Here's the "deal" that Tsipras agreed to in what is being described as anything from a whipping to a torture chamber. Frankly he deserves a whipping, but not this kind. In the end what has emerged as the "deal" is nothing more than an orgy of neoliberal grab. Here we go:
- Privatization program. Greece will be forced to sell off 50 billion euros in valuable assets. Of course, this is what the oligarchs were after. These are primo assets. Once again it's the looting of long-paid-for assets by theives with fraudulent claims to them. These assets have benefited the people. Now The Powers That Be can charge money for their use.
- Ambitious pension reforms. So the pension money will be stolen by the banksters to make them whole from their horribly wrong speculations. Off the backs of the innocents. What scum. This is exactly what the Greek voters voted against, but hey, referendums in Greece are not binding so too fucking bad, people.
- Liberalization of Greece's economy. That means deregulation, which is one of the favorite scams of the neoliberals who disguise this as fake competition and freeing up the "free market" when in fact it's nothing more than state sanctioned racketeering by large multinationals--European and American. They come in, take control, boost their profits and impose their will.
- Modernizing the labor market. Haha. How funny. You knew this was coming. It's a euphemism for union destruction and labor subjugation.
- Depoliticizing the Greek government establishment. Talk about brazen. These guys have gone above and beyond with this one. It's basically saying we're going to take politics out of politics. In other words, the end of any form of representative government. Don't even think about it. We'll be taking over from here on.
- Ending or rolling back legislation that Syriza passed in its first six months. This one goes hand in hand with the bullet point above. Your government passed laws? Too fucking bad, we're cancelling those laws.
Anyone who says this is
not a coup is a fool. By the way, the hashtag
#ThisIsACoup is trending on Twitter. On another note, let's not get smug or overly critical of the Greek people or for that matter go on any sort of rant against this outcome for that would be hypocrisy. The same thing goes on here in America and in Europe all the time. While we don't have binding referendums (a direct democracy) in the USA or, in most European countries, (we have representative government) the will of the people is almost always ignored just the same. We know this by looking at polls and then seeing what laws are passed, which are almost always against what the people want and almost always aligned with what the elites want. We have seen it here in the USA with Citizens United, the many trade deals (in fact, one that Congress just gave to Obama), endless foreign wars, tax giveaways to they rich, law enforcement and police brutality, NSA surveillance and much more. So we are just as much sheep being led to slaughter as the Greeks.
