[cmdkeen]

It needs to be made clear that the decision making process also did not know about the "good" Czechoslovakia of the 1980s, it knew about the brutality of the Spanish Civil War and Soviet Purges, mass starvation of Ukraine. Stalin had more blood on his hands than Hitler at that time when these decisions were being made.

Plus, because it seems to have slipped further down the list that the GP the Guardian ran a correction pointing out the article has no historical basis and the damage these incorrect allegations have done to Greece in plainly visible in the writing of the GP.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/28/readers-editor-...

[caf]

The correction does not point that "the article has no historical basis", it points out that the specific allegation that British soliders were among those to fire upon the demonstrators in the December confrontation is based only upon the recollection of those there at the time, and is not generally considered to be true.

[twoodfin]

That blows a pretty significant hole in the narrative of the article! How seriously can I take the rest of the "eye witness" reporting that makes up much of this piece if that "specific" allegation was likely simply a convenient legend?

For example, how sanguine should I be about the claimed non-violent, non-Stalinist goals of the revolutionary forces?

[caf]

If you read the correcting article, it makes it clear that confusion on the part of those present is understandable: the British did apparently fire tracers over the heads of the demonstrators; the Greek police were firing from concealed positions; the Greek forces were dressed similarly to the British Army; and there were British soldiers present on the rooftops.

As I read it, the major claim of the article is that the British supported elements of the Greek state who had been collaborating with the Nazi occupiers in purging the EAM resistance. This does not seem to have been disputed.

[andreasvc]

We can nitpick over who pulled the trigger or who gave the direct order, but the larger issue is that Churchill was waging a dirty civil war. We can discuss how violent and Stalinist the goals of the revolutionary forces may have been, but meanwhile we know about torture and concentration camps that actually happened, which seems more pertinent.

[twoodfin]

They're not nitpicks; they're major factual concerns with what is ostensibly a piece of journalism.

For that matter, the use of the term "concentration camp", while accurate, is not provided the context to differentiate it from the modern connotations associated with Nazi death camps.

This isn't journalism, but historical propaganda.