Thread: Athens - The Morning After: 48 Buildings On Fire, 150 Looted, Hundreds Arrested

Athens - The Morning After: 48 Buildings On Fire, 150 Looted, Hundreds Arrested


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/13/2012 08:00 -0500

There is a silver lining to Athens' ever uglier transition to a third world country: the massive GDP boost that awaits it as it sets off to fix broken windows and burned down buildings. In fact, we eagerly await Krugman's OpEd praising some of the more recent developments out of Greece in the past 48 hours. Granted, the country will need to get even more bailout funding from the Troika for said GDP boost to occur, but who cares about details anymore.





From Athens News:

Police said 150 shops were looted in the capital and 48 buildings set ablaze. Some 100 people – including 68 police – were wounded and 130 detained, a police official said on Monday.
There was also violence in cities across the country, including Thessaloniki and the islands of Corfu and Crete.

Athenians were shocked at the burnt buildings that included the neoclassical home to the Attikon cinema dating from 1870.
"We are all very angry with these measures but this is not the way out," said Dimitris Hatzichristos, 30, a public sector worker surveying the debris.
Altogether 199 of the 300 lawmakers backed the controversial bill. The 43 who rebelled were immediately expelled by their parties, Pasok and New Democracy.
"Night of terror inside and outside the parliament," conservative daily Eleftheros Typos wrote on its front page.
Asian shares and the euro gained modestly on Monday and MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan edged up as much as 0.3 percent.

Some of the more vivid images from this morning's cleanup crew:

Athenians swept rocks and broken glass from the streets of their city on Monday after a night of violence that gave MPs a taste of the challenge they face in implementing a deeply unpopular austerity bill demanded by the troika.

Firefighters doused the smouldering remains of several buildings, set ablaze by hooded youths during protests against the package of pay, pension and job cuts adopted by parliament just after midnight, on Monday morning, after 10 hours of debate.

And while we already knew that democracy is only that on paper, and until someone disagrees, following the expuslion of 43 deputies from their respective parties for disagreeing with the ongoing sacking of Greece by Europes' banks, here are potential next steps.

"Enough is enough!" said 89-year-old Manolis Glezos, one of country’s most famous leftists. "They have no idea what an uprising by the Greek people means. And the Greek people, regardless of ideology, have risen." Glezos is a national hero for sneaking up the Acropolis at night in 1941 and tearing down a Nazi flag from under the noses of the German occupiers, raising the morale of Athens residents.

Odd: the Greeks managed to stand up to the Nazis, yet when it comes to standing up to Europe's banker cartel, the best the "risen" Greek people can come up with is looting and burning down their own country? Oh well, in the scramble for the last money good asset yet to be pillaged, all is fair in love and rehypothecation.

Athens - The Morning After: 48 Buildings On Fire, 150 Looted, Hundreds Arrested | ZeroHedge

Video: Athens on fire as mass protest turns violent - YouTube



Feb 12, 2012

Dozens of buildings went up in flames as the riots engulfed the center of the Greek capital. A three-story corner building believed to be a home appliances store was severely damaged by fire. Among other buildings damaged were a cinema, a bank, a mobile phone dealership, a glassware shop and a coffee shop.

Burning Banks: More footage of Greek chaos and riots - YouTube



Feb 13, 2012

The worst riot damage in years has struck Greek cities as MPs pass harsh new austerity measures. Amateur video shows violent protests in central Volos, where a branch of one of Greece's largest banks - Eurobank - was torched.

Bailout Sellout: 'Germany desperate to chop Greek gangreen' - YouTube



Feb 13, 2012

Germany's finance minister has declared that promises aren't enough anymore, saying that Greece must now implement reforms to prove it's not a bottomless pit. John Laughland, of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris, says there are more radical plans currently being drawn up by the Germans...

Democracy is ending in the land where it began

Greece's plight has alerted the world to the way the EU extinguishes democracy.


Greek protesters threw stones and firebombs at riot police who responded with tear gas in Athens as clashes erupted on the sidelines of a protest against new austerity cuts. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

By Christopher Booker
7:00PM GMT 11 Feb 2012
296 Comments

It is peculiarly appropriate that the country that gave the world the words “democracy” and “tragedy” should now be the beacon which alerts the world to the fact that the EU is extinguishing democracy – part of a wider tragedy that will eventually lead to the extinction of the EU itself. But what of our own country’s part in this horrible drama?

It already seems an age since we were told, last June, that David Cameron had “won his fight” to prevent the EU extracting a loan of billions of pounds from Britain to help Greece pay off some of the colossal debt it has run up since it was so foolishly allowed to join the euro. The next move, we learned, was that we would have to lend the money anyway, not through the EU but through the IMF.

George Osborne still cannot promise that he will be able to resist this demand, even though he knows we are having to borrow an additional £2.5 billion every week just to pay for the ever-rising deficit on our own Government’s spending. Thus, in order to lend £17 billion through the IMF to Greece, which it will never be able to repay, we would have to borrow even more money than we are doing already.

The latest contribution to this tragi-farce, it seems, is Sir Mervyn King’s decision to roll the printing presses and conjure a further £50 billion of imaginary money out of thin air. As Fraser Nelson explained in Friday’s Daily Telegraph, this will keep interest rates on annuities at rock-bottom, and thus rob Britain’s pensioners of an estimated £74 billion.

So our pensioners’ money will be disappearing into a bottomless pit of debt, not least to help save the euro, which the EU cannot allow Greece to leave, because this might set off a domino effect, bringing down in turn all those other eurozone countries that have run up debts they cannot repay, and plunging Europe’s and the world’s economy into unimaginable chaos.

There were those of us who long ago came to see that the dream of building a politically united Europe had all the makings of a tragedy doomed eventually to end very badly, and to carry what remained of European democracy with it. But I confess that not even in our worst nightmares did we foresee that it would end quite like this. And even now the end game has hardly begun.

Rebel MPs’ weasel words about wind farms

Last week’s Sunday Telegraph scored a hit with its widely followed front-page story about the 100 MPs who sent a letter to David Cameron protesting against inefficient and costly wind farms. But there was a huge contradiction in that letter.
Look again at this key phrase: “it is unwise to make consumers pay through taxpayer subsidy for inefficient and intermittent energy that typifies onshore wind turbines”. For a start, the subsidy for wind – at least £600 million a year and rising fast – is paid not in taxes but through our electricity bills, thanks to the Renewables Obligation which makes electricity companies pay far more for wind energy than for that from conventional power stations.

Much more glaringly dishonest, however, is that the MPs only protest against “onshore” turbines (their letter repeats “onshore” no fewer than four times).They make no mention of the thousands of offshore turbines the Government wants to see built – even though these are just as “inefficient and intermittent” as onshore wind farms and receive double the subsidy.

Onshore wind energy gets a subsidy of 100 per cent; that for offshore is 200 per cent. So why did the MPs not object twice as vociferously to offshore wind farms?

Herein lay the third dishonesty of their letter. They carefully omitted to mention that we have a commitment to the EU to produce 32 per cent of our electricity from “renewables” by 2020. The only way to try to meet that absurd target is by buildings tens of thousands of windmills. The official figure is only 10,000, but Mr Huhne, just before he resigned, was babbling about 32,000, a figure his equally deluded successor Ed Davey has not denied.

So the MPs misled us on three different counts. They know that, due to that EU commitment, the Government will ignore their weaselly letter, which was written as no more than an empty gesture to placate those onshore voters who are increasingly voluble in their contempt for the great wind scam. Until we have MPs prepared to speak with more honesty on this madness, it can only rage on until our lights go out.

Democracy is ending in the land where it began - Telegraph

Originally Posted by AirborneSapper7

Democracy is ending in the land where it began

Greece's plight has alerted the world to the way the EU extinguishes democracy.


Greek protesters threw stones and firebombs at riot police who responded with tear gas in Athens as clashes erupted on the sidelines of a protest against new austerity cuts. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

By Christopher Booker
7:00PM GMT 11 Feb 2012
296 Comments

It is peculiarly appropriate that the country that gave the world the words “democracy” and “tragedy” should now be the beacon which alerts the world to the fact that the EU is extinguishing democracy – part of a wider tragedy that will eventually lead to the extinction of the EU itself. But what of our own country’s part in this horrible drama?

It already seems an age since we were told, last June, that David Cameron had “won his fight” to prevent the EU extracting a loan of billions of pounds from Britain to help Greece pay off some of the colossal debt it has run up since it was so foolishly allowed to join the euro. The next move, we learned, was that we would have to lend the money anyway, not through the EU but through the IMF.

George Osborne still cannot promise that he will be able to resist this demand, even though he knows we are having to borrow an additional £2.5 billion every week just to pay for the ever-rising deficit on our own Government’s spending. Thus, in order to lend £17 billion through the IMF to Greece, which it will never be able to repay, we would have to borrow even more money than we are doing already.

The latest contribution to this tragi-farce, it seems, is Sir Mervyn King’s decision to roll the printing presses and conjure a further £50 billion of imaginary money out of thin air. As Fraser Nelson explained in Friday’s Daily Telegraph, this will keep interest rates on annuities at rock-bottom, and thus rob Britain’s pensioners of an estimated £74 billion.

So our pensioners’ money will be disappearing into a bottomless pit of debt, not least to help save the euro, which the EU cannot allow Greece to leave, because this might set off a domino effect, bringing down in turn all those other eurozone countries that have run up debts they cannot repay, and plunging Europe’s and the world’s economy into unimaginable chaos.

There were those of us who long ago came to see that the dream of building a politically united Europe had all the makings of a tragedy doomed eventually to end very badly, and to carry what remained of European democracy with it. But I confess that not even in our worst nightmares did we foresee that it would end quite like this. And even now the end game has hardly begun.

Rebel MPs’ weasel words about wind farms

Last week’s Sunday Telegraph scored a hit with its widely followed front-page story about the 100 MPs who sent a letter to David Cameron protesting against inefficient and costly wind farms. But there was a huge contradiction in that letter.
Look again at this key phrase: “it is unwise to make consumers pay through taxpayer subsidy for inefficient and intermittent energy that typifies onshore wind turbines”. For a start, the subsidy for wind – at least £600 million a year and rising fast – is paid not in taxes but through our electricity bills, thanks to the Renewables Obligation which makes electricity companies pay far more for wind energy than for that from conventional power stations.

Much more glaringly dishonest, however, is that the MPs only protest against “onshore” turbines (their letter repeats “onshore” no fewer than four times).They make no mention of the thousands of offshore turbines the Government wants to see built – even though these are just as “inefficient and intermittent” as onshore wind farms and receive double the subsidy.

Onshore wind energy gets a subsidy of 100 per cent; that for offshore is 200 per cent. So why did the MPs not object twice as vociferously to offshore wind farms?

Herein lay the third dishonesty of their letter. They carefully omitted to mention that we have a commitment to the EU to produce 32 per cent of our electricity from “renewables” by 2020. The only way to try to meet that absurd target is by buildings tens of thousands of windmills. The official figure is only 10,000, but Mr Huhne, just before he resigned, was babbling about 32,000, a figure his equally deluded successor Ed Davey has not denied.

So the MPs misled us on three different counts. They know that, due to that EU commitment, the Government will ignore their weaselly letter, which was written as no more than an empty gesture to placate those onshore voters who are increasingly voluble in their contempt for the great wind scam. Until we have MPs prepared to speak with more honesty on this madness, it can only rage on until our lights go out.

Democracy is ending in the land where it began - Telegraph

The Government unions have totally destroyed that Country things are very bad for the average citizen over there...Almost everyone works for a union or they don't work. So much for the bastion of freedom....They say the pendulum swings both ways, well I hope it swings back again and stops in the center.

The plan is to destroy the small countries world wide first then work to the bigger ones. This is all part of the New World Order and total control of all of us from the cradle to the grave..The Greek people are right, and they are fighting this. All this rioting will not stop the Greeks are very stubborn and not stupid. I fear it will not end well..but I can only hope, so goes Greece goes US. People that have been there come back with terrible stories of the poverty and destitution...The media tells us nothing and only slants the rioters as trouble makers when it suits their purpose. We are seeing the same thing here in our own occupy movement. You can't ell who is who because it is so mixed up with many kinds of occupiers.

Thegovernmentcontrolled unions are destroying our own country
All this will come to us it is in fact starting already. Can you find one government run program or union that is running at a surplus. If we don't get all these deficits and uncontrolled spending under control we will be in big trouble. We need to kick them all out. We don't have a prayer between the government controlled unions and our politicians allowing so many ridiculous things to happen. Too many of these politicians just don't want to live within our means and listen to know one but their own pocket book.. They just want to continually borrow and spend us into oblivion they make me sick. They seem to want the total destruction of our Country....

Greece is a precursor to US if we don't stop these vicious fools in our government. Anyone who sees all this happening can't possibly think they are working for us.....

Please Stop Amnesty Now
http://www.alipac.us/f8/illegal-immi...states-250879/