NIKOS BELOYANNIS, The Man with the Carnation: Always alive in the hearts and consciousness of the people

By Nikos Mottas.

It was in the dawn of Sunday 30th March 1952 when his heart stopped beating. The bullets of the firing squad gave an end to the lifes of the KKE Central Committee member Nikos Beloyannis and three of his comrades- Dimitris Batsis, Elias Argyriadis and Nikos Kaloumenos. The execution- murder- of Beloyannis was a crime of the then bourgeois Greek government of Nikolaos Plastiras and the U.S. imperialists.

Beloyannis, who is known as "the man with the carnation", was a cadre of the - then illegal- Communist Party of Greece (KKE). He and his comrades had waged an unwavering struggle against foreign imperialism and its local allies. For his political activity and ideological beliefs he was arrested, tried and executed.

“We believe in the most correct theory which has been conceived by the most progressive minds of humanity. And our effort, our struggle, is that this theory becomes a reality in Greece and the entire world (…) We love Greece and its people more than our accusers (…) Precisely because we struggle so that our country will see better days, without hunger and war (…) and when it is necessary, we sacrifice our lives.”  

- Nikos Belogiannis, abstract of his defense speech at the military tribunal.

Dimitris Koutsoumbas: Who has benefited from the EU, the people or the monopolies?

In his article published in the Greek newspaper "Naftemporiki", the General Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) Dimitris Koutsoumbas writes on the 60 years since the foundation of the EEC/EU (Treaty of Rome):

"The anniversary of the 60 years since the foundation of the EEC and later of the EU is celebrated by her founders, the capitalist member-states, the monopolies of the european states. Because the EU is their own creation for their own interests. It is not celebrated by the people of her member-states, because the EU has never been, is not nor can become people's EU. 

Vile anticommunism from SYRIZA's daily "Avgi"

The true face of social democracy's anticommunism is expressed through the pages of SYRIZA's daily newspaper, known as "I Avgi" (The Dawn). In a recent article, under the title "A tragic page of european history", the newspaper actually adopts the vile anticommunist-antisoviet imperialist propaganda regarding the so-called "Katyn massacre". 

Regarding this unhistorical and provocative article, KKE's daily "Rizospastis" points out that:

"The whole goebbelist propaganda about the murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Nazis at Katyn forest in 1941 (which was attributed to the USSR by the crumbling Nazi Germany in 1943) is, once again, adopted by "Avgi" and her known anticommunist "stalinologist" article writer Vlasis Agtzidis. The article reproduces one of the most characteristic products of History's counterfeiting during the counter-revolution period of Gorbachev and Yeltsin in the USSR, in 1991-92, when the notorious document of the 5th March 1940 appeared, according to which Stalin supposedly gave his permission for the slaughtering of the Polish officials.

KKE: Statement on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Press Office of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) issued the following statement:

"Fifty-one years after the proclamation by the UN, with the decisive contribution of the Soviet Union, of the 21^st of March as the International Day against Racial Discrimination, the capitalist world, in the USA, the EU, in Greece, is showing more and more clearly its inhuman character against refugees and immigrants, to the victims of imperialist wars and capitalist exploitation.

The intervention of KNE at the 13th Meeting of European Communist Youth Organizations

Below is the full text of the intervention of the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) at the 13th Meeting of European Communist Youth Organizations which was held in Istanbul, Turkey on 24-26 February 2017. 

Dear comrades,

We greet all the organizations participating in the 13th Meeting of European Communist Youth Organizations. We would especially like to thank our comrades from the Communist Youth of Turkey that gave their best to host this meeting, under the difficult conditions in which they fight in their country.

"Enough! It's time for uprising" - KKE calls for people's struggle against new measures

"Another agreement - Another looting. Enough is enough! It's time for an uprising!". With this slogan the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) organises a broad campaign within the country's working people thus calling them to organize their struggle against the new pack of measures that the SYRIZA-ANEL government is negotiating with the creditors. 

A KKE pamphlet writes among other things (translation from Greek):

"A WALL OF PEOPLE'S RESISTANCE AND COUNTER-ATTACK must be built against the new package of measures that the SYRIZA-ANEL government is negotiating with the EU and the IMF. 

The new agreement will escalate the attack against the working people, the self-employed people, the pensioners, against all people. 

KKE: Women's liberation is connected with the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism

With a political and cultural event held at the Party's headquarters in Perissos, Athens on Saturday evening, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) honoured the International Women's Day (8th March). 

Hundreds of women and men of all ages attended the event which had the slogan "With the KKE in the struggle for the equality and the contemporary needs of woman".

The major speaker at the event was the General Secretary of the CC of the KKE Dimitris Koutsoumbas. Secretary Koutsoumbas hailed the 8th of March as a "milestone day for the participation of women in the struggle for the equal rights between men and women in labour, education and social life". 

In his address, the KKE GS said that during the 100 years of the KKE there are numerous examples of communist women who have demonstrated extraordinary heroism in their activity. 

THESES OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE FOR THE 20th CONGRESS OF THE KKE (Full Text)

THESES OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE FOR THE 20th CONGRESS OF THE KKE

PROLOGUE

The Central Committee of the KKE publishes its Theses for the 20th Congress of the KKE, which will be held from the 30th of March to the 2nd of April 2017, four years after the 19th Congress, in line with our Statutes.

From the 19th Congress we have a new programme that expresses the elaborated strategy of the party for workers' power, socialism, and provides directions for the leading activity of the party under all conditions.

The Programme that was adopted by the 19th Congress of the KKE and the Congress decisions as a whole have met with  mass acceptance inside the party and KNE, and also amongst the supporters and friends of the party, more broadly amongst working class and popular forces in Greek society. This acceptance is borne out in practise by the significant activity developed by the Party and KNE on the basis of the decisions of the 19th Congress.

Despite all this, this deep agreement with our decisions, as well as the work developed in all the party's fields of activity in the framework of the efforts to implement these decisions, does not lead us to complacency, self-satisfaction, and even more so to a lack of concern about the weaknesses, deficiencies and about how and to what extent the Programme and Statutes have been understood and are best served by our activity.

Communists in Greece and Turkey denounce nationalist "cockfights" over the Aegean

Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos and Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu
have been engaged in a warfare of nationalist and provocative statements over the Aegean.

Ankara and Athens resurrect old nationalist tension, writes soL international:

"Greece will do everything to prevent Turkey from getting to its territory", Greek Minister of National Defense Panos Kammenos said Sunday, adding that Greece is ready to rebuff Ankara in a case of any provocation. After his statement, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu called the Greek minister "a spoiled child". 

Massive rallies in Greece: Thousands of people demonstrated against government-EU policies

With militant rallies in Athens, Thessaloniki and other Greek cities, thousands of workers, pensioners and young people gave their powerful response to the antipeople policies of the SYRIZA-ANEL government and the EU.

Headed by the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME), numerous trade unions from the public and private sector, mass organizations, people's committees, self-employed associations, the Federation of Greek Women, the Students' Struggle Front, student unions expressed their their determination to fight against the new measures which come as a result of the so-called Eurogroup's "evaluation" and which will be added to those which have led the country's working class to poverty and misery.

KKE: People’s struggle for a united Cyprus without guarantors and protectors

Source: inter.kke.gr.

The Party Organization of the KKE in Cyprus held on Saturday the 11^th of February a meeting in Lefkosia (Nicosia), Cyprus with as its theme the positions of the KKE on the Cyprus issue. Giorgos Marinos, member of the PB of the CC of the KKE, spoke at the meeting.

His speech was as follows:

“The KKE is preparing for the 20^th Congress which will be held between 30^th of March and 2^nd of April and there is an ongoing creative dialogue- on the basis of the theses of the CC- in which members and friends are participating, a large number of working people.

The major objective of the Theses of the CC and the final decisions of the Congress is the all-round ideological-political-organizational steeling of the KKE and its Youth, as a Party of revolutionary overthrow. This steeling is a necessary precondition in order to carry out the complex tasks of the labour movement's recasting, the struggle against imperialist war, the building of social alliance towards an anticapitalist, antimonopoly direction aimed at workers' power.

PAME strongly denounces ETUC for attempting to exploit class Trade Union movement

Snapshot from the article on "equaltimes.org"
where the altered photo from PAME's rally
was used (click to enlarge).

Source: All-Workers Militant Front (PAME).

In article for Greece, published in its e-magazine, ETUC attempts to take credit for the struggles of the Greek, Class Oriented, trade union movement, by using photo from demonstration of PAME!!!

The ETUC, this notorious part of ITUC in Europe, which acts as the right hand of the employers and the European Union, has played an extremely dirty role in the imposition of the memoranda and the antiworkers’ policies of the EU in Greece, raised the level of its lies and hypocrisy.

Though the ETUC has 2 affiliate unions in Greece (GSEE and ADEDY), which have co-signed the wage cuts and attack on workers’ rights in Greece, the ETUC attempts to falsely take credit for the great struggles of the Greek workers, in which has played vanguard role the class oriented trade union movement of Greece, PAME, WFTU affiliate, and opposition to the ETUC’s aims.

The All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) calls for nationwide rallies in Greece on February 21st

The All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) calls workers, unemployed people, self-employed workers, the youth and women to participate in the nationwide rallies on February 21st, in order to give their own answer to the antipeople policy of the SYRIZA-ANEL government. 

Having as a slogan "No fear, no compliance. Struggle for labor with rights. Life with dignity", PAME calls the working people and the country's popular strata to give a powerful response to the new antipeople measures of the government and Troika and to assert the cancellation of the antiworker laws.

Greece's farmers converge in Athens to protest against government-EU policies

After 22 days in road blockades, small farmers are going to give a powerful response to the provocative intransigence of the government which has ignored their rightful demands. 

After a decision by the national committee coordinating the farmers’ protests, a large rally is scheduled to take place in Athens today as a way of pressure towards the government. Already, since the early hours of Tuesday, thousands of workers with their tractors and pick-up tracks, from all over Greece, began their route towards the Greek capital.

KKE slams PM Tsipras for visiting Ukraine

With a statement the Press Office of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) denounces the recent visit of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Ukraine. More specifically, the statement says:

"Prime Minister Al. Tsipras choosed to visit Ukraine in a period when a regime has been imposed in this country through coup actions, with the support of the US, EU, NATO and with the utilization even of fascist groups. 

The visit coincided with the new sharpening (of the situation) in Southeast Ukraine, with the outbreak of a new bloodshed, under the primary responsibility of the current president P.Poroshenko and his reactionary government. He (Tsipras) visited Ukraine when the parody-trial for the prohibition of the Communist Party of Ukraine is in process, when soviet and antifascist monuments are taken down and the collaborators of the nazis are extolled to the youth as "patriots".

The nature of SYRIZA and why it is supported by the bourgeoisie

Photo credit: IDC.

Source: Rizospastis / Translation: In Defense of Communism.

The identification of SYRIZA's political positioning requires first of all the clarification of the relationship between bourgeois politics and the opportunist (political) stream. In respect to its class substance, the opportunist political line is a bourgeois political line, but as it is manifested within the lines of the labour movement. While it is a policy which supports the strategic objectives of the capital in economy and politics, it appears with a socialist cloak and slogans. The fact that the opportunist perceptions objectively have a common "core" with the bourgeois ideology and politics is expressed both in the occasional convergences between opportunist and bourgeois parties as well as in the convertion of opportunist parties into parties of bourgeois governance, especially in times when this is necessary of capitalism.

When an opportunist party is called to manage the general interests of the bourgeois class from governmental posts, then it de facto becomes subject to a series of political, ideological and organisational adjustments that are characterized by the retreat of its opportunist elements and references without, of course, meaning that these do not continue to be utilized for the entrapment of popular forces in the bourgeois pursuits.

KKE: Greek and Turkish workers must fight together against the bourgeois classes

The Press Office of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) issued a statement regarding yesterday's violation of the Greek maritime borders by Turkish warships. More specifically, the statement says:

"The KKE denounces the violation of  the Greek maritime borders, in the area of Imia, by Turkish warships in the presence of the heads of the Turkish armed forces, which took place on Sunday 29th of January.

This action- 21 years after the Imia crisis- consists a dangerous development added to the successive violations of the Greek air and maritime space, the challenging of the Treaty of Lausanne which defines the Greek-Turkish borders, the threats which Ankara fired recently, after the decision of the Supreme Court for the non-extradition of the 8 Turkish military officers who asked for protection-asylum in our country.

SYRIZA: Capitalism's social democratic servant

By Nikos Mottas*.

The 25^th of January marked the two years since SYRIZA's electoral victory. During these two years the political deception of SYRIZA and Alexis Tsipras was fully exposed. The promises of the “left-wing” SYRIZA- about the supposed “tearing” of the memorandums, the end of austerity, the abolition of unjust taxation, the incrase of wages and pensions- were proved a colossal piece of political knavery. During the last two years, the government of Alexis Tsipras was proved an excellent implementer of capital's anti-people policy, thus walking on the steps of its predecessors, the governments of New Democracy and PASOK.

Since January 2015 and its electoral triumph, the “left-wing” SYRIZA, in governmental alliance with the right-wing, nationalist party “ANEL”, managed to sign and vote a 3^rd memorandum of austerity with even harder measures than the previous two; to pass hundreds of harsh anti-people, anti-workers laws; to demolish pension rights; to impose additional heavy taxation to the popular strata; to proceed to further privatizations of state property; to attack social security rights through supposed “reforms” which demolishes whatever has remained from the workers'-people's rights.

Solidarity with Greece's small farmers in their struggle against the SYRIZA and EU policies

Small farmers in Greece are back on the roads again. With their tractors of work and struggle, on the roadblocks, in order to survive. They are struggling, tooth and nail, in order to keep their fields and animals, so that their remain in their villages, so that we can sustain our families through our work in a decent way.

The struggle is inevitable for poor farmers. If they don’t struggle, they will be driven off their land, if they do not resist, they will be throwed on the bonfire of unemployment and destitution. 

Farmers from Tyrnavos, Central Greece, set the first blockade on Monday noon, while farmers from Karditsa, Trikala, Farsala, Larisa have scheduled to go out on the streets on Thursday. The protests and the blockades are to take place from South on the island of Crete and Peloponnese to the North in Central and East Macedonia and from East mainland like Magnisia to the West like Aitoloakarnania and Epirus.

KKE: The Greek people must denounce and isolate the Nazi thugs of Golden Dawn

On the 17th of January 2017, thugs from the neo-Nazi party of “Golden Dawn”, at a time when the trial concerning the murderous activity of this fascist organization is continuing, gathered outside a school in one of the working class neighbourhoods of Piraeus. They intended to prevent the children of the refugees from attending the primary school. 

Α group of about 20 members of the neo-Nazi party headed by Golden Dawn MP Yannis Lagos started quarreling intensely with parents and teachers ahead of the parents’ meeting which was expected to decide on whether to allow 22 child refugees to attend the school. The meeting was held with the participation of the mayor of Perama, the teachers and the parents.