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Athens Full Day Strike Turns Violent: Tears Gas, Petrol Bombs Exchanged
Same old, same old from the country whose future is supposedly being decided at today's latest (we have now lost count) Eurosummit. Spoiler alert: nothing will be decided until after the US election. From AP: 'Violence has broken out at an anti-austerity demonstration in Athens during a 24-hour general strike, with youths pelting riot police with petrol bombs and rocks. Riot police responded with tear gas to disperse the troublemakers during the clashes Thursday in the capital's central Syntagma Square, as thousands of people marched through the streets. Greek workers are holding their second general strike in a month, protesting new austerity measures the government is negotiating with the debt-ridden country's international creditors." Too bad "rioter" is not a Full Time Equivalent employment position according to the Greek BLS. Or at least not yet.

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Netherlands won't agree with new aid for Greece at EU summit...
So is this the signal the market has missed that Greece is done?
They must be serious......gas is almost worth it's weight in gold in Euroland.
Good Morning, Syntagma Square!
Opa!
Print like a motherf*cker, Draghi!
Nevermind the whining by Germany & the North. Just go Bernank, bitch!!!
(Once you go Bernank, you never go back)
Ummm......why is all this stuff happening again?
Did you ever see Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray?
"I got you, babe"
Athens truly must be one mystical place. I just tried to exchange some petrol for tear gas and the attendant looked at me as if I had 5 eyes.
I was just in Greece last week (On Cruise). I went to the parliament building where all of this shit takes place (Thanks to ZH for educating me and giving us the live riot feeds). Pictures do not show how fucked up this country is. Every building is tagged with Graffiti saying "Fuck Merkel", and "Hows this Capitalism working for you now?". Most of it is in Greek, but the paint in English is truly scary. Again..most buildings and ANY free walls are tagged and tagged again. The city is ruined. Even the windows of businesses are tagged from top to bottom. Bank windows are cracked and broken. I was there the day after Merkel was there so no riot photos. I tried to take a photo with the police with machine guns and riot gear hiding around town but they would not let me. I now see why there are "Riot Dogs" also. Stray dogs and cats all around. You guys will really appreciate what I am about to say.....We were in a taxi going back to the cruise ship, and I asked the female taxi driver "What do you think of Merkel?". She said "We all hate her" in a broken Greek accent. I asked "Why?". She said "I have 4 children, and I have always received my checks to help me pay for my kids, and now that bitch Merkel took my checks away." I was astounded to hear this type of thinking....so I tried to rationalize her comment by saying "Angela Merkel didn't take your checks, your government overspent, and Merkel is trying to help and your government has to pay Germany back as they agreed for the borrowed money right?" She said "We don't have to pay anything back....Germany still owes us big time for the war.!!" I just sat back in the cab and listened to her rant for the remaining 5 minutes of our trek back to the ship..... As you can see from this type of thinking....they are screwed. All they want is more Free Shit.....sounds very familiar with another country. After hearing this type of thought process explained to me in person over and over in Greece first hand, it shows me that these people in the streets have no clue. It is either "I get more free stuff, or we riot in the streets". There is no compromise. It is a 100% "All Me" society. Thanks ZH for waking me up. Just ordered some more Buckets of food from Costco...take a look. I feel a lot better having some of these under my belt. I don't post much, but I sure do read all of your guys comments. Thanks. Oh before I finish gas is $12 a gallon and they will not touch the US dollar no matter what. Tried to give the cab driver a $5 tip because I was out of Euros and she just gave it back and said "We don't take that". I had already paid for the cab with my remaining Euros....Yikes.
http://www.costco.com/330-Total-Servings-of-Emergency-Food-Storage-ARK-1...
"Hows this Capitalism working for you now?"
Wow....talk about some confused bastards. Welcome to the socialistic mind screw.
Exactly.....I was confused at that. That is painted on the Parliament building in huge 3 foot letters. IN RED. If you could stand in this city, and just see how beautiful it was through the graffiti....now it looks like "The Bronx"....everywhere. If this is a clue to what is coming to the US, we are sooo screwed.
you do realize that you are talking about a small area around the Parliament in a city that has over three million inhabitants, do you? and that you could tourist around without anybody harming you? and that you could have partecipated to the demonstrations without fear for life and limb? and that the "riot" part of the demonstrations involve 1% of the total of the demonstration max, with plenty of time and warning to get out of the "spray zone" where tear gas is used?
sorry, but if a few graffiti on a state-owned building scare you that much then I have to think that you were there but did not "see"
of course there are socialists in Greece - like the one you met! some 25%, according to the electoral results. we consider this "natural" and "normal"
you do realize that you are talking about a small area
So......don't worry.....yet?
if I would not be worried I'd be doing other pasttimes from scanning ZH. but I'm not worried by those kids throwing "petrol bombs" (explanation further down). those kids are arguably the future politicians of Greece, and they mean well, at the moment. and their police knows that, and tries to treat them as well as they can
what worries me most is what can come out by the continuos misrepresentation of relevant news by a media in the pockets of people who want to make their hyperhypothecated hyperleveraged bet for a "quick megabuck" on the back of entire populations
our dear friend Soros is already ventilating "that Germany has to leave the EUR" and placed his bet accordingly, just as an example - though I would not trust his word...
I do realize these things. I spent 2 1/2 days in Greece. Athens and Crete. We went to parks, restaurants, and tourist sites, Everything.....walls, monuments, etc is covered in graffiti. It doesn't scare me per say as in "Fear for my Life"....it scares me to see how bad a great city can be made "Ugly". And I probably chose the wrong word..."Scare". A better word for the feelings I had is more of an "Anxious" nature. The realization that we (The United States) are on the same path, and I feel this is a glimpse into our future. It will always be a small part of the population that gets out of hand at first.....then it can go exponential. We shall see.
in the 70's, the US was covered in graffiti, too. read something about the "broken windows" policies that NY, NY adopted against them, it's fascinating.
at the cost of generalizing: US/UK/Commonwealth citizens have a very low tolerance for graffiti on real estate (compared to other cultures) and this has a lot to do with the specific strong attachment/feelings that the Anglophone culture(s) have for RE.
I can sympathize with your anxiety, I have something similar for things that might leave you cold... stupid example: private, armed security forces give me the willies
You bring up a good point re: graffiti, it's in a lot of neighborhoods in Copenhagen, and it's respective country was recently declared the best place in the world to live. I imagine graffiti takes on a different context when the population is not in a good situation economically, and knowing that Greece, as a country, is being fucked to such a spectacular extent by monied interests can result in a different perceptual context being applied to "broken windows".
even the french revolution started like that
Sounds EXACLY like black culture here in the states. SAME exact mentality and will end the same way except for blacks are magnitudes more violent and unruly than Greeks. It will not end well if Romney wins in heavily black populated areas, of which my neighborhood resides in...
That's prety scary. It does makes me feel better about my homeland, Portugal, though.
At least in Portugal it's not an entitlement mentality, it's more like "we must do the honorable thing and pay our debts but we can't pay those huge interest rates that foreigners demand". Also people are very much aware that most of the money has been wasted in corruption, like public-private partnerships where the private side has zero risk but gets a cool guaranteed 15% a year return on investment, fundations started by politicians that get subsidies from the state and all sorts of past "public works" that were really just ways to hand money over to well-connected construction companies.
In Portugal, people hate the local politicians, not Merkel.
why bother with politicians? just bagmen for the bankers, the true criminals.
no politicians means dictators. you might think it's the same but this might mean you have never experienced a dictatorship
having said that: OT, I reccomend watching first Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" and then Sacha Baron Cohen's "The Dictator".
in this sequence they are a truly remarkable combo
Consider this an intervention.......you guys are really screwing up and we're starting to pick up bad habits from you.
+1
Society without some kind of centralised coordination is just Anarchy. Anarchy is unstable and quickly turns into Warlordism. Eventually either society just keeps sinking into decay as different armed groups fight amongst themselves and use force of arms to prey on the rest of society (as in Ethiopia) or a strongman will emerge by force of arms (i.e. a dictator). Corruption is the least of worries for the common people under a dictatorship.
I understand that many here have an utopian view of how the world would be without governments. We too had that in Europe in the late 19th century: Fascism and Communism both were once seen as the right way for society. Just ask anybody that has lived under any of them how good they turned out to be ...
thank you takeaction...have you asked yourself about the bankers, the many cuts they have taken? or are they exempt and beyond accountability, leaving that entirely to the children and their future?
well Merkel is bailing out the German Banks at the expense of the Greek State so i think the taxi driver got that part right. Funny they don't take the greenback but they will take the euro though! especially when a taxi driver is paying 12 bucks for a gallon of fuel!! nothing the drachma can't fix of course...
Granted, the corrupted Greek governments did overspend, steal, etc.; but you are quite mistaken if you think the Nazis' didn't stifle the Greek economy.
What happened to the compensation which should've been given to the Greeks for the gold that was stolen, from the National Bank of Greece, to fuel the Nazis' war against the allies? What about all the destruction they caused? All Greeks got were loans, loans and more loans! Let us also not forget the allies hand in the Greek civil war which ravaged a country trying to grow from the devastation of WWII!
Greece caught up with Western Europe in a matter of a couple of decades ... just at the right time to become the bitchez of the EU!
Greece: Give us more euros, or we'll riot!
Germany: Come and take them.
Coming to (insert city here), (state here), USA soon!
Nay, we will probably see another one of those 'slut protests'. This time the 'sluts' might go topless to really distract the masses. I think we are too far down the stupid path.
Already here. No going back without major disruptions to the existing paradigm. No connection of cause and effect.
I want to have some empathy but most seem hell bent on theirs and everybody else's destruction.
Bad choices make for bad outcomes.
Edit: all the debt talk rubs me raw though. Why would I give my hard tangible labor to preserve the bad results of bad decisions regarding currency that doesn't even exist.
If it came from thin air, it can (and eventually will) go back where it came from. It is the transition process that has me a bit concerned!
Where is the dog?
Riot Dog, bitchez!
Every day I am more and more amazed that the Greek military hasn't staged a coup.
The coup happened already. Only, not by the Greek generals. The Greek generals have bosses that are not Greek.
Agreed - but I am referring to a coup by the military to kick the EU out of Greece.
I always think of the Europeans as sissies until they burn down their Starbucks and generally engage in the kind of revolutionary mayhem that puts our pasty-ass society to utter shame.
at cost of being misunderstood: the US had one revolution in the last 200+ years. the UK had one in the last 400+ years. now count how many we had in continental europe
nevertheless, facing the police is a kind of fun extreme sport, here (most of the times). different traditions
Sometimes I think the reason why the UK (and the US) is so far down the road to surveilance society and police state is that they haven't had any kind of dictatorship or foreign occupation in the recent years, unlike almost all of the rest of Europe which had them and where people are still alive that remember how those times were.
Certainly for me as a Portuguese, I still remember the stories about the Fascist dictatorship (which fell in 1974) and things like how a neighbour could denouce you to the secret police for talking bad about the government and you would end up in a prision not far from where I used to live. Some of the shit I see around me here in the UK (for example, posters asking people to warn the police if they see their neighbours put something suspicious in their trashcans) is just plain scary.
I remember well being in Spain, late 70s; there was still a hangover from El Caudillo.
There were plenty of Civil War veterans at that time, too. The stories were incredible.
as incredible as the graves
what is this, a convention of bunnies? ;-)
Meeh ... *chomp* *chomp* ... wasup Doc?
with the advent of the internet the need for "denouncers" is now mootn as well. yet another perfectly good job gone...
"We demand 16oz Coca-Cola".
That's totally legal.....just don't ask for 32oz - Mayor Bloomberg bitchez
Mayor Bloomberg has received a federal grant to purchase, maintain, fuel & operate a fleet of drones dedicated to monitoring the streets & restaurants of NYC to ensure compliance with the ordinance prohibiting the sale, purchase, concealment or consumption of oversized sodas.
Bloomberg has a request pending to be supplied with highly modified, drone carried hellfire missiles that can take out Big Gulps from as far away as 42,000 feet.
Welcome to Skynet......we're here to protect and serve.
"and that'll be 50 US dollars for the Coke you worthless Americans." god i hate that Mayor. i'd watch TV just to see those New York City clowns scream to the rafters how they love that guy even though New York City's unemployment is soaring under this clown's watch. The irony that he's about to bankrupt New York City should be lost on no one. Already Governor Cuomo's polling numbers are getting crushed as he too get's sucked "into the vortex." The oil drilling that's already underway up here can't get expanded soon enough for me. Soon we will be rich up here...and i will be bird watching in Manhattan at all those beautiful billion dollar nesting sites. Oh look! A bald eagle!
I just hope that the drone missiles use shaped charges, we don't want to take out the Subway next to the 7-11's.
5 ... 5 ... kilo warhead ...
Who is paying for the gas in those petrol molotovs? If it is subsidised by the gov it is being well used.
Spain Banks Face More Pain as Worst-Case Scenario Turns Real"Bad loans as a proportion of total lending jumped to a record 10.5 percent in August from a restated 10.1 percent in July as 9.3 billion euros ($12.2 billion) of loans were newly classified as being in default, according to data published by the Bank of Spain on its website today. The ratio has climbed for 17 straight months from 0.72 percent in December 2006, before Spain’s property boom turned to bust."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-17/spain-banks-face-more-losses-as...
Work stoppage at Lonmin Marikana minehttp://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2012/10/18/work-stoppage-at-lonmin-mari...
Riotcams:
http://www.livestream.com/stopcarteltvgr?utm_source=website-channel-page&utm_medium=related
http://www.zougla.gr/page.ashx?pid=85&type=&mid=110
Are you the riot dog Brian?
Try to pet him and find out.
I have a team to do that for me. It seems there may be more than one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_dog
from the AP article, different selection of key phrases:
"Hundreds of youths pelted riot police with petrol bombs, bottles and chunks of marble Thursday as..."
"Tens of thousands of people took to the street during the country's second general strike in a month as..."
"Riot police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades as protesters ran from the area of clashes in the capital's Syntagma Square outside Parliament, splitting the demonstration in two."
"Hundreds of police were deployed in the Greek capital ahead of the demonstration, as such protests often turn violent."
"However, a protest march by about 17,000 people in the northern city of Thessaloniki ended peacefully."
"Thursday's strike was timed to coincide with a European Union summit...""Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said the country will run out of cash by the end of that month, meaning Greece would most likely have to default on its debt and potentially end its membership of the euro currency."
-----------
Make up your own mind about "hundreds" and "thousands" but let me note that again AP is not capable of making a distinction between a "Summit" an "Eurozone Summit" and a meeting of the Council of the EU. Sloppy.
AP is no longer the reliable news service it was 30 years ago.
When I worked as a stringer, facts were checked. Personal or subjective comments were not encouraged.
Petrol bombs exchanged?????
The police have petrol bombs too?
This should be fun :)
have you ever been under a shower of water laced with tear gas or in the vicinity of a stun granade? having said that - it is funny
It was poorly written..."pelted by" a petrol bomb?...I don't know what that winds up meaning, I guess they can't afford the Bic lighter or matches to light the damned thing after buying the petrol to fill it...lol.
no, there is a reason for this, beyond the gas/petrol US/UK word differences. those kids are perfectly capable to fill up "Molotov Cocktails" with high-inflammables. but they know that they are truly dangerous and could provoke a shooting escalation by the police.
so they reduce the flammability of the liquids - this makes it less dangerous for the police and produces plenty of smoke, which then looks much, much better on TV. and so they talk about "petrol bombs".
some of those kids are still remembering with dread how a couple of persons died when one bank branch burned down. they want to make a statement, not kill or hurt unnecessarily
So, its a kinder-gentler sort of riot ;-)
it's a demonstration, not a riot. we might look laughable to some by putting so much emphasis on the difference between the two, but this is our reality.
in London, those were riots. and they have a tendency of being one-off affairs, not repeating engagements like those in Athens or nearly ever other big city in continental europe
so yes, they are gentler affairs, with a moderate police intervention and both sides keen on not escalating the whole thing to the point that blood flows on the street
and the police has clear goals, like "splitting the demonstration in two", i.e. dividing the violent part from the non-violent and tries to bag the worst offenders
Just for understanding: there is a whole generation of continental european politicians that threw petrol bombs towards the police, in their youth. one stupid example: ex German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Joschka Fischer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joschka_Fischer
from there "Fischer was a leader in several street battles involving the radical Putzgruppe (literally "cleaning squad", with the first syllable being an acronym for Proletarische Union für Terror und Zerstörung, "Proletarian Union for Terror and Destruction"), which attacked a number of police officers. Photos of one such brawl in March 1973, which were later to haunt Fischer, show him clubbing policeman Rainer Marx, to whom he later publicly apologized."
note that this story haunted Fischer later not because he was in a group bent on "Terror and Destruction" but because they proved that he did not show restraint
I'm just having fun with it Ghordius. They're pissed, but not that pissed. And it gives them something to do with their time with unemployment up so high.
Plus, the government paid street sweepers and cops need something to do as well...seems like something invented by the state itself.
Very refined, controlled ;-)
until you do something that Golden Dawn does not like, that is...
Beware the Golden Dawn. And the Police. I saw this article on TV last night. Scary
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19976841
Sorry, I'm not buying it- right-wing violence, no way! </sarc>
put a little lump in my throat the article/link
I'm sure they will all calm down when they realize that Merkel wants the new bailout tranche to go directly to an escrow account from where the money will only go to Greece's creditors.
society delamenating. da glue isn't "bonding" arar- ya think?
Riot police responded with tear gas to disperse the troublemakers
The police are using tear gas on Merkel, Draghi, Lagarde? But those people aren't in Greece at the moment?
Beat me to it!
I believe, however, that there are others still around: banksters.
I just hink this has to show the troika and the IMF that they will make WHATEVER they say they will do...lol....cut how much..what ..who when....Greece is over....and for the Germans to give them more money to pay Germany back is toast...just stupid economics now...
It's all part of planning a new volk, a new fit race. Efficient, strong, pure, able to be set free though work.
Bloomberg leader principal.
One city, one people, one leader!
I just won a bet for an ounce of gold, made a year ago at the height of the GREXIT GREXIT GREXIT panic. I bet that Greece would still be using the Euro, today, (i.e i.e a year later) on October 18th 2012.
Easymoney bitchez
time to get govt out of the way of the freedom of enterprise.
http://covert.ias3.com/expose/