Category: Aggregated

The Greek Debt Commission report declaring all the bailout debt “odious” and “unpayable,” has been virtually blacked out of the major English-language international media. Even Greece’s English-language dailies have blacked it out. Kathimerini, the leading neoliberal daily, included one line on it buried in an article on another subject. But, the Debt Commission report is all over the blogosphere on countless websites, and is covered widely in Spanish-language media, both in Spain and Ibero-America. Several websites, such as the Center for Research on Globalization, among others, published the Executive Summary or short summaries of each chapter.

International media are filled with reports on the fact that Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras inserted in the bank’s official report, the warning that if Greece defaults it would be thrown out of the Eurozone and the European Union. His report was rejected by the Parliament as soon as it was submitted, by Speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou, as being “unacceptable” and an “undemocratic” attempt to “create a fait accompli and prevent a challenge for debt relief.”

Stournaras was appointed by the previous government, as a reward for kissing the asses of the EU Commission/ECB/IMF Troika every day as finance minister in 2012-2014. He is considered an idiot, and a lackey of the European oligarchy, and is thoroughly discredited. Even Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in his Daily Telegraph column yesterday calls Stournaras’s assertions “fatuous” and says that the EU would not dare throw Greece out. Evans-Pritchard said that Stournaras’s action, when he is supposed to be a “neutral” figure “tells us much about the institutional rot.”

Wednesday night thousands of Greek demonstrators gathered in Syntagma Square carrying banners accusing EU leaders of being “loan sharks” and “blackmailers,” to send a message to the Athens government that their mandate is to take a tough stand against the creditors.

Yesterday’s meeting of 19 European Finance Ministers in Luxembourg to discuss the Greek crisis, yielded no results except more vicious threats and demands that Greece submit completely to their murderous dictates.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, immediately announced after the meeting that he would call all Eurozone presidents and prime ministers to an emergency summit in Brussels on Monday, June 22. “It is time to urgently discuss the situation of Greece at the highest political level,” he said, the Financial Times reported yesterday afternoon.

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chaired the ministerial meeting, harumphed that no agreement is yet in sight, accusing Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis of having presented “too few measures that were credible and serious,” Associated Press reported. Time is running out, and it now time for the Greeks to submit “new” proposals over the next few days, he howled. Prior to the meeting, Dijsslbloem repeated that debt restructuring “is not in the cards.” The FT reports that Dijsselbloem admitted for the first time, that in order for Greece to unlock the 7.2 billion euros it is seeking, it would have to accept a third extension of the bailout program.

For her part, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde demanded more killing. She warned that Greece’s proposals “cannot be smoke and mirrors,” but must be “credible.” According to the rte.ie website, she stated that Greece will get no extra time to make the 1.6-billion-euro debt payment it owes the Fund at the end of this month.

“There will be no grace period,” she hissed. “I have a term of June 30. If it’s not paid by July 1, it’s not paid. No delay of one month or two, as I heard; It’s due June 30.”