THE debt talks between Greece and its international creditors collapsed on Thursday night with German Chancellor Merkel telling the Greek PM Tsipras to shut up, and members of the Syriza government accusing the Troika of seeking to organise a Greek right-wing coup against the elected government.
The reality is that Greece and its workers, farmers and youth have been bled dry, but this is not enough to satisfy the Draculas of the Troika (the European Commission, European Central Bank and the IMF).
With Monday morning constituting zero hour, there is a massive run taking place on what deposits are left in the Greek banks which will, no doubt, refuse to reopen on Monday morning, raising the prospect of imminent bank closures as the country spirals towards default in days.
Greece’s creaking banking system is now facing the prospect of a devastating run on its assets on Monday morning, provided the banks re-open.
In the latest three-hour aborted session of finance ministers, both sides failed to agree to an agreement that could be sent on to the EU leaders at their two-day summit.
At the summit, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Holland’s Mark Rutte reportedly told Alexis Tsipras to ‘shut up’ when he pleaded for a ‘reprieve’ for Greece as the leaders consumed their multi-course dinner.
For good measure, Merkel rounded on Tsipras telling him that Germany ‘will not be blackmailed’ by the Greeks.
Greece cannot find the 1.6bn euros to pay off its latest loan instalment to the International Monetary Fund on June 30. So there will be no release of the 7.2bn euros in bail-out cash ‘owed’ to the country.
The IMF’s board would be notified ‘promptly’ of a missed payment, said IMF spokesman Gerry Rice. There will be no 30-day ‘period of grace’ for Greece.
Tsipras, meanwhile, has been handed a revised list of ever more draconian measures the Troika are demanding in return for emergency paper cash.
Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said his partners in the Greek government remained divided on what they were willing to concede, saying that ‘several colleagues disagreed and criticised not only our text but also that of the institutions.
‘We decided as a Eurogroup that we should continue our deliberations.’
Greece is being plunged into a devastating and revolutionary political and economic crisis by the EU Commission and the IMF.
The last such intervention in Europe by these bodies was in the Ukraine, where, when the accredited government of Yanukovych refused the deal that was on offer from the EU, the latter supported a right-wing insurrection and coup, and encouraged civil war measures by extreme right wingers that led to a civil war.
There is no doubt that the Syriza-led coalition will shatter and fall leaving Greece on the crossroads.
In this crisis situation, the working class must declare an indefinite general strike, set up Councils of Action (Soviets) in every city and town, organise the youth into a workers militia, along with the rank and file soldiery of the Greek army and set out to mobilise the mass of the rural population and the ruined urban middle class for a socialist revolution.
This will bring in a workers and small farmers government to expropriate the bosses and the bankers and carry out socialist policies, breaking with the European Union, to begin the struggle for a Socialist United States of Europe.
That is the way forward.
If this road is not taken in the most determined fashion the price to be paid will be enormous.
The US boasted that the Ukrainian coup cost it 5bn dollars.
That kind of money will pour into Greece to arm the fascists, the right wing and officer corps and the upper layers of the army and the police.
The only way forward is to prepare and organise the Greek socialist revolution.
Anything less will play onto the hands of the European Commission that thinks that it can do in Greece what it did in the Ukraine.
