The Mental Waterboarding of Mr. Tsipras

Paul Mason of Channel Foour News, as usual, provides concise and very clear commentary

Greece crisis: Europe turns the screw

Paul Mason – channel 4,

12 July, 2015

The Greeks arrived with a set of proposals widely scorned as “more austere than the ones they rejected”. The internet burst forth with catcalls – “they’ve caved in”.

By doing so, however, the Greeks last night revealed the true dysfunctionality of the system they are trying to stay inside.

First, Germany put forward a proposal one could best describe as “back of envelope” for Greece to leave the Eurozone for five years. There is logic to it – because Germany was signalling that only outside the Eurozone could Greece’s debts be written off.

But for the most powerful Eurozone nation to arrive with an unspecified, two-paragraph “suggestion” at this stage explains why the Italians, according to the Guardian, are about to blast them with both barrels for lack of leadership.

Then came the Finns. Their government is a coalition of centre right parties and the right-wing populist Finns Party. The latter threatened to collapse the new governing coalition if the Finns take part in a new bailout for Greece.

The demand is now that the Greeks pass all the laws they signed up to in advance of any new bailout deal. This is backed up by a threat to keep the Greek banks starved of liquidity from the ECB for another week.

‘Political chaos’

In Greece large numbers of people – on all sides of politics – believe the Europeans are trying to force the elected government to resign before a deal is concluded. If so there will be political chaos.

Syriza’s poll rating is currently 38 per cent and rising. Without a “moderate” split from Syriza the centrist parties have no chance of forming a new government, and without Tsipras’ tacit consent there can be no interim government of unelected technocrats.

On Friday I reported, on the basis of intelligence being supplied to large corporations, that the key supply concerns are gas – because of the need for forward contracts – disposables in the healthcare system, and meat imports.

The screw Europe is turning on its own supposed member state now begins to resemble a sanctions regime. Without more liquidity the banks will run out of money some time this week.

To be clear, it is the Europe that is in charge of the Greek banking system, not Greece. Yet after last night what many in Greece and elsewhere see is that Europe has no single understanding of what it’s trying to achieve through this enforced destruction of a modern economy.

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