Greek riots | 93 comments (93 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

who become the police? (none / 1)

Greek riots: A friend who was checking out the situation from up close described the people on the street breaking stuff as "undercover police, common law criminals and assorted bums" (but yet another as "the true face of modern disadvantaged proletarian youth bereft of any political ambition whatsoever).

talos: this sort of blond pillaging points to a new and violent "angry youth" with no future, no political ideas and few family ties to constrain it. That this segment crosses even (parental) class lines to a certain extent, is possibly a Greek particularity (?)...

are there any common "profiles" of those who join the ranks of the police in Greece? are there any socioeconomic and/or ethnic "particularities" about these people?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

by marco on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 09:52:24 AM EST

Re: who become the police? (none / 1)

Mostly the rural poor and the urban lower middle class, if I had to pinpoint a profile.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 10:16:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (none / 1)

People like my cousin!

A mother of 2, lives in a small apartment with husband and two kids. Good people. Our parents come from the "rural areas," namely the mountains of Central Greece.

It's a job, a low paying one at that.

by Upstate NY on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 04:57:42 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (4.00 / 7)

Yeah police in general, but special guards are... well special. They are either of two things: army (ex army special forces, officers five-year contract soldiers) - or beneficiaries of the political clout and connections of their family. Either way they are either soldiers (with very little training about how to handle non-enemy combatants), or macho posers. They were sent to Crete a few years ago to battle the local mafias and turned into a plague as bothersome or more for the locals as the mafia (who were at least someone's cousin and could be dealt with through family ties) to whom they generally behaved like an occupying force. They killed an 18 year old kid there for trying to run a roadblock because he had a joint on him as it turned out.

The Police Officers' Union (people that really don't like Special Guards, I note) accused the leadership of the Police force of an established perception of the model policeman as a sort of 'Rambo', incompletely and inefficiently trained and elastically hired, because this is the philosophy that runs through the shortened and militarized training that was recently adopted through the new disciplinary code (link in Greek here).

This is the first time that the Police are not backing one of their own in public.

(For anyone that can read Greek: this post of mine might regarding among other things the reality of what a riot really is like - in Greek)

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 06:06:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (none / 0)

And one way to develop a quick dislike for the police if you know Greek, is to listen to this live radio broadcast embedded in the blog post, of an incident in Omonia square, involving two 15-year-olds and a squad of riot police.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 06:22:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (none / 0)

Is there any optimism about any beneficial political fallout?

Greece isn't going to trade a Karamanlis for a Papandreou again, is it?

Are there any young bloods available?

by Upstate NY on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 07:30:36 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (4.00 / 3)

The best case scenario if recent polls are to be trusted, is a coalition government between PASOK and the new Green party. But there are no polls done after the riots and the one that's underway shows (reportedly) that conservatives are bottoming out while the left (syriza) is benefiting from the fact that a. it had put the youth problem at the center of its political focus years ago and b.ND, KKE and LAOS all target the party as complicit with the rioters, which is such odious bullshit, that it has created an inverse effect especially among the younger voters (where SYRIZA's strength is anyway). But Syriza won't co-operate with PASOK unless there is some sort of minimum program with basic safeguards which PASOK won't agree with (i.e. SYRIZA wants the renationalization of some banks an increase in minimum wage and a withrdawal from Afghanistan). All this is speculation - we'll wait and see what the new political landscape will be after the riots.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 08:32:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (none / 0)

Let's face it: the culture of corruption has caught up to the people. Lax tax collection, no land registry, huge bureaucracy, crooked deals everywhere. That rots the core of the country. People who left the country can remember getting taken badly for decades afterward.

In the USA, it only took 8 years of cronyism and corruption to completely tank our economy and send people fleeing to protect themselves.

One wonders how Greece operated this long at all given the noxious mix of government and business.

With high corruption comes a level of cynicism that eventually corrodes the nation's well-being.

by Upstate NY on Wed Dec 10th, 2008 at 10:03:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (none / 0)

Hm, even if not exectly at Greek levels, I'd say cronyism and corruption flourished at federal US level before Bush, too. (Not to mention state and city level, if poemless is to be believed. And not to mention the fact that the way lobbying and corporate campaign finance was/is a legal pastime in the US, corruption and cronyism were effectively legalised.)

Though, for Greek conditions, perhaps the better US parallel is the post-Civil-War period: that was thorough and lasted for decades.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Dec 11th, 2008 at 05:10:18 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (none / 0)

I can't say I quite agree. of course there is corruption everywhere, but things like cheating on taxes are largely frowned upon and self-policing, until that time it becomes obvious that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. That frays the social fabric and causes ordinary citizens to wonder if they're being taken for suckers. Prior to Bush, this feeling was not so widespread.

by Upstate NY on Thu Dec 11th, 2008 at 10:45:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (4.00 / 2)

Well yes, it has caught up with people especially since there is no "corruption divident" and clientilst promises don't add up to what they used to.

The cynicism and the corryption has come back to bite its originators. The new underclass, in all its shapes and forms, isn't smiling. Really I can't emphasize strongly enough how different the composition of the violent crowd is from the usual anarchist mobs.

I also add that there is accumulating evidence that some of the protesters are on the police payroll. Stelios Kouloglou, a respected journalist and head of the independent online tvxs report that they saw young men with helmets, hoods and wrenches, chatting and mingling with the police outside a down-town district. There's a blurry cell-phone photo as evidence along with the eye-witness testimony here:

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Thu Dec 11th, 2008 at 05:23:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (4.00 / 2)

Do I recall correctly if I say that Greece has nominally proportional representation, but biggest party/pre-election coalition gets a ton of extra seats?

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Thu Dec 11th, 2008 at 04:12:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (4.00 / 2)

Yes. It's pretty much proportional among the parties that are above the 3% limit, for 260 seats. The other 40 go to the winning party. In the election after the next (you can't change the election law for the next election) the bonus will become 50 seats.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Thu Dec 11th, 2008 at 05:02:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: who become the police? (none / 1)

talos:

we'll wait and see what the new political landscape will be after the riots.

firestormed cities, or riots don't end at all.

horrible, that the right's stormtroopers could be the only membrane between order and mayhem.

isn't the word 'anarchy' originally greek?

they were the first to invent democracy, perhaps they will now be the first to reinvent it.

great work to be done...here are the smouldering ashes, what will be the phoenix?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Dec 11th, 2008 at 07:02:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Not backing own (none / 1)

This is the first time that the Police are not backing one of their own in public.

This is a watershed! It may be too soon to know what it means, but watch closely!

The Fates are kind.

by Gaianne on Sat Dec 13th, 2008 at 03:47:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Greek riots | 93 comments (93 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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