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Panayiotis Lafazanis, the parliamentary spokesman for SYRIZA, told us that his bloc wouldn’t seek to remove Greece from the EU if it wins the parliamentary election this Sunday, but would press ahead with scrapping austerity measure, saying, “SYRIZA isn’t advocating that we quit the Eurozone or the EU. SYRIZA is proposing a plan on how to restore and reorganise the country, cancel the Memorandum [of Economic and Financial Policies] and the austerity policy, take leave of the troika of lenders, and follow through on a programme to fight the poverty that came because of the Memorandum, and, of course, to write off a bigger chunk of [national] debt. These are our priorities and we’re going to deliver on our agenda”.
Greece will vote in a snap election on 25 January. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras called the vote after the Hellenic Parliament rejected his candidate for President three times. Lafazanis said, “It’d do a lot of good to Greece, the entire region, and Europe. I believe that a SYRIZA victory would be a turning point for our country… it may also trigger a domino effect within the entire Euro space”. Speaking on Greek membership in the NATO military bloc, Lafazanis said that SYRIZA aimed to “free the country from neo-colonial shackles”. The anti-bailout SYRIZA bloc, or Coalition of the Radical Left, won a resounding victory over Samaras’s neoliberal New Democracy party in the European Parliament elections in May 2014, grabbing more than 26 percent of votes and sending six deputies to the European Parliament.
Lafazanis also said that SYRIZA would put an end to privatising ports and railroads, if it won the upcoming election, noting, “SYRIZA would stop the programme of privatisation and ‘extrusion’ of property out of the country. This is definite. Where ports are concerned, we won’t allow [privatisation]. This applies to all ports and, certainly, to the railroads”. Russian Railways is amongst those bidding on privatisation of a railroad network and port facilities in Thessaloniki. Lafazanis said, “We’d reorganise Greek railroads in a new enterprise, therefore, stopping their transformation, and they’d remain a state-run company”. Lafazanis also expressed his confidence that SYRIZA would gain the majority in the upcoming January 25 parliamentary election.
SYRIZA, a leftist and adamantly Eurosceptic bloc, is Greece’s second-largest political party. The latest pre-election polls showed SYRIZA having a lead over incumbent Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ neoliberal centre-right New Democracy party of over 3 percentage points.
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On Monday, Panayiotis Lafazanis, a leader of the Greek left-wing coalition SYRIZA, told us that EU sanctions against Russia are causing substantial damage to peace and stability throughout Europe, saying, “The EU policy of sanctions against Russia is very bad policy. This policy causes significant damage to Russian-European relations, damaging peace and stability throughout Europe. We don’t agree with imposing sanctions against Russia. We want good relations with Russia. A leftist government, should it come to power in Greece after the election, would try to improve ties with Russia. Absolutely nothing divides the people of Greece and the people of Russia. Greece and Russia have no problems that divide us. Good connections are the only way for our two nations and two states, and improving bilateral ties would help Greece, Russia, and, most certainly, all of Europe, the EU as a whole”.
Following Crimea’s reunification with Russia, the EU imposed several rounds of sanctions against Moscow. In August, Russia responded by introducing a one-year ban on imports of a number of food products from countries that imposed sanctions against it.
19 January 2015
Sputnik International
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150119/1017082349.html
http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150119/1017083814.html
Editor:
Even if SYRIZA wins in the election, the USA is a ravening aggressor. Look at Arbenz in Honduras, Allende in Chile, Lumumba in the Congo, Mossadegh in Iran, Diệm in the Republic of Vietnam, Gaddafi in Libya, Saddam in Iraq, and Milošević in Serbia… the USA didn’t scruple at toppling governments that they hated. They tried to topple Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Iran… but failed.
Look at 1948… the CIA toppled Ecumenical Patriarch Maximos Vaportzis (a leftist socialist) and replaced him with the lickspittle American bishop Athenagoras Spyrou. In the previous year, Winston Churchill gulled Harry Truman… he convinced him that Greece was about to fall to leftist rebels, mislabelling them “communists”. Truman was a naïf in foreign affairs, so, Churchill deceived him into the Cold War. Many Russians believe that the Berlin Crisis was a direct outgrowth of Russian fears of Western encirclement and attack, stimulated by Western military intervention in Greece against the native leftists. The Berlin Crisis broke out in June 1948, after Truman upped the ante in Greece in February 1947, at Churchill’s urging. The CIA toppling of Patriarch Maximos occurred in October 1948… after the Berlin Crisis occurred… one could see that it was an American move in the Grand Game. By the way, both Maximos and Athenagoras died in 1972… some “poor health!”
Therefore, even if SYRIZA wins, it’s not out of the woods. The USA has a history of aggression, starting with its wars of conquest against Native Americans (how many broken treaties were there?) and its war against Mexico to steal Tejas and Northwestern Mexico. They’d best keep their wits about them… there are many pro-American neoliberal quislings in Greece.
BMD
Junta Forces Attempted Massive Attack on Donetsk Airport
Tags: civil unrest, DNR, Donetsk, Donetsk International Airport, Donetsk People's Republic, Novorossiya, political commentary, politics, Russia, Russian, Ukraine, Ukrainian Civil War, war and conflict
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Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the DNR Defence Ministry, said that junta forces attempted a massive attack against Donetsk Airport, shelling it with Grad and Uragan multiple rocket systems, saying, “Over the past day, our forces repelled massive attacks against the Donetsk Airport launched by Ukrainian troops on direct instructions from the Ukrainian President. They used large-calibre artillery and aircraft. We stopped Ukrainian armour that tried to storm us at a distance, and mostly destroyed it”. The general ratio of losses sustained by DNR forces as compared to junta troops is ten to one. Basurin said, “In the course of defensive operations, our forces destroyed 27 tanks and 20 armoured vehicles, and captured one tank. Ukrainian losses exceeded 200 killed and about 300 wounded. Our losses stand at 16 killed and 62 wounded. The airport and the areas around it are under the full control of DNR forces. At the moment, our forces are conducting a security sweep in Peski, close to the airport, from where Ukrainian artillery had shelled Donetsk residential areas and suburbs for the past few months”.
19 January 2015
ITAR-TASS
http://itar-tass.com/en/world/772000
Editor:
The junta forces obviously used frontal bulldozer tactics and paid the cost. Ignorant Galician Uniate fanatics with no real military training and discipline lead them. Ergo, the butcher’s bill is tremendous. As I say, look at the bright side… the Uniate fanatic trash are dying on the battlefield. It looks as though the Uniates learned nothing from their previous encounters with the patriot forces. “Slava Ukraina!”… well, let them scream that… it’s the last thing that they say before the Russians send them to their reward…
BMD