From Consortium News
'Anti-imperialist March 23/5 German Embassy' 'Whoever is afraid is already dead.'
(Image by (John Kiriakou)) Details DMCA
'Anti-imperialist March 23/5 German Embassy' 'Whoever is afraid is already dead.'
(Image by (John Kiriakou)) Details DMCA
Under Tsipras' reforms, any prisoner who has significant physical disabilities and who is serving a life sentence may be released unconditionally. That law affects only one person, Savvas Xiros, the 17 November assassin whose bomb went off in his hands as he was positioning it to kill a shipowner in the port city of Pireaus. Xiros lost his hands and an eye. He thought he would die from his injuries, so he confessed everything to the police. Then he lived. So far he's still in prison.
Another provision gave furloughs to all of the 17 November terrorists serving life terms for murder, including the group's founder Alexandros Yiotopoulos and its two lead assassins, Christodoulos Xiros and Dimitris Koufondinas. They are all serving terms of more than 1,600 years each. Two years ago, while on a two-week Christmas furlough, Christodoulos Xiros simply walked free. He was caught a year later. But instead of being punished with a longer sentence, he is scheduled for another furlough this Christmas.
Tsipras' Betrayal
After becoming prime minister in January 2015, Tsipras, then 44, almost immediately began hinting that Greece would exit the Eurozone and return to the drachma as its national currency unless the "evil troika" -- the European Central Bank, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- eased demands to slash government spending, primarily on pensions.
He sent his finance minister at the time, Giannis Varoufakis, who is now working with Sen. Bernie Sanders to form an international progressive movement, to Berlin and London to hold the Greek position as forcefully as possible. Varoufakis did as he was asked. He made it clear that Syriza was willing to leave the European Union and default on its loans to defend Greek citizens from hardship. His comments rattled foreign exchange markets and weakened the euro against the dollar.
As part of these hardline and high-stakes negotiation, Greece missed a payment deadline of its international creditors by 24 hours, further escalating tensions. Tsipras then pulled an infamous publicity stunt. He called for a national referendum on withdrawing from the Eurozone, calculating that it would fail. He had no intention of dropping the euro and returning to the drachma. But voters approved the referendum.
Varoufakis, who is a personal friend, told me that he was with the prime minister the night of the referendum. When it was clear it would pass, he said, Tsipras looked at him and said, "sh*t. We're going to actually win this."
Tsipras decided to ignore the voters. Instead of fulfilling his party's essential, opening promise -- to resist demands for massive budget cuts and layoffs from the public sector for Greece -- Tsipras capitulated.
Varoufakis Takes the Fall
Tsipras also threw Varoufakis to the wolves. Varoufakis was forced to resign and the country's chief prosecutor wound up charging him with "undermining the national currency" by weakening the euro against the dollar with his threat to withdraw from the Eurozone in meetings with the Germans.
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