I looked across the entire spectrum of UK press titles and US business on Tuesday in relation to business in general and Greece in particular. It was all, variously, one or more of propaganda, dissembling, sloppy, badly-informed, hopelessly wishful and inhumanly unthinking. All the work of proprietor bumboys, ideologues, drunks, 2nd rate minds and smear-merchants: Tsipras caught on camera at anti G8 demo in 2002 (when he was 26), invented crap about Greek proposals that arrived late and in the wrong format, yet more repetitions of this EU myth called Grexit….out and out it comes, this vomit from those who don’t have the stomach for reality or a brain for designed for discernment of the truth.
‘Information’ on offer about the eurogroupe/EC v Syriza 15-rounder makes one
loathe to comment on much because everything is wheels within enigmas inside spirals and black holes. But very late last night I got a final confirmation of something I’d been chasing for 48 hours, so I offer it to you now as an informed opinion: Troika2 (Schäuble/Draghi, the IMF and Count Dijesslbleom of Eurogroupe) are going to reject the Athens proposals. NB I don’t include Juncker in that conclusion – even though I remain sure that he enjoys the confidence of German Chancellor – because to me he has become a slightly more depraved and considerably more inebriated version of Sepp Blatter. Indeed, large parts of me would be happy to rename the EU as FIFA…F**king Insufferable Footloose Arseholes.
Piecing the last 72 hours together, this is my best shot:
The eurogroupe were caught on the hop by how much Syriza had caved…so they smeared the Greeks to waste time, and went off to think of things they could find wrong with the new poposals. Hence the phantom eurogroupe meeting on Monday. Read Dijesslbleom’s pathetic responses as to why it never happened.
Syriza knew this outcome was likely – thus we see Tsipras leaking comments to colleagues this morning about contrived objections, and “sectional interests” in Greece being served. But sources close to the Right and Centre of the Syriza Coalition suggest that an outright rejection of the proposal was not expected by the Party leadership….yet this now seems a near-certainty.
I was reminded last night of what Tim Geithner told close confidantes following his attendance at the Polish EU summit: “The EU” he asserted, “is going to beat Greece to death with baseball bats”.
Al Capone meted out the same treatment to a Mob rival in the summer of 1930. By 1931 he’d been convicted of tax evasion, and later died of untreated syphillis. I think the parallel is clear enough: you can beat the crap out of somebody, but once dead they can’t sell your deal for you – however much you might humiliate them.
Troika2 is going to demand more, but Syriza – if it wants to survive as a political force – has nothing more to offer. The EU has a creeping disease: it is doomed, but it can’ t kill Greece.
The Slog 