Greek Riots

[Section_31]

Greece riots: People have lost trust in government, says opposition leader | World news | guardian.co.uk

 

They're finally demanding some decent indoor plumbing, respect.

[RJ Fan club]

I sense that you're still a little annoyed by that bout of the shits.

[Section_31]

I sense that you're still a little annoyed by that bout of the shits.

 

I can neither confirm nor deny this wild accusation, however, while trying to maneuver the bog roll from round the back of my arse to an overflowing bin near my feet for the fiftieth time, I did muse as to how Greece's lamentable sewer system had never brought forth a military coup d’état.

[RJ Fan club]

I can neither confirm nor deny this wild accusation, however, while trying to maneuver the bog roll from round the back of my arse to an overflowing bin near my feet for the fiftieth time, I did muse as to how Greece's lamentable sewer system had never brought forth a military coup d’état.

 

When in Greece do not shit in your own room. Always use your mates room, a bars or the hotel lobby toilet and I always put paper down the bowl.

 

I put shit ladened Andrex in a little bin for no man. It is supposedly one of the cradles of civilisation FFS.

[devilsadvocate]

Seen this on news yesterday looked like one flashpoint was at the parliment building which happens to be syntagma sq where we congregated in final 2007.

[Section_31]

Kicking off again big time, glorious.

 

GLOBAL MARKETS-Greece fears hammer stocks, euro; bonds rally | Reuters

 

 

Top little article from Pilger last year.

 

 

New Statesman - The heresy of the Greeks offers hope

 

Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely reported as such.

 

As Britain's political class pretends that its arranged marriage of Tweedledee to Tweedledum is democracy, the inspiration for the rest of us is Greece. It is hardly surprising that Greece is presented not as a beacon, but as a "junk country" getting its comeuppance for its "bloated public sector" and "culture of cutting corners" (Observer). The heresy of Greece is that the uprising of its ordinary people provides an authentic hope unlike that lavished upon the warlord in the White House.

 

The crisis that has led to Greece's "rescue" by European banks and the International Monetary Fund is the product of a grotesque financial system that itself is in crisis. Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely reported as such, but waged with all the urgency of panic among the imperial rich.

 

What makes Greece different is that it has experienced, within living memory, invasion, foreign occupation, military dictatorship and popular resistance. Ordinary people are not cowed by the corrupt corporatism that dominates the European Union. The right-wing government of Kostas Karamanlis that preceded the present Pasok (Labour) government of George Papandreou was described by the sociologist Jean Ziegler as "a machine for systematically pillaging the country's resources".

 

Epic theft

The machine had infamous friends. The US Federal Reserve board is investigating the role of Goldman Sachs, which gambled on the bankruptcy of Greece as public assets were sold off and its tax-evading rich deposited €360bn in Swiss banks. This haemorrhaging of capital continues with the approval of Europe's central banks and governments.

 

At 11 per cent, Greece's budget deficit is no higher than America's. However, when the Papandreou government tried to borrow on the international capital market, it was effectively blocked by the US corporate ratings agencies, which "downgraded" Greek debt to "junk". These same agencies gave triple-A ratings to billions of dollars in so-called sub-prime mortgage securities and so precipitated the economic collapse in 2008.

 

What has happened in Greece is theft on an epic, though not unfamiliar, scale. In Britain, the "rescue" of banks such as Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland has cost billions of pounds. Thanks to Gordon Brown and his passion for the avaricious instincts of the City, these gifts of public money were unconditional, and the bankers have continued to pay each other the booty they call bonuses and to spirit it away to tax havens. Under Britain's political monoculture, they can do as they wish. In the US, the situation is even more remarkable. As the investigative journalist David DeGraw has reported, the principal Wall Street banks that "destroyed the economy pay zero in taxes and get $33bn in refunds".

 

In Greece, as in America and Britain, the ordinary people have been told they must repay the debts of the rich and powerful who incurred them. Jobs, pensions and public services are to be slashed and burned, with privateers put in charge. For the EU and the IMF, the opportunity presents to "change the culture" and to dismantle the social welfare of Greece, just as the IMF and the World Bank have "structurally adjusted" (impoverished and controlled) countries across the developing world.

 

Greece is hated for the same reason Yugo*slavia had to be destroyed physically behind a pretence of protecting the people of Kosovo. Most Greeks are employed by the state, and the young and the trade unions comprise a popular alliance that has not been pacified; the colonels' tanks on the campus of Athens University in 1967 remain a political spectre. Such resistance is anathema to Europe's central bankers and regarded as an obstruction to German capital's need to capture markets in the aftermath of Germany's troubled reunification.

 

Shock therapy

In Britain, such has been the 30-year propaganda of an extreme economic theory known first as monetarism, then as neoliberalism, that the new Prime Minister can, like his predecessor, describe his demands that ordinary people pay the debts of crooks as "fiscally responsible". The unmentionables are poverty and class.

 

Almost a third of British children remain below the breadline. In working-class Kentish Town in London, male life expectancy is 70. Two miles away, in Hampstead, it is 80. When Russia was subjected to similar "shock therapy" in the 1990s, life expectancy nosedived. In the United States, a record 40 million cannot afford to feed themselves.

 

In the developing world, a system of triage imposed by the World Bank and the IMF has long determined whether people live or die. Whenever tariffs and food and fuel subsidies are eliminated by IMF diktat, small farmers know they have been declared expendable. The World Resources Institute estimates that the toll reaches between 13 and 18 million child deaths every year. This, wrote the economist Lester C Thurow, is "neither metaphor nor simile of war, but war itself".

 

The same imperial forces have used horrific weapons against stricken countries where children are the majority, and approved torture as an instrument of foreign policy. It is a phenomenon of denial that none of these assaults on humanity, in which Britain is actively engaged, was allowed to intrude on the British election.

 

The people on the streets of Athens do not suffer this malaise. They are clear who the enemy is and regard themselves as once again under foreign occupation. And once again, they are rising up, with courage. When David Cameron begins to cleave £6bn from public services in Britain, he will be bargaining that Greece will not happen in Britain. We should prove him wrong.

[Stu Monty]

Hope it spreads across southern Europe and gets a bit of fear into our leaders.

[WaltonRed]

It'll be us once the nice weather kicks off

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Hope it spreads across southern Europe and gets a bit of fear into our leaders.

 

Our system and society is so fucked that we shouldn't be here typing, we should be ripping governments apart. Ousting them, and the fucking monarchy, engaging with the army for support. That's not a party political point, all of which operate roughly in the same small space; just a point against the fucked system. It's all very well a few of us lucky bastards, with our 50 inch Samsung TV or super fast Apple idoodah, saying how great capitalism is - which is effectively what a few posters here say - but the world is fucked because of it. We're literally raping the world and most of the people in it. We give a fuck, but we're not doing anything about it.

 

Section has called it right for a long time on here, the uprising is coming. Against authoritarianism, against inequality, against injustice, against bankers with more money than they know what to do with; many other reasons too. I don't think we'll be united behind one issue, but we'll be united against governments and self-interest. I'll be gutted if I don't see a global revolution in my time.

Edited June 16, 2011 by Numero Veinticinco

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

We don't have to hate enterprise, either. There's nothing wrong with people making money, growing the economy and paying lots of tax to help the poorer in society. I don't think anybody is speaking out against injustice because they want a free ride, it's because society is so unequal. It's because we don't have anything like democracy.

 

Fuck this, I'm going to listen to Tracy Chapman:

 

SKYWOwWAguk

 

Then I'm going to listen to this:

 

JBfjU3_XOaA

 

Then I'm going to eat some fucking baklava.

[Guest The Chimp]

I fucking love baklava.

[bri]

It's just a bit to sweet for me one or two pieces I'm done. As for Greece good on em. Change needs force and the tree hugging brigade might as we stay at home. The next Demo in the UK should be in Canary Wharf

[sparta7]

I'm sure the Greek version of Cable, Clegg or Cameron will be along shortly to tell them how irresponsible they are and how theres no alternative. Hopefully they will get told to go fuck themselves.

[Section_31]

Vote of confidence currently being debated in the Greek parliament with big crowds outside.

 

Couple of people being interviewed then, one said "I've paid my taxes, I don't owe anything to Europe." Another "we deserve better lives".

 

Can't argue with that.

 

Let's get this show on the road.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Let's get this show on the road.

 

I've recently purchased a one way ticket for your 'global revolution' bandwagon. I think we could be seeing the start of something historic. Possible.

[Stu Monty]

I love the way each crisis has to have reference to how "the markets" are going to downgrade how they see the country and fuck up their credit rating.

 

It's like taking into account a rapists view on how his victim should be treated in hospital.

[RobbieOR]

The Euro is fucked.

[Section_31]

It's fucking crazy isn't it? When you take a step back and think about it. Markets, banks etc being allowed to run riot and drag states into shit, so the state takes the pummeling, it gets told how shit it is, how it needs to reform, how it's a 'basket case' and can't afford its pensions, its libraries, its jobs, and we all listen to it. We're wound up into this panic of 'oh no what if they don't take the deal?! What if the contagion spreads!?!'.

 

Worst case scenario I might end up living at home not having a pot to piss in. Oh wait.

[Stu Monty]

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest".

 

Einstein.

[L19red]

Louk the riot dog is an example to us all.

[Sugar Ape]

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest".

 

Einstein.

 

He said that before He-Man was made though.

[silverlining]

I love the way each crisis has to have reference to how "the markets" are going to downgrade how they see the country and fuck up their credit rating.

 

It's like taking into account a rapists view on how his victim should be treated in hospital.

 

Greece's main problems have been endemic political and economic corruption and ineptitude within Greece. They should never have been allowed into the Euro anyway - like most Southern European countries who scraped in - because Northern Europe was always going to be bailing them out anyway.

 

An economy based on tourism, fishing and the export of halloumi was never going to be sustainable, especially when the aforementioned corruption and general ineptitude is taken into account.

[Strontium]

It's all the fault of big business, they made the Greeks spend billions that they didn't have.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

It's all the fault of big business, they made the Greeks spend billions that they didn't have.

 

You could send this well thought out, heartily analytical sentence in as a doctoral thesis.

[Section_31]

It's all the fault of big business, they made the Greeks spend billions that they didn't have.

 

It's not about business, it's about the international superclass. The poeple who run the banks, who run the firms and who run the governments and the media. A breed of people for whom not paying their fair share while enjoying a champagne lifestyle is a fine art, and yet who shape the perceptions of the plebs to believe that they are in fact a commodity who must be placated at all costs - even though their various machinations have led us all to ruin.