only a fake-democracy, actually an “oligarchy,” more-traditionally called an “aristocracy” (as I shall be calling it in this article); and the personal story narrated here will help to explain how and why this is the way our country actually functions.
Here is the broader framework in the United States, as it operates today: The aristocracy know that the way to control the public is via the ‘news’ media; and they create, buy, and build, all of the ‘news’ media that are of any substantial size or influence. It’s the cheapest way for the aristocracy to control the government; and, besides, any aristocrat who owns a controlling interest in one ‘news’ medium can then sell to his fellow-aristocrats favorable ‘news’ coverage of his own companies and/or of the governmental policies that they seek.
For example, if, say, The New York Times slants a report in favor of a certain change in the law, which will help one of its advertisers, then that advertiser won’t merely be buying with his ad-dollars increased sales of his own products and services; he’ll also be buying increased public support for that change in the law, favoring his company in a way that will increase his profit-margin, even if sales do not increase. Consequently, control over the ‘news’ media is basically an “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” business among aristocrats: it’s not really about journalism; it is instead about selling — and, what it is mainly selling is influence. That’s influence over government, and not only influence over the sale of private products and services.
This is the way that the system actually works. Any reader who refuses to consider the possibility that this is so, should stop reading here, because what I’ll be documenting from my own experience fits into that framework, and definitely does not fit into the framework, which I have found to be mythological, of the influential ‘news’ media being authentic journalistic institutions — truth-driven, instead of public-manipulation-driven.
That, for example, is the reason why not only all of America’s major ‘news’ media, but even all of its major ‘alternative news’ media, refuse to report that the U.S. Government carried out a very bloody coup d’etat in Kiev Ukraine in February 2014 under the cover of ‘democracy demonstrations,’ and that our Government has ever since that time been carrying out (via its imposed new rabidly anti-Russian Ukrainian regime) an ethnic-cleansing campaign, which they call an ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ or ‘ATO,’ in order to exterminate and/or terrorize to expell from Ukraine the residents in the particular area of Ukraine that had voted 90% for the man whom Obama overthrew, Viktor Yanukovych. The people slaughtered there are not ‘terrorists’ but victims of a government by terror. This government routinely uses firebombs in order to slaughter the residents there. The extermination is the goal, not an unfortunate side-effect of policy.
This has, in fact, been the first time in American history when the U.S. Government has actually installed a racist-fascist, or nazi, government (one the likes of which we actually fought against in World War II), and has (along with the cooperating aristocracies in Europe) imposed an ethnic-cleansing campaign, a war to exterminate the residents in a region. And we’re doing it in Europe, in Ukraine, on Russia’s border. The U.S. aristocracy are so heavily invested, for such a long time, in overthrowing Russia’s Government, so that Ukraine is now being used by them as the proxy-state to do it. Killing, or driving into Russia, those strongly pro-Russian residents, is necessary in order for future national elections in Ukraine to retain in power the new, rabidly anti-Russian, Government, a Government that wants to join NATO and to place nuclear missiles against Russia, at Russia’s border, a veritable nuclear checkmate, more devastating for Russia even than the dozen currently existing formerly Russia-allied nations that now belong to the anti-Russian U.S. military alliance, NATO. Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, has every reason to consider the United States now to be a deadly hostile nation, because America’s aristocrats are deadly serious in this genocidal anti-Russian gambit, which is a preliminary step to destroy Russians.
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