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I'm back from downtown and the scenes are like from a civil war. Hundreds (or thousands, impossible to estimate) are trapped inside the metro station in Syntagma, where it was impossible until a while ago to escape, because the atmosphere above is unbreathable. Dozens of injured, poisoned, burned by teargas canisters shot against them from close range, are being treated in makeshift hospitals, since the camp's hospital was teargassed away from the square. The situation is barely discernible from martial law. Cops on motorcycles hit people walking on the road, riot police threw tear gas in coffee shops, 2 km away from Syntagma and even grocer shops, three metro stations were blocked by police forces throwing tear gas and terrorizing people away.

The clashes continue. There is no doubt, the chief of police has said as much apparently, that the police wanted to dissolve the demo in Syntagma for good. The government media (and that includes the major private channels) are trying to spin this situation as the working of anarchists or even of the left. They are desperate and they are dangerous. Democracy has failed. Europe has failed democracy.

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

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 02:06:27 PM EST
The police can keep that level of repression up for a couple of days before they'll have to de-escalate.  Eventually, they'll have to let people go off-duty -- to sleep, if nothing else.  The backlash, when they do lift the violence, is apt to be stronger, in more places, and with more protesters on the streets.

Panda-what's-his-name is making a BIG mistake.  This isn't a bunch of students and young people anymore.  This is beginning to shape as a wide based nationalist revolt against foreign domination.  The psychology, aims, and fervor of which is completely different from what the elites have previously seen.  

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 02:28:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]
European Tribune - Flash brief from the #greekrevolution
deficit colonization

great meme...

needs to be endlessly repeated. they are too clever to fly any flags any more, they-who-must-be-obeyed. their puppets like SK and the new ice queen are just the front line stooges, the real movers and shakers are in the shadows, hiding behind the near-total lack of democratic transparency in the upper financial stratosphere.

lizards with political leverage, hijacking the forces of law and turning them into blackshirts who provoke mayhem to cover their agenda.

all the while their business houses of cards financially leveraged, under water of their own making, they try to drown the people from the safety of their own liveried lifeboats.

perhaps the emergency will morph to an emergence. it's the best we can hope for at this point.

egypt is making it clear it's a lot easier to start a revolution than sustain it to the point it really replaces what went before, plus ca change... kicking dictators out is only the first step, creating a new system from scratch, now that's hard, and made harder by the armed forces and secret police who continue their depredations as if little or nothing had changed, other than a statue or two gets downed, and a dictator shuffles or is carried off stage.

'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 Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 04:51:40 PM EST
[ Parent ]
They are desperate and they are dangerous. Democracy has failed. Europe has failed democracy.
well...

Economics is politics by other means
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 04:55:45 PM EST
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The largest banks in each major country have to be taken down, or they all have to collapse together, to bring about a resolution to this disaster. And a majority of the people in each country have to understand that the whole disaster was generated by the banks and will not end until they and their employees have their hands removed from the levers of power.

What we have is tyranny by banks and government by and for bankers.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Wed Jun 29th, 2011 at 05:49:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Finally someone makes the point!

Parasitic skimmers.

It isn't the legislators, but the fact that they are paid to do the wrong thing.

Cut off the banks. The body will die.

Align culture with our nature. Ot else!

by ormondotvos (ormond.otvosnospamgmialcon) on Sat Jul 2nd, 2011 at 02:50:21 AM EST
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  FIFY:

 

  "Democracy "the ruling elite" have failed Europe and have failed democracy's tenets."



"In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge
by proximity1 on Thu Jun 30th, 2011 at 08:17:10 AM EST
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