from Russ Stetler
The establishment of military dictatorship in Greece five months ago is an alarming development, It has survived without support from a single social class in contemporary Greece. It is a junta of the colonels, i.e., of a section of the military: not only the rank and file of the army, but even certain more eminent officers, including generals, cannot be identified with the coup. The colonels have attempted to purge the military, but, following his recent trip to Washington, King Constantine has refused to sign a document 'retiring' some four hundred junior Army officers considered ‘unreliable' by the junta. Divisions, then, exist within the hegemonic classes in Greece. Contradictions divide the external powers whose support is crucial to any regime lacking a popular base. The U.S.A. has withheld its support, and the results of President Johnson's secret talks with the monarch will not be known immediately. But it is expected that the regime will be strongly bolstered this week by support from the Common Market. A loan of $57 million from the EEC is expected to postpone for many months along of payments crisis which would soon crystallise social problems
TECCE. Press censorship continues, and, in large measure, has been accepted by the majority of major newspapers in Greece. The regime regulates not only content but also such details as the size of headlines. Arrests likewise continue. The King (and various other moderate forces) claimed credit for securing the release of 4,000 of the 6,000 Greeks originally imprisoned in the spring. But the number now in prison greatly exceeds such estimates and grows higher each week. The military junta has indicated that it will install military commissars in the universities -- without the consultation or approval of the civilian 'Government'. When the Dean of Athens University demanded of a military representative by what authority he could claim an office and a telephone at the university, the reply was simple: ‘A law is now being prepared’. The colonels are not hesitating to extend their arbitrary authority. The left outside Greece should mobilise protest against the extension of overt reactionary rule. We must campaign for the immediate liberation of all political prisoners. The EEC should be exposed for its complicity in an insufferable instance of clear-cut tyranny. And in broader terms, we should study not merely the character of this particular regime -- which may well prove short-lived and temporary -- but the contours of U.S. strategy for the entire Meditterranean, including Greece, Cyprus, and Syria. The importance of Greece to America is strategic, and no efforts will be spared to bring 'stability' to that theatre.