The incendiary device lands at the policeman's feet and bursts into flames
Posted on 12/13/2008 5:57:15 PM PST by bruinbirdman
To millions of British holidaymakers it is a summer playground of sun, sea and ancient treasures, but a week of fierce rioting and violent street battles has uncovered a far darker side to Greece.
Athens – the cradle of Western civilisation – has been turned into a war zone, its streets jammed with the burnt-out wrecks of cars.
In the most serious crisis since the end of the military junta in the early 1970s, shops and restaurants had their windows stoved in and their interiors set on fire as police in full riot gear squared up to hundreds of hooded protesters.
The incendiary device lands at the policeman's feet and bursts into flames
The teenager's death was the catalyst, not the cause, of the protests which have shaken Greece to its very core. It tapped into deep-rooted anger over decades of police brutality and government corruption as well as fears for Greece's economic future.
"The whole country is going through a nervous breakdown," said Alexis Papachelas, editor-in-chief of the conservative Kathimerini newspaper.
"Greece is in self-destruct mode. A whole range of problems have accumulated over the years and have now reached a critical point."
The response of the embattled conservative government was judged by 68 per cent of Greeks as woefully inadequate in a poll last week.
Fearful of more deaths or injuries, the prime minister Costas Karamanlis instructed police to assume a defensive role – responding to direct attacks but otherwise allowing the rioters to burn and loot at will.
It appears to have been a huge miscalculation, encouraging night after night of violence and prolonging the crisis.
Mr Karamanlis's New Democracy Party was elected on a wave of euphoria in 2004, after 20 years of rule by the Socialist Party, Pasok.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Their mistake was in not shooting a few rioters as well. They let this thing grow into something that has a life of it’s own now.
aka
Dress Rehearsal for US cities. /s
... It appears to have been a huge miscalculation,
No, really? That's so unexpected! It's always worked before!
Fearful of more deaths or injuries, the prime minister Costas Karamanlis instructed police to assume a defensive role – responding to direct attacks but otherwise allowing the rioters to burn and loot at will.
“prime minister Costas Karamanlis instructed police to assume a defensive role – responding to direct attacks but otherwise allowing the rioters to burn and loot at will.”
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So much for ‘law and order’. Greece is a MAJOR tourist destination for the Brits. The rioters have caused a ‘foot bullet’ to the economy in that region. They’ll be rioting about that next.
Happy cops don’t have to do their jobs either. It works both ways. The French got the idea during their Revolution and spread it out worldwide apparently.
It’s not police brutality, it’s idiot youthful radicalism. Greece has had a Communist infection that runs all the way back to the Second World War or earlier. That radical craziness has been stoked over the years, and now we’re seeing a repeat of Europe in 1968 or even earlier, Greece after the Nazi invasion was lifted.
Over the course of the 20th century, Communism was thoroughly debunked, yet it just refuses to die. Idiots.
And about the worst thing you could do in response is to tell them that you don’t plan to do anything to stop the riots.
“Dum a$$” airmass flowing over Europe again. The French flaunt themselves as responsible budgetors of “fun”. It’s all overbudget in blood in the end, hell to pay and a gap with reality grows everyday like a canker going cancerous.
Parasitic Socialism, by whatever name it covers itself, can not be removed from a society without bloodshed, once it gets established.
Such things as now plague Greece are definitely and unavoidably in our own future.
During the last riots in LA (Rodney King?) the city council was putting pressure on the LAPD because of the beating. So he told his cops, to virtually, not interfere. After about a week, the state had to call in the marines from Camp Pendleton, not the national guard.
yitbos
Madness....
L
Looting is such a harsh word. These misunderstood youths are merely doing their Christmas shopping.
“Cradle of Democracy?” You mean a country that has seen rule by the Turks for centuries, and years of corrupt parliaments intersected with military rule (the most recent of which ended in 1974) since?
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