This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Tens of thousands protest against austerity in Greece
- Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party gains support in Greece
- Greeks shocked at Golden Dawn attack on Corpus Christi play performance
- Hungary’s neo-Nazi Jobbik party demonstrates against Roma Gypsies
- Bitter Germany/France divisions mark European summit
Tens of thousands protest against austerity in Greece
Protester throws petrol bomb at police (Reuters)
Some 70,000 furious Greeks took to the streets in Athens on Thursday,while European officials were at a summit in Brussels discussing thenext round of austerity measures to impose on Greece. Protesters inSyntagma Square through rocks, petrol bombs, bottles and chunks ofmarble at police, who responded with rounds of tear gas and stungrenades. One 60 year old protester, Nikos Xeros, is quoted assaying:
“After nearly 50 years of work and paying into anexpensive pension fund, I have been forced to retire on 1,000euros a month and if they pass these measures it will be evenless. It’s like having a noose about your neck that is gettingever tighter. The next time I come out to demonstrate it’s goingto be with a gas mask and a big wooden club.”
Xeros has been working as a shipbuilder since age 16. AP and Guardian
Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party gains support in Greece
Proceedings in the Greek parliament were disrupted Thursday when EleniZaroulia of the far right Golden Dawn party, an MP and member of aCouncil of Europe anti-discrimination committee, described immigrantsas subhumans:
“It is unacceptable that they be assimilated to thiskind of subhumans who have invaded our fatherland with thediseases that they lug around.”
The loud support that she received is symptomatic of the growingsupport that the Golden Dawn party is receiving from the public.Violence against “subhuman” immigrants is growing, and there is someevidence that some Greek police are supporting the violence, or atleast doing nothing to stop it. Greek Reporter
Greeks shocked at Golden Dawn attack on Corpus Christi play performance
Another Golden Dawn MP, Ilias Panagiotaros, last week led a protestagainst a performance of the Terence McNally play, CorpusChristi. Panagiotaros shouted racist, homophobic and threateningremarks against the director of the play. The 1997 play dramatizesthe story of Jesus and the Apostles, and includes a scene where Jesusadministers a gay marriage between two apostles. A Youtube clip hasPanagiotaros shouting, “Wrap it up you little faggots. Yes, just keepstaring at me you little hooker. Your time is up.” and “You Albanianassholes.” Golden Dawn members threw rocks at audience members and,through it all, the police just stood by and let it happen.Panagiotaros is commemorating the Greece’s civil war that ended in1949:
“There is already civil war.
Greek society is ready – even though no-one likes this – to have afight: a new type of civil war.
On the one side there will be nationalists like us, and Greeks whowant our country to be as it used to be, and on the other sideillegal immigrants, anarchists and all those who have destroyedAthens several times.”
The attack on Corpus Christi has become a signal moment in Greekpolitics, and greater nationalism and violence directed againstimmigrants. BBC
Hungary’s neo-Nazi Jobbik party demonstrates against Roma Gypsies
Around 500 supporters of Hungary’s far right Jobbik party demonstratedagainst Roma Gypsies in the Hungarian city of Miskolc, protestingagainst “Gypsy crime” in the Avas housing development mostly occupied,some illegally, by poor Roma families. The housing development wasoriginally built to house an influx of Roma workers in the 1980s, butwhen factories closed down in the 1990s, Avas has fallen intodisrepair. Jobbik supporters are calling for the eviction of familiesthat owe rent or public utility bills, and an “end to the terror.”Like Greece’s Golden Dawn party, Hungary’s nationalistic Jobbik partyis growing in popularity. BBC and Politics (Hungary)
Bitter Germany/France divisions mark European summit
Bad body language between Angela Merkel and François Hollande (Al-Jazeera)
European leaders have arrived in Brussels for a two-day European Unionsummit with a bitter dispute growing between France and Germany.France’s president François Hollande would like to extend as muchcredit as possible to the “Club Med” countries, Greece, Italy andSpain. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel is much more cautious, andis making a counter-demand: That Brussels be given a budgetary vetoover euro zone countries. However, Hollande has stated that Francewill never give up any budgetary authority to anyone. At stake is thenext bailout loan to Greece. Expect the “Kick the Can Theory” to befollowed, and that the EU officials will find a way to kick the candown the road, postponing the problems for a few additional weeks ormonths, after which the problems will be MUCH worse than they aretoday. Al-Jazeera
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