Afternoon,
Nobody can help but have been staggered by the horrendous scenes that have been coming out of Greece in recent days. The violence which broke out initially in Athens and subsequently spread throughout the country seems to have been boiling up for some considerable time and it has taken a act of Police Brutality (unsurprisingly) to light the proverbial touch-paper.
The basic facts of what has triggered this wave of violence seems to be this:
Just after 10pm on Saturday, two policemen patrolling in a central street by Exarchia Square, in the centre of the Greek Capital. They had a verbal argument with some young people who were there. During the argument, one of the cops pulled his gun and shot a 16-year-old guy twice. The victim was moved to Evangelismos Hospital to be found dead. From what eyewitnesses have reported, the cop had been swearing against the young man, showing his genitals, before shooting him.
Like so many disturbances before this, it only needs to take a small dispute to get out of hand and then before you know it the government is on the brink and are considering all sorts of measures. Indeed reports have come in overnight of smaller, but politically significant disturbances breaking out in other European Countries, with reports of sporadic violence as far away as Madrid and Moscow.
Personally, what is of more concern is the way that the Greek Prime Minister denounced those who have demonstrated and those who have rioted as 'Enemies of Democracy,'. Such terminology is worrying - just like Chairman Brown has tried to, and up to a point successfully done - opposition is not allowed.
This is the way Europe is going, where dissent is treated as subversive. You must agree with the government way of thinking or you are see as an extremist. Left or Right, Socialist or Conservative. If you do not agree with this government you might as well hibernate until the people have seen sense and have got rid of this government of the jackboot.
While the violence was triggered by the death of a 15-year old boy, the underlying motives of the protest obviously run far, far deeper. As always The Hard Left can mobilize demos because the youth unemployment is endemic and because the government is being forced by economic constraints to adopt a hair-shirt policy at a very bad moment. At some stage a major political party - perhaps PASOK - will start to reflect whether it can carry out its spending and economic revival plans under the constraints of a chronically over-valued currency (for Greek needs).
Then there will be a problem.
Is it really much of a surprise that it is the Greeks who have kicked off first in this riot phase of this long politico-economic drama known as EMU has kicked off even though the post-bubble hangover has barely begun.
Saying that though, there has not been much civil disobedience in countries such as Spain, where they are a year or two ahead of Greece in the crisis cycle.
In the last few years looking in from the outside there have been an number of cities that have struck me as potential flashpoints - and indeed became powder kegs in the case of Rotterdam following the murder of Pim Fortyn, and Antwerp following the Muslim street riots.
Lille, Strasbourg, Marseilles, Amsterdam, Brussels seem inherently unstable, and it seems that the big cities of Spain and Italy are taking kindly to new immigrants - obviously we saw at first hand the riots in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley amongst others a few years back which was a result of growing disillusionment from White and Muslim youths, but thankfully we have not seen that level of violence in the UK.
Inevitably, the picture is going to get very ugly as the continent slides deeper into the shitter next year. The International Monetary Fund expects Spain's unemployment to reach 15pc. Astonishingly for a socialist government, Immigrants are already being paid to leave the country. 
There will be riots in Spain too (there have been street skirmishes in Barcelona) - no doubt events will get ugly in Britain as well. People need someone to blame and as is tends to be the case, it is those in need or who are vulnerable who are targeted by the fascists who do not have a clue about economics.
More politically revealing still, the Guardian has warned not only of the impact of recession, but also the widening gulf between rich and poor in fuelling political and social unrest. It editorialised, "It would be one thing if everyone was suffering equally. But, of course, there are some people in Greece doing very well indeed, including those with connections to a government with a string of scandals, some of them financial, behind it...
"The more general lesson of these troubles is that unless governments are more attuned to the difficulties faced by their citizens, and particularly their younger citizens, they may well face similar but much worse times in the future, as the recession begins to bite. Greece's difficulties are not a product of the recession, the major impact of which is yet to come in that country. But that does not mean they are not a sort of model of what might happen elsewhere if governments go into the recession without a new emphasis on equality."
There is trouble ahead and it is going to have to take a coalition of Left groups and minorities groups to take this country away from the Federalist claws of the EU and its authoritarian dictators.
This country cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes of the 1980s and early 1990s and allow Thatcherite economics to take a hold.
The Greedy Bankers are going to have to be told in no uncertain terms that each penny of profit that they make, they must give back to the people, of which this government has given hundreds of billions of our money.
This is not a option, this is a necessity.
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