by B. R. GOWANI
Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s Finance Minister, leaves the finance ministry with his wife after resigning his post under pressure from European and US creditors PHOTO/BBC
In recent decades, the world has witnessed the power of corporations, financial institutions, and financiers grow many fold. This has turned them into destructive giants with the power to make or break countries. Currently, they, led by the European superwoman Chancellor Angela Merkel, are hell bent on destroying their European victim, southeastern nation of Greece, by imposing impossible conditions.
If the Greek government agrees to abide by the conditions, it is doomed to fail. If it doesn’t, the creditors will surely make Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s life a hell and thus forcing him to resign. This will make room for someone obedient enough to carry out their orders.
Tsipras’s government, in order to show it to the creditors that the Greek people support his dealings with them, took a huge risk by calling for a referendum set for July 5, 2015. The supporters numbered 61% whereas 38% opposed.
Merkel’s office said “that the vote of the Greek people must be respected,” after she spoke with French President Francois Hollande. An absolute lie. If the Greek people’s mandate had any respect then this stage would never have reached. The Greek people elected Tsipras in January 2015 precisely to fight the “austerity measures,” that is, slashing of wages, cutting down of pensions, and so on as demanded by the “troika,” that is, the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund – or more appropriately, IMF or International Mother Fuckers. The troika together can be labelled as INF or International Nations Fuckers.
Germany, the European Economic Super Power (despite its sluggish economic growth), is in the forefront asking Greece to accept the creditors’ terms and conditions; forgetting its own checkered past of debt paying which economist Thomas Piketty reminds us in an interview given to Die Zeit.
“What struck me while I was writing is that Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.”
The austerity measures foisted on Greece five years ago has resulted in a decline of 25% in its GDP. At present, the youth unemployment is over 50%, two-fifths of the children are living in poverty, infant mortality is extremely high.
The current face-off between Greece and its creditors is due to the former’s failure to pay the loan installment on time. The loan business is an immense industry and is an indirect kind of colonialism of the debtor nations. Economist Joseph Stiglitz on loans given to Greece,
“We should be clear: almost none of the huge amount of money loaned to Greece has actually gone there. It has gone to pay out private-sector creditors – including German and French banks. Greece has gotten but a pittance, but it has paid a high price to preserve these countries’ banking systems. The IMF and the other “official” creditors do not need the money that is being demanded. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the money received would most likely just be lent out again to Greece.”
He further adds:
“But, again, it’s not about the money. It’s about using “deadlines” to force Greece to knuckle under, and to accept the unacceptable – not only austerity measures, but other regressive and punitive policies.”
And that is what the Greek Finance Minister Yannis Varoufakis refused to do. He was not one of those leaders who would say one thing to the domestic audience but would do the total opposite of that as dictated by the INFs. He also didn’t hide from his people the measuress his country was asked to carry out. That were his real sins as Chris Bickerton points out:
“If a minister is constrained because of a difficult situation at home, this is treated as an understandable — if unfortunate — problem that needs to be solved. Ministers find in the Eurogroup a source of energy and support for taking on their own domestic populations. It is also a private club of sorts, where what goes on inside remains secret.”
That is, too hell with democracy. As leader of a country you’re not suppose to work for your people’s benefits, however, you’re duty bound to enhance the interests, i.e., interest payments, of your creditors and the profits of the corporations.
Talking about the troika, Varoufakis, in an interview given to Spanish El Mundo newspaper, said:
“What they’re doing with Greece has a name – terrorism.”
“Why did they force us to close the banks? To instill fear in people. And spreading fear is called terrorism.”
The banks are closed in Greece since June 29, 2015, and people can only withdraw 60 Euros (67 US dollars) per day through ATMs. The financiers are the financial terrorists. The words the real terrorists hate to hear are “terrorist”/”terrorists,” “terrorism,” and “terror” when they are applied to them; otherwise they are fine to hear when they are applied to “others.” Belgian Finance Minister Johan Van Overtveldt told VRT radio:
“To say that it wasn’t nice to hear him more or less saying that his fellow ministers were terrorists is of course an understatement.”
So Varoufakis had to resign.
But then, Greeks don’t need financial terrorists to destroy them when they have Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. His proposals, supported by most of the MPs (members of parliament) contains acceptance of many of the conditions against which the Greeks voted less than a week ago!
Tsipras may perhaps be a rare leader who got elected twice (January election and July referendum) within six months and yet went against the interests of his own people, and thus letting INFs to continue screwing the Greek people.
Even Varoufakis is supporting Greek Parliament’s proposals!
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com