ARTICLE
SOURCE
http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie
The problem of Greece is not only a tragedy. It is a lie.
13 July 2015
John Piliger
An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the
mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully
ignored last week's landslide "No" vote and secretly agreed a raft of
repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a "bailout" that means
sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.
Prime
Minister Alexis Tsipras has pushed through parliament a proposal to cut
at least 13 billion euros from the public purse - 4 billion euros more
than the "austerity" figure rejected overwhelmingly by the majority of
the Greek population in a referendum on 5 July.
These
reportedly include a 50 per cent increase in the cost of healthcare for
pensioners, almost 40 per cent of whom live in poverty; deep cuts in
public sector wages; the complete privatization of public facilities
such as airports and ports; a rise in value added tax to 23 per cent,
now applied to the Greek islands where people struggle to eke out a
living. There is more to come.
"Anti-austerity party sweeps to
stunning victory", declared a Guardian headline on January 25. "Radical
leftists" the paper called Tsipras and his impressively-educated
comrades. They wore open neck shirts, and the finance minister rode a
motorbike and was described as a "rock star of economics". It was a
façade. They were not radical in any sense of that cliched label,
neither were they "anti austerity".
For six months Tsipras and
the recently discarded finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, shuttled
between Athens and Brussels, Berlin and the other centres of European
money power. Instead of social justice for Greece, they achieved a new
indebtedness, a deeper impoverishment that would merely replace a
systemic rottenness based on the theft of tax revenue by the Greek
super-wealthy - in accordance with European "neo-liberal" values - and
cheap, highly profitable loans from those now seeking Greece's scalp.
Greece's
debt, reports an audit by the Greek parliament, "is illegal,
illegitimate and odious". Proportionally, it is less than 30 per cent
that of the debit of Germany, its major creditor. It is less than the
debt of European banks whose "bailout" in 2007-8 was barely
controversial and unpunished.
For a small country such as
Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist
ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it "intolerable" and
"the dung of the devil". The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to
remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is
guaranteed by their dependency.
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?
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.
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.
Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger
SOURCE
http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-problem-of-greece-is-not-only-a-tragedy-it-is-a-lie
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COMMENT
Another good article re Greece.
How inaccurate are the mainstream press articles about these 'radical' lefties? LOL
This mob must be one of those third-way, pretend lefties. And they've betrayed the electorate making promises they've not kept, & sullied themselves doing secret deals, contrary to the basis upon which they were elected. Very grubby.
Not really sure what postmodernism is:
postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism,
in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power.
This article discusses postmodernism in philosophy.
[britannica]
Too lazy to get into it the look-ups.
Favourite bits:
- *theft of tax revenue by the Greek super-wealthy.
- *euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology.
- *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.
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EU-NATO IMPERIALISM ❌ 