MAY DAY protests in Greece turned violent yesterday as youths in gas masks and hoods set fire to vehicles, smashed shop fronts and threw molotov cocktails and rocks at police in an explosion of fury over austerity measures they claim will hurt only the poor. | public sector workers are virtually unsackable, can retire as early as 45 and get bonuses for using a computer, speaking a foreign language and arriving at work on time. |
"No to the IMF's junta," they chanted as a youth in a black hood produced a hammer to try to smash windows of the luxury Grande Bretagne hotel.
Another painted anti-capitalist slogans on the facade, and demonstrators intervened to prevent him from spraying an Australian woman with paint as she tried to get back into the hotel. Japanese tourists stood taking photographs of the mayhem with mobile phones before being forced to retreat, coughing and sneezing, under a cloud of tear gas.
The violence came as negotiations were concluding between the socialist government of George Papandreou, the IMF and the EU over a multi-billion-euro rescue package for Greece.
Anger has grown against the EU for insisting on tough austerity measures in return for a bailout worth an estimated €45 billion this year alone, and up to €120 billion over three years.
| I have a suggestion: let them fail. Boot them from the Euro and the EU. Let Greece go back to being Greece. They can cheat the tax man, enjoy their wine, riot in the streets, and retire at 45. Let them figure out how to pay for it, and if they can't, let them handle the consequences. But don't give them another euro, pound or dollar. Let them fail and work instead to insulate those countries in the EU that will maintain some sense of fiscal responsibility. The Euro isn't big enough for both Germany and Greece, so one of them has to go. Since the Germans are the ones who make the Euro work, it has to be the Greeks that go. Let them. |