Clashes, looting rock Greek cities for 4th night

AP ^ | 12/9/2008 | NICHOLAS PAPHITIS and ELENA BECATOROS

[mojito]

Masked youths and looters marauded through Greek cities for a fourth night Tuesday, in an explosion of rage triggered by the police shooting of a teenager that has unleashed the most violent riots in a quarter century.

The nightly scenes of burning street barricades, looted stores and overturned cars have threatened to topple the country's increasingly unpopular conservative government, which faces mounting calls for Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis to resign.

Police fired tear gas at protesters Tuesday following the funeral of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, who was laid to rest in an Athens burial attended by about 6,000 people.

The rioting — which has engulfed cities from Thessaloniki in the north to the holiday island of Corfu and Crete in the south — threatens the 52-year-old Karamanlis, who already faced growing dissatisfaction over financial and social reforms at a time of deep anxiety over growing economic gloom.

Opposition Socialist leader George Papandreou called for early elections, charging the conservatives were incapable of defending the public from rioters.

"The government cannot handle this crisis and has lost the trust of the Greek people," Papandreou said. "The best thing it can do is resign and let the people find a solution ... We will protect the public."

The call was echoed by protesters, who, though they have not voiced any particular policy goals, say they want Karamanlis out.

"It's very simple — we want the government to fall. This boy's death was the last straw for us," Petros Constantinou, an organizer with the Socialist Workers Party, said in Athens.

[mojito]

Anarchy in the Aegean continues.

[Crazieman]

Not the Religion of Peace.

Communists this time.

[Clock King]

"The government cannot handle this crisis and has lost the trust of the Greek people," Papandreou said. "The best thing it can do is resign and let the people find a solution ... We will protect the public."

Don't you love how communists talk out of both sides of their a**es? Let the "people" decide, but put us in charge.

[RC2]

Impose martial law......now.

[UCANSEE2]

“”It’s very simple — we want the government to fall. This boy’s death was the last straw for us,” Petros Constantinou, an organizer with the Socialist Workers Party, said in Athens.”

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Ahhhhh.... I see the truth is openly admitted.

Is the same movement going on here?

[John123]

It's very simple — we want the government to fall.

Be careful what you ask for... you might get it.

[SevenofNine]

Has Looter guy show up YET

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

Opposition Socialist leader George Papandreou ... charging the conservatives were incapable of defending the public from rioters.

"The government cannot handle this crisis and has lost the trust of the Greek people," Papandreou said. "The best thing it can do is resign and let the people find a solution ... We will protect the public."

The call was echoed by protesters, who, ...

Communists are the same everywhere, intimidate with mobs.

[FatherofFive]

Teenagers and university students have joined self-styled anarchists in much of the rioting and destruction.

I'm glad to see they're spending the best years of their lives in meaningful and productive behavior.

[Mercia]

Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, who wrote famously that “the Greeks, the most humane men of ancient times, have a trait of cruelty, a tigerish lust to annihilate . . . that must strike fear into our hearts throughout their whole history and mythology”.

The Times.

I might go so far as to call this insurrection. I have Greek friends, but we are finding ourselves differing massively over the rights and wrongs of this.

Army. In. Now.