D'ETAT IN GREECE
The April 21 coup d'état in Athens has cast a pall over all of Europe. Barely three years after emerging from two decades of harsh military dictatorship, the most reactionary forces in the country, mobilized around the throne and backed by the financial and military might of the United States, have again seized power.
Ruling under decree law, with troops patrolling the streets and jet planes buzzing the cities, the generals are rapidly putting Greece back into the straitjacket.
During the night troops occupied strategic points in the city and circled the palace. Tanks took over the airport, the central post office, and all radio and communications buildings. Flights out of Athens were cancelled.
At dawn, a decree, said to have been signed by King Constantine (although this has been disputed by some), was read over the radio suspending certain provisions of the constitution.
Four of these provisions bar arbitrary arrests. One of them guarantees the right of peaceful assembly.
Article 14, annulled by the conspirators, guarantees the right of every individual to express his thoughts orally, in writing or in the press. The same article guarantees freedom of the press and bans censorship or any other measure restricting free thought.
Article 18 prohibits torture, the total confiscation of one's possessions; and abolishes the death penalty.
Article 20 guarantees the inviolability of correspondence.
Article 97 bars the military from trying civilians before war tribunals.
From this list, it is completely clear what the generals have in mind. They are prepared to submit Greece to a blood bath, if necessary, to consolidate their coup d'état.
By noon, a curfew was announced, and the troops were given orders to shoot on sight anyone caught in the streets after sundown. Martial law was proclaimed in the border regions, particularly near the Turkish frontier.
On the evening of April 21, King Constantine swore in one of the chief plotters as the head of the new regime. This was Constantine Kolias, a former prosecuting attorney and one of the country's most notorious ultrarightists. The new prime minister said over the radio that the country had been at the "brink of catastrophe" due to the probable results of the elections which had been scheduled for May 28.
During the night machine-gun fire was heard in the streets and three persons were said to have been killed.
Reports began filtering abroad that at least 2,000 persons had been arrested, all the leaders of the bourgeois democratic and leftist parties being caught in the raids staged by the political police.
The athens radio announced new decrees permitting the arrest of anyone, without a warrant, and without any time limit on how long a person might be held without charges.
If political dissidence is involved, he cannot be released on bail and he can be detained indefinitely.
Anyone, no matter what his position, can be tried by special military tribunals or commissions.
All meetings whatsoever are banned and if held are to be at once dispersed by force.
Any kind of organization with tradeunion aims is absolutely banned. Strikes are illegal. Searches can be made at any time in homes night or day without any restriction. All radio and television communiques must be submitted for clearance in advance by the censorship.
Correspondence, no matter what its nature, comes under the censorship decree.
Military tribunals are to try all infractions of the above decrees.
The witch-hunt gathered momentum within hours. The April 25 Paris daily
Le Monde reported that the army itself was being purged.
A group of foreign correspondents, who pooled the information they had gathered, reported 8,000 arrests had been made within three days. In addition, the police were hunting for another 2,000 or 4,000 in hiding.
"Me internment camps," said Le Monde, "have been hastily fixed up to receive thousands of prisoners. Upon their arrival from Vienna, members of the Austrian national soccer team reported that they found the big Karaiskakis stadium covered with tents sheltering hundreds of internees. Agence France-Presse said that in Athens the Phalere hippodrome and soccer stadiums had been transformed | into temporary prisons guarded by troops.'
According to United Press, about, 500 persons had been shipped from Piraeus April 23 to the island prison of Youra in the Aegean Sea.
This was the concentration camp. that gained fearsome notoriety under the dictator Metaxas, again during the Nazi occupation, and in the decades following World War II when British and American troops smashed the Greek freedom fighters, paved the way for the destruction of the republic and the restoration of the hated monarchy, all as part of the Truman Doctrine of "containing communism."
Hundreds of victims of the new dictatorship have also been sent to the desert island of Gavros.
How was it possible for the gen-
erals to take over in the dead of night
in this way, after the electoral break-
through February 16, 1964?
The reason is simple. The leaders
of the working class blocked the masses
from taking the revolutionary road to
socialism.
In the summer of 1965, the masses
poured into the streets of Athens and
other cities in giant demonstrations that
could easily have swept away the hated
monarchy and its entourage of verminous
generals whose first concern is to please
the U.S. State Department and the Penta-
gon.
But the working-class leaders,
particularly those under the influence of
the Communist party, deliberately re-
strained the people, got them off the
streets or diverted their energy into
harmless channels.
They took the course of following
George Papandreou, a wily bourgeois poli-
tician whose role was to serve as the
stabilizing democratic tail to the mon-
archical kite.
The great mass upsurge of 1965 was
successfully derailed.
The reactionaries in Greece uti-
lized the breathing spell to good advan-
tage. Step by step, they prepared the
ground for a deadly thrust at the whole
popular tendency toward democracy. With
the eyes of the masses turned toward the
May 28 elections, the time was propitious
to bring down the uplifted dagger.
WESTMORELAND MOUNTS "OPERATION RESCUE" FOR JOHNSON ON HOME FRONT
By Les Evans
New York
General William C. Westmoreland, American commander in Vietnam, invaded the political front at home this week with a series of speeches in full dress uniform before newspaper publishers, Congress and a meeting of state governors. He is the first battle commander in American history to address Congress during a war.
What prompted this unusual move? It is Johnson's attempt to counter the tremendous demonstration of antiwar sentiment on April 15 when thé largest mass marches and rallies in the history of this country took place.
; Westmoreland made this explicit at a meeting of the American Newspaper Pub-
lishers Association on April 24 in New
York. He declared that U.S. troops in
Vietnam were "dismayed, and so was I, by
recent unpatriotic acts here at home."
He went on to say that "both. here
and abroad" the National Liberation Front
and north Vietnam -- to him they are "the
enemy" -- have "gained support which gives
him hope that he can win politically that
which he cannot accomplish militarily."
Even more significant than this
curious admission was the fact that the
general in command, directly under John-
son, was called in to offer a political
defense of the administration's course.
Normally in American politics this would
be expected from the president, who pre-
sumably is the one bearing political
responsibility.
A general replaces the civilian president in defending the central question of the day facing American imperialism! Fresh from the slaughter he has been directing, in his medals and ribbons, the grim general cast a long shadow ahead in the field of American politics.
Johnson's need to bring in a general is a damning admission of political weakness: If nobody would believe Johnson, perhaps they might believe General Westmoreland!
But the effort to provide a plausible political response to the massive April 15 demonstrations through Westmoreland's "tour" has been something less than a resounding success.
The day after Westmoreland's speech there was an outburst of criticism in the U.S.Senate aimed both at the new escalation of the war and at the general's implied threat to the right of dissent.
At least eight senators attacked administration policy in the sharpest terms to date. As men with their fingers on the political pulse of the country they were obviously not unaware of the Significance of the hundreds of thousands who turned out April 15 and the millions who agreed with then.
The mounting antiwar pressure left them no recourse, as they saw it, but to sharpen their criticism and thus increase the pressure on the Johnson administration.
Their criticisms, of course, are strictly limited, being of a purely tactical nature. This was spelled out ina blunt way by Senator George McGovern, a Democrat. He said:
"No Senator is suggesting that we pull out of Vietnam. Not a single Senator has suggested that."
Unhappy as they are with the dangerous course being followed by Johnson, they are still more fearful of the potential in the antiwar movement and will do their utmost to dissipate it into harmless channels ~- not without profit to their own political fortunes, of course. The influential New York Times has also responded in its way to the giant April 15 marches and is sharpening the tone of its criticisms of the war. The Times reflects increased worry among a sector of the ruling class who see the conflict in Vietnam growing more and more dangerous.
The chief fear in ruling circles is a counterescalation by China and the Soviet Union in behalf of Vietnam. This was articulated in the Senate by Robert Kennedy and George McGovern on April 25. Kennedy declared:
"As surely as we are standing ‘here, the Soviet Union, Communist China and North Vietnam will have to react to what we have done by acting themselves."
Even more explicit was McGovern's statement that: "...our bombing of the North Vietnamese airfields has brought us one step closer to World War III involving the limitless legions of China backed by the enormous firepower of Soviet Russia."
In the guise of friendly advice, even some supporters of the war are be-~ ginning to express concern over Johnson's endless escalation and the use of military brass like Westmoreland to attempt to intimidate dissent at home.
Senator Thruston Morton, an erstwhile defender of Johnson's policy, felt compelled to respond to Westmoreland's remarks with the following blast in the Senate on April 27:
"Those who would decry ‘unpatriotic acts at home' during a period of bloody conflict abroad, without differentiating between flag burners, draft card burners, peaceful demonstrators and United States Senators exercising their responsible rights of dissent, only add fuel to the fires of irresponsible opposition that continue to plague present Administration policies."
What is Johnson's response to all of this? It is plain that he is not backing down, but furthering the escalation. He has decided to stake his political fortunes on a desperate gamble.
Last week he ordered Hanoi and Haiphong heavily bombed. Airfields in north Vietnam were struck. Johnson has acted in favor of the Pentagon's demand for an additional 50,000 U.S. troops to go to Vietnam in the next few months. This will put the total over 480,000. Another $6 billion a year will be used to pay for the escalation, raising the outlay on the war to $30-26 billion a year.
Johnson's present position is becoming more and more difficult. The onus of the imperialist war has deeply undermined his standing.
Elected president in 1964 with the biggest majority in American history, he now faces the prospect of setting another record in 1968 by being the first president in American history to fail to be elected to a second term in time of war.
In this situation, Johnson has decided to take a plunge, staking all or
nothing on a military victory before the 1968 election campaign opens. With that he could campaign as both a victor and a peacemaker.
What he would give to the Vietnamese would be the peace of the grave. His
"victory" would be genocide.
The continuation of massive demon-
strations against the war will play a big
role in deciding whether Johnson will win
or lose his murderous gamble.
PRO-JOHNSON WAR PARADE "ANSWERS" GIANT ANTIWAR RALLY IN A VERY