IT'S A fantastic wave of arrests. They've arrested once again my remaining lawyer. They've been arresting even on slight suspicion. It's coming to us from every angle- he's been arrested. It's really a wave, and it's arrest Nazi style, that is to say, the families no longer know anything about the man, where he is, why he is where he is-nothing. No contact with the outside world. Now I ask you one question, if this be true, as it is, what are they afraid of? What's this fear?

Well, obviously, it's like a volcano, a silent volcano, so that it's eerie, the kind of thing that you see smiles on faces, or you see expressionless faces but it can turn like this, and it can turn when it is convinced that there is a resistance framework, that is to say it's a structure, responsible, consistent, and likely and capable of leading the fight against the colonels internally. We are trying to provide this, this is what our task is, to build this framework. This is what we're working very hard on.

Although I don't want to monopolize, I would say that our group-maybe-is the most important. I don't want to monopolize; there's the Patriotic Front of the Left, with which we have had, from time to time, cooperation. Ours is the Pan-Hellenic Liberation Movement. And our main task at this time is less political, and more the organization of a true liberation movement-I use the word liberation advisedly, because it really is an occupied country today.

It is not a political problem. First, we must be a nation, first we must be free from American occupation, to put it bluntly and openly. And it's a very hard task because, you see, our liberation effort is not supported directly by any government, and you know without government support, it's rather hard to build. The financial resources that must be committed are very substantial. So I don't say it's anything easy. But it's there and it'll crack one of these days.

One of the colonels' favorite propaganda devices is that they are improving economic conditions and especially in the countryside, and that the liberal governments before their regime were derelict economically . . .

WELL, first of all, even if this were the case, it would be no less an American occupation than it is, and the fight would go on even though the conditions improved, or didn't improve, so this is not really what we're fighting for at this point. It's not a higher standard of living that we're fighting for, but, since this happens to be an important issue anyway, and since I am myself tied up with economic policy in Greece, I would very much like to respond.

I think the characteristic of this regime, if I may say so, in terms of economic policy, is the massive sellout of Greek resources to foreign capital, and especially to Greek-American capital. You can, in fact, ask yourself sometimes about a dictatorship-what particular class or social group does it represent, both politically and socially. You ask this about a Latin American dictatorship, you can ask it about an African dictatorship, an Asian dictatorship, a European dictatorship. Well I've asked this question of myself very honestly, and I can say that it really reflects, it represents, theoretically, very little.

There's an analysis that is Greek. There's an analysis by a young man-Tsoukalas is his name-a very interesting analysis, in which he argues that it's the middle class somehow that is reflected in this, that it's the petit-bourgeoisie rather than the bourgeoisie. But I don't quite buy it, in the sense that I think really this is a coup of foreign capital and strictly a colonial operation. Colonial-it has a strategic component. This is the twentieth century. It's not only pillage-it is pillage plus strategy. A staging area for that part of the world. But if you study really the key characteristics of this regime, it has been commented that the more contracts they can sign, and the more attractive terms they can give-Pappas, and Niarchos, Standard Oil-the happier they seem to be. And this they do, of course, in part to relieve the pressure on balance of payment, which has gone very badly for them, not surprisingly.

NOW in return for this, what they have been doing at home, aside from selling out, and actually here we can take the crudest Marxist interpretation and do very well, provided that we don't talk about some Greek bourgeoisie-better talk about foreign capital. It's really an exercise in modern imperialism. Greece is a beautiful example of what neo-imperialism does. It's a crude story, so crude that you don't have to be too well-read to understand. The reading is there.

I want to point out that emigration has picked up again, on a huge scale. I think that's a very important fact. They're losing a hundred thousand Greeks from the labor force annually, net. Now keep in mind that the population increase in Greece is eighty-five thousand per annum, net. The reproduction rate is eighty-five thousand. But emigration is a hundred thousand now, it's nearer that number again. It had reached the number under the rightist government of Karamanlis, and it's back again. It means many things for the nation, but for them it means relief on the unemployment rate-this is an escape valve. Let the Greek go to Germany, to Canada, to Australia to find a job. And they're losing, of course, the better component of the working force, for who would risk going out to Germany or Canada unless he had some training? A semi-skilled laborer, anyway, not unskilled. So this is then proof that the economy is not quite as buoyant as they are pretending it is.

And, of course, they have admitted that in the early years of the coup it was under a slowdown, a very significant slowdown. We had a rate of growth of about nine per cent when we fell, and their rate of growth, of course, by even their own statements, was less than half that, and I think it was probably almost zero the first year, year and a half. Now they argue that it's up to eight per cent. I doubt it, and I understand that also the World Bank doubts it, but it's not inconceivable, let's put it that way, it's not inconceivable.

WHAT have they done for the small man? Well, I think that they have not dealt with labor, in a beneficial way to labor, I think that is clear. And the new taxes, most of them indirectly imposed, must in fact lower the real income of the worker.

In the Greek countryside, what happens? That is a question that is of some interest. What they've been doing there, and, in my opinion, it's the only thing they've been doing, is to be building a road system and building electricity to the village. Their rate, maybe, is not higher than our rate, I don't know, but at least represents an extension of the work that had been done in the past in this direction. These are the infra-structure type operations in the countryside.

But if you really want to see the attitude they have toward that population, the rural population from which they're supposed to come-they emphasize this all the time. I mean, where did we come from? My father did not wear shoes until he was 13, in a mountain village. Where did any Greek come from? We are a country of villagers. I don't know very many people who were born in Athens. Surely hardly a Greek prime minister ever was born in Athens, hardly ever. From some countryside. Karamanlis was a poor boy from the farm from the rural section, my father was, Venizelos was, I mean, there's hardly anyone. So this is nothing special, to come from the villages.

BUT LET me give you one characteristic example, and that has to do with something we introduced. We introduced a very spectacular measure, I think, for Greece: free school lunch for all elementary school children. And that meant that for every Greek village, no matter how remote, a kid got a solid meal once a day. That was really redistributing income if you wish, but in a way that was very, very important. A full solid meal meant that the mother did not have to worry about any other meal, because when I say they had a meal at noon, I mean they really filled up. Now that was the first thing they eliminated. And I ask you, really, why did they eliminate that? And I think that this is characteristic of their oppressive attitudes. I mean, they're not about to redistribute income through the Greek countryside.