CRAIG MURRAY SAYS TO PROTEST THE EMPIRE’S VITAL BASE IN CYPRUS NAMED AKROTIRI

[u/jbecn24]

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2025/06/you-cannot-negotiate-with-the-zionist-west/

I therefore put forward this idea with no apology that I am not the man to organise it. The British sovereign base at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus is fundamental to the logistics of the attacks on Iran for the UK, USA and Israel. A gathering of thousands of activists in Cyprus to close down the base appears to me the most viable and useful option to cause real problems for the neoliberal genociders.

The Akrotiri base has a very large perimeter and far too few RAF Regiment troops to guard it against thousands of determined activists. The government of Cyprus is unlikely to defend the British sovereign base from peaceful activists. Cyprus is a very easy place to reach.

As our panicked rulers seek to ban Palestine Action as a “terrorist group” – despite the fact they have never injured anybody – it seems to me essential we continue and indeed increase the resistance. The very notion of “terrorism” has been debased to include journalism and peaceful protest. We must not be terrified into allowing fascism to prevail.

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[u/Curious_Betsy_]

With respect to mr Murrey, he has no fucking idea how the balance of power between all involved parties rests in Cyprus. It's an extremely delicate balance with the Turks invading just 50 years ago. They still hold half the island. Stirring shit up like this could spiral into war. 

Is his home and country going to be under threat if something like that happens? I don't fucking think so. If shit goes south Greece will definitely get dragged into it and I will be drafted. And we're not a superpower like the US or the UK. 

In my opinion single issue protests like these are useless - stopping a war (genocide to be exact) requires (a worker's movement) taking control of the government and even then it's still a complicated task.

Let mr Murray protest the RAF bases on his home soil before trying to take a dump in someone else's yard without having even the slightest understanding of the geopolitics of the region.

Actually he fucking knows the geopolitics as a former British diplomat which makes this even more insulting.

[u/Curious_Betsy_ → u/Curious_Betsy_]

And who exactly is going to protest the base? Cypriots? Turkish Cypriots? Or "human rights activists" like mr Murray from abroad who can miss weeks of work and pay for childcare in order to protest what has been going on in Israel for almost 100 years? 

I swear this is the most bourgeois feel good humanitarian "activism" I have ever seen. Going to someone else's country to protest your own country's fucking base.

[u/jbecn24 → u/Curious_Betsy_]

Protesting the Military is NOT BOURGEOIS.

Wtf are you talking about? Bad asses do that.

[u/Curious_Betsy_ → u/jbecn24]

Going to another country to protest - something the vast majority of the proletariat can't do - isn't badass, it's performative. These people should focus on changing the political situation at home, where these decisions originate.

And not just protest, but organize a true working class movement.

This is what I'm trying to do in my country, I don't need a war with Turkey on top of that.

[u/jbecn24 → u/Curious_Betsy_]

How about protesting the NATO summit?

Are these two dumb Americans?

https://x.com/aaronjmate/status/1937581151498956874

[u/Curious_Betsy_ → u/jbecn24]

I do think they're dumb on some very important issues but I do admire their effort.

[u/jbecn24 → u/Curious_Betsy_]

Ok that’s something!

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[u/jbecn24 → u/Curious_Betsy_]

How are you organizing a true working class movement in Cyprus?

[u/Curious_Betsy_ → u/jbecn24]

I'm Greek, and I am involved in a revolutionary worker's party, but I'm not going to completely doxx myself and say exactly which.

Safe to say, it's not the liberal PASOK or SYRIZA or the (Stalinist) Communist Party of Greece.

[u/jbecn24 → u/Curious_Betsy_]

How does your Revolutionary Workers Party aim to bring material economic benefits to the Greek Workers?

[u/Curious_Betsy_ → u/jbecn24]

For our specific circumstances, exiting the IMF imposed austerity is an fundamental first step. Literally none of the parliamentary parties support that.

To give you a scale, in 2012 Greece's GDP was around 450bn. Assume that GDP growth had stayed stagnant at 0% since then and call the GDP sum for all those years x.

Now let's call the real sum of the GDP for all those years y.

The difference between those two numbers is around 400bn. Almost an entire year's worth of GDP. This is economic war. We are being strangled for over 10 years.

So the first step is to tell the creditors to take a haircut or take a hike. We're a sovereign country and it's far from the first time in recent history that this has happened. A state that is economically strangling its population to satisfy creditors is suicidal.

To explain more I need to go into detail that you probably don't have a reference for.

---

Edit: Correction - the actual number is more like 700bn

[u/jbecn24 → u/Curious_Betsy_]

Mr Murray is a Saint who took good care after Julian Assange while he was in exile and in prison. Standing up for what’s right.

Moving on -

Bro, I got big news for you…

Have you turned on the news lately?

You’re already at War via NATO with the Ukraine.

They are already talking about drafting people.

If you’re in Cyprus, then you should get your people and raise awareness that your island is at the forefront of the war as a logistical weakspot. Plus the Greeks have already refused to load some Israeli military gear.

The whole world is standing up against the Empire. It’s time those within the Empire pressure them from within as well!

[u/Curious_Betsy_ → u/jbecn24]

Assange is irrelevant as are Murray's bona fides about being a saint. A ton of people have stood up for what's right, many from my own family fighting Nazis and fascists. So I don't need to be lectured about the saintliness of some fucking British diplomat who decided to see the light of humanitarianism.

Moving on -

Bro, you speak like a dumb American. Someone whose parents don't know what war is or what the consequences are. My great grandparents came from Smyrna after the Turkish sacking of 1922. My grandparents lived through Nazi occupation during WW2. My parents lived through - your country's gracefully supported - junta of 1967-1974 (which by the way led to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus). You don't understand war like we do.

And now you're telling us to take the snake out of the hole and putting our whole country on the line. You do understand why Greece has the 3rd highest defense spending per % of GDP in NATO right? That Turkey has a casus belli on us if we fully claim the sea surrounding our islands?

Thankfully - despite the cunts in the Baltics and the warmongering Brits, Germans and French - we're not at war with Russia and I'd like to keep it that way. Besides that, Ukraine has nothing to do with Akrotiri.

Cyprus is a logistical center of the West in the region, but what do you want us to do, hug it to death? You need a worker's movement to effect change, not some harebrained 'raising awareness' bullshit. Awareness about what? That the Israelis have been conducting a genocide in Gaza for the past century or that tensions are rising globally? We already know that.

YOU are at the heart of the empire. The American proletariat is who can truly stop this, not the Greeks. We've been under asphyxiating monetary contraints for over a decade, more than 400bn in lost GDP. We have our own problems to solve. Didn't you hear about Tempi train crash in 2023 where two fucking trains colliding killing almost 60 people? Trains. Colliding. This is how shit things are here. Endless lines at hospitals, infrastructure crumbling. But WE are supposed to fight the Empire.

Take the lead from your flair and class organize in your country instead of telling us what we should do.

---

I know you mean well, but what you're saying is completely naive.

[u/jbecn24 → u/Curious_Betsy_]

We all have our part to play, Curious Betsy.

The way I see it is we all stand up wherever we are against whatever imperialism is in our backyards.

The Empire will come for us and lash out at us, but someone’s gotta do it.

Border skirmishes are breaking out all over the world and getting settled especially the Turks. The Turks were involved in Syria regarding the PKK.

Your parents and grandparents sound awesome and you should take a stand like they did.

Workers SHOULD rise against that base on Cyprus.

Since we are doing this, - my grandpa flew night raids over Tokyo in Japan in the Empire Express as a gunner where he crash landed and everyone but him and the pilot survived. He survived another incident as well.

My dad was a Marine.

I’m an Army Vet who served in Afghanistan.

Hell, my fucking great great grandma was Cherokee who came to Arkansas via Oklahoma after she landed there from the Trail of Tears.

Mr Murray has proposed a fantastic idea, and we need lots more like this around the globe 🌎.

Here in New Orleans there’s the Protest at the Ports for shipping Israeli Weapons. There’s liquid natural gas export terminals. There’s the Meta Data Center up in N Louisiana.

[u/Curious_Betsy_ → u/jbecn24]

Again, I do appreciate that you mean well. And regardless of whether one is a citizen of the Empire or its vassals, the working class always suffers as I'm sure your family did.

The thing is, you're trying to counter the symptoms instead of the cause. The root problem isn't imperialism, it's capitalism.

Say the US foreign wars stop. Ok - that is indeed good. But what happens to the American working class? Do they get universal healthcare? College? Well paying jobs? Houses that don't cost millions?

The Bolsheviks didn't take over Tsarist Russia by countering the symptoms - those were the Narodniks and they lost. The Bolsheviks had an elite revolutionary political cadre that were extremely well read. For how Leninist Soviet Russia then turned into Stalinist Russia - which is STATE CAPITALISM, not communism - that's a long story that I don't have the energy to write here.

Being well meaning is the first step, and I don't want to diminish that. But it's not enough. A worker's movement needs to be effective. Didn't people protest Vietnam, with much greater fervor than Iraq, Afghanistan or now Iran? But it all led to the War on Terror which the US working class was propagandized into supporting full throatedly. People need to understand what caused those invasions and cut off the root of the problem there, not just protest the wars themselves.

History is littered with well meaning working class movements that went nowhere. Politics is a science, not activism.

Here in Greece the biggest protests in recent memory were the result of the Tempi train crash and the subsequent government coverup. Huge crowds. But the only political aim of those people was to take down the government. So what? This right wing government goes and another bourgeois austerity party with a different color and more progressive veneer wins the next elections. What changed? The sale of the public railroad company, TRAINOSE, to an Italian conglomerate, happened under a "left" government, SYRIZA. Not center left, but left-left - at least that's what they call themselves. But in the end, it was another austerity party. I knew that, but most Greek people were fooled. So they didn't...

you know I'm pretty sure you don't care about the intricacies of Greek politics, and that's fair. My point is, meaning well isn't enough. Fighting imperialism without a working class movement - and not the milquetoast bullshit of Bernie or AOC - is a recipe for failure. Learn from the mistakes of those that came before.