Violence in Athens after Greek austerity vote

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Athens, Greece (CNN) -- Violence broke out briefly between police and demonstrators here Thursday night, hours after Greek lawmakers approved an unpopular package of budget-cutting measures.
Thousands of demonstrators had gathered in front of Parliament to show their anger, and as dusk fell bottles were thrown at police, who responded with tear gas and pepper spray, said CNN's Diana Magnay, who was at the scene.
The government is cutting public-sector salaries, raising the retirement age for women in the public sector and imposing new taxes in order to secure billions of euros in loans from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
Crowds dispersed quickly, Magnay said.
Four people were arrested, police said.
Demonstrations Thursday were smaller and generally more peaceful than a day earlier, when general strikes turned violent and three people were killed when a bank was fire bombed.
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Two unions had called on workers to meet Thursday evening in front of Parliament to protest the measures, which include higher taxes on cigarettes, fuel, gambling and luxuries, and an increase in the value-added tax consumers pay on purchases.
Athens police say about 8,000 protesters were outside the Parliament building while the voting was taking place and another 10,000 were at Omonia Square, including members of the militant left-wing PAME union, who planned to walk toward Parliament later
It is not clear who started the violence. Shortly before it began police said the PAME supporters had dispersed peacefully.
Greek lawmakers voted 172 to 121 to approve the controversial package of cost-cutting measures, despite the protests, the prime minister's office announced.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted as the protests broke out, falling nearly 1,000 points and dropping below 10,000 before climbing back up and ending slightly above 10,500. Shortly after the close, the Nasdaq said faulty Procter & Gamble stock quotes were a major factor in markets' huge drop.
The European Union announced a 110 billion euro ($140 billion) aid package for Greece earlier this week.
Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou announced the tough cost-cutting measures to meet European Union and International Monetary Fund conditions for the deal.
Prime Minister George Papandreou said Wednesday night that no amount of unrest on the streets would change his support of the budget cuts, and he has already said he is prepared to risk not getting a second term in office because he feels the package is so important for Greece's future.
"We are all to blame for where we are today -- even those not in government who at every stage have blocked every attempt at change," Papandreou told Parliament.
"Other countries are voting to save Greece," Papandreou said in comments directed at the opposition. "What do we say to them? Can we not unite?"
Thursday at the burned bank, people placed flowers at a memorial for the victims killed in Wednesday's violence.
Greek government debt threatens to undermine the stability of the euro, the currency used by 16 countries in the European Union, including Greece.
International ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Greek debt to "junk" recently, making it harder and more expensive for Athens to borrow money commercially. That's when the European Union and International Monetary Fund decided to intervene.
What are the protests about?
Leaders of the countries that use the euro were planning to meet Friday evening in Brussels, Belgium, to finalize the bailout and discuss the effect it's having on the eurozone.
"This crisis has demonstrated that all euro-area member states have a responsibility for the stability of the euro area as a whole and the strength of the single currency," French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote in a joint letter Thursday to the presidents of the European Council, which is hosting the summit, and the European Commission.
Sarkozy and Merkel urged country leaders at the summit to consider tougher fiscal surveillance and more effective sanctions for eurozone members.
They also pushed for better-quality statistics, saying, "The lack of reliability of the Greek statistics explains to a large extent the markets' distrust in this country."
Violence in Athens after Greek austerity vote - CNN.com

 

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A riot police officer is hit by a petrol bomb near the Greek Parliament. Rioters hacked marble from buildings to use as missiles against the heavily armed police

 

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Riot police retreat to the steps of the Parliament. The violence came in the midst of a 48-hour general strike that paralysed the country, causing travel disruption and closing schools and hospitals

Demonstrators chanted "thieves, robbers" while riot police used teargas



Bank employees in central Athens. The Greek Parliament voted by a simple majority to pass the austerity measures, which include a 25 per cent cut to civil servants’ salaries



Flowers outside the Marfin Bank in Athens, where three employees died after a fire-bomb attack. Greek unions mobilised for demonstrations against austerity cuts as the Government tried to push the measures through Parliament

 

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European leaders to discuss Greece's financial woes

(CNN) -- The Italian, Spanish and German governments approved their contributions Friday to a 110 billion euro ($140 billion) bailout plan for Greece.
Leaders of several European countries plan to meet Friday in Belgium to finalize details on the plan.
The meeting in Brussels comes a day after Greek lawmakers approved a package of budget-cutting measures to help the country's battered economy -- measures that were required to meet the terms of the bailout.
In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said he spoke Friday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel regarding economic and financial developments in Europe.
"We agreed on the importance of a strong policy response by the affected countries and a strong financial response from the international community," he said.
"I made clear that the United States supports these efforts and will continue to cooperate with European authorities and the [International Monetary Fund] during this critical period."
European Central Bank officials have tried to play down fears that the economic turmoil in Greece could spread to other heavily indebted European countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy.
iReport: Are you there? Send your pics, video
Spain saw three straight days of losses in its stock market this week after the country's credit rating was downgraded by the influential rating agency Standard & Poor's.
The Spanish government fired back on Friday, threatening to bring "legal action" against speculators accused of launching "attacks" against the economy.
Luis de Guindos, an economist at the IE Business School in Madrid and a former secretary of state for the economy, said, "This is the deepest and most profound crisis we have had in Spain in five decades, since the Spanish Civil War."
In a possible glimmer of hope, the Bank of Spain announced Friday that the nation's economy grew 0.1 percent in the first quarter of 2010.
"It's slightly positive, one decimal point," de Guindos said. "We need some positive news to improve the mood of Spanish society."

European leaders to discuss Greece's financial woes - CNN.com

 

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Greek tragedy: how last phone call by murdered bank clerk touched off backlash

Thousands of Greeks upset by the murder of a pregnant bank clerk have turned against the protesters who threaten Athens with anarchy.

In a land long used to people expressing their views through street violence, the crowd may not have looked that threatening at first. Stuck with her colleagues in an Athens bank last week as it was besieged by rioters, Angeliki Papathanasopoulou rang her mother to tell her not to worry.
"Mummy, don't worry, I'm OK," she said, as the sounds of protests against Greece's new austerity measures echoed in the background. "They are just breaking the bank's ATM machines and glass entrance downstairs using sledge hammers. But we are safe up here on the second floor. When I leave the job and go home, I'll phone you."
Her mother, Panayota, never did get another phone call. Instead, her 32-year-old daughter, who was four months pregnant, died along with two other colleagues on Wednesday after the demonstrators hurled firebombs through the broken windows, asphyxiating all three in clouds of toxic smoke. Angeliki's last words, which were disclosed by her grieving mother yesterday, provide the final poignant, postscript to how a week of mounting frustration over the country's debt crisis spiralled tragically out of control.
The deaths of the three bankers - whose offices were apparently targeted as a convenient symbol of capitalist greed - have shocked the country's 11 million people, who now face years of belt-tightening as a condition of the 110 billion Euro bail-out signed off last week by the European Union and IMF. As a result, an extraordinary mood of contrition has befallen a nation of people known for hot-headedness. Gone are the rants against the country's government the foreign institutions who now dictate its tune, and in their place has come a sense of national soul searching in which the Papathanasopoulou family's grief is playing a central role.
Huge crowds attended Angeliki's funeral on Friday in the picturesque port city of Egio, following on foot behind the casket as it wound its way through the narrow streets. Her father Zacharias, a 75-year-old lawyer, had to be supported by relatives, such was his grief, although he used the opportunity to express hope that his countrymen might learn from his daughter's passing. "I can only hope that her death will not be in vain," he said, in comments released yesterday. "I can only hope that it will serve as a lesson to our country so such things may never happen again".
More than 170,000 Greeks have now joined a Facebook Group campaign with messages of condolences and appeals for action to arrest those responsible for the arson attack. Security police are scanning CCTV footage and other evidence which shows how hooded rioters - believed to be from Greece's anarchist fringe - smashed the bank's fortified windows with sledge hammers and tossed petrol bombs inside. Angeliki's husband, Christos, was held later back by riot police as he tried to enter the bank to rescue her. The fact that all three of the dead were ordinary workers, not members of the super-rich, has added to the sense that the rioting - so long tolerated as a fact of life in Greece - was pointless and misplaced.
Angeliki's close friend, Olga Driveri, said: "The couple were so happy at the prospect of their first child. Angeliki had a smile that would rarely leave her lips. Now, our entire town is in shock that she is no longer with us."
Meanwhile, Euro-zone leaders worked into the small hours of yesterday at an emergency summit in Brussels to try and stop market contagion from the Greek crisis bringing down the European single currency.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, pledged "merciless combat" against "speculators" who have failed over the last week to be reassured by the Greek bail-out plan. "We can't let the Euro fall," he said. "The Euro is Europe and Europe is peace."
Talks to finalise the Greek aid deal were expected to be finished over dinner on Friday night, but dragged on for nine hours as Spain and Portugal, along with others, expressed their fears that jittery markets were causing soaring interest rates for their own high levels of public debt, posing the risk that they too could go the way of Greece.
Diplomats present at the talks described them as "an unpleasant and uncomfortable mixture of helpless fury, desperation and mutual recrimination".
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, came under fire for "foot dragging" by allowing her domestic political concerns to slow down agreement of a German contribution of 22 billion euros (£24 billion) to the EU loans to Greece.
Mrs Merkel, regarded as the EU's strongest leader before the crisis, faces losing her fragile coalition government majority after she failed to delay the Greek bailout until after a vital regional election in North Rhine-Westphalia today. German voters, furious at bailing out profligate high spending but under-performing Greece, are expected to punish Mrs Merkel at the polls.

Greek tragedy: how last phone call by murdered bank clerk touched off backlash - Telegraph

 

[Nima]

I've been looking @ the pics from Greece in the past week and it reminds me of Iran and what happened after the elections.
Always loved Greeks b/c they never take **** from their govt but then again their govt doesn't shoot them in the street.