Greek Prime Minister Tsipras claims social cuts over as Syriza prepares more austerity
By
Alex Lantier
22 August 2018
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke yesterday to hail Greece’s exit from its European Union bailout scheme, imposed after the 2008 Wall Street crash, as a new dawn created by his Syriza (“Coalition of the Radical Left”) government. The speech was a pack of lies from start to finish. Above all, Tsipras tried to cover up the key role Syriza played in continuing EU austerity after its election in 2015, and its pledge now to impose EU austerity for decades to come.
Tsipras pompously chose Ithaca—the home of Ulysses, the hero of Homer’s Odyssey —to claim that Greece’s devastating, decade-long austerity Odyssey was drawing to a close. “Greece has experienced its modern Odyssey since 2010,” he said. “Within five years, unprecedented things happened for a country in peacetime. We lost 25 percent of our national wealth. Three out of 10 people were unemployed. Six out of 10 young people, too. Austerity measures of 65 billion euros were implemented. Violence and repression became part of everyday life.”
He claimed, however, that a “new day” had dawned: “The people, three-and-a-half years ago, made a historic decision: getting the country’s steering wheel from those who led it onto the rocks and giving it to new captains. We assumed this heavy responsibility. … The people who fought to get to the destination were no longer on the sidelines. They were no longer locked in the hold, with no voice, no hope. They were behind the wheel, with us. And in hard times, they held it firmly.”
There is only one element of resemblance in the idiotic comparison Tsipras drew between himself and Homer’s mythic hero. Ulysses designed the Trojan…