Longtime critic of the Eurozone’s destructive commitment to austerity, Italian comedian-turned-political activist Beppe Grillo has launched what one news outlet called a “full-throated attack” on the single currency, saying his country should throw off that “anti-democratic straitjacket” by nationalizing its banks and taking a stronger stance against the demands of elite financial interests.
For Greece, leaving the EU may be perilous; but it opens provocative possibilities. The government could nationalize its insolvent banks along with its central bank, and start generating the credit the country desperately needs to get back on its feet. If it chose, it could do this while still using the euro, just as Ecuador uses the US dollar without being part of the US.
Europeans who have been completely misled about the Greek crisis, and who are shielded from its consequences, are willing to endorse their governments’ cruelty toward Greeks. German officials have openly boasted about how well protected its economy is against collapse in Greece – not an empty boast given the reality of the past several years. People who believe in democracy assume that it gives voters the most influence on decisions that impact them the most. That is why nobody would endorse the citizens of Athens electing the mayor of Berlin and contemptuously disregarding what Berliners think. Anyone who claims that Germany and its allies are acting with democratic legitimacy in Greece are endorsing that kind of nonsense.
Chris Black concludes that a “court would also have to consider whether the contract was ever valid in the first place; that is – did both sides get real consideration for their part in the bargain….It is clear that the moneys lent did not actually flow into the Greek economy but were nominal loans to the Greek nation, but actually went from one lenders bank to another and back again, so that it was really a scam to steal the wealth of the Greek people…. The Greek could legally argue their way out of all these contracts and loans, but of course behind the contracts sits the German army and behind them the US army – and so it not (so much) a legal matter but a political one. Argentina and Iceland made a political decision and repudiated these contracts. Greece can do the same.”
The most optimistic scenario shows that Greece would face an unsustainable debt in 2030 even if it agreed to the package of tax increases and spending cuts proposed by the European commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF in exchange for a five-month €15.5bn loan from its creditors.
Financial technocrats were put in place to serve the domestic oligarchy and foreign bondholders. Greece was under financial attack just as deadly as a military attack. Finance is war. That is this week’s lesson.
And for the first time, debtor countries are realizing that they are in a state of war.
An indication of how this is to play out can be discerned from Monday’s judgment of the UK’s Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which found that Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had spied on a number of human rights groups around the world.
Greece has a unique opportunity to exit the Eurozone gracefully, head high, telling the troika, especially the fratricidal Brussels gang, that honoring the election commitment to the Greek people is a priority – no more austerity, no more pension cuts, no more privatization of public services and public assets, no more closing of hospitals – for these honorable reasons Greece will exit the Eurozone – not surrender, never surrender. This is not surrender; this is a wise move that will lead Greece into a new and prosperous future.
the Greek “sovereign debt crisis” is being used to create a precedent that will apply to every EU member government. The member states will cease to exist as sovereign states. Sovereignty will rest in the EU. The measures that Germany and France are supporting will in the end terminate their own sovereignty, very little of which actually remains as they do not have their own currency and their foreign policy is subservient to Washington.
The military targeting of civilian infrastructure, especially of water supplies, is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, writes Nafeez Ahmed. Yet this is precisely what NATO did in Libya, while blaming the damage on Gaddafi himself. Since then, the country’s water infrastructure – and the suffering of its people – has only deteriorated further.
The documents lay out a military operation against cross-Mediterranean refugee transport networks and infrastructure. It details plans to conduct military operations to destroy boats used for transporting migrants and refugees in Libyan territory, thereby preventing them from reaching Europe
Clearly, our creditors’ demand for more austerity has nothing to do with concerns about genuine reform or moving Greece onto a sustainable fiscal path. Their true motivation is a question best left to future historians – who, I have no doubt, will take much of the contemporary media coverage with a grain of salt.
