luc said:
I agree with you Spyraal that we should always be alert and aware of deceptions. But this shouldn't lead us to see conspiracies everywhere I think. We should give people, even "outstanding" people like Yanis, the benefit of the doubt. We are all human, we all have our blind spots, and we are all subject to various forces, internal and external.
So far, the facts you presented (which I haven't verified) just tell the story of a man born into a semi-important family, getting a good education abroad as is common in that milieu, and ending up in politics. I have listened to some of his speeches and am reading his book, and I found his ideas highly creative, very intelligent, very pragmatic. His thinking seems very nuanced to me, something rare indeed in today's world. It's really a pleasure and stimulating to listen to him.
....
Again, there's nothing wrong with being suspicious, but it's true that it's easy to create "grand conspiracies" by connecting dots that can be easily explained otherwise - like that Yanis studied abroad or that some family members had good business connections.
I am coming back on this subject not out of stubbornness, nor to impose my view on others by any way, but only hoping to provide a service to this network by adding some information for those who can use it. No one is expected to be an expert on modern Greek political history. I am not either. I have also been a supporter of Yanis until the contradiction between his words and deeds convinced me that some is very wrong with this picture, and more research is need.
Since what I said so far about Varoufakis, his family and their dirty connections may sound far fetched to some as it seems, I feel I will have to elaborate more. So, sorry in advance for the long post that is coming, but I see that more substantiation in needed, so whoever is interesting on the subject can follow on.
So,
1). Is Varoufakis' father is some "semi-important" employee of "just another business family"? Far from it. He has been for decades
the trustee and personal secretary of the head of the Aggelopoulos oligarch family. From this exclusive insider's position it is safe to assume he knows all their doings. Since 2003 he is also the Chairman of the Board of Directors at their giant steel company, together with an Assistant Professor at the University of Athens and a honorary president of the Greek Standardization Organization.
His profile on LinkedIn: _https://gr.linkedin.com/in/varoufakis-george-7838b2a5
2). Next, why is it such a bad thing to be a loyal servant and trustee of the Angelopoulos family? Let's hear what the Greek historian Demosthenes Koukounas (an author of 25 books who specializes in the study of Greek WW2 history) has to say about the Angelopoulos family during the Nazi occupation in his book "The history of [Nazi] Occupation" where the oligarch family has it's own chapter (translated by me):
According to the historical documents about partners of Germans, the Angelopoulos brothers' build a series of fortifications for the benefit of the German occupation army and among other things, they also manufactured with their iron and steel the barb-wire for Greek prisoners gathered in the detention and execution camps.
"All these are not necessarily black marketeers. But all of them are those who did not hesitate to transact with the occupation authorities, undertaking supplying or constructions on their behalf, "writes historian D. Koukounas in the "hot chapter” [of his book] that includes the list of nazi collaborators. He continues: "While other of their colleagues were hungry and suffering to the degree that they literally could not feed their family since they did not manage to keep [ownership of] their businesses, or on reasons of principle they did not accept to practice their profession in such circumstances, other people [like Angelopoulos family] rushed with great willingness to serve the occupiers. They profited from the misery of our people at that critical time. Basically they are not the "smart" ones who managed to stay afloat. They were dishonest and immoral since in a time of extreme misery not only they were indifferent to their neighbors who were looking in the trash for a bite, but they took away from them every drop of blood that had remained in their weakened bodies.
This is not some verbal exaggeration: We must realize that in that period of destruction and dissolution, the occupier assigned to some of their chosen ones to provide the supplies needed, construct fortifications and other projects deemed necessary. When talking about supplies, we mean the whole spectrum of production, because the occupier (even citing and international law) had to feed and nourish from the conquered land. The logistics authority of the Occupation Authorities approved the invoices of suppliers (usually overpriced) and signed in order to present them for payment to the Bank of Greece. So inflation swelled and money to lost even more value" the historian says.
Link: _http://www.newsbomb.gr/ellada/apokalypseis/story/327178/oikonomikoi-dosilogoi-oikogeneia-aggelopoyloi
3). So the Angelopoulos family are NOT just another business family by any means.
They are for example the single largest private shareholder of the largest Swiss bank, UBS [Union Bank of Switzerland].
Greek billionaire emerges as largest shareholder in UBS
Theodoros Angelopoulos, a Greek steel and shipping billionaire, is understood to hold a stake in Swiss bank UBS of between 6% and 9%, which is worth as much as Sfr5bn (£2.5bn), according to a Swiss newspaper.
link: _http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2008-04-17/greek-billionaire-emerges-as-largest-shareholder-in-ubs
The private property of
just one of the Angelopoulos brothers (Theodoros) is estimated around 10 billion euros. That is nearly twice the wealth of Donald Trump to set an analogy. They also very big players in shipping and oil business. Their investments in steel companies in other countries include: "Geselschaft" in Switzerland, "Alpha Steel" in Cardiff of Wales, "Beta Steel" in Indiana of USA, with a central mother-company called "Credite Industriale Societe Anonyme".
4). The Angelopoulos family is
friends and partners with the... Clinton family, and they run together for many years now the "Anglelopoulos-Clinton GIU Fellowship".
This is their website: _https://www.angelopouloscgiu.org/index.html
And this one from the Clinton's webside: _https://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative/commitments/leadership-matters
Leadership Matters
In 2011, Ambassador Gianna Angelopoulos and the Angelopoulos Foundation committed to establish the Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Program (the Program) at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. This initiative, designed for highly-respected elected leaders transitioning out of public office, will provide participants with the skills, expertise, support, and connections necessary to develop their own initiatives, projects, and foundations as continuations of their service to the public. As these global leaders move from idea to action, their own initiatives, projects, and foundations will be individually developed as Clinton Global Initiative Commitments to Action.
Bill Clinton and the strong lady of the Angelopoulou family, Gianna.
So the Clintons with the help of the billionaire Angelopoulou family are in the business of starting up "foundations" for their own selected politicians after they leave office, and then they support them with money, connections etc. to further promote their "ideals" for the world. I guess being the biggest private share-holder in the biggest Swiss bank might be very useful to the oligarch family for moving around money for their "charities". But nothing to see here, they are "just another business family".
5). Even before coming into power and earning his publicity as "leftist" minister, some have been calling Yanis Varoufakis the "Trojan Horse" of the system. Let's take a small look at their arguments:
“[Although] the vast majority of his [Tsipras'] new Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) government have good left-wing and pro-labor credentials, the same cannot be necessarily said of the man Tsipras chose to be Greece’s new finance minister. Yanis Varoufakisis a citizen of Australia who was educated in Britain and worked as a professor at the University of Texas. Europe has witnessed such dual nationals with conflicting loyalties take power in countries in Eastern Europe, most notably in Ukraine, where American Natalie Jaresko became finance minister in order to deliver International MonetaryFund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) austerity «poison pills» to Ukraine. “
Today, the nations of eastern and central Europe are populated with globalists, overt types and those of the «crypto» variety, with many of them, like Varoufakis, citizens or past legal residents of other nations. Romania’s finance minister, Ioana Petrescu, is a Wellesley and Harvard graduate and former fellow for the U.S. Republican Party’s National Republican Institute at the neo-conservative and anti-Russian American Enterprise Institute (AEI). She is also a past professor at the University of Maryland. Although Petrescu’s right-wing connections to Washington appear at odds with Varoufakis’s ties to the neo-liberal Brookings Institution, in the world of «make believe» political differences, Petrescu and Varoufakis are two sides of the same coin. When one follows the money that helped create these two finance ministers, as well as Jaresko, all roads lead back to Washington and entities that suckle from the teat of the Central Intelligence Agency and its myriad of front entities.
Varoufakis’s curriculum vitae, like that of Jaresko’s, reeks of George Soros-intertwined globalist links. For a finance minister who is to -- if we believe the dire warnings from the corporate press -- challenge the austerity measures dictated to Greece’s previous failed conservative and social democratic governments by the «Troika» of the IMF, ECB, and European Commission, Varoufakis has had a past close relationship with the global entities with which he is expected to battle.
Varoufakis also served as «economist-in-residence» for the Valve Corporation, a video game spinoff of the always-suspect Microsoft Corporation of extreme globalist Bill Gates. The warning signs that Varoufakis is a «Trojan horse» for the global bankers are abundant. First, Varoufakis served as an economic adviser to the failed PASOK social democratic government of Prime Minister George Papandreou, the man who first put Greece on the road to draconian austerity measures. Varoufakis now claims that he was ardently opposed to Papandreou’s deal with the «Troika» but no one will ever know how much the now-anti austerity finance minister agreed to while he was advising Papadreou on the proper course of action to settle Greece’s enormous debt problem.
_http://m.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/01/29/a-soros-trojan-horse-inside-the-new-greek-government.html
Also from another source:
George Soros, whose main mission is to infiltrate the progressive left movement and neutralize its anti-capitalist underpinnings, has struck again through one of his Trojan horses Yiannis Varoufakis. In a typical Hegelian fashion, the leader of this new group, which bills itself as anti-austerity, anti-bankers, and anti-bureaucratic, is none other than the former SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) Finance Minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis.
Interestingly enough, there is a deep connection between the Papandreou government and Tsirpas government. First, Varoufakis is a close friend of American economist and fellow University of Texas professor James K. Galbraith, the son of the late éminence grise of American economists, John Kenneth Galbraith. Varoufakis and James Galbraith co-authored together. Galbraith’s ties to the global banking elite are exemplified by his guest scholar position at the elitist Brookings Institution in Washington. Varoufakis’ second and most important connection is Jeffrey Sachs.
Sachs is well-known from his economic reforms in developing or fragile economies. Through the late summer and fall of 1991, as the Soviet Union fell apart, Jeffrey Sachs and other Western economists participated in meetings at a dacha outside Moscow where young, pro-Yeltsin reformers planned Russia’s economic and political future. Sachs teamed up with Yegor Gaidar, Yeltsin’s first architect of economic reform, to promote a plan of “shock therapy” to swiftly eliminate most of the price controls and subsidies that had underpinned life for Soviet citizens for decades. Shock therapy produced more shock – not least, hyperinflation that hit 2,500 percent – than therapy.
Many years later, in Greece, Sachs, Varoufakis and Galbraith all became George Papandreou’s and Alexis Tsipras’ ad hoc advisers. Nevertheless, Varoufakis became the Finance Minister in Tsipras’ first cabinet despite its goal of renegotiating the bailout – agreed to by Papandreou for whom Varoufakis served as an adviser. There is much evidence to the claim that Varoufakis was a Soros implant within the "leftist" government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras - a claim supported by multiple different sources.[iii] Varoufakis's first move was to cut deals with the very same European bankers against whom the Greek electorate rebelled by electing SYRIZA. Rather than cancelling Greece's usurious debt arranegements with the bankers, Varoufakis began to negotiate with them in order to keep Greece within the disastrous "eurozone."
_https://gianalytics.org/500-yannis-varoufakis-the-trojan-horse#_edn3
6). But how Yanis Varoufakis would answer to such accusations of being a Soros' man? Would an "erratic Marxist" openly denounce the psychopath market criminal we all know George Soros to be? Well, he actually did have a chance to answer when asked by a Greek reporter about these rumored connections of his with George Soros. Let's here it from the Greek article (translation by me):
Yanis Varoufakis: Soros and me
...
But so as not to think that I try to distance myself from Mr. Soros, let me say something that will certainly serve to feed those who want to practice their talent at fantastic stories and libel: I consider him an important personality and, for this I was really glad when I met him, and that our positions regarding the euro crisis have come very close.
Soros is one the people that, normally, I should not like. To begin with, he is an avid supporter of Karl Popper (who has been his teacher at LSE). And although I hold nothing against Popper (I consider him an important intellectual) I cannot hide that feels strange when someone is a loyal fan of anything. Apart from that, Soros has spend his whole life betting on the markets – and with them [markets] I have an aesthetic and ideological “difference”. [quotes present in the original]
….
I write all these in the wake of all these rumors about me, because all these tell us something important as to the depth of the crisis that Europe suffers. I do not know, and I do not want to know, what Soros does, or any and each Soros, in the capital markets I dislike. What I can tell you, and I think that is important, is that since the crisis erupted in 2008, Soros has been constantly putting forward proposals to resolve it, which if accepted, would help our country (and of course all over Europe ). And at the same time [Soros' proposals] will eliminate the immense profits that he would make if he just was keeping his mouth shut, and simply kept "playing" with the markets.”
So Varoufakis thinks Soros is... trying to resolve the crisis and help Greece and all of Europe!
He doesn't know and does not want to know what Soros does! What do you know... Soros is not the psychopathic and manipulative opportunist of global markets we all know him to be. Very interesting Yanis.
7). Did the Angelopoulou oligarch family
actively supported SYRIZA's coming into power? And maybe with that, the son of their family's most trusted man and Chief of Directors in their companies, Yanis, to also become Minister of Economy? Let's see:
If you follow HellasFrappe then you might recall that we have charged Mrs. Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki of supporting the radical left SYRIZA party in more than one report. Well no second guessing is needed any longer because she not only recently admitted that she supports the Greek main opposition party, but she also left it to be understood that she is going to do everything in her power to get into the Greek political scene!
Just ten years after her controversial triumph as head of the committee for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greek business woman Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki seems as hungry as ever for a slice of public life, states an article in the ProtoThema newspaper. The article notes that Angelopoulos doesn’t chew on her words when it comes to sharing her political viewpoints, and even finger-points in specific directions when asked to elaborate. All this of course while drinking the finest Chardonnay, and jetting off to one of her many homes around the world.
She said that if SYRIZA took over the leadership of the country it wouldn't be so bad. Apparently Gianna is convinced that SYRIZA represents the new political force in Greece.
Link: _http://hellasfrappe.blogspot.gr/2014/07/busted-gianna-angelopoulos-daskalaki.html
Bellow a picture of Gianna Angelopoulou's official meeting with Tsipras in November 2014, just a few months before SYRIZA was to become government.
8. Then who was Andreas Papandreou, the politician who gave Varoufakis his personal recommendation to enter the university of Essex (and remember also "by chance" happens to be the one who signed Greece into membership to the EU)? And what was his relationship with Yanis? Yanis has claimed to admire Andreas Papandreou in more than one occasions:
10 things you did not know about Varoufakis:
...
2. Andreas Papandreou was his mentor. As a teenager, Yanis was charmed by the political speaking and style of Andreas Papandreou and was eager to follow the advice of the president of the PASOK party after a short meeting that they had, a meeting that forever changed his views on what he should study. Andreas Papandreou convinced him to turn his scientific interests into action, and combine Mathematics with Politics.
This is the same Andreas Papandreou, whose policies are greatly responsible for the current situation in Greece. Andreas Papandreou came into power as a "socialist" supposedly with an anti-EU and anti-NATO agenda, tapping on anti-American sentiment after a ruthless 7-year long American-inspired military junta from 1968 to 1975. He increased wages and salaries for both public and private sector while keeping the taxation high. This made things very hard for small and middle sized business and industries in terms of having a survivable profit, and within a decade of his government and policies, only selected "big fish" Greek industrialists (like the Angelopoulou family) were able not only to survive but thrive on the artificial vacuum Papandreou created for them. And the country's debt had exploded.
So, Andreas Papandreou (the one Varoufakis call his mentor) was, as I said in my previous post, suspect of being selected, trained, "armed" with academic titles, and then released back into Greek politics as an agent of US interests in Greece. His deeds matched this profile to the letter. The following image is what seems like a declassified 1974 document that clarifies the terms under which Papandreou had to agree in order to be given 100 million dollars from various banks to start his party called PASOK. At the bottom is his signature. Even if taken with a grain of salt, it still fits perfectly with what happened in the years to come, as Papandreou did become Prime Minister in 1981. Notice point no.5 where it states:
5. Phrasal "fights" against NATO and EEC [how EU was called at the time] not really "war". Connector between USA and Greek Government will resume to "keep calm" the NATO's officials.
So we see that phrasal "fights" (like Yanis often has against EU, IMF etc.) are sometimes just for show, agreed in secret never to be followed by any actions (like Yanis did
nothing while a minister of economy). Or at least, that is what Yanis' mentor was instructed to do, according to this declassified document.
And for last, some nice and meaningful pictures:
From left to right: Theodoros Angelopoulos, George Panandreou (son of Andreas, and also former Yanis' boss), Bill Clinton and Gianna Angelopoulou.
The opening ceremony of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. The president of the Olympic Committee walks in the stadium with... Gianna Angelopoulou. Not the Greek prime minister, the highest elected official, but the oligarch Gianna. Just a subtle clue of who is
really in power.
This is the Theodoros Angelopoulos (Gianna's husband) family house in Athens. It is 5000 square meters. In a 2012 scandal, it was found out that in order to pay less in electricity they had this super-vila declared to the power company as... a shopping mall! Professional rates are lower in price than domestic, so as a "shopping mall" it was estimated they were saving around 30.000 euros per year. Cheap bastards, they own 10 billion euros and yet they dare steal even from the electricity bill! Talking about hubris...
(link in Greek: _http://www.protothema.gr/greece/article/229843/pos-baftisan-to-palati-biotexnia-gia-pio-fthhno-reyma-kai-xamhlo-xaratsi/)
And bellow the rest of the house, because it cannot easily fit in one single picture.
So, I am sorry for the really long post, but I think that this information should at least be available for consideration to this forum's members for the sake of truth and objectivity. There is even more, but I think these selected bits can prove the point that Varoufakis is much more than he claims to be, and caution is well advised in my humble opinion.
So I ask, how could ever Varoufakis have had a true "gun on table" during the negotiations last year, when a potential Grexit would actually undo the signature of his own mentor to enter the EU, his benefactor for entering university? When a Grexit would seriously hurt the Greek oligarchs like the Aggelopoulou family who have been employing his father for decades as their trustee and personal secretary? What would Varoufakis' father tell to the Angelopoulou family if his son Yanis have helped to change the status quo of Greece being an EU member they so much depend upon?
This guy is textbook candidate for some serious conflict of interests, and a split loyalty between his preached ideas and ideals on the one hand, and on the other his privileged family that enjoys the trust, protection and benefits that come with serving a really powerful and corrupt oligarch family, a family whose history reaches from collaborating with Nazis to cooperating in high-profile political subversion together with the Clinton family, and even more.
Thank you,
Spyros
