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December 10, 2008
Protests in Greece

What started as student protests now seems to develop into a general revolution against the unloved conservative government. The unions joined today with a general strike. A $28 billion bailout for banks who do not seem to need it versus half a billion for anti-poverty measures when 20% of the population lives below the poverty line did not go down well with the people.

Talos at EuroTrib summarizes the real social reasons behind the protests:

ubiquitous police brutality against youth, immigrants, the weak – brutality that routinely goes unpunished as it is swept under the rug; deep systemic corruption and perception of corruption; increasing income gaps; entry level monthly wages in specialized jobs < 700 euro that don't visibly lead to something better; precarity for the under 35s; a life suppressing yet utterly ineffective educational system; the death of hope; the break-up of existing social patterns; the decay of public services; a justice system plagued with scandal itself; massive bailouts for the bankers – the same bankers who simply refuse to enact laws that they don't like (no, really). And on top of that the Crisis promising even more immiseration and discomfort… Now that I look at the list, the question really is: why didn't this explosion happen sooner?

There are rumors of a possible declaration of emergency rule. If that comes, this will explode into something bigger than street riots.

There some blogging from Greece at OccupiedLondon (h/t drunkasarule). Please add reliable sources/news in the comments.

Posted by b on December 10, 2008 at 17:33 UTC | Permalink
Comments

Young ppl in Greece: about 20% or a bit more are U students, add 15% or a bit more at high level Tech institutes.
The Greek edu system was completely roiled up and disturbed by the Bologna accords.
The EU asserting itself, and Greece making nice, trying to be on the front line. Several ‘periphery’ countries went gung ho (Switzerland for example …) sacrificing their long term organization and attention to students, or their own qualifications, c’est selon, to conform to EU standards.
It was an easy thing to do, as the manipulated or disregarded were young, non workers, dependents, in about equal parts on their families and the tax payer.
The official discourse mixed up globalization, international organization, fantastic recognized diplomas, and of course, economic development, etc. The aim was quite clear – to create a qualified, mobile, subservient, geographically rootless (thus detached from any on the ground issues, oblivious about anything except their own w-end plans) workforce. There are no official private institutions of higher education in Greece (forbidden.) Most instances protested, weakly, about Bologna. The main argument – the nation should have the first say.
Greek students speak and write Greek, which is not written in the Roman alphabet, duh. The demand for Greek engineers, speech therapists, architects, business majors, financial analysts outside of Greece is – NIL.
This Bologna saga has had many ups and downs, and lead to many serious upheavals and violent demos. Education as an exportable good failed.
Just one aspect…

Posted by: Tangerine | Dec 10 2008 19:28 utc | 1

. Several ‘periphery’ countries went gung ho (Switzerland for example …) sacrificing their long term organization and attention to students, or their own qualifications, c’est selon, to conform to EU standards. ”
I don’t understand Switzerland don’t belong to EU.

Posted by: JLS | Dec 10 2008 19:46 utc | 2

ubiquitous police brutality against youth, immigrants, the weak – brutality that routinely goes unpunished as it is swept under the rug; deep systemic corruption and perception of corruption; increasing income gaps; entry level monthly wages in specialized jobs < 700 euro that don't visibly lead to something better; precarity for the under 35s; a life suppressing yet utterly ineffective educational system; the death of hope; the break-up of existing social patterns; the decay of public services; a justice system plagued with scandal itself; massive bailouts for the bankers - the same bankers who simply refuse to enact laws that they don't like (no, really). And on top of that the Crisis promising even more immiseration and discomfort... Now that I look at the list, the question really is: why didn't this explosion happen sooner?

Or in America, with exactly the same list of grievances, the question: why hasn’t there been an explosion at all? And, why won’t there be one?
As an American university student, in my gut I feel the answer may have something to do with fifty years of car/suburban culture + television (destroying local community). Also maybe something to do with shitty junk food making us fat and depressed.

Posted by: Cloud | Dec 10 2008 20:11 utc | 3

And/or, the placebo of voting for the Democratic party.

Posted by: Cloud | Dec 10 2008 20:14 utc | 4

Some thoughts on the riots in Greece:
1) People are very very angry. And tomorrow we will be even more angry, when we all hear and read what the lawyer of the two policemen said.
2) The riots in downtown Athens and the big cities are not something uncommon, but they are really intensive and extensive.
3) I think that we all experience this murder as something personal. For example, two weeks ago a friend of mine and his wife came in Athens for a book presentation. We sat for a cup of coffee at a cafe ten meters away from the exact point that the teenager was executed. It could be me, it could be anyone taking this bullet.
4) What was really astonishing is what happened on Monday. You won’t read about it on the media because it was not high profile and there weren’t any coctail molotovs in most cases. On Monday morning and noon high school students in many districs of Athens and other cities marched to and attacked the local police stations throwing rocks, eggs and destroying police cars. The attacks against local police stations continued the following days. Even now I can’t really imagine high school students attacking police buildings in broad daylight. That is, I think, the qualitative difference of these riots.
5) The (conservative) government is paralysed. They don’t know what to do. Sometimes they do nothing and sometimes they overreact (usually against students). In the march today I saw policemen only outside the parliament building. There are three possible explanations about its attitude: a) They are really afraid that things will become worse, b) This situation is politically beneficial for them, because no one is talking about the current theologicopolitical real estate scandal that implicates ministers, and because this destruction will galvanize its party base, c) Both a and b hold true.
6) The police is demoralized and must be very tired too. I believe that they can’t bring reinforces in Athens from other cities, because there are marches or riots all over Greece, even in small towns. And they have to guard every local police station, otherwise high school students could occupy one.
7) What we see is pure social rage.

Posted by: geopoliticus | Dec 10 2008 20:57 utc | 5

that social rage is evident in france particularly in the west with massive demonstrations of student in brest, nantes & rennes – on the orders of the govt there is little or no coverage of these quite significant developments
greeks are my natural brothers & sisters. the first bit of political violence was when i was quite young at a screening of ‘z’ where the fascists entered the cinema & an all out brawl erupted & i was hit over the head with an iron bar & the little indentation rests as one scar amongst many on this beautiful but battered body
what is happening in greece today is very significant indeed – the people connecting the death of a young boy with the wholly corrupt governing of the state. & i think all over the world people are making the connections, finally between their own oppression & the joke which passes for state governance – their incompetence & corruption appears infinite
the left would have won the civil war if it had not been for stalin & churchills deal & the bloody & murderous policy of the british in alliance with the fascists. & in the time of the military junta – it was the americans who backed it, financed it – trained the torturers & assassins. the parliamentary left does not act with honour either but the people have maintained a resilience & a will to participate in the civic life of their country in a way that has been emasculated elsewhere
the greek comrades of my youth taught me life, eating, taliking, drinking, being, dancing – & in the left they shared the humour that one found in cubans & vietnamese. they were harsh but there was always humanity in their actions
of the question in the balkans they were the only country that saw through the so called ‘humanist project’ of the u s
they are exemplary but they are also human

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Dec 10 2008 21:25 utc | 6

The Greeks have a special place in my heart, as well. Today my thoughts are with the Greek youth who are out in the streets.
Pantelis Boukalas has a post at Kathimerini that is worth reading.

November 1980. New Democracy in power. Mass demonstrations. Stamatina Kanellopoulou, aged 21, is bludgeoned to death by a policeman’s baton. Cypriot student Iakovos Koumis, 26, is killed by a bullet. The promised “exhaustive investigation” and “exemplary punishment of the guilty parties” were nothing but empty words. The guilty parties were never found, and the country’s security forces got the message that they enjoyed impunity.

The fuse of Greek anger has been burning for a long while.

December 2008. Exarchia. A special guard, nicknamed “Rambo,” kills Alexandros Grigoropoulos. The bullet hits the 15-year-old in the chest. Eyewitnesses say the policeman executed the young man in cold blood following a quite ordinary verbal exchange, and immediately left with his colleague, as the boy lay dying.

Greek people have seen the formality of official resignations being offered and formally refused. This is a pattern that is repeated down through the years; the culprits among the police are never made to answer for abuses.

Posted by: Copeland | Dec 10 2008 22:08 utc | 7

As a European (British), I don’t see this as a European problem. It is not an immigrant problem, as Greece does not have so many immigrants, as in many European countries. The question must be economic. The poor dead youth was Greek, by his name.
I’ve often wondered, as so many people of Greek nationality were forced to adopt Greek identity by their names, although they were in fact Albanian or Macedonian, whether there is not a secret racism here. But I discounted it, as too far back in the past. In the 18th century, 80% of names in Boeotia, a central Greek province, were Albanian. None today.

Posted by: Alex | Dec 10 2008 22:27 utc | 8

Here’s what I found…
Police is using Neo Fascists and policemen in plane clothes
In Greece. I can’t tell whether they belong to any neo-fascist groups, but they are holding rocks and bars (or rods if they aren’t metal – but it could also be a pipe) and they are chilling out with the police.
Police is using Neo Fascists and policemen in plane clothes , with rocks and sticks , pretending to be demonstrators , targeting either the demonstrators or vandalizing small shops and houses , trying to divert the climate and scare of the every day citizens.
The pictures are from Patra city, where Policemen in plane clothes and Neo Fascists were clashing with demonstrators AND caught vandalizing small shops in the city.
The above ( ie the participation of fascists in the events) have been confirmed this morning by the Mayor of city of Patra, this morning speaking from his telephone to the major TV channel ( Alpha)
Also ..The photographer who took the pictures in the link showing of police shooting to the demonstrators, was fired from the newspaper he was working “Eleftheros tipos” ( free press), owned by Mrs Agelopoulou, key respected finger in the organisation of the Olympic games of Athens and idustrialist … http://garizo.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-do-you-explain-this-mr-paulopoulo
Can anyone read Greek?
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=144053

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 11 2008 1:05 utc | 9

I dunno why greece gets singled out for making peeps change their names. Most countries forced migrants to change their name up until the mid 20th century. We have all heard of the ellis island xtianings where names were anglicised by lazy officials who couldn’t spell ‘prick’ as migrants arrived in amerika. My great great grandfather was forced by some english official to change his name to “Jones” when he and his family were pushed off the boat at swansea, their first stop from europe to amerika god knows what the real name was something polysyllabic and eastern european or judaic no doubt.
No wonder his son jumped on the first boat outta the joint as soon as he got married, and ended up in NZ where the english were busy forcing the local tangata whenua to change their names to english ones before they were sent off to kill dutchmen in the boer war.
I’m sure the assholes running Greece at the moment would love to be able to get the peeps divided against each other which is exactly how stories of macedonians vs greeks etc get perpetuated, but from what I have seen, most ordinary people in greece recognise that the average shit kickers have much more in common with each other than any of them have with the ruling elite.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 11 2008 1:12 utc | 10


Yup. Google Can.
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fathens.indymedia.org%2Ffront.php3%3Flang%3Del%26article_id%3D144053&sl=el&tl=en
Enjoy.

Posted by: Tesla_x | Dec 11 2008 1:31 utc | 11

“summerizes”? Learn to spell,then maybe I’ll take your blathering seriously.

Posted by: lcs | Dec 11 2008 3:59 utc | 12

Alex, the Greek Albanians are called Chams – there are still quite a few of them. My grandfather’s family was from Ioannina, supposedly an almost entirely Albanian city in the 18th Century. I heard a lot of Albanian jokes growing up but I’d bet I have Albanian blood.
Debs, Macedonia is a whole different thing (speaking as a half-Greek/Macedonian). I grew up with stories of my klepht ancestors – those anti-Turkish fighters in the skirts and pom-shoes – getting boiled in oil by Ali Pasha, so it was only when I was researching the C19th struggle against the Ottomans that I found out the real story of Macedonia, very different from the official Greek line. Greeks lived way up into what are now Serbia and Bulgaria (some of my family were from Monastir in modern Serbia) and Serbs and Bulgarians lived all over what’s now Northern Greece. Greek was the language of the towns, and the countryside was exclusively Serb (or Slavic Macedonian) or Bulgar. The Greeks, Serbs and Bulgars were basically all fighting each other while the Turks kept out of the way, occasionally helping one or other side as it suited them. My grandparents’ town (now in Greece) was apparently largely Serb, but when I’ve suggested that, given that our family dialect has a good bit of Slavic in it (plus Turkish and Jewish Ladino) we might not be direct descendants of the blond heroes who built the Parthenon after all, I don’t get a very enthusiastic hearing. Truth is, modern Greece was hammered together out of an incredibly diverse collection of peoples, tribes, religions etc etc and after it was accomplished, more or less after 1922, history was rewritten. But ‘Macedonians,’ whoever and whatever they were, trapped inside the borders of Greece after 1912 had to become Greek or else, and the evidence of other cultures was erased. It isn’t a coincidence that Greek Macedonia was the battleground of the Civil War. Sorry for the history lesson – I find it engrossing but if you ever go to any Macedonian forums you’ll see that irrationality and resentment are still boiling away crazily on all sides.
Meanwhile, given that there have barely been 30 consecutive years of stability in Greece since 1821, it isn’t surprising that the Greeks still know how to riot.

Posted by: Tantalus | Dec 11 2008 4:04 utc | 13

@lcs – “summerizes”? Learn to spell,then maybe I’ll take your blathering seriously.
Thanks, corrected. I always appreciate to get lessons by native English speakers. That does not mean that I take all their blathering seriously.

Posted by: b | Dec 11 2008 8:51 utc | 14

Everywhere (and especially in Europe) people were forced to change names especially if they lived around the border.
Borders on Balkan changed so many times. It was common to be born in one state and to die in another one even if one never left his village…But it is totally different story then this one we are talking about here.
Police brutality is well known around the globe. Don’t let me start to talk about Australian police. They shoot first and then ask questions. Don’t ask about aboriginal deaths in police custody. It’s outrages…and recently policeman walked free after killing aboriginal man in custody. For ten years here I have heard about numerous deaths made by police and I have never heard that policeman was actually hold responsible for any wrong doing. And justice system (that I had so much trust in) is a long and ugly story. Arghhh…it’s a long story.
Generally it looks like after 9/11 (and don’t get me start on that one)police brutality was unleashed …why not when they legislated torture and immunity for the police and assorted “special forces”…what have we expected after that.
————

Posted by: vbo | Dec 11 2008 14:37 utc | 15

@ b and lcs
It’s right to correct spelling, but minor errors by a non-native speaker are no real problem. Often there are two “correct” spellings as, I believe, is the case with “summarize” or “summarise”: the former is the “correct” U.S. spelling, the latter is the “correct” British spelling.
Moreover, I have long thought that inserting minor errors into a text is an excellent way to ensure the reader’s attention: making corrections forces one to follow read the text closely, and b‘s texts are almost invariably well worth close reading. Douglas Hofstedter gave a remarkable example of that technique in his classic Gödel, Escher, and Bach, and as homage I’ve deliberately left one error in this post.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Dec 11 2008 15:48 utc | 16

Spot on, Hannah. Small errors in spelling and usage read to me like part of the signature, and raw material out of which I can fathom a character for the writer. Nice little error there in your post, by the way.

Posted by: Browning | Dec 11 2008 18:56 utc | 17

“”… Now that I look at the list, the question really is: why didn’t this explosion happen sooner?””
“Or in America, with exactly the same list of grievances, the question: why hasn’t there been an explosion at all? And, why won’t there be one?”
The media will ignore any real protest to death, and no one wants to be unilaterally declared an “enemy combatant” (per the Patriot Act)for which rioting will most certainly qualify…end up in some federal prison with no access to a lawyer, with torture now legal in the USA…that’s why there won’t be an explosion in the USA.

Posted by: James Crow | Dec 11 2008 20:30 utc | 18

Recommended Democracy Now interview. Amy Goodman w student activist Nikos Lountos in Athens.

Lountos – I think you should know that the next Thursday will be the next day of action, of general action. Every day will have action, but next Thursday will be a day of general action. The students will be all out. And we’re trying to force the leaders of the trade unions to have a new general strike. So I could propose to people hearing me now that next Thursday would be a good day for solidarity action all around the world, to surround the Greek embassies, the consulates, so generally to get out in the streets and express your solidarity to our fight. And I think workers and students in Greece will really appreciate it.

Posted by: Alamet | Dec 11 2008 21:11 utc | 19

Talos’ diary at EuroTrib provides the best overview I’ve come across anywhere! Two more resources I can suggest are Libcom’s Greece page and Strategic Anarchy blog. Don’t let the latter’s Dec. 8 date put you off, it is continually updated and includes links to a million relevant news items, etc.
See also, Teacher Dude’s blog for coverage from Thessaloniki.

Posted by: Alamet | Dec 11 2008 21:21 utc | 20

From all I’ve seen, far right collusion with police is documented by countless reports, photographs and video footage. There is also a possibility that the murderous special guard himself has a history of extremist involvement: Μember of Pro NAZI organisation the killer of Alex?
The organisation in question is the notorious Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avyi among other transliterations).

Posted by: Alamet | Dec 11 2008 21:32 utc | 21

Its so crazy what happens in greece with students actually !

Posted by: ratp | Dec 12 2008 10:34 utc | 22

From a comment at Libcom:

The army forces are on yellow alert. “they might attack us too” one officer is quoted saying. This yellow alert is ofcourse more an intimidation measure.

Posted by: Alamet | Dec 12 2008 16:49 utc | 23

Switzerland don’t belong to EU.
No it does not but it is dependent. It latches into, and on, and agrees to, and participates, and makes nice, and occasionally stands up and insists on its own POV. It is tiny; half or its revenues come from exports, mostly to the EU; it so far has refused to furnish military aid ( — neutrality –), except for volunteers to Kosovo, which has created horrible strife.
The story is, a) go it alone is not possible, b) joining the EU is not possible either (hands-on democracy, tax, banking secrecy, no military intervention, though CH has a draft, etc.) , c) therefore endless negotiations, called ‘bilateral agreements’ (often individually with each EU country, which can take years..) is the ‘proper way.’
At each point CH can choose to isolate, be punished, or to join. It negotiates, negotiates, joins when it can, as it figures for no loss, or even gain, and tries to preserve its ‘core’. The public is not really apprised of all the capitulations, except by the People’s Party (nationalist right xenophobic) who themselves lie and obfuscate, as their basic interests are the free market, cheap labor, even foreign labor, globalisation, and so they raise specters, like in the US, of blackfaces or chink eyes all over, jobs lost, outsourcing, drugs and crime, and all the other populist arguments. Usual contradiction.
Think Rhode Island not part of the US!
The Bologna scenario and before that other programs (Erasmus, etc.) was an easy way to make nice – and not trivially so. First, CH was obliged to accept college degrees etc. from the US/EU but had no mutual recognition. This way, Swiss young ppl could, one hoped, travel and be hired…

Posted by: Tangerine | Dec 12 2008 18:48 utc | 24

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