Greece: The Souvlaki Conspiracy

By KOSTAS KAVVATHAS / http://kavvathas.wordpress.com/

Αυτό, και άλλα άρθρα που θα ακολουθήσουν, γράφτηκε Αγγλικά για να μπορούν να το διαβάσουν και άλλοι εκτός των τειχών

Hundreds of fully armed policemen fully “gassed” some 20.000 Athenians who were peacefully demonstrating for the 30th day against the so called “austerity measures” imposed by the “troika” and the Greek Socialist government. 

Most of the “international community” news networks presented the demonstration as a threat to Democracy because about not more than one hundred hooded youngsters started throwing rocks broken away from the beautiful Constitution Square (Platia Syntagmatos) marble structures. It so proved by mobile telephone video that, Greeks and foreign tourist eating “souvlaki” at Monastiraki, about 1 kilometer from Syntagma where also “a threat to Democracy” because they were gassed too!

In simple terms, last night and today we had an overdose of police “protection” for the thousands of peaceful people from 16 to 76 of who took, and continue to take, part in the protests. Independent TV footage shows the ugly face of blanket gas attacks against innocent people in order to protect them from the 100 “leftists” and “anarchists” from which quite a few where under “friendly” police protection!

I presume that, anybody reading these lines will ask if the “violence” of the demonstrations is a sign of more civil unrest that might lead, as the impressive (in size) Vice President Theodoros Pagalos, to “tanks protecting the banks from the attacks of an angry mob”. 

Allow me to say, with the experience of 48 years in active journalism, that this is nothing but a vicious and morbid attack to Common Sense and Democracy. Greeks have lived a similar situation for 7 years with the April 1967 junta and they are not prepared to live it again. The demonstrations against the, so called austerity measures, the troika and the IMF are a direct result of decisions and policies imposed to the Greek people by the six Presidents elected from the fall of the junta in 1975 to the present day

Those leaders (two are in heaven) had the power and the opportunity to take the necessary decisions and impose the policies requested in order to transform Greece in a fully fledged “European” country. Instead the have done the opposite. They have chosen the persons who created party armies (in the style of the late central European socialist bloc countries), who took over the State by storm. The party “armies” destroyed all existing infrastructure, ravaged assets and sky rocketed, under the directions of PM’s, ministers and party civil servants, the national debt in order to win the next elections

Today, these same politicians are asking the Greek people to pay for their “mistakes” and irresponsibility and, rightly so, they protest, I repeat peacefully.