Apparently, workers at Coca Cola HBC, the world's second-largest Coca-Cola bottler, headquarters in Switzerland, have been on strike since last autumn.
A Syriza member of parliament and a Syriza newspaper claimed that a KKE newspaper accepted advertising from the company! Problem is, the displayed ad is from May 2, 2012, a year and a half before the strike began. An officer of the bottling workers' union denounced the smear and confirmed that the KKE has supported the strike all along. The Greek CP (KKE) specifies plenty of details in its account. Maybe Syriza will have a rebuttal. Maybe. ___ Provocation against Rizospastis In recent days, there was an attempted provocation against Rizospastis and of course against the KKE. The protagonists in this were representatives of the SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government, Avgi newspaper that belongs to SYRIZA, and of course dozens of anonymous and independent blogs that rushed to regurgitate the provocation. On the 11th of February, a text entitled "You won't believe your eyes- the advert carried by Rizospastis on its last page" was uploaded on the website of the well-known journalist Spyros Karatzaferis. The text was accompanied by a photograph of Rizospastis, which carried a Coca Cola advert on its last page. The date of the specific edition of Rizospastis is deliberately concealed so that the readers are led to believe that it is a recent one and in a period when the workers in the company have been engaged in several months' of struggle. However, this specific edition of Rizospastis was published on 27/5/2012, i.e. 17 months before the major strike mobilization of the workers in Coca Cola began. Rachel Makri, MP of SYRIZA (who used to be in ANEL) continued the provocation. She repeated the provocation , while participating in a television program, saying: "The day before yesterday I saw Rizospastis and it had a Coca Cola advert on its final page…"!! Avgi, SYRIZA's newspaper, picked up the baton and uploaded the specific extract from the TV program, which included these claims, on to its Youtube channel. The video was uploaded with the title: "Rachel Makri answers the Potami and the KKE". These actions demonstrate the Goebbels-style propaganda of the "governmental left", which can not use arguments in order to answer the well-substantiated criticism of the KKE concerning the government's programmatic statements and its first concrete steps. The workers themselves responded immediately. Giannis Nivorlis, deputy secretary of the Greek Federation of Workers in the Bottling Industry (POEEP) noted in his statement to Rizospastis: "The provocation being orchestrated against Rizospastis, the newspaper of the KKE, is unacceptable. Some people presented an advert of the 3E company, which was published 17 months before the start of our strike, as being a recent one. This is unacceptable. During our strike, Rizospastis has decisively supported our struggle. We have over 250 articles from Rizospastis on this issue. Such provocations can not blacken the name of Rizospastis, which supports the struggles of the working class and our struggle in particular." Giannis Fragkidis, the vice-president of POEEP stressed in his statement to www.902.gr that such tactics and slanders will not succeed. POEEP issued a press statement entitled "to set the record straight", which noted: "When Coca Cola tried to impose absolute silence on the daily print and electronic media, during the many months that our colleagues have been on strike against the multinational company, the newspaper “Rizospastis”, organ of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), was one of the very few exceptions that carried news and reports about the mobilizations and activities of the trade union branch and our Federation against the policy of Coca Cola." http://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Provocation-against-Rizospastis-The-response-of-the-workers-was-immediate/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
