Comments by "joe k" (@joek600) on "Greece, no to Leopard tanks. Biden, yes to 150km weapon. Now they want nukes. U/1" video.
-
3
-
2
-
2
-
2
-
Allow me to give you my 2 Greek cents. Greece unlike any other European country, is facing an actual existential threat by Turkey. A nation with a completely different religion, culture, society and values than ours. It took us 400 years to get rid of them and a lot sacrifices, so nobody would accept anything less than total war. All the political spectrum of Greece agrees that there is a huge problem with Turkish aggression. From the far right (unsurprisingly) to the Right wingers, the centrists, the neo-liberals, the diet Cola leftists, to the Communist Party. Hell even the anarchists if cornered after finishing their tirade of platitudes will admit that there is a serious issue. Since nobody here expects the rest Europeans to even lift a finger, ( call that the fall of Constantinople syndrome), everybody accepts as granted that we have to be armed. Armed to the teeth as a deterrent.
I’m sure that most of you who think of Greece as a place for holidays and sightseeing don’t know that we have enough weapons to blow out of the water any European country of our size, and give a seriously extremely bad day to all the rest with the exception of France and UK. Greece at the moment has the most Leopard 2 tanks in Europe, 353 half of the roughly, are the latest variant and not the outdated by modern standards but still capable, A4 versions most countries have. I won’t even mention the older Leopard 1, Modernized M60s etc.
These weapons, that are promoted here as guarantees of our security, are the eye of a tornado of corruption. Every one of those weapons systems were bought way above their normal price in the market, due to commissions given to politicians and military staff, bribes and deals under the table with the manages of French, German and American military industries or/and with their governments who tried to get those very juicy contracts since everybody in Europe basically lives in LaLa land when it comes to actual security concerns. These contracts played a major part in the huge Greek debt and the constant loans that the Greek state is in neck deep. Everybody acknowledges this here regardless his political opinions.
The majority of the Greek public is against this war and against the current diplomatic stance of Greece towards Russia. As usual the government is on a complete separate level, because nobody has balls and because objectively they are being blackmailed by the US who uses the threat of Turkey and the EU who controls the financial outlets. If you ask them personally I bet that most of them would not touch Ukraine with a 10 meter pole. The fact that there are imminent elections means that at least for the campaigning season, they have to take into account the public opinion. At the same time they have a good excuse for not being teacher’s pet for awhile. The public knows that these weapons represent their life’s blood. Those weapons to a great degree were the underlying reason for all that misery of the last 15 years. I was 29 years old when the financial crisis started. I am 44 years old now and still we live in a financial wasteland. I lost my most creative and supposedly career building years as a graphic designer in publications and advertising, just scrambling to keep a job and fending off ridiculously bad deals while my counterparts in Europe were dinning with silver spoons, and some of them were payed by our huge military and industrial contracts brokered by our politicians.
I don’t think that any government would survive the images of our Leopard2 burning in a Ukrainian steppe, while there are huge gaps in our defenses.
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1