Greece: The bailout (this is a coup) and Varoufakis's refusal to play by the rules.

Yeah, I'm up early today. This one just came over the wire.

Greece bailout agreement: the key points (The Guardian)

However, it has been pleasing to note the widespread recognition that these past few weeks have been not unlike a war between international bankers and Greek politicians, with the "collateral" damage being suffered by ordinary Greeks with no dog in the fight.

#ThisIsACoup: Germany faces backlash over tough Greece bailout demands (The Guardian)

The draconian list of demands eurozone leaders handed to the Greek government in return for a European bailout has inspired a social media backlash against Germany and its hawkish finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

ž#ThisIsACoup was the second top trending hashtag on Twitter worldwide – and top in Germany and Greece – as eurozone leaders argued through the night to convince the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, to take the deal or face bankruptcy and his country’s expulsion from the euro.

The former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis departed the scene following last weekend's referendum, but to me, the following points remain significant, especially this one:

"Thinking of himself as a representative of the Greek people, he made his wishes public."

Transparency. Imagine that.

The Man Who Refused to Play by the Rules: the Real Sins of Varoufakis, by Chris Bickerton (Counterpunch)

... The negotiations didn’t break down because of an unbridgeable gap between the North and South; creditors and debtors; the German ‘Ordoliberalism’ of Schäuble and Djisselbloem and Greek-style Marxism of Varoufakis and Tsipras. This gap has never existed. They broke down because Varoufakis repeatedly breached the Eurogroup’s etiquette. In doing so, he challenged the very foundations of the eurozone’s mode of governance ...

(the non-democratic Europgroup "rules" are recapped)

... The hostility towards Varoufakis stems from his breaking of all of these rules. He refused to play the Eurogroup game. It’s not really about riding a motorbike, wearing combat trousers and being a celebrity academic-blogger — though his charisma and popularity probably created jealousies amongst the other (colourless and tie-wearing) politicians.

At the heart of the matter is how Varoufakis presented his demands. Thinking of himself as a representative of the Greek people, he made his wishes public, and when in the Eurogroup, he maintained the same stance — changes in views could not be informally agreed around a table but had to be taken back to Athens and argued for, in cabinet and with the Syriza party.

Paying attention to what's happening in Greece.

Why is it that amid the discussion of bailouts and debt and money, no one seems willing or able to explain why several million Greeks should be made to pay a price in impoverishment for the misbehavior of international bankers and wretched politicians?

Greek villagers' secret weapon: Grow your own food, by Gregory Katz (AP - The Big Story)

KARITAINA, Greece (AP) — Ilias Mathes has protection against bank closures, capital controls and the slashing of his pension: 10 goats, some hens and a vegetable patch.

If Greece's financial crisis deepens, as many believe it must, he can feed his children and grandchildren with the bounty of the land in this proud village high in the mountains of the Arcadia Peloponnese.

Happily, Bernie Sanders has had something coherent to say about Greece. Our Republicans presumably are busy searching for Bible passages.

“I applaud the people of Greece for saying ‘no’ to more austerity for the poor, the children, the sick and the elderly ... in a world of massive wealth and income inequality Europe must support Greece's efforts to build an economy which creates more jobs and income, not more unemployment and suffering.”

Sanders spots the element that's usually missing as the bankers do their numbers fetish -- you know, the piece about dignity.

Greek Voters to Eurozone: We Can’t and Won’t Do This Anymore, by Maria Margaronis (The Nation)

... “We won’t be saved by Yes or No,” said a gentleman in his 80s. “It’ll be bad either way. But one thing will change: They’ll know they don’t have our agreement for what they’re doing to us. The government may have made mistakes, but the position of the Europeans has been cruel, oppressive, humiliating, shockingly inhuman. They’ll get their money. But they have to realize we need time to recover first.”

I'm looking for lessons wherever I can find them.

Greek referendum: smart response from Tsipras, but triumph may be brief, by Larry Elliott (The Guardian)

... David Marsh, of the thinktank OMFIF, said: “The failure of the creditor countries, led by Germany and the Netherlands, to recognise a central maxim of guerrilla fighting – the enemy will always surprise – provides a key reason for the Oxi win. If you’re outnumbered, practise the unorthodox. Tearing up the rules of Brussels conduct, Tspiras and Varoufakis, his finance minister-cum-field marshal, have outmanoeuvred and divided the surplus states by constantly re-engaging, over five months, from unexpected, demanding and outrageous battle positions.”

Yanis Varoufakis blogged his resignation with these important words.

I consider it my duty to help Alexis Tsipras exploit, as he sees fit, the capital that the Greek people granted us through yesterday’s referendum. And I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride. We of the Left know how to act collectively with no care for the privileges of office.

Prior to his resignation, an excerpt from Varoufakis's book provided closing context: Greece this time. Who's next?

Angela Merkel has a red and a yellow button. One ends the crisis. Which does she push?, by Yanis Varoufakis (The Guardian)

Bankruptocracy is as much a European predicament as it is an American “invention”. The difference between the experience of the two continents is that at least Americans did not have to labour under the enormous design faults of the eurozone. Imagine their chagrin if the citizens of hard-hit states (eg Nevada or Ohio) had to worry about a death embrace between the debt of their state and the losses of the banks who happened to operate within the state.

Additionally, Americans were spared the need to contend with a central bank utterly shackled by inner divisions and the German central bank’s penchant for treating the worst-hit parts of the union (the eurozone, that is) as alien lands that had to be fiscally waterboarded until they ceased to obey the laws of macroeconomics.

Varoufakis on Greece: “We’ve lost everything, so we can speak truth to power, and it’s about time we do."

Sovereignty?

Greece will say it as it is: five years on, the medicine prescribed by Germany, Europe’s paymaster, to mend the ills of run-away profligacy hasn’t worked. Instead, the nation has become an echo of its former self; its economy slashed by almost a third, one in four out of work, one in three facing the prospect of living in abject poverty.

“We’ve lost everything,” he says. “So we can speak truth to power, and it’s about time we do.”

Damned book readers.

I wonder if he knows Papa John personally?

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis: ‘If I weren’t scared, I’d be awfully dangerous’, by Helena Smith (Guardian)

... At 53, Varoufakis is still clear that he “understands the world better” as a result of having read Marx. But he no longer considers himself a diehard leftie, whatever others may think. Rather, he says, he is a libertarian or erratic Marxist, who can marvel at the wondrousness of capitalism but is also painfully aware of its inherent contradictions, just as he is “the awful legacy” of the left. “It is a system that produces massive wealth and massive poverty,” proclaims the economist who taught at the universities of East Anglia, Cambridge, Glasgow and Sydney after gaining his doctoral degree at the University of Essex. “I don’t think you can understand capitalism until and unless you understand those contradictions and ask yourself if capitalism is the natural state. I don’t think it is. That’s why I am a leftwinger.”

More than that, Varoufakis is an iconoclast, a self-styled “contrarian” who is also an idealist, “because if you are not an idealist, you are a cynic”. And he has, he laments, lost a lot of friends on the left who believe that Grexit, Greece’s exit from the currency bloc, would be the country’s best course.