by purplesofa 22 Replies latest jw friends
Possibly something to do with this event purps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Polytechnic_uprising
It was mentioned on the news bulletins here that the police have been mistrusted by the general public since the days of the dictatorship. I guess if the tension is already there then it only takes a tiny spark to trigger something bad like the recent events.
BA,
It's very scarey to think that this will happen here. Maybe that is why I am so interested in what's going on there.
I think Americans will tolerate alot.
Alot of these people have been poor a long time and HUNGRY.
They have totally lost all trust in their government.
I am very interested in whats going on over in Greece right now, any info, or input is greatly appreciated.
purps
By DEMETRIS NELLAS and MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS – 2 hours ago
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A week after the police killing of a 15-year-old boy triggered riots across Greece, young protesters promised Saturday to remain on the streets until their concerns are addressed.
Greek youths taking part in protests every day since the boy's death are angry not just at the police but at an increasingly unpopular government and over economic issues.
Violent protests have injured at least 70 people and left hundreds of stores smashed and looted in the past week. More than 200 people have been arrested.
While most of the protesters have been peaceful, the tone of the demonstrations has been set by a violent fringe. And more young people have been willing to join them than in the past.
Several dozen students held a peaceful sit-down demonstration Saturday in Athens' central Syntagma Square. Early in the afternoon, a crowd of about 1,000 people gathered peacefully at Syntagma and another 1,000 demonstrated in the northern city of Thessaloniki. A vigil is set for the place and time - 9 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) - that 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was fatally shot by a police officer.
One 16-year-old student at the sit-down demonstration, who gave only her first name, Veatriki, said young people her age felt their voices were being heard, immediately, when they smashed a shop window or a car.
She also said young people want to see the policemen involved in the shooting punished and the police disarmed.
The two officers involved in the boy's shooting were arrested. One was charged with murder and the other as an accomplice. The circumstances surrounding the shooting are unclear.
"We are entering a long period of economic crisis," said Giorgos Kyrtsos, publisher of the City Press and Free Sunday newspapers. "But there is also a deepening social crisis, combined with a weakened state. We are truly at a crossroads."
Kyrtsos, a conservative, was highly critical of the government's handling of the protests.
"This is the only government I remember that has managed to alienate both the rebellious youth and the law-and-order crowd. It has nothing to offer to anybody," he said.
Kyrtsos said the hard-core anarchists "number about 500 and certainly less than 1,000." They are joined in the protests "by an anti-social element, many of them soccer hooligans and by many young people who seek excitement but also feel a diffuse sense of frustration and of not being listened to."
Paris Kyriakides, 32, who described himself as an anarchist, said that attacks against banks, ministries, police stations and large chain stores were decided collectively, in assemblies.
Asked about the smashing and looting of small stores, he said they were "an aberration" in which "the poor and immigrants that are oppressed by the system" joined in.
"In the end, the violence that we use is minimal in comparison to the violence of the system uses, like the banks," Kyriakides said. He added that the protest movement was "a multifaceted one composed of many groups including students, anarchists, anti-government activists, communists, workers and immigrants...all these people who have experienced police violence and the violence of the system."
At the site where Grigoropoulos was shot, messages were posted on a wall. One read: "Those who trained the murderers will regret it." Scores of people came to leave flowers and pin messages to a notice board. A privately made street sign bearing the teenager's name was placed on the corner of the block.
Christmas shoppers cautiously returned to central Athens Saturday, but many shops boarded up their windows instead of replacing the glass, for fear of further violence.
Glazier Michalis Mentis said he had replaced several storefronts twice. "There's been a lot of work for us but it's very bad for businesses in general," Mentis said. "It's very lucky more people were not hurt, because there was so much damage."
thanks Sad emo.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/12/2008129185813618985.html
Info about who the main protesters are and what its all about.
BA, I do think we are headed for riots in the UK again too - the only thing holding it all back is apathy - anarchy is sneaking in through the back door...
I agree B.A.
There are already riots happening all over the world that we aren't getting media coverage about - some for food, some for jobs, some for freedom - they are steadily increasing. Thailand, China, Spain, Greece, Haiti...all over the world including those 200 employees that locked themselves inside the glass company, demanding their money. I just read an article about squatters taking over some houses in one of the major cities - they creep in at night and you don't even know they are there unless you get too many at once or they are on drugs. In India they are rioting because of food shortages and seed distortion..they now have articles devoted on the 'best cars to call home' in the USA....sherrifs in 3 States are now refusing to evict people so that's their way of revolting....sammieswife.
Food Riots, Tax Rebellions By 2012...
Trend forecaster, renowned for being accurate in the past, says....
November 14, 2008 Live Leak
The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.
Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.
Celente says that by 2012 America will become anundeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatterrebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.
"We're going to see the end of the retail Christmas....we're going to see a fundamental shift take place....putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree," said Celente, adding that the situation would be "worse than the Great Depression".
"America's going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for," said Celente, noting that people's refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.
Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following yearwould be known as "The Panic of 2008," adding that "giants (would) tumble to their deaths," which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others.
He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.
The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago,which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.
The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, "The world's middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnationalprocesses in their own class interest."
And that, "The middle classes could become a revolutionary class."
In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.
"There will be a revolution in this country," he said. "It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it:
the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broaddaylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue toworsen."
"The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts.That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax,property tax, any kind of tax.
You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.""It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before.
Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re goingto see many more.""We’re going to start seeing huge areas ofvacant real estate and squatters living in them as well.
It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not goingto be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’sgoing to be a lot of crime.
And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’sminds weren’t wrecked on allthese modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be.
So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension."
National and Racial Pain-Bodies
Certain Countries in which many acts of collective violence were suffered or perpetrated have a heavier pain-body than others. This is why older nations tend to have stronger pain-bodies. It is also why younger countries, such as Canada and Australia, and those that have remained more sheltered from the surrounding madness, such as Switzerland, tend to have lighter collective pain-bodies. Of course, in those countried, people still have their personal pain-body to deal with. If you are sensicive enough, you can feela heaviness in the energy field of certain countries as soon as you step off the plane. In other countries, one can sense an energy field of latent violence just underneath the surface of everyday life. In some nations, for example, in the Middle East, the collective pain-body is so acute that a significant part of the population finds itself forced to act it out in an endless and ubsabe cyce of perpetration and retribution through which the pain-body renews itself continuously.
In countries where the pain-body is heavy but no longer acute, there has been a tendency for people to try and desensitize themselves to the collection emotional pain; in Germany and Japan through work, in some other coutries through widespread indulgence in alcohol (which, how-ever, can also have the opposite effect of stimulating the pain-body, particularly in excess) China's pain-body is to some extent mitigated by the widespread practice of t'ai chi, which amazingly was not declared illegal by the Communitst government that otherwise feels threatened by anything it cannot control. Every day in the streets and city parks, millions practice this movement meditation that stills the mind. ths makes a considerable difference to the collective energy field and goes some way toward diminishing the pain-body by reducing thinking and generating Presence.
The collective pain-body is pronounced in Jewish people, who have suffered persecution over many centuries. Not surprisingly, it is stong as well in Native Americans, whose number were decimated and whose culture all but destroyed by European settlers. In Black Americans too the collective pain-body is pronounced. Their ancestors were violently uprooted, beaten into submission, and sold into slavery. The foundation of American economic prosperity rested on the labor of four to five million black slaves. In fact, the suffering inflicted on Native and Black Americans has not remained confined to those two races, but has become part of the collective American pain-body. It is always the case that both victim and perpertrator suffer the consequences of any acts of violence, oppression, or brutality. For what you do to others, you do to yourself.
It doesn't really matter what proportion of your pain-body belongs to your nation or race and what proportion is personal. In either case, you can only go beyond it by taking responsibility for your inner state now. Even if blame seems more than justified, as long as you blame others, you keep feeding the pain-body with your thoughts and remain trapped in your ego. There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet; human unconsciousness. that realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges-the Power of Presence. Instead of blaming darkness, you bring in the light.
from A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
Greece calm after 8 days of riots by angry youths
By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS – 7 hours ago
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Athens was calm Sunday after eight days of the worst riots Greece has seen in decades, sparked by the police killing of a teenager.
Traffic returned to normal in the center of town and open-topped double-decker buses carried tourists around the city's main sights. The cafes in the Thissio area under the Acropolis were busy, and couples took their children for Sunday walks.
But Greek youths who have protested daily since the boy's death have vowed to remain on the streets until their concerns are addressed. Protesters are angry not just at police but at a government already on the defensive over a series of financial scandals, and over economic issues.
"We are not in this for the short term," said Petros Constantinou, an organizer with the Socialist Workers Party. "We want the protests to continue after Christmas and New Year, until this government of murderers goes."
Analyst Theodore Couloumbis, however, said he expected the disturbances to "peter out" over the next few days.
"We are going to have periodic flare-ups," said Couloumbis, a professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Athens. "It will take a generation or two to straighten things out in Greece."
A newspaper poll published Sunday showed the governing conservatives' popularity at 20.6 percent, 5.6 percent below the main opposition Socialists. However, 55 percent of respondents said neither party seemed competent to handle the situation.
"Political parties initially made things worse because they acted as if it was business as usual ... trying to score political points," Couloumbis said.
The Focus poll of 1,000 people for Real News gave a 3.1 percent margin of error.
Violence has wracked Greece since the death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos Dec. 6. It spread from Athens to more than a dozen other cities. At least 70 people have been injured, hundreds of stores have been looted, and more than 200 people have been arrested.
Late Saturday and early Sunday, youths in Athens attacked a police station, stores and banks, and fought with police as candlelit vigils were held to mark a week since the shooting.
Another vigil was planned for Sunday evening at the site of the shooting but heavy rain made a large gathering unlikely. A separate protest is scheduled for western Athens.
In the northern port of Thessaloniki, a few dozen people held a peaceful protest at noon. Overnight, suspected anarchist arsonists attacked two Communist party offices with homemade gas-canister bombs and molotov cocktails, causing minor damage but no injuries.
While most protesters have been peaceful, the tone of the demonstrations has been set by a violent fringe. And more young people have been willing to join those fringe elements than in the past.
Couloumbis said the violence appeared to have been caused by "an abysmally insignificant group of destructive elements," whom students joined "for the fun of it."
In a poll released Sunday, 62 percent of respondents said the riots following the shooting were inexcusable, compared to 35 percent who believed the violence was justified. The poll of 1,000 people gave no margin of error.
According to another poll, Greeks see more in the violence than a simple reaction to the shooting. Asked whether the riots were a social uprising, 60 percent said yes. Some 64 percent considered police unprepared for the violence.
The poll of 520 people published in the Kathimerini newspaper gave a 4.5 percent margin of error.
Demonstrations in support of the protests in Greece have been held in several European cities. In Berlin, a peaceful gathering on Sunday at Mauerpark drew about 50 people.
"We're not in favor of violence. We just want to show our support," said Yannis, 27, a Greek man who declined to give his last name. "We're not expecting any violence in Berlin because the circumstances in Greece are very different from those in Germany."
Associated Press Writers Demetris Nellas and Menelaos Hadjicostis in Athens and Patrick Mcgroarty in Berlin contributed to this story
People still demonstrating and they are more calm. But the mass of the people demonstrating is getting larger and larger day by day. When you are hungry, when there is unjustice, when your own Country treats you like nothing, then is about time to raise your voice and start to act.
Those who are in power must realize that without us they are NOTHING...And I'm not talking only for Hellas. Is just that the Hellenic people we can tolerate a lot, but our toleration has LIMITS...And those limits ended. We cannot accept LIES, we cannot accept CORRUPTION, we cannot accept those politicians who sell our country, because our history and our herritage for more than 5,000 years dictates this to us. When the time comes to fight we FIGHT. Besides we never care who was the enemy, or how strong was. Either he was an inside thread or from outside.
I see that in many countries we have the same situations. I see that U.S. people are loosing their homes, their politicians lie to them, start a war that cost's billions of dollars, and the homeless people are increasing, while the health system is in a bad shape. If we don't act against those who are trying to control us, then we have no future. We must fight for our future and our children.
*****I see that in many countries we have the same situations. I see that U.S. people are loosing their homes, their politicians lie to them, start a war that cost's billions of dollars, and the homeless people are increasing, while the health system is in a bad shape. If we don't act against those who are trying to control us, then we have no future. We must fight for our future and our children.*****
I think Americans are trying to do just that, alot of people are very hopeful with our new president-elect Obama. A governer was just exposed for his corruption and probably will soon be impeached.
I don't know what it would take for Americans to riot in the streets at the scale I see in other countries, but I imagine if we see food shortages here, it's very likely going to happen. It won't be about race, corruption, being homeless, but hunger will drive anyone to madness.
Then, I think those who have suffered and endured long hardships, could/will collectively ban together and protest, to the point of riots and violence. I hope the American government is taking notes on how other countries citizens are handling injustice.
Please keep us posted with whats going on and your thoughts,
purps
ATHENS, Greece – Greek protesters pushed their way into television and radio studios Tuesday, forcing broadcasters to put out anti-government messages in a change of tactics after days of violent street protests .
A group of about 10 youths got into the studio of NET state television and turned off a broadcast of a speech by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, station officials said. The protesters forced studio cameras to instead show them holding up banners that read: "Stop watching, get out onto the streets," and "Free everyone who has been arrested." No one was hurt, and no arrests were reported.
NET chairman Christos Panagopoulos said the protesters appeared to know how to operate cameras and studio controls.
"This goes beyond any limit," he said.
In the northern city of Thessaloniki , protesters made their way into three local radio stations, agreeing to leave only when a protest message was read out on the air.
Violence also broke out again after a two-day lull as masked youths attacked riot police headquarters in Athens and protesters clashed with police in Thessaloniki.
Police said 30 youths threw petrol bombs and stones at the riot police building, damaging seven cars and a police bus parked outside.
In Thessaloniki, riot police fired tear gas to disperse 300 youths throwing fruit and stones outside the city's main court complex. The disturbance followed a court decision that found eight police officers guilty of abusing a student following riots two years ago.
Overnight, arsonists attacked three Athens banks with petrol bombs, causing extensive damage.
The fatal police shooting of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Dec. 6 set off violence that led to more than 300 arrested and left hundreds of stores smashed and looted. Retailers say the damage will cost them euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) in lost income.
Protesters have called for riot officers to be pulled off the streets and for police to be disarmed. But the protests tapped into wider discontent with Karamanlis' conservative government and there have been widespread calls for the government to revise its economic, social and education policies .
Higher education in Greece has come to a standstill. Lessons have stopped at more than 100 secondary schools that are under occupation by students, according to the Education Ministry. Scores of university buildings across Greece are also occupied.
Greece's opposition Socialists, who are calling for early elections, accused Karamanlis of mishandling the crisis which they said had worsened the effects of the international economic downturn .
"Greeks are losing their patience. Their salary is running out before the end of the month as they endure a major economic crisis , and at the same time can see the state collapsing," Socialist spokesman Giorgos Papaconstantinou said.
"People want answers to their problems, not speeches."
Karamanlis insisted his government has acted "calmly and responsibly" in dealing with riots, avoiding the loss of life. But for the first time since the violence erupted, he acknowledged the public's sense of frustration.
"Of course there are broader issues," he said. "People experience a lack or merit, corruption in their daily lives, and a sense of social injustice ."
In Athens main Syntagma Square , Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis relaunched holiday celebrations after the city's Christmas tree was torched by rioters last week.
A small group of protesters chanted slogans during tree-lighting ceremony, as hundreds of revelers looked on. The protesters, mostly students from various drama schools , handed out fliers that read: "Lavish storefront and Christmas Trees will not hide the reality."
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My heart goes out to the Greeks. Unfortunately, we may be experience a lot of the same pains in the near future.
BTS
