How the Greek Government Bungled Riot Control
Riots have been going on for five days in Greece now, well beyond any length of time explicable by the need to decide on a response or amass the necessary forces to put the riots down. And the Greek people are starting to get angry at the Greek government for failing to stop the riots.
The Greek government defended itself against these accusations today, and in doing so unwittingly demonstrated its own incompetence:
From Elena Becatoros, AP "Greek Government Defends Handling of Riots" (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081210/ap_on_re_eu/eu_greece_riots)
The government, which also faced a crippling general strike Wednesday, insists it has acted in the public's best interests, safeguarding lives over property amid an unprecedented explosion of rage sparked by the shooting death by police of a 15-year-old in one of Athens' often volatile neighborhoods.
The two officers involved in the shooting were quickly arrested, charged and ordered jailed.
Arresting and charging the officers, especially when the evidence increasingly shows that the shooting was the result of a ricochet, was a clear attempt to appease the mob. The mob responded as could have been predicted by anyone with any knowledge of urban history -- it became emboldened. At the same time, of course, doing this no doubt dampened the zeal of the Greek riot cops, who now had reason to fear that they might be facing assault or murder charges if they took action.
The government sought to show it was trying to act with restraint when it came to dealing with the protesters.
Indeed. And that was the problem with their response. Their first objective should have been stopping the riots, for every hour that you let a riot rage unchecked is an hour in which people are suffering and possibly dying.
"Human life is top priority. Property comes next," Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos said during the worst of the rioting Monday, as masked youths overturned cars, erected blazing barricades across city streets and smashed stores at will.
In other words, the reason why the police stood by and did nothing when the rioters began destroying the city right under their noses was that they had been ordered, presumably by Pavlopoulos himself, to do nothing.
No doubt these cars and stores belonged to nobody in particular. Otherwise, the rioters would have been smashing up investments amounting to months and years of hard work on the part of the car and store owners. Destroying, in effect, portions of their lives. But I forgot: only the lives of the rioters are to be held valuable here.
Observe what happened here. Three young thugs attacked a police car. When the police fired into the air to drive them off, one bullet, to the great good fortune of anyone whose life otherwise would have intersected that man's, hit one of the thugs and removed him from the gene pool.
At first the dead thugs' friends rioted. When the police did not intervene, under orders from the Government, anarchists all over Athens began rioting. When the police still did not intervene, anarchists all over Greece began rioting. When the police still did not intervene, Islamists joined the party. With the police still not intervening, the unions have called a general strike.
Do you detect the pattern here? When mass lawlessness goes unchecked, and in fact results in bribes to the lawless (the railroading of the cops involved in the shooting incident), then more people behave lawlessly, lining up for their piece of the Danegeld.
The general strike shut down schools, public services, hospitals and airline flights, increasing the pressure on Karamanlis.
No kidding. This is his Socialist enemies sensing weakness, and going for the kill. When one demonstrates this high a degree of weakness, one almost can't blame others for behaving toward one in a predatory fashion. Karamanlis might as well be hanging a sign on himself saying: "I'm prey. Come and eat."
To try to reassure businesses, Karamanlis pledged financial aid to those who lost property in the riots - cash payments of $12,800, delays in tax payments and three-month guarantees for employee salaries.
And who will pay for this? Somehow, I don't think that Karamanlis has the guts to start sweeping up the rioters and making them work in labor camps to pay for the damage they did ...
"Nobody seems to care about the employees at the burnt shops. What will their fate be now over the Christmas season?" asked one shop assistant on the popular Ermou shopping street who would only give her first name, Eleni.
Well, who cares about Eleni? She's probably not up on the latest post-modern trends like the Anarchists. And she can't be anyone important if she's just a "shop assistant." Who cares?
Certainly not either the allegedly-Conservative Greek Government, nor the Anarchists. And I have a sneaking suspicion that even the Socialists only care about her to the extent that she may be made at Karamanlis and thus vote against him in the next election.
Despite general public grumbling, the occasional Molotov cocktail and tear gas volley during a protest march is considered normal. Groups of youths march under the black-and-red anarchist flag, with the gasoline bombs in their backpacks.
One of the major ways in which reality and perception differ, which I have never understood, is the consideration of Molotov cocktails as "minor" weapons, nothing to get concerned about. Molotov cocktails were invented as anti-tank and anti-fortification devices, and they are quite capable of setting a house on fire or destroying anything less than a main battle tank or heavy armored personnel carrier. They are horrible weapons, that kill by burning their victims alive. The weird thing is that many of the same "progressives" who claim to be morally offended by napalm are apparently ok with throwing non-jellied gasoline bombs at people.
But the unprecedented scale of destruction has horrified Greeks.
Since they are evidently surprised that this could happen when you regard the tossing of firebombs as "normal" ...
But the unprecedented scale of destruction has horrified Greeks. The conservative daily, Eleftheros Typos, lamented that the very foundation of the country's democracy was at risk.
"What we have been living these days is the revelation of how imperfect and deeply wounded is the democracy for which we brag about," it said in an editorial, which accused police of being incapable of dealing with the riots.
Eleftheros Typos is quite right. When massive street violence is tolerated, the people will turn to any leader who promises to enforce order and end the anarchy. This is, basically, how Adolf Hitler got elected in Germany in 1933.
Under Greek law, police are barred from entering universities - a regulation that gives the self-styled anarchists and rioters a safe base from which to prepare and launch their attacks and stockpile gasoline bombs.
Papasotiriou, the political scientist, argued that until this sometimes zealously guarded right to "university asylum" is abolished, occasional outbursts of violence will continue.
"The lynchpin to the rioters' tactics is the asylum provided by universities. If it were to be abolished, things would be very different," he said.
Well, yes. Obviously. Wow, modern Greece is almost medieval in that regard.
The Greek government defended itself against these accusations today, and in doing so unwittingly demonstrated its own incompetence:
From Elena Becatoros, AP "Greek Government Defends Handling of Riots" (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081210/ap_on_re_eu/eu_greece_riots)
The government, which also faced a crippling general strike Wednesday, insists it has acted in the public's best interests, safeguarding lives over property amid an unprecedented explosion of rage sparked by the shooting death by police of a 15-year-old in one of Athens' often volatile neighborhoods.
The two officers involved in the shooting were quickly arrested, charged and ordered jailed.
Arresting and charging the officers, especially when the evidence increasingly shows that the shooting was the result of a ricochet, was a clear attempt to appease the mob. The mob responded as could have been predicted by anyone with any knowledge of urban history -- it became emboldened. At the same time, of course, doing this no doubt dampened the zeal of the Greek riot cops, who now had reason to fear that they might be facing assault or murder charges if they took action.
The government sought to show it was trying to act with restraint when it came to dealing with the protesters.
Indeed. And that was the problem with their response. Their first objective should have been stopping the riots, for every hour that you let a riot rage unchecked is an hour in which people are suffering and possibly dying.
"Human life is top priority. Property comes next," Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos said during the worst of the rioting Monday, as masked youths overturned cars, erected blazing barricades across city streets and smashed stores at will.
In other words, the reason why the police stood by and did nothing when the rioters began destroying the city right under their noses was that they had been ordered, presumably by Pavlopoulos himself, to do nothing.
No doubt these cars and stores belonged to nobody in particular. Otherwise, the rioters would have been smashing up investments amounting to months and years of hard work on the part of the car and store owners. Destroying, in effect, portions of their lives. But I forgot: only the lives of the rioters are to be held valuable here.
Observe what happened here. Three young thugs attacked a police car. When the police fired into the air to drive them off, one bullet, to the great good fortune of anyone whose life otherwise would have intersected that man's, hit one of the thugs and removed him from the gene pool.
At first the dead thugs' friends rioted. When the police did not intervene, under orders from the Government, anarchists all over Athens began rioting. When the police still did not intervene, anarchists all over Greece began rioting. When the police still did not intervene, Islamists joined the party. With the police still not intervening, the unions have called a general strike.
Do you detect the pattern here? When mass lawlessness goes unchecked, and in fact results in bribes to the lawless (the railroading of the cops involved in the shooting incident), then more people behave lawlessly, lining up for their piece of the Danegeld.
The general strike shut down schools, public services, hospitals and airline flights, increasing the pressure on Karamanlis.
No kidding. This is his Socialist enemies sensing weakness, and going for the kill. When one demonstrates this high a degree of weakness, one almost can't blame others for behaving toward one in a predatory fashion. Karamanlis might as well be hanging a sign on himself saying: "I'm prey. Come and eat."
To try to reassure businesses, Karamanlis pledged financial aid to those who lost property in the riots - cash payments of $12,800, delays in tax payments and three-month guarantees for employee salaries.
And who will pay for this? Somehow, I don't think that Karamanlis has the guts to start sweeping up the rioters and making them work in labor camps to pay for the damage they did ...
"Nobody seems to care about the employees at the burnt shops. What will their fate be now over the Christmas season?" asked one shop assistant on the popular Ermou shopping street who would only give her first name, Eleni.
Well, who cares about Eleni? She's probably not up on the latest post-modern trends like the Anarchists. And she can't be anyone important if she's just a "shop assistant." Who cares?
Certainly not either the allegedly-Conservative Greek Government, nor the Anarchists. And I have a sneaking suspicion that even the Socialists only care about her to the extent that she may be made at Karamanlis and thus vote against him in the next election.
Despite general public grumbling, the occasional Molotov cocktail and tear gas volley during a protest march is considered normal. Groups of youths march under the black-and-red anarchist flag, with the gasoline bombs in their backpacks.
One of the major ways in which reality and perception differ, which I have never understood, is the consideration of Molotov cocktails as "minor" weapons, nothing to get concerned about. Molotov cocktails were invented as anti-tank and anti-fortification devices, and they are quite capable of setting a house on fire or destroying anything less than a main battle tank or heavy armored personnel carrier. They are horrible weapons, that kill by burning their victims alive. The weird thing is that many of the same "progressives" who claim to be morally offended by napalm are apparently ok with throwing non-jellied gasoline bombs at people.
But the unprecedented scale of destruction has horrified Greeks.
Since they are evidently surprised that this could happen when you regard the tossing of firebombs as "normal" ...
But the unprecedented scale of destruction has horrified Greeks. The conservative daily, Eleftheros Typos, lamented that the very foundation of the country's democracy was at risk.
"What we have been living these days is the revelation of how imperfect and deeply wounded is the democracy for which we brag about," it said in an editorial, which accused police of being incapable of dealing with the riots.
Eleftheros Typos is quite right. When massive street violence is tolerated, the people will turn to any leader who promises to enforce order and end the anarchy. This is, basically, how Adolf Hitler got elected in Germany in 1933.
Under Greek law, police are barred from entering universities - a regulation that gives the self-styled anarchists and rioters a safe base from which to prepare and launch their attacks and stockpile gasoline bombs.
Papasotiriou, the political scientist, argued that until this sometimes zealously guarded right to "university asylum" is abolished, occasional outbursts of violence will continue.
"The lynchpin to the rioters' tactics is the asylum provided by universities. If it were to be abolished, things would be very different," he said.
Well, yes. Obviously. Wow, modern Greece is almost medieval in that regard.