Papademos Appeals to Greeks’ ’Historical Responsibility
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-11/papademos-appeals-to-greeks-on-eve-of-vote-as-party-leaders-back-austerity.html

Protesters set fire to a Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) cafe, a bank and a movie theater as well as other stores in downtown Athens, a fire department spokesman said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with official policy. The buildings were near a bank that was set on fire in May 2010, killing three bank employees, during a general strike against Greece’s first bailout package.

“Today at midnight, before markets open, the Greek Parliament must send a message,” Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told lawmakers in Athens today as the final debate on the accord to secure a 130 billion-euro ($171 billion) second aid package got under way. “We must show that Greeks, when they are called on to choose between the bad and the worst, choose the bad to avoid the worst.”

They torched a Starbucks a Bank and a Movie theatre

Interesting message

to pay for cleaning up the damage done in the pointless riots.

I can assure you the Starbucks Bank got the point and the riot police got the POINT
as well as the government is getting the point

as well as the European Union

Riots are never pointless...there destruction MAKES the point

The major point being that there is not enough Police not enough prisons ....to stop them
The Greece government can not stop them


History of Riots
the Teamsters Riots in 1934

battle between striking teamsters armed with pipes and the police in the streets of Minneapolis, June 1934.
this occurred in 1934
this occurred during the Depression when unemployment was 21.7%

Riots cause loss of money property and lives
An estimated £200 million worth of property damage occurred in the 2011 England riots Also five people died and at least 16 others were injured as a direct result of related violent acts

than with violence and destruction.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. ... Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

that is the question?

I would have called for strategy talks with the Icelandic Representatives that engineered their default.

The Greek government doesnt understand that the last thing the bankers and the IMF/EU wants is a total default that would leave existing Greek bonds worthless.

They have the power in this situation, and they needed to leverage that power to benefit their people.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/01/19/when-sovereign-default-is-a-really-attractive-option/

At first, the government decided it would do what Ireland was doing. It would rescue the banks, that is, it would bail out the banks’ lenders with public funds, but when the public caught on to what was going on, a referendum was held. Voters rejected the bailout as if they were voting against sin itself. More than 90% of voters cast ballots against a taxpayer bailout. We were impressed. We wrote about it. The “Patsy Revolt of 2009” we called it.

Unable to stick the voters with the losses, the government left the banks to default.


See: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0611/1224298736664.html

Iceland, which averted a sovereign default by refusing to bail out bondholders when its banks failed in October 2008, will enjoy economic growth of 2.2 per cent this year and 2.9 per cent in 2012 as its budget deficit narrows to 1.4 per cent of gross domestic product, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The Icelandic government never tried to bail out Icelandic banks in the way Ireland did. It nationalised them, and split them into the vital bank functions they needed to continue the economy, and investment parts which were allowed to go bankrupt immediately. It paid back Icelandic savers according to the Icelandic deposit guarantee laws, but told British and Dutch savers with the Icelandic banks that they'd have to wait for that. Their own governments paid them instead, and demanded the Icelandic government pay them back - at first, demanding fairly high interest for the delay. That was what was rejected in 2 referendums - first in 2010, and then, after the interest rate was lowered, again in 2011.

Here's a better summary, from an Irish MEP: http://www.paulmurphymep.eu/icelandic-referendum-we-will-not-pay-for-the-bankers-crisis

Since that was written, they've worked out that the remaining assets of the bankrupt banks should be enough to pay the Dutch and British governments - without interest, I think (though I'm not certain about that last part).

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-12/german-leaders-maintain-pressure-as-greek-parliament-debates-budget-cuts.html

German leaders kept up pressure on Greece as the struggling euro member moved closer to approving an austerity package designed to stave off economic collapse.

German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler said the lower house of parliament in Berlin could put off a vote for Greek financing this month if the government in Athens and opposition parties fail to approve measures today. Greece has to show that “it’s worth it” to call a meeting, Roesler told ARD public television. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told newspaper Welt am Sonntag that Greece “will be saved in one way or another,” though the government has to do its “homework.”


“I’m really wondering now whether so much damage has been done that this marriage no longer can be rescued,” Erik Nielsen, chief global economist at UniCredit SpA in London, wrote today in a note to clients. He predicted that the measures would be approved and that Greece will be able to make a 14.5 billion-euro ($19 billion) bond payment on March 20.


European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund -- known as the troika.


troika is a interesting word to use
bring back memories of the days of Stalin's NKVD troika


These commissions were employed as an instrument of extrajudicial punishment introduced to circumvent the legal system with a means for quick execution or imprisonment. It began as an institution of the Cheka, then later became prominent again in the NKVD, when it was used during the Great Purge. Troikas are credited with the death sentences or exile of over 600,000 people.

'Troika' literally means "a group of three" in Russian.

They had much to lose if this didn't pass...

From November, 3, 2011--

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Michael Hudson. What is happening right now? The significance of Obama being in the south of France at the G20 meeting, and the possibility of the Greek prime minister being thrown out?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, you’ve asked about three questions there now. Obama is here to represent the interests of the American banks. And the Europeans are very angry that a few weeks ago Tim Geithner, the bank lobbyist, came over and insisted that Europe not forgive Greece’s bank loans, not let Greece write down the loans, and indeed that it not even claim that Greece should do what Argentina is and write down the loans as a premise, because Mr. Geithner explained to the Europeans that the largest insurers of the Greek debt are American money market funds and hedge funds. And he said American hedge funds and banks would lose money and actually would crash the U.S. economy, if Europe made a concession to Greece to bring debts down to the ability to pay. So, instead of a debt write-down or a haircut, the banks said, "OK, we will agree with what the Americans are insisting on, and we will ask for a voluntary write-down by the banks on the Greek debt they hold." Obviously, European banks who are not part of the credit default swaps have disagreed with this. So the Americans are putting immense pressure on Europe, saying, "We will wreck your economy, if you don’t wreck Greece’s economy."

Now, because of the problem in Greece, you have had the riots in the street, you have had the demonstrations. All of these demonstrations in Athens are very much like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations here, and the similar demonstrations in Iceland. They were to show that the Greek people were not behind the bailout and to let the international banks know that if the so-called rescue operation—that is, the German and European rescue of the French banks and the German banks and the American banks that hold the Greek bonds, not the rescue of Greece—were to go through, that the fact that this was unpopular, under international law, meant that the Greeks could repudiate the debt. So, you heard two days ago, or on Monday, indeed, Mr. Papandreou said, "We’re going to have a referendum on whether to pay the—go along with the austerity plan or not." The principle is the same that the president of Iceland said earlier this year: if you’re going to plunge an economy into a decade of depression and force much of its population to leave to find jobs, the workers have to have a vote—the population has to have a vote.

Well, just a few minutes ago, the clip that you played at the beginning of the program was something quite different. Yesterday, when Mr. Papandreou met with Angela Merkel and Sarkozy in France, they said, "Look, all the opinion polls show that the Greeks are going to vote against the referendum, so let’s think of something nice. Would they rather be human beings or monkeys? What would they rather do?" And they came up with another question: do the Greeks want to be part of Europe or not? Well, obviously, the Greeks—66 percent of the Greeks do want to stay in the eurozone. They want to stay in the euro. So, by trying to rephrase the question in a way that will get a "yes" vote, they avoid asking the really important question: do you Greeks want to push yourself into a decade of depression and impose austerity and sell off the public domains, sell off the Athenian water supply, sell off your islands, sell off, yeah, your mineral rights in the sea, sell off even the Parthenon—do you want to do that so that the American banks will not lose money? Well, obviously, that would get a "no" vote. So there is some kind of trickery here going on. Nobody knows exactly what the referendum will be, or right now, whether there even will be a referendum, because, as you also noted earlier, the other politicians in Greece are now jockeying for position and are trying to get rid of Papandreou and to replace him, in a very opportunistic mood, to prevent any kind of a referendum happening at all.

--more--
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/3/wall_street_v_greece_g20_opens

The elite knew they couldn't risk letting the voters of Greece directly decide on this.

the question is does this government represent the Greek people?
Are the Greek people willing to give their country up to control of other countries