[DAWN] IN the wake of the Greek voters' fairly unequivocal verdict in Sunday's referendum, the decent way for Brussels to respond would be to cut Athens some slack and conclude a deal that leaves out some of the more toxic strictures on which the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
(EU) negotiators have thus far insisted.
Unfortunately, doing the decent thing does not come naturally to the eurocrats and politicians in charge. The initial reaction from Germany suggested it was pretty miffed with the Greek people for their stubborn refusal to endorse for an indefinite period the collective punishment that has been their lot for the past five years.
The July 5 referendum, called just eight days earlier, was something of a desperate gamble for the government led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. It was necessitated by a near-impossible situation after the troika -- the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the IMF -- turned down a deal offered by Greece that was more or less tantamount to capitulation.
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