The terrorists in suits and ties who in January showed such indignation for the atrocious Parisian attack by their Kalashnikov-wielding twins have struck again. If a terrorist is distinguished by the cruelty and absolute indifference for the consequences of their actions on others, how else can we call the band of frosty technocrats who demolished Greece?
As many commentators have written, the harsh and humiliating measures forced upon Tsipras have no sense beyond that of a mafia-like warning: to destroy what was becoming a dangerous example and to admonish anybody from imitating it. Try to go against us and see how you end up! You’ll be a slave and your children and grandchildren will face the same fate.
Maybe we have all been naïve (Tsipras and Varoufakis as well) not to imagine that it would come to such brutality. To follow the news arriving from Brussels from last night and this morning has been an instructive exercise in horror: it was difficult to believe that the representatives of a Europe built on noble (if very abstract) principles could impose conditions of this kind on one of its member states, while spouting lines about ‘trust’ and calling a blackmail bordering torture a ‘deal’.
Maybe we can draw some bitter satisfaction at least from this: they have had to drop their masks and show their true faces. The will of a people, clearly expressed in an election and a referendum, counts for nothing. The law of force rules and those who don’t bow to it will be destroyed.
One hope remains: will the Greek people, who have shown such courage and dignity by voting No in the referendum last Sunday, accept such a shambles? And all of us, the next victims of this ruthless logic, will we find the way to not leave them alone?
