Tsipras will return to Greece today holding a scrap of paper declaring that there will be peace in our time.
Chamberlain did much the same in September 1938.
The crisis was not averted then.
I do not think the Greek crisis has been either.
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This is sad. This is very sad indeed.
I share your pessimism, but perhaps Hirohito is more suitable than Chamberlain – “We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is unsufferable”.
It’s worse than sad. It’s appalling.
I see no chance of there being a stable government in Greece.
This result just brings home the real state of democracy in the EU states.
Who is next?
Greece is cooked and cooling, Italy is too big, Spain couldn’t really care anyway, so the remaining turkeys are Ireland and Portugal to be enlisted into the vassals of Germany brigade.
Now is a good time to point out that we are not in the euro, and that it looks highly likely that the euro will depart this mortal veil in the future. In any case, it and the EU have been seriously injured with all this backstabbing going on. And democracy will never be the same again, at least in Europe.
“Who is next?”
That’s an easy one. Using the last world bank and CIA world fact book data, Greece’s ratio of external debt to exports is 11.9, Cyprus is 8.0, and no other country is above 4, with the next highest EU country being below 3.
So notionally if Greece had no imports at all for 11.9 years and used every single export to pay down external debt, they’d clear it. It won’t happen.
Cyprus has debts to roll over in two years time. They are next imv.
Richard, you are quite right as ever. I am appalled that this will undoubtedly be used by the neo-liberals to reduce the role of government. What we need, in Greece as elsewhere, is a Courageous State in which government is given its proper role.
When you read Yanis Varoufakis’s account of the negotiations before his replacement, it seems that Germany’s approach, led by Wolfgang Schaueble, was unable to even contemplate a different analysis of the Greece’s economic situation.
http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015/07/exclusive-yanis-varoufakis-opens-about-his-five-month-battle-save-greece
The humiliation forced on Greece this morning resulted from the cold rage of system that sensed a challenge to its core. By ‘going too far’ the challengers’ case will be amplified and reflected back.
It is a huge pity that the next round of this fight may be taken up by the more extreme elements of the right. And if history is to repeat itself as you suggest, the establishment will prefer an accommodation with the right.
All true, I am sure
Also true that YV could not, I think, comprehend of this possibility
But then nor can many – even the FT
Richard, my wife is Czech, and I cannot help feeling that what is being done to Greece now is the neo-liberal, neo-feudal equivalent of the August 21st invasion of Czechoslovakia by the forces of the Warsaw Pact, which snuffed out the TRULY democratic experiment of the Prague Spring, because the hard-line ideologues in the Kremlin, and especially Ulbricht in the DDR, couldn’t bear to see their cherished beliefs called into question.
On this reading, Tsipras is a new Dubcek, another true democrat, and probably Dubcek’s equal in naivety.
Two observations: the August 21st invasion contributed massively to the collapse of Communism but it took, alas, 21 years for this to materialise. We probably face,at least that, and more, given the iron grip of the neo-liberal neo-feudal Mafiosi of Bankeristan have on the whole system.
Secondly, having been a convinced europhile for about 55+ years, since the age of 14 or 15, I’m afraid I no longer want to belong to the neo-feudal “Berlin Pact”, and will be voting to leave in the 2017 Referendum. I confidently expect this will lead to the equivalent of my being imprisoned in the Tower of London, unless a majority agree with me, when Cameron will simply ignore the result, just issue an Order in Council, suspending the constitution and Parliament, imposing martial law, and ruling by decree. After all, that’s virtually what’s happening in Greece.
i remember that attempted revolution
I was 10, I guess, and ti moved me
Still does
And you’re right about the impact on the EU vote. It will be so hard to defend the EU now
Richard, I forgot to say that the whole turning back the clock in Czechoslovakia after the invasion rejoiced in the wonderful “bureaucratise” term “normalisation”, a process that involved the imprisonment of many, including Vaclav Havel.
The EU has been impossible to defend for some time.
I believe somebody once said ‘when the facts change, I change my mind’.
The facts have changed.
I am rapidly changing my mind