Will a breath of fresh air sweep through Greece on Sunday - and upset the EU applecart?

[David Guyatt]

From The Slog:

REALITY 1: How Syriza was hit by eurogroup FinMin ambush and why the Greek position is weaker than we thought.

BY JOHN WARD FEBRUARY 22, 2015 DIJSSELBLOEM DRAGHI GREEK POSITION WEAKER THAN SUPPOSED LAGARDE MOSCOVICI SCHÄUBLE AND VAROUFAKISYANIS VAROUFAKIS

SEPARATING THE HEADLINES FROM THE PARTY LINES

Today and tomorrow, in a special triple-header, The Slog examines three news' situations where the truth is slowly beginning to out: Greece v eurogroup, the Ukraine, and the whoring of newspaper titles who have already taken the corporate shilling anally. First today, what really happened behind closed doors before the eurogroup meeting last Friday.
This afternoon, while I still see Syriza and the Greek People as the best means we have at the moment of pricking Troika2's balloon, I have to recognise that Syriza too is playing the game of spin. It has been pressured into this, however, by an outrageous 4-onto-1 bullying session the preceded Friday's meeting.
Yesterday morning I picked this up from the agreed text after Friday's eurogroup:

…the new Greek government must not introduce legislation that contradicts or takes back measures agreed with the creditors…'

I confess that I hadn't read that anywhere, but then an AP release contained the same phrase. And yes, it seems, Yanis Varoufakis did agree' to the phrase. Linking this to a surprisingly aggressive question from Paul Mason at the press conference "How does it feel to have just trashed Greek democracy?" I at first thought it wasjust Masonic rhetoric. But then, reading this piece, a lot of things seemed to fall into place. Further digging around has confirmed most of the piece.
It seems that a pre-meet just before eurogroup was called at which the attendees were Lagarde, Moscovici, Dijsselbloem, Draghi, Schäuble and Varoufakis. (This is why the original eurogroup scheduled start-time was put back an hour from 4.30 to 5.30). It was positioned to Yanis Varoufakis as a formality: a means of agreeing a final text. In fact, within two minutes the Greek finance minister found himself surrounded by a hostile group…and Moscovici studying his shoes a lot.
Although accounts differ on the nature of the threats, they appear to have consisted of a blunt warning that the Four Horse-destroyers of the Acropolis would strangle the Greek economy by cutting off funding to the banks through the ELA system. Furthermore, it seemed that the big Greek banks already knew this. Go back to The Slog's Eurobank story of Friday if you're looking for further evidence of this.
So now we must all me included revise our view of what the real situation is. Basically, Mason's question was well put: subjected to sheer Mafiaesque bullying, Varoufakis had to extract the best he could. This seems to consist of Syriza being given a free hand for four months to sort out all the problems it didn't create…but the free hands were to be tied for the duration.
Yanis was tweeting last night to deny the story as "a fake", but the sources used by Mason and the PressProject piece (and me) tell a different story. Syriza cannot now carry out a reversal of the sell-offs and austerity policies, because the accord' overtly forbids them from so doing. And all around them, the Party's bigwigs know that the bnking enemy within stands ready to stab them in the front any time Mario Draghula rises from his coffin to give the word.
I truly do not know why Yanis didn't walk away and let them boil in their own pot. I accept that its easy to be an armchair tough-guy when you're not the one being beaten up, but what would they have done if with hopes riding so high the Greek finance minister had simply said, "OK, your ball, your rules. I choose not to play." Tragically, he has fallen for an almost exact remake of the Cyprus heist
The only good thing to emerge is that this is further proof of the nasty-arsed fascists with whom we're dealing, and just how little real belief in democracy such clown-gargoyle mutants have. It also from an English perspective once again rams home what a cowardly closet Conservative Nigel Farage really is: all over the Greeks like a rash when he wanted a higher EU profile before the euro-elections…but now he smells power in his nostrils, Farage is become the Mouse with No Voice. But no worries for Wriggle Barage: once again, Brussels-am-Berlin just handed UKip another million votes.
So folks, Dr Strangelove, a Dutch hairdresser, a daft French tart who can't even average quarterly figures properly, and an Italian banking fraudster whose career has seen 100% cloud cover throughout: this unpleasant quadruped has just grabbed the balls of the only bloke in years to suggest a way out of eurozone indebtedness for the People as opposed to the pernicious incompetents at the top.
It may be true that nothing is real anyway. But in a 3-dimensional Universe, there is plenty for some sociopaths to get hung about…and millions going hungry as a result of their madness.
Several sources in Greece are now sceptical about just how "straightforward" getting agreement to Syrisa's reforms is going to be tomorrow. We shall see.