War on war! (Alexis Tsipras and the Gordian Knot)

By Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

We do not question the usefulness of reaching a compromise. The government should seek a compromise, for a few days, if it wishes so, because neither the country nor the economy can take the pressure any longer.  Of course, as long as such compromise is satisfactory and final.  Rather than just promises, once again, to discuss the issue of the debt later, just as the promises made to Samaras and were never kept. What’s more, no payment should be made for the time being against the country’s external debts, whether the creditors like it or not.

However, we are not blind to see that such a “compromise” is now unlikely to be reached, if only because of the German stance.  Unless the government capitulated, accepting the surrender of national independence and the suicide of the Greek people and state.  

European governments and institutions blackmail Greece using progressive financial suffocation and deny to the Greek government the means to deal with the most pressing real problems of hunger and disease caused by their policies.  They ask for even bigger cuts from a welfare state already in shambles. They ask from Greece, the country they destroyed by “rescuing” it, the country which, as a result of the policies imposed on it, over the last five years has suffered greater national income losses than France or Germany during the first WW,  to take even more austerity measures!

European governments, European institutions and the IMF treat, on behalf of the “Markets”, an EU member state, in the same way they treated Iraq and Libya. The only difference is that they use different weapons; financial in the case of Greece, military in the case of the Arab countries.   

Accepting the new ultimatum of the European governments would mean three things:

a) The prospect of full surrender of power from Athens to Merkel, Schäuble, Draghi, Lagarde

b)  The violation of the mandate of Greek people to not accept an agreement such as the one rejected; a mandate that is constitutionally stronger than any decision by political parties or by the parliament and may be changed only by another referendum.

We remind here the obvious: the mandate of the Greek people is an answer to the simple question of whether to accept the ultimatum given by the creditors and, obviously, whether to accept any other similar proposal which shares the same philosophy, all the more so an even worse proposal. We did not vote on whether we want a breach with Europe or not, nor did we vote on whether we want to stay in the eurozone and the EU, nor on whether we like one leader over the other, because, to put it simply, we were not asked to answer any of these questions.

It is an evidently absurd and even grotesque interpretation of the Greek people’s No vote, the view, coming from official mouths and expressed by some supposedly “reliable” and “important” personalities, that the Greek people asked from its government to accept an ultimatum, worse than that already given, in order to avoid a breach with Europe and remain in the euro zone and the EU at any cost. Those who believed so, voted obviously Yes. They didn’t vote No. Before the referendum the supporters of the “Yes” were claiming that a “No” vote means exit from euro. Now, they say that it means staying in the euro!!! They argue that the “empowerment” of Tsipras does not mean a mandate for resistance but that it offers greater flexibility for concessions!!! (1)

c) The prospect of a coordinated, “within the euro and the EU” transformation of Greece in a European version of Bangladesh, but without the degree of independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh and with much bigger, unsustainable debt!

No Prime Minister of Greece can – or is entitled to - sign such an agreement, even more so Alexis Tsipras, without in essence committing political suicide and without causing the disband of SYRIZA, of which sole raison d'être is the promise of bringing to an end the austerity course to destruction and economic colonization.

Even in a fully hypothetical scenario that he manages to pass it through his party and the parliament, such an agreement would not be operative; Greece would remain in a “spiral of death” and the “Greek problem” will blow up again in a few months’ time.

We hope that Alexis Tsipras and SYRIZA leadership have grasped the real meaning of the overwhelming majority of the No vote.  Today, the Greek people, especially the younger generation, entering massively and rapidly into politics, is miles ahead from all political leaders, who all, those in Berlin and in Europe included, occasionally remind us of something between Maria Antoinette and the Bourbons (who learned nothing and forgot nothing). To be more precise, things in Europe today seem worse than what they were on the eve of the French Revolution!

We don’t know how long Athens will carry on thinking that it is pertinent to continue the efforts to reach a compromise or to follow the political line of the “one and only good scenario". We fear already that the government is being dragged into a negotiation context  which is outside the binding - for all, including this government- mandate of the people (but also beyond the undertakings on the basis of which it was elected), in an attempt to find a solution with bad-faith partners who want to destroy Greece and in the context of a programme which has no room for any substantial improvement.   

Our understanding is that the country can no longer wait. If we do not want to undermine on our own the deepest, most elementary moral and material foundations of our national existence, we should at long last prepare, employing «German discipline and soberness", to respond with war to war.

Groundwork is required at legal, political, economic, and international level, but also at the level of military security. Among other things, there is a need to establish forthwith a legal task force of high level, there is a need for political discourse that is capable of mobilizing rather than reassuring and for the Greek people to be told the whole truth. What is required is legal and administrative preparation for blocking debt payments, for introducing a domestic mean of payments and for employing administrative tactics suitable for a wartime economy. We need an international political discourse superior to that of our enemies. What is now required is the swift development of a wide popular movement, which would function as today’s EAM (National Liberation Front), because it is evident that SYRIZA alone cannot cope.  We need to fight relentlessly against the domestic oligarchy and, at long last, make private TV channels, which promote foreign interests having evaded their debts to the state, to abide with the law!  We need to establish effective controls on the banking system. (If all those things had been done earlier the Creditors stance may have been different

Any further illusions and misapprehensions however, may prove fatal.

Even if we wanted to wait, the country’s economy cannot wait. With the banks closed, because of Draghi’s tactic of slow death by asphyxiation, with the problems in supply of medicines and in the operation of any business which has dealings with abroad, we are now at a situation which has more of the bad things and none of the good things of the breach with the creditors. Nor can the Greek people stand any longer the humiliation of its country by the representatives of Luxemburg’s tax heaven, by Rothschild bankers acting from the position of finance ministers of large nations, by the “neo-hitlerites” in Berlin and by Goldman Sachs veterans from the position of the Central Banker of Europe!

Those are the people who put to us the question of “leaving or staying in the euro”. We must respond convincingly, answering them not on the euro question, but on the debt question, because this is the spearhead of the attack to Greece, and to explain to European people who and why created this debt. We will not return to national currency in order continue serving the debt in euro. If we return we will take the debt with us! And, we will pay it only when we will be able to cover the very basic needs for this nation’s survival.  

It is too bad that we found ourselves at the forefront of the war launched by the markets and Germany against the peoples of Europe. But now we are reaching the point where we have no other option than fighting. We will fight, with this or with any other government, as we so often did in the past. Greece will win and will survive!

Athens, 8 July 2015

Konstantakopoulos.blogspot.com

1. By the way, accepting the European ultimatum would constitute not only a blatant violation of the result of the referendum and of the core of the political regime, something which would create one of the conditions required for the county to enter into civil conflict;  it would also constitute the continuation of the massive violation of the provisions of the Greek constitution, the European treaties and other international law statutes, by the programme of the Loan-Memorandums which were imposed on Greece by blackmail,  by an international conspiracy  and in violation of the mandate given by the Greek electorate in 2010 and of renewed mandates thereafter.
   
   The apparent and now proven objective was not to save Greece in any way, but to make Greek people pay for the damage caused by major international banks and other financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank, BNP-Paribas, Goldman Sachs and many other with the complicity of the competent European authorities and of successive Greek and other European governments.