Blog 10

Although I am sure the worst is over (I haven’t seen any news today) I don’t suppose I could let time go by without mentioning the recent riots in various Greek cities. It’s not bad enough that beautiful Athens gets trashed by graffiti vandals and litter louts it has to be truly trashed by mindless rampaging mobs. The Greeks love demonstrations. Teachers, students, trade unionists, they’ll organise a march under banners at the drop of a hat but normally these rallies, no matter how large, seem to pass off more or less peacefully. The kind of mindless outrage seen these last few days is the work of those claiming to be socialist (left wing anyway), communist or, here in Greece I don’t know whether they still exist anywhere else these days, anarchists, or just into it for the hell of causing mayhem and grief. There will always be looters in these situations and bank buildings always seem to be the first to suffer the fury of these idiots but why in heavens’ name destroy the livelihood of small shopkeepers and the like by trashing their premises, in some cases deliberately demolishing buildings with fire? Perhaps pyromaniacs and mobsters have to be included in the list of the numbers rioting. It’s possible the demonstrations could have been peaceful until these latter mentioned set the tone and the sheep thought it rather an adventure to follow suit and terribly brave to mask their faces, throw missiles at police and then run away as fast as their legs could take them, rather like Cretan dogs that will bark at you until you advance in their direction when they turn tail and flee to a safe distance in order to carry on barking but out of harm’s way. Walking down from Syntagma to Panapestimeo once as a student demo was about to take place I noticed a small group of students(?) keeping themselves aloof and virtually out of sight while they got their balaclavas and whatever else ready for the battle they were obviously anticipating. I had no doubts then and still haven’t that they were no more students than I could jet to the moon on a fart and it was no wonder the riot police were already taking up position in various side streets long before the march was due to take place. It seemed to me though in watching the TV coverage of the latest outrages that the police, apart from lobbing tear gas at their assailants were being pretty ineffective but that was just an impression. Who am I to know police procedure and, as their shooting of a fifteen year old started the rot, maybe they were being ultra-cautious so as not to inflame matters further – as though they could! The riots have been followed by a general strike, another favourite occupation in Greece.