Three dead as Greece protest turns violent

Source: BBC

At least three people have been killed in the Greek capital as protesters set fire to a bank during a general strike over planned austerity measures.

The fire brigade said three bodies were found inside the bank in Athens. Another building is also on fire.

Petrol bombs were thrown at police who responded with pepper spray, tear gas and stun grenades.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8661385.stm

I find these stations more fact based to begin with ... less politics, more meaty information.

I agree -- it's important to read news directly from Europe if
you want to know what's really going on.

Tesha

i have the feeling this is just the dress rehearsal before the opening act...

Good for the fact that they're actually fighting back

the World Bank to turn them into a 3rd world country.

- that ran the Greek public debt to $400 billion?
- passed legislation that paid government workers and retirees for 14 months every 12?
- created the national past time of dodging taxes?

Were heavily involved in hiding debt in complex financial instruments on the behest of corrupt Greek government officials for quite a few years, their entry to the eurozone was done through this method and they have been playing with fire ever since....eventually that shit comes up.

Europe and the US is one giant Enron financially. Europe has the disadvantage that 16 states have to agree to create digital money out of nothing...fortunately, for a little while, Tim Geithner and Ben Bernake are not impeded by such a thing.

Well we do have our own situation brewing in pretty much 30-40% of our states, but I'm sure that can be easily dealt with by a few computer entries.

paying high taxes. Just like they'll soon come for OUR Social Security. Will you then blame the American People and NOT the Banksters who wish to continue sending money up to the 1%?

As long as Barack Obama says it is what has to be done, he will.

year after year and nothing bad will happen.

It will happen here soon enough too.

Oh yeah, the hyper-rich in the US. And yes, when rich people stop paying taxes, the public debt goes through the roof.

If you think OUR debt is more due to with Social Security and the like than the Reagan/Bush tax cuts and MIC spending, you need to turn off King Glenn and get some reality-based news.

countries. Here is a good read on the matter:

http://blogs.euobserver.com/irvin/2010/05/05/should-greece-simply-default/

excerpt:

"European leaders would do well to read up on the Asian, Russian and Latin American financial crises of 1997-2002. The Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz famously published a open letter citing his reasons for resigning from his post of Chief Economist at the World Bank. Amongst his other criticisms of the Bank and the IMF was their imposition of drastic deflationary measures on Thailand and Korea in 1997, and on Russia in 1998, mainly to protect the balance sheets of private Western banks. The conditionality imposed was paid for dearly by cuts in economic and social expenditure imposed on ordinary citizens. In Greece—however corrupts some of its politicians—much the same is happening. The average Greek is being asked by the EU-IMF to tolerate vicious cuts mainly so that German (and other EU) banks won’t have to take a ‘haircut’.

A central lesson of all this is that unless protective action is taken early, a country can rapidly be overpowered by the financial markets. Once traders start betting against a country’s bonds or its currency, the herd instinct takes over. Greece’s budget deficit is not particularly high by world standards; 13.6% versus 11% in the UK, and 12.3% in the USA, but traders perceived its sovereign debt structure as too risky and prophecies of doom became self-fulfilling.

There is a further problem, too. The spending cuts needed to meet the government’s deficit target will undermine Greek government revenues. As an economist at London-based Capital Economics put it., “The key risk to its target is that deeper recession will lead to lower tax revenues, offsetting some of the savings that the Government expects to make as a result of its fiscal tightening,” In short, even though the bailout package has been agreed, the cuts may prove counter-productive and Greek recovery is far from assured."


Maybe Greece should have been considered for membership in the EU. I don't know.

earn money to them?

Taxes are the price we pay for civilization. We elect the leaders who spend our tax dollars and have kept reelecting ones who spend more than they get. Are we not responsible for the debt? Greeks did the same. No "bankster" made Greece spend more than tax revenues raised. "Banksters" have in fact allowed the Greeks to live beyond their means for decades. Is it your landlord's responsibility if you don't pay the rent for the lease you signed or yours?

I'll be happy to pay my fair share. :thumbsup:

We as a population elected deficit spenders. Again and again. For good reasons or bad. We own the debt. So do Greeks.

that candidates never run on anything that is remotely painful, however true it may need to be said. Like increasing taxes. Or increasing deficit spending to get us out of the recession. Part of the problem of our democracy I suppose.

Greece has been a mess since after WW2.It is corrupt to the core.They have benefits for the workers that are totally crazy especially since tax cheating is a national pastime.The government cooked it's books to get into the EU.Their debt is 13% plus of their GDP .They agreed to keep it at 3% or less to be in the EU.If anyone should be rioting it should be the Germans who through hard work and frugality have a great economy and now have to help bail out the Greeks.

The Greek people pay high taxes. The IMF has NO RIGHT to their pensions.

No bank made those promises. The government of Greece did. They borrowed money from the banks to fund them far longer and more generously than they could afford.

BTW whose money do you think the banks used to lend those funds to Greece? Do you think all money in all banks comes from billionaires?

What pensions would they have anyway?

A bankrupt Greece won't be able to pay for all those pension obligations.

It's really they take a cut in government paid wages, pensions and services - or see the nation go belly up and not be able pay for most of it anyway.

The protesters sound like whining babies. They will accomplish nothing out burning banks and smashing things. The cuts are going to happen, or Greece won't get the funding and will go broke. If that happens, it will be isolated and probably eventually cut out of the EU like some kind of cancer.

That's the problem when you have no choice but to get help from others, you don't get to set the terms. It's reality, and Greece has to deal with it.

Have you ever lived in Greece? Visited their? My family comes from the neighborhood.Less than 10 people in Greece declared they made over a million Euro last year.I know hard to believe . Do you deny what I wrote about the government lying to get into the EU? Do you deny that the government has missed the mark to stay in the EU,debt % of GDP,by 400%?Compare the benefits of your average Greek worker to the avg German or American it is a joke.LOOK UP THE % OF GREEKS who have a gov. job.All one needs is a cheap calculator to figure out if the difference between your revenue,taxes,and your expenses is very large and growing in favor of the expenses you have a problem that needs to be addressed.In the end the Greeks will have to seriously tighten their collective belt or face bankruptcy .

it's the Greeks who have been borrowing money they don't have. Banks will lend it to them, of course, but it's not the banks fault that Greece has spent itself into such debt, even going so far as to try to hide its debt. And yes, now others are bailing them out, much like we bailed out the banks. Thankfully, we have gotten back most of our money back from the banks, and may yet get it all back.

It would be like the US suddenly cutting domestic spending because our economy was on the brink of collapse due to massive debt and it was the only way to keep financial viability. And there were other countries that were giving us money (a bailout) so that our collapse doesn't happen, which of course would be bad for the whole world. And then the Americans take to the streets to protest the cuts when they pretty much only have themselves to blame for continuing to elect the leaders that spent them into that much debt. They can protest the cuts all they want, but the cuts will have to happen either way and is not even the main issue. It's their leaders, and themselves, that will have to change.

The lack of logic reminds me of the teabaggers and their completely misguided anger.

Greece is not the only country in trouble. Hungary and Latvia already went under and were quietly bailed out.
Iceland, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy are all on the edge.
Unregulated international banks are the culprits here, not Greek workers.
Or is it possible that the workers in Greece, Latvia, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Iceland all conspired to ruin the global economy?
Are these workers buying default swaps to make billions when their nations fail or is that being done by hedge funds in New York and London?
Re taxes: Exxon did not pay one cent in federal tax for 2009. Is tax cheating an American corporate pastime?
The Greek books were cooked with assistance from Goldman Sachs.
Loans (such as the sale of the Greek lottery and airport landing fees to Goldman) were booked as "sales" by Goldman.
European auditors were shocked by the bankers fraud.
The Germans don't give a damn about Greece and have zero interest in helping them.
The only reason they are helping is because German banks hold billions in Greek debt.
The Germans are not bailing out Greece, they are bailing out their own banks.

The fault is the government's alone. Greece is a democracy and they elected deficit spenders again and again. The people were complicit and the government is liable. The banks were at worst enablers, and they at least are reducing that enablement.

The big banks lent billions and used Enron accounting to hide the true nature of the debt.
Governments are certainly to blame too.
Our government's 30 year experiment with Friedman economic theory got this ball rolling in the first place.

The specter of sovereign default is the cause of the fear (near panic) in the Euro zone.

You can be sure unregulated hedge funds are buying up swaps and pushing for a collapse.

And that specter is at the edge of the US. What happens when US debt is downgraded to AA?
Will we blame the American people for electing "deficit spender" Obama?
Or will the blame be laid at the feet of us American workers who have no social benefits at all?

If banks gamble among themselves that's not causal. It's a bit tasteless sure, but if Greece had not borrowed no such speculation could occur. If Greece pays their debts according to the dating of their bonds they cannot default no matter how much banks want them to (or not - gambling goes both ways).

We WILL probably blame everyone else according to political taste but if (big IF - our debt to GDP is a fraction of Greece's) US bonds are degraded we SHOULD blame many successive governments for outspending their revenue and all of us collectively for electing them to do so. Trust me the big banks are guilty of many things and responsible for many horrors in thsi world but sovereign debt is not one of them.

servicing and refinancing its debt, if the interest rates demanded by the so-called "international investors" (we will call them banksters)
remained the same as when most of that money was borrowed. No government in the world can sustain borrowing at over 11% APR,
simply because there is no possible productive use for that money to justify such a return. Banksters say it is the "market" rate and
not their fault. What utter bullshit! That's nothing but their greed. Every time you hear about "market" doing this and "market" wanting
that, you can get a better hold on reality by substituting "market" by "greedy banksters". The whole point of this scheme is to extract
this usurious interest from the blood and sweat of the working people and buy themselves another set of mansions and yachts with it.
What we see now is a purposeful and directed run on Greece orchestrated by the international financial oligarchy. All this crap about
how the Greeks are lazy and corrupt is just so much gooey to justify this daylight robbery. The same will be said about people in
other countries after they are done with Greece and move on to their next target. They say that increased risk of default justifies such
interest on Greek sovereign debt. Another piece of utter crap! It is the other way around - it is such interest rates demanded by the
greedy banksters that is the main reason Greece cannot pay. They would pay easily with zero risk of default if they could borrow at
a reasonable rate. It is not Greece being bailed out either, that's the banksters and their high-yielding investments that are. God forbid
they lose their "investments", turn petulant and decide to pull "Atlas shrugged" on us. Then we all would really be in trouble without
their brilliance and productivity. Don't let them fool you again and again. Greek people are right - you cannot appease or buy off those
blood-sucking bastards, they will alway be coming back for more, keeping their victims just alive enough to produce more fresh
blood. Fuck austerity! The only permanent solution is a steak through the heart. That's the rich who caused it, and so they are the
ones who must pay for it, not the poor.

Good post.

And have never been fined for it (which was part of the deal). But besides that. I totally agree with you. Your analysis of Greece is correct. They retire at 53 and their government personell get paid 13 or 14 months (instead of 12). It's crazy.

The Icelanders were fiscally conservative people who ran their own budgets with only modest debt as all people should. But a few Icelandic bankers took extraordinary risk with deposits from all over the world which put the people of Iceland on the hook for it. The last I heard was that the people of Iceland voted not to accept the debt and risk which put the burden back on European banks.

I don't feel sorry for them at all. No wonder that they're in financial troubles! This crisis is a good opportunity for the Greeks to reform their system. They need to realize they can't get everything for free. I'm a genuine left-winger but I fully support the strict measures imposed on Papandreou to make the Greek budget healthy again.

Greek workers work more hours per year than any OECD nation, except South Korea.
Greeks work 2,152 hours per year. (The Dutch clock in at 1,392)
Greek GDP per hour is the same as Israel or New Zealand.

"Greek workers" do not receive two extra months pay.
10% of the work force is in the civil service.
Only that 10% formerly received a bonus equivalent to two months pay.
Those bonuses add up to a whopping $1.4 billion euros a year, or exactly 1% of the EU/IMF package.
All of the Greek bonuses combined are about one half of hedge fund manager John Paulson's personal income for 2009.
Those bonuses have just been slashed by 70%.

The financial sector PR firms are working overtime.

if your house is robbed, you kill a couple of neighbors to make yourself feel better. All life is sacred!

The Greek government has lied to the Greek people for about 10 years about their true financial conditions and to what they were up to. Of course, while the music was playing the Greek people danced.

The music stopped playing and someone is going to have to pay. The IMF exist to make sure the leaders who created the situation can push as much pain onto the populace as possible. It is really a nefarious organization with a track record of poverty, death, and disease in its wake.

The only difference between Greece and the US, Greece can't create digital money in Treasury auctions with their own central bank.

I expect similar situations to develop in California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York without massive federal intervention.

I'd probably be in the street as well. My brother is in a group home for autistic adults, because of this he is able to work in the community and have somewhat of a life. Those are the type of the things IMF types hate, you know people who can't help themselves and need assistance from others.

Basically take the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and reverse them, and that is what the IMF stands for.

The casualties were just working people doing their jobs. Tell their families it's good the building they were working in was torched by a mob.

I said I do feel bad for the casualties, and am sorry that lives were lost. I feel good for the protestors, who are actually making themselves heard.

:thumbsup:

ya think?

as the Union army shared with the Confederacy philosophically.

There is plenty of reading that can be done about this, I suggest you stick to American Idol if you don't want to do that before you comment.

two groups that both think they are ENTITLED to everything, yet don't want to have to SACRIFICE for it. they are both XENOPHOBIC and they have RESENTMENT towards perceived political corruption and change that they can't control.


they are cut from the same cord. just because they don't line up on some neat political litmus test, doesn't mean they aren't driven by the same sorts of emotions and motives.

So little time.

Do us all a favor and read before you talk.

That's a big difference.

And in any case, the employees of the bank were forbidden to leave despite messages of direct actions the whole day. If they left they would have been fired. They were held hostage by their bank masters.

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wo groups that both think they are ENTITLED to everything, yet don't want to have to SACRIFICE for it

The teabaggers, maybe. The Greeks have worked their entire lives in a promise of the pension. They have sacrificed, just as have people here who took wage concessions in return for benefits and retirement..

have RESENTMENT towards perceived political corruption and change that they can't control.

The Greeks, maybe. The teabaggers cheer corruption in the media (Fox News and Hate Radio's collaboration with right-wing government and corporations) and in government (their heroes are Palin and Cheney), and believe they are represented by those evil forces.

Your entire post is straight from the King Glenn/Lou Dobbs/Michael Weiner script.

misguided anger based on ignornace and selfishness. Very similar. Of course, the teabaggers have as of yet to kill innocent people over it. So I guess the Greek protesters are actually worse in some ways.

They should provide Greeks with the means to live in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

I'm not sure why the American taxpayer should do this, except that is what the American taxpayer does. Bails out everyone but herself. Sort of like your raison d'etre.

H1L visa programs, keep giving companies low tariffs for goods made by companies outside the US and companies that left the US for cheaper labor, and keep robbing our tax dollars for unnecessary wars while not using our taxes for health care and not regulating health care, and many other industries that hold us hostage - credit companies, banks etc.

I don't doubt for a minute that Greece got sacked by a whole bunch of corrupt gov officials, banksters, and corporate conglomerates. Probably some of the same that have raped America.

I would not stoop to blame the Greek people, however. That is very Republican of you.
Will you also blame the American people for wanting jobs and being rather communist in wanting the health care industry regulated and OMG health care for all, paid for by our taxes? The Greek citizens are not uneducated, they burned down a bank for a reason. I expect the world bank goes right back to WTO.

The whole panic started when investors realized that Greece's outstanding public debt now exceeded ts GDP, and lost faith in their ability to repay its debts. If investors don't have faith in your ability to repay, they aren't going to buy your bonds. If nobody buys your bonds, you can't deficit spend. Governments are like regular schmoes in that regard...if the bank account is empty, the checks will just bounce. We've become accustomed to unlimited spending over the past 100-odd years, because bond "loans" have always been there to cover the difference.

By current estimates, the U.S. total outstanding government debt will reach the same 100% psychological threshold as Greece by 2015, only five years from now. If investors stop buying U.S. bonds the way they stopped buying Greek bonds, our nation is going to be facing a massive crisis, unmatched by ANYTHING that ANY living American has seen before. We're talking about the overnight vaporization of a third of our national budget. There isn't a tax hike in the world that will cover that.

Our own government is run by lobbyists of various ilk who put the concerns of the American people dead last in their pecking order. They push for wars and special rules for them. America was a self sufficient nation into the 50s and even early 60s until interests took over that put America last. It was our government along with the bankers and multi-national corps. who eliminated all the good jobs and sent them off to China. When you have a country where most of the citizens have lost relative income while a select few have accumulated wealth beyond reason, you end up with a country in distress.

:)

Gee, America has it's own massive debt that our corporate criminals crafted for us.

I notice this article says that the unrest is over capitalism and that police brutality made the crowd more violent where they began using more violent tactics.

I wouldn't be surprised if the gov uses this to put more laws against public protest and make the common people who are being raped by them, look like the bad guys instead. JUST LIKE OUR POLICE AND GOV DO AT PROTESTS. Make sure to plant some violent cops and get the protesters to go overboard.

Not much outrage about police killing someone (we americans are used to it I guess), lots of outrage over cars being burnt and windows smashed.

Some people will always an excuse to justify state violence against innocent people. There has always been this kind of tension between citizens and the state, these austerity measures are going to put the screws to the majority of the population. Just like every other nation the IMF and World Bank The poor will get poorer, the rich will get richer, and the banks and corrupt politicians who caused the crisis will walk away untouched.

It's amazing how many people begrudge every penny that finds it's way to the hands of ordinary working people, as if paying people a decent wage for honest work is an obscenity. I guess it's easy for them as long as you aren't the ones having their livelihoods destroyed by untouchable elites.

Paying a decent wage for honest work is indeed great. But when that wage is paid by the government they must collect enough taxes to pay those wages, or reduce the number of people employed, or go into debt. The last option runs out eventually, and you have to do one or both of the first two anyway.

It happens so often in the US that we are used to it, and we assume that the person had it coming.

There was plenty of outrage about broken windows and burnt cars.

But yes, I'm sure you could find people bemoaning the fact that rioters break and burn shit while giving the benefit of the doubt to the BART cop who killed that guy. It's one of many incidents of cops shooting people, and if there is no video then it is pretty much assumed that the person had it coming until the facts come out weeks or months later and prove otherwise.

How can there have been a riot over that if there were no outrage?

I have also seen very little outrage over property damage. The three people burned alive however are worthy of outrage. Murder is murder when done by mob just as much as by cop. Plenty of criticism of the Greek government (it's their fault) and opinions that the riot is silly and self defeating (it is - costing a near-bankrupt nation a fortune and eliminating what little GDP it ekes out is a bit of a silly way to reduce the need for more cash and less spending). BUt no real whining over burning "shit". People yes, but not shit. There's a difference.

This was about a year ago.

By far, people were less upset with the fact that a cop shot some kid for little reason, but over the fact that some people got their cars torched and windows of businesses were broken when there were confrontations with police.

This is tragic and if anarchists were involved they should come clean and apologize to the family members. I don't expect that will happen, of course.

They were local branch employees: clerks, tellers, managers, branch executives, et cetera. I guarantee you none of them are setting policy or raking in millions a year by screwing over their clients.

In other words, and let me make this very clear for some of the so-called "liberals" on here:

THESE PEOPLE DID NOT DESERVE TO DIE BECAUSE OF THE CRIMES OF THE FEW PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF THE ORGANIZATION!!!

Those that died were average working people and not those who rape, pillage and screw an economy and from a system that benefits only them. The answer is always about removing political figures and not violence.

I expect the protestors to come out against this though, it will change their bank burning tactics somewhat.

The employees were held hostage by their employeer, and they died because of a result of that.

Here's the thing. Yeah, they didn't know the CEO (or is he the branch president?) had strong-armed the people into an unsafe building and then locked the doors. Although I'm cynical enough to ask if they'd have cared had they known.

The CEO's appalling disregard for his worker's safety doesn't absolve the arsonists from actually having set fire to the unsafe building.

The arsonists would have done better to assassinate Vgenopoulous with a scoped rifle.

Even though the penalty is going to be harsh it is something to be expected. They will have the full support of the Greek Anarchists.

to keep them occupied all while taxpayers subsidize the game, players and stadiums.

The relationship works out well for elitists.

And part of the blame lands squarely on the hands of those who would not allow people to go home when the riots began.

THE COMMIES AND ANARCHISTS ARE OUT TO KILL YOU!!! :sarcasm: