In a free translation of a beautiful movie's title....
This is a photo (one of the first) from Sunday's riots in light of the voting of the new austerity package that Greece was forced to vote in order for PSI+ and 130 bn. euro that comes with it will be approved.
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The beautiful buildings are burning beautifully...
This is a photo (one of the first) from Sunday's riots in light of the voting of the new austerity package that Greece was forced to vote in order for PSI+ and 130 bn. euro that comes with it will be approved.
Basically, for those that are unfamiliar with all that, PSI+ is supposed to take some 100bn off Greece debt (more like 65bn) - thru swapping old bonds with new ones with different clauses.
In order for all that to happen, Greece is forced to once more agree to austerity measures, such as 40% -in total- salary cuts in the private (not public) sector, 15% at least cuts in the pensions , people even with cancer will have to pay for their medicines -reminder, people already have been hit in their income, so a question is, how are they supposed to pay for expensive medicine when they have little money, a LOT, and I mean a LOT of taxation, no tax reliefs once so ever, not even to the handicapped or people with many children.
Many of the austerity measures are against several law, international, european and so forth, but we were forced to vote them, as Germany and their allies (Luxembourgh, Holland, Austria and others) pretty much said that either we do that, with more than 180 votes in the parliament, or we'll be forced to leave the eurozone, with catastrophic effects.
So, people went out on the streets, not asking to leave the eurozone, but asking for better negotiations...
This , is just before the special police units started using chemicals against people that somehow always find their way into the protests such as this, and after 3 hours managed to break a crowd estimate of 800,000 people. The main channels, talked of ..15,000 people. But I am sure you can make judge of what really 15,000 look like and if that indeed is 15,000 people.
Needless to say, it was not the Greek people that were protesting, that burned the establishments.. but criminals.. that found their way there, that just wanted to create chaos, to loot. And they succeeded.
Eventually, the austerity measures now is a law of the country.. more than 40 buildings are in ruins... Greek people ... are shocked.. and angry.. and many just wonder bout the future, but all agree..
The future IS dark.
