Greek Riots – A Taste Of Things To Come
Poverty is the greatest violence’. Mahatma Gandhi
The general strike started in Athens, Greece at 11 am at the archaeological museum.
The 24 hour strike was organized by the Unions as a protest to new economic reforms including pay cuts.
Today’s general strike it’s the 7th of the year and brought all public transport to a halt: busses, trains, airplanes, and ferries alike. Factories also stayed closed.
Greece is experiencing its worst financial hardships since the Second World War.
How did the situation become so bad? With a little ( a lot, maybe) help from Goldman Sachs which facilitated Greece’s entry in the ‘Euro Club’.
Of course, for Goldman Sachs it was business as usual, albeit dirty – and a tad illegal.
Goldman Sachs gave the Greek government loans which ensured the required liquidity for Greece to join the euro.
Years later, when the secret transactions were discovered, Greece was already an EU member and its currency had become the Euro.
It is now public knowledge that Goldman Sachs kept the transactions with the Greek government secret from other EU members because it knew the purpose of these loans is to mislead, to give existent EU members a false perspective about the real financial situation Greece was in and understood the illegality of it all. When the information about these secret loans surfaced, Goldman Sachs claimed the loans were not officially called loans and a few other lame bits of gobbledygook.
Goldman Sachs was never to let semantics or ethics get in the way of a healthy profit.
The problem was Greece didn’t have control anymore over its interest rates, which were by now decided by the European Central Bank. In effect, the Greeks no longer controlled their own finances and when the economic recession hit, Greece sunk financially.
Unable to repay its debts to the international bank which also blocked the Greek banks access to more credit – how’s that for help?- Greece was forced to borrow money from the IMF, as a last resort.
IMF is no charity, though.
The sharks smelled blood and came to feast. They lent Greece 110 billion Euros of bailout money at extortionist rates. Also, the IMF set harsh conditions for the bailout loan.
The Greek government had to agree to a program of economic austerity imposed by the IMF.
The program means that the ordinary citizens of Greece have to suffer tremendous hardships for many years to come, just so the IMF bankers can get their profits and bonuses.
This is a disturbing trend of IMF dictating the internal policy of a nation by making certain preconditions compulsory for releasing loans to countries in need. Such rules are being imposed on countries like Greece, Ireland, Romania, and all other nations who need to borrow money from IMF.
These preconditions involve extreme economic austerity, manifested through job losses, pensions and salaries cuts and health and education budget slashed to ridiculous levels . In fact all public services suffer greatly as a result.
IMF’s ultimate goal is to get nation states into slavery by imposing unpopular austerity measures to unbearable levels on the population and dictating how these countries allocate their national budgets.
Accept their terms, or IMF is not lending.
What we see in Greece now is just the beginning of a long and violent struggle against the international banks.
Over 100.000 people in Athens today showed that they are not sheep to be sheared at will by the IMF and corrupt politicians. They refuse to become slaves for the New World Order
The huge scale of today’s protest and the people’s resolve shows that there is only so much ordinary citizens are ready to put up with.
Yesterday, angry protesters set fire to banks and shops in Thessaloniki.
In Volos, demonstrators attacked a government building.
Today, over 100 000 angry people took to the streets in Athens.
It was an ugly affair.
In Athens, the Minister of Economic building was burned.
The Minister of Finance was attacked and lines of riot police were made to temporarily disperse under a shower of Molotov cocktails.
All the luxury cars parked outside the most exclusive hotels in Athens, Grand Bretagne and Saint George, were burned in just a few hours. The hotels themselves were attacked, their entrances and some balconies were set on fire with Molotov cocktails .
The police, mostly riot police, of course, were out in great numbers and did the only thing they know.
They used violence from the beginning , antagonizing the demonstrators from the start.
Police on motorbikes from the Greek Delta force drove into the demonstration. They were of course thrown off their bikes and attacked.
The riot police used heavy-handed tactics, with random beatings and arrests the norm of the day.
The police attacked the main demonstration with gas bombs, everywhere teargas was being deployed in abundance, like Christmas presents.
The demonstrators answered in kind:
Pieces of pavement and flagpoles became weapons, and Molotov cocktails became more and more common on the streets of Athens.
A riot police bus was burned right in front of the Greek Parliament.
Former minister Hastzidakis was beaten up as he was leaving Parliament.
The police tried in vain to scatter the protesters. They kept chanting and continued marching.
The neighborhood of Exarcia was militarized and police organized road blocks.
They kept clashing with protesters in different parts of the city, throwing teargas and getting Molotov cocktails in return.
People erected barricades and refused to be dispersed. This landscape was completed by burning rubbish bins and the smell of teargas.
Greece is at a standstill with public transport paralyzed.
For Thursday, a media blackout is announced.
And Unions say this is just a taster.
That bigger protests will follow after the winter holidays.
That the Greeks will not take this absurd IMF impositions , just so the politicians to keep their jobs.
100 000 people cannot be classed as a bunch of anarchists, regardless of today’s violent events.
It simply shows how strongly opposed the people are to the economic austerity and that they are going to fight for their rights until they will get them.
They want to live like decent human beings with dignity and not to suffer poverty in silence.
The International Banks are responsible for the global financial mess. They have to be made to pay for it, not ordinary people.
The Wall Street banks created the crisis.
Europe is not willing to pay for it. Not to them, not to the IMF.
Today is just a beginning. The fight will continue and intensify until The Banksters get it.
The Greeks spoke for all of us. Their message is:
There will never be a One World Government with an enslaved world to rule. And there is too many of us. You will never kill us all and we will never let you enjoy your spoils in peace!
Our rage will put fear into you. We will not stop until we get what we want. We will not stop until we win!
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