Endgame looms for Greek crisis as both sides take debt negotiations to the brink
Premier
Alexis Tsipras will come to a fork in the road on Thursday, but
whether or not a deal is made, the future for his country is bleak
13
June, 2015
Eleventh-hour
talks to avoid Greece defaulting on its debt and plunging the
eurozone into crisis intensified at the weekend with Greek officials
flying to Brussels only days before a meeting of Europe’s finance
ministers that many regard as a final deadline.
Almost
five months after he assumed power, the Greek prime minister, Alexis
Tsipras, has come to a fork in the road: either he accepts the
painful terms of a cash-for-reform deal that ensures Greece’s place
in the single currency or he decides to go it alone, faithful to the
vision of his anti-austerity Syriza party. Either way, the endgame is
upon him.
Thursday’s
meeting of eurozone finance ministers is viewed as the last chance to
clinch a deal before Athens’s already extended bailout accord
expires on 30 June. “It is in his hands,” Rena Dourou, governor
of the Attica district, said. “Tsipras, himself, is acutely aware
of the historic weight his decision will carry.”
The
drama of Greece’s battle to keep bankruptcy at bay has, with the
ticking of the clock, become ever darker in tone. What started out as
good-tempered brinkmanship has turned increasingly sour as
negotiations to release desperately needed bailout funds have
repeatedly hit a wall over Athens’s failure to produce persuasive
reforms.
“It
is as if they work in Excel and we work in Word,” said one insider.
“There just seems to be no meeting of minds.”
Last
week the mood became more febrile as it emerged that Eurocrats, for
the first time, had debated the possibility of cash-starved Athens
defaulting. The revelation came amid reports that Germany’s
chancellor, Angela Merkel, was resigned to letting Greece go.
Berlin
is by far the biggest contributor to the €240bn bailout propping up
the near-bankrupt state. Last week, the EU council president, Donald
Tusk, ratcheted up the pressure, warning: “There is no more time
for gambling. The day is coming, I am afraid, that someone says the
game is over.”
On
Saturday Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis hit back, telling
Radio 4 that he did not believe “any sensible European bureaucrat
or politician” would seriously contemplate the country’s euro
exit. “The reason why we are not signing up to what has been
offered is because it is yet another version of the failed proposals
of the past,” he said.
The
persistent demand of foreign lenders for pension reform, given the
scale of austerity already undertaken in a country that has seen its
economy shrink by more than a quarter in the past five years, was not
only silly but plainly a deal-breaker, he said. “It is just the
kind of proposal that one puts forward if you don’t want an
agreement,” insisted the academic-turned-politician.
With
both sides seemingly determined to take negotiations to the brink,
the nerve-racking game of poker was raised a notch yesterday as
Tsipras’s closest aides resumed talks with technical teams in
Brussels. The EU and IMF say the ball is now in Greece’s court.
Following his rejection of their demands as “absurd” last week,
the young premier is hoping the officials will be able to bridge
outstanding differences on the basis of a new set of “counter
proposals”.
Publicly,
the government says it is closer than it has ever been to a deal, but
in private EU sources say the Greek government’s proposed measures
still run too close to the “red lines” that Tsipras has refused
to cross in terms of pension cuts and labour deregulation.
In
a statement released by his office , the leader was quoted as saying
that, if a compromise agreement was viable, his government would
support it, no matter what. “But if what Europe wants is division
and continuation of subordination we will again … say the big no
and we will give battle for the dignity of the people and our
national sovereignty,” a newspaper quoted him as saying.
Tsipras’s
robust defence of what Greek people believe are their rights has
played well with a population both worn out and humiliated by crisis.
Support for him has never been higher.
Neither,
ironically, has support for Greece’s continued membership of the
eurozone itself. “Even if we achieve very little, we will know that
we have held our heads high,” said Vangelis Pavlatos, an actor, in
what has become a common refrain. But the prolonged talks and the
uncertainty they have engendered has also sounded the death knell for
the real economy and a banking system that has been depleted by
worried savers. Panic is on the rise; so, too, is the unmistakable
sense that whichever way they go – and an extension of the current
programme may well be the end result – pride will soon be replaced
by hardship.
“Everyone
knows that a new deal is going to mean more austerity,” said Takis
Leonidopoulos, among the hundreds of accountants who took to the
streets on Friday in protest over projected tax rises.
“But
if there is no deal we will likely see capital controls, our bank
savings will be up in the air, salaries could stop, it’ll be
ordinary people who will pay the price. What we are looking at is
misery either way,” he sighed. “The big question – and be sure
to write this – is how are the Greeks going to react?”
The
Pentagon is reportedly poised to store battle tanks, infantry
fighting vehicles and other heavy equipment for up to 5,000 US troops
in Eastern European and the Baltic countries. It says the move is to
reassure its NATO allies.
According
to the New York Times citing American and allied officials, the
equipment would be stored in each of the three Baltic nations:
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as well as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria
and possibly Hungary.
The
move, if it is approved, would be the most serious deployment of
military hardware in Europe since the end of the Cold War; although
the plan falls short of a permanent presence of boots on the ground.
First time since Cold War, US military equipment on Russia’s doorstep
The
Pentagon is ready to store heavy military equipment in East Europe to
face a possible “Russian aggression” in the wake of a crisis in
Ukraine, a report says.
On
Saturday, the New York Times quoted officials as saying that the
weaponry, which includes battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles,
was enough for as many as 5,000 American troops.
Since
the end of the Cold War, this would be the first time that the United
States is stationing heavy weaponry in the Eastern European
countries, once part of the Soviet Union
From American NBC television
U.S. Trains Ukrainian Forces on Russia's
Doorstep — And Moscow Isn't Happy
American troops are training Ukrainian forces on Russia's doorstep, a move seen
as a major provocation by Vladimir Putin's regime.
The live-fire drills and counter-insurgency exercises involving about 300 U.S.
aratroopers are a key bone of contention for the Moscow, which the West accusesof helping to arm pro-Kremlin rebels in eastern Ukraine.
U.S. Troops Train Ukrainian Forces With Live-Fire Drills 0:36
An
RT Deutsch show has received stunning support among viewers in
Germany, according to the chief editor and co-owner of a local
channel that is currently being investigated for airing the program.
An
Indonesian volcano, closely monitored by alarmed authorities, has
unleashed a new powerful plume of smoke and ash into the air. The
status of Mount Sinabung, located close to a deadly ancient volcano,
was recently raised to the highest alert level.
Indonesian
authorities have recorded another powerful burst from Sinabung on
Saturday. The latest eruption however caused no injuries as over
2,700 people living in the immediate danger zone had already been
evacuated earlier this week.
An
oil depot near Kiev caught fire again on Saturday after firefighters
had contained the massive five-day blaze that claimed the lives of
five people. The authorities have launched a criminal investigation
against the depot operator on ecocide charges.
A
storage tank caught fire at the BRSM-Nafta facility in Vasilkov, 25
kilometers south of Kiev, at about 11:30am local time, the town’s
mayor Sergey Sabov wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday.
The
fire at the oil deport flared up again, after one of the tanks was
depressurized resulting in a fuel leak, he added.
The Bilderberg conference, which bills itself as a “forum for informal discussions” held by the world's top brass, has drawn fire from protesters gathered near the Interalpen-Hotel Tyrol in Austria, accusing the attendees of corruption and elitism.
After a rally on Friday, anti-Bilderberg activists re-emerged on Saturday afternoon to protest what many of them refer to as a gathering of criminals. Thousands of protesters are expected to assemble outside the hotel where the Bilderberg group meeting is taking place
The
British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, has withdrawn its agents
out of live operations in foreign countries as they could allegedly
be identified by Russia and China with the help of files stolen by
former US National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden,
The Sunday Times reports.
The
newspaper claimed on Sunday citing senior British officials that
Moscow has gained access to over 1 million classified files that
contain details of secret intelligence techniques and information
that could be used to identify British and American spies.
A
senior Downing Street source told The Sunday Times that "agents
have had to be moved and that knowledge of how we operate has stopped
us getting vital information," although there is "no
evidence of anyone being harmed" as a result of the reported
leak.
Hackers
with suspected links to China appear to have accessed sensitive data
on US intelligence and military personnel, American officials say.
The
computer of German Chancellor Angela Merkel was used to spread Trojan
malware during a cyberattack on the German parliament (Bundestag),
Bild am Sonntag reports.
German
Bundestag’s internal computer network was hacked in May. It was
unclear whether the cybercriminals, which some reports said were
Russian, obtained any classified information as a result of the
breach.
Germany
Unable to Confirm Russian Hackers Behind Bundestag Cyberattack
Bild
am Sonntag said on Sunday that Merkel’s computer was one of the
first attacked by the hackers, who accessed the system using Trojan
malware.
The
chancellor’s name was then used to spread the virus to other
computers through a fake invitation to a conference. A link in the
letter would activate the Trojan virus.
None
of the sources close to Merkel could say whether the hackers stole
any data from the chancellor’s computer, the German newspaper said.
London's
biggest companies warn they will have to quit the capital if the
United Kingdom leaves the European Union, as EU trading restrictions
would harm their business in case of Brexit, The Sunday Times reports
The
most anticipated papal letter for decades will be published in five
languages on Thursday. It will call for an end to the ‘tyrannical’
exploitation of nature by mankind. Could it lead to a step-change in
the battle against global warming?
The
lack of faith in central bank trustworthiness is spreading. First
Germany, then Holland, and Austria, and now - as
we noted was possible previously - Texas
has enacted a Bill to repatriate $1 billion of gold from The NY Fed's
vaults to a newly established state gold bullion depository..."People
have this image of Texas as big and powerful … so for a lot of
people, this is exactly where they would want to go with their gold,"
and the Bill includes
a section to prevent forced seizure from the Federal Government.
Just
two weeks after California's farmers - with the most senior water
rights - offered to cut their own water use by 25% (in an attempt to
front-run more draconian government-imposed measures), AP
reports that
the California government has - just as we predicted - ignored any
efforts at self-preservation and ordered
the largest cuts on record to farmers holding some of the state's
strongest water rights.
While frackers and big energy remain exempt from the restrictions,
Caren Trgovcich, chief deputy director of the water board,
explains, "we
are now at the point where demand in our system is outstripping
supply for even the most senior water rights holders."
With
"the whole damn state out of water," AP
reports State
water officials told more than a hundred senior rights holders in
California's Sacramento, San Joaquin and delta watersheds to stop
pumping from those waterways.....
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