The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie.

/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tra

  • The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie.
    http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie

    In their travels to the court of the mighty in Brussels and Berlin, Tsipras and Varoufakis presented themselves neither as radicals nor “leftists” nor even honest social democrats, but as two slightly upstart supplicants in their pleas and demands. Without underestimating the hostility they faced, it is fair to say they displayed no political courage. More than once, the Greek people found out about their “secret austerity plans” in leaks to the media: such as a 30 June letter published in the Financial Times, in which Tsipras promised the heads of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF to accept their basic, most vicious demands - which he has now accepted.

    When the Greek electorate voted “no” on 5 July to this very kind of rotten deal, Tsipras said, “Come Monday and the Greek government will be at the negotiating table after the referendum with better terms for the Greek people”. Greeks had not voted for “better terms”. They had voted for justice and for sovereignty, as they had done on January 25.

    The day after the January election a truly democratic and, yes, radical government would have stopped every euro leaving the country, repudiated the “illegal and odious” debt - as Argentina did successfully - and expedited a plan to leave the crippling Eurozone. But there was no plan. There was only a willingness to be “at the table” seeking “better terms”.

    The true nature of Syriza has been seldom examined and explained. To the foreign media it is no more than “leftist” or “far left” or “hardline” - the usual misleading spray. Some of Syriza’s international supporters have reached, at times, levels of cheer leading reminiscent of the rise of Barack Obama. Few have asked: Who are these “radicals”? What do they believe in?

    • Yánis Varoufákis a également affirmé au magazine britannique qu’il avait prévu « un triptyque » d’actions pour répondre à la situation que connait la Grèce aujourd’hui, et notamment à la fermeture des banques, pour éviter une hémorragie de l’épargne : « émettre des IOUs » (phonétiquement « I owe you », « je vous dois », des reconnaissances de dettes en euros) ; « appliquer une décote sur les obligations grecques » détenues par la BCE depuis 2012, pour réduire d’autant la dette, et « prendre le contrôle de la Banque de Grèce des mains de la BCE ».

      Cela laissait, selon lui, entrevoir une possible sortie de la Grèce de l’euro mais avec la certitude, explique-t-il, qu’il n’y avait de toute façon aucun moyen légal de la pousser dehors. Le tout pour faire peur et obtenir un meilleur accord des créanciers, selon lui. « Mais ce soir-là, regrette-t-il, le gouvernement a décidé que la volonté du peuple, ce "non" retentissant, ne devait pas être le déclencheur de cette approche énergique (...) au contraire cela allait mener à des concessions majeures à l’autre camp ».

    • Enfin Yánis Varoufákis, universitaire de formation, s’en prend à l’absence de débat de fond au sein des instances européennes : « Il y avait un refus pur et simple d’engager des débats économiques. » Et d’assurer que lorsqu’il exposait un argument économique, il était confronté à « des regards vides ».

    • The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie.
      http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie

      In 2013, Yanis Varoufakis wrote: “Should we welcome this crisis of European capitalism as an opportunity to replace it with a better system? Or should we be so worried about it as to embark upon a campaign for stabilising capitalism? To me, the answer is clear. Europe’s crisis is far less likely to give birth to a better alternative to capitalism... I bow to the criticism that I have campaigned on an agenda founded on the assumption that the left was, and remains, squarely defeated... Yes, I would love to put forward [a] radical agenda. But, no, I am not prepared to commit the [error of the British Labour Party following Thatcher’s victory]... What good did we achieve in Britain in the early 1980s by promoting an agenda of socialist change that British society scorned while falling headlong into Thatcher’s neoliberal trip? Precisely none. What good will it do today to call for a dismantling of the Eurozone, of the European Union itself...?”

      Varoufakis omits all mention of the Social Democratic Party that split the Labour vote and led to Blairism. In suggesting people in Britain “scorned socialist change” - when they were given no real opportunity to bring about that change - he echoes Blair.

    • la suite :

      The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind - but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, an imperial thug. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as “liberal” or even “left”, Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, “schooled in postmodernism”, as Alex Lantier wrote.

      For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza’s luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but “better terms” of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with “identity politics” and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. “Mainstream” political life in Britain exemplifies this.

      This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.