This video says about itself:
Greece reacts to WikiLeaks allegations over IMF threat
3 April 2016
Greece strongly reacted on Saturday to allegations that International Monetary Fund officials were planning to threaten Athens with a Greek disorderly default this summer.
Reports say Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras convened an extraordinary meeting with ministers and his associates to discuss the issue.
From daily News Line in Britain:
Tuesday, 5 April 2016
IMF out to bankrupt Greece, leak reveals
THE WikiLeaks organisation dropped a bombshell on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last Saturday when it published the transcript of a private conversation between the two IMF officials leading the negotiations with the Greek government over the country’s huge debt crisis.
In the leaked conversation between IMF Europe director Poul Thomsen and IMF head of Greece mission Delia Velculescu have been caught out discussing a plot to deliberately drive Greece into bankruptcy in the coming period in order to force the EU to bow to the IMF demand for Greek debt release and force the Greek government to speed up implementation of the full austerity programme demanded by the IMF.
Thomsen is recorded as saying: ‘What is going to bring it all to a decision point?’ before going on: ‘in the past there has been only one time when the decision has been made and then that was when they were about to run out of money seriously and default.’
Velculescu is heard later agreeing saying ‘We need an event but I don’t know what that will be.’ The ‘event’ under serious consideration appears to be for the IMF to pull out of the talks, due to resume in the next two weeks, putting a block on any bail-out money, precipitating the complete collapse of Greece.
This would lead to the Greek government being unable to pay wages, pensions or sustain any spending on health, education, welfare, while the banks would be forced to close. In other words, these two IMF leaders are plotting to drive the entire Greek working class into poverty and starvation on a scale never witnessed before.
By precipitating such a crisis they hope to force the Syriza government to accept every austerity demand demanded of it, and at the same time force the German bankers to accept the IMF position that a part of the Greek debt should be written off.
The argument between the IMF and the Germans stems from the fact that the IMF has concluded that Greece will never be able to pay off its entire debt owed to the bankers and that it is better to give a modicum of relief in order to get back the greater proportion of the debt.
The German bankers, who have most to lose, are demanding full repayment, they want their pound of flesh from the Greek working class and nothing less. Both are united in their intention that the Greek workers pay for capitalism’s crisis, not the bankers who caused it.
Alexis Tsipras, Greek prime minister, immediately wrote to IMF head, Christine Lagarde, demanding to know whether Greece could ’trust’ the IMF not to engineer his country’s bankruptcy to force austerity compliance on Greece.
Lagarde loftily dismissed this as ‘nonsense’ before going on to arrogantly complain about ‘eavesdropping’, something she clearly regards as a much more serious crime than plotting to reduce an entire country into a state of bankruptcy and smashing up the lives of millions of Greeks in the process.
Commenting on these revelations, the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said: ‘It’s time to stop Greece’s fiscal waterboarding by an incompetent, misanthropic troika.’
…
The Greek working class and youth, unlike Tsipras, have not been cowed by the troika, with thousands of workers confronting Syriza in mass demonstrations and strikes and whole swathes of the country blockaded by farmers protesting about austerity.
See also here.
Wrong all along: Neoliberal IMF admits neoliberalism fuels inequality and hurts growth. Top International Monetary Fund researchers concede austerity, privatization & deregulation can hurt more than help: here.
Reblogged this on sdbast.
LikeLike
Friday, 22 April 2016
Greek journalists 48hr strike
GREEK journalists employed in newspapers are on a national 48-hour strike this Thursday and Friday, while journalists on radio and television are staging their 49-hour national strike on Friday and Saturday.
The action has been called by the Greek Federation of Journalists’ Trade Unions against the government’s Pensions Bill which annihilates the journalists’ own Pensions Fund and imposes huge pension cuts.
The journalists’ union along with the seafarers’ union have appealed to the GSEE (Greek TUC) to call the promised 48-hour general strike against the Pensions Bill, but the GSEE bureaucracy said that the strike will be announced only when the government tables the Bill in the Vouli (Greek parliament).
The Greek government has launched a campaign against those refugees who have been camping in the port of Piraeus and at the Greek/Republic of Macedonia border.
The government intends to put refugees, estimated at about 53,000 now in Greece, into camps but refugees are afraid that these camps would become ‘detention centres’, i.e. concentration camps, as is the case at two camps on the Greek Aegean islands of Khios and Lesbos.
Riot and port police have been harassing refugees and moving their tents, while fascist gangs, of a few dozen, are threatening attacks. A number of trade unionists have mobilised support to the refugees but neither the GSEE nor the ADEDY (public sector unions) have organised mass support.
Last Wednesday, following a refugee support rally at the port of Piraeus, the teacher Pavlos Antonopoulos was being investigated by port police for committing ‘obstruction’. Two years ago Antonopoulos was arrested by riot police in central Athens as he was reading out a trade union declaration against the visit of German Chancellor Merkel.
• The 40-year-old Syrian refugee who was seriously injured by a police vehicle last Monday at Idomeni, on the Greek/Republic of Macedonia border, died early on Friday at a Thessaloniki hospital. A Greek police statement said that the refugee ‘lost his balance and as he fell on the ground he hit the side of a passing police vehicle’.
http://wrp.org.uk/news/12027
LikeLike
Pingback: Greek ex-minister Varoufakis interviewed | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: General anti-austerity strike In Greece | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Malawi workers demonstrate against IMF | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Christine Lagarde dictates more poverty in Greece | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: European Union demands more austerity in Spain, Portugal | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: European Commissioner Oetinger’s anti-Chinese racist insults | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Anti-austerity strike in Greece | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Harvard University, financial elites and Venezuela | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Sri Lankan armed forces’ anti-worker violence | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: IMF boss convicted in fraud scandal, but not sentenced | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Christine Lagarde convicted, continues as IMF boss | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Donald Trump, the European Union and NATO | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Neonazis deprive Ukrainians of winter fuel | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Dutch Blairite Dijsselbloem’s anti-south European bigotry | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Greek austerity disaster continuing | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Hurricane Irma abused for austerity in Puerto Rico | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Arab Spring again in Tunisia, Sudan? | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Tunisian anti-austerity protests continue | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Tunisian anti-austerity protesters interviewed | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Sudan dictatorship arrests anti-austerity protesters | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Sudan protests against dictatorship and austerity | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Italy, Spain and the European Union | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Jordanian mass anti-austerity protests | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Jordanian anti-austerity protesters speak | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Jordanian Prime Minister sacked by protesters | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Jordanian prime minister gone, absolute monarchy still there | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Greece, California wildfires, not ‘natural’ disasters | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Greek austerity tragedy, is it really over? | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: ‘Socialism not just anti-austerity, also pro-peace’ | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Erdogan crackdown on Turkish construction workers | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: G20 summit police state in Argentina | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Privatisation of education, new book | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: NATO-Yugoslavia war, prelude to more bloodshed | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Free Julian Assange, worldwide calls | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Egyptian dictatorship butchering people | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Militarist Von der Leyen European Union boss | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Ecuadorian Trump-IMF puppet president runs away | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Trump’s Ecuadorian puppets’ bloody repression of people | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Ecuadorian people’s victory against Moreno, IMF | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Argentina under right-wing President Macri | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Billionaire Bloomberg tries buying United States presidency | Dear Kitty. Some blog
Pingback: Abolish Pinochet dictatorship constitution, Chileans vote | Dear Kitty. Some blog