Mrs. Merkel’s Shame – The Banker and the Nazis

EN,FR,DE

In Athens, the interim cabinet of the new Prime Minister, Lucas Papademos, was sworn in after a long dispute on Friday. For the first time since the end of the military dictatorship self-confessed right- extremists and anti-Semites belong to the so-called “government of national salvation”.  The right-extremist LAOS-party will be part of the cabinet with one minister and three vice-ministers. So, this is what it looks like, the team that is to assist Merkel and Sarkozy in pushing through their programme of blood and tears that is to be imposed for the sake of the financial markets on the Greek population.
According to the published list of cabinet members, Socialist Evangelos Venizelos remains Minister of Finance and Vice Prime Minister. Former EU-Commissioner for the Environment, Stavros Dimas from the Conservatives, becomes the new Minister of Foreign Affairs. His party colleague Dimitris Avramopoulos takes over the ministry of defence. He will be assisted by a vice-minister of the extreme Right. 
The most prominent LAOS-representative in the government is Makis Voridis, heading the Ministry for Infrastructure and Traffic. He was the founder of the youth organisation of the Junta of the Colonels and the chairperson of the “Hellenic Front”, which was dissolved in 2005 and hit the headlines for their hunts of migrants in the inner city of Athens. Internationally, the man drew attention by his joint public appearances with the right extremist French Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Belgian Vlaams Block.
Voridis’ party colleague Adonis Georgiadis, co-editor of an anti-Semitic pamphlet among others, is the new Deputy Minister for Development and Shipping. 
The Central Council of Jews in Germany has sharply criticised this appointment. Politicians of the LAOS-group, “have repeatedly attracted attention by their anti-Semitic comments”, President of the Central Council, Dieter Graumann, said to the media. “That now ministers of this party are allowed to become members of a new cabinet is really very sad”.
Under these circumstances, 17 November, the anniversary of the rebellion of the Greek students of the Athens Polytechnic, which led to a popular uprising, is charged with a double symbolic meaning: on the one hand, as a day of remembrance of the victims in the struggle for democracy and on the other hand as a day of resistance against the dictate of the troika, that is, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. 
In many European capitals people will gather in front of the Greek embassies to express their vigilance and their solidarity.
2011-11-11