ishtar79

Season’s Greetings from Greece
(Now that’s how you wage “war on Christmas”! Bill O’Reilly, take note.)

Some of you might have heard about Greece basically becoming riot central, following the murder of a 15-year-old boy by police on Saturday (naturally, the root of the riots and discontent is deeper and a hell of a lot more complex, but I won’t bore you with my ramblings on it: to sum it up, corrupt government, even more corrupt cops, an educational crisis and oh yes, that pesky economy).

I figured I’d do a post following a couple of messages to clarify I’m fine: yes, I tend to go out in the very area the riots originated. No, I haven’t been there the last couple of days, for obvious reasons. Some of the worst rioting damage reached shops literally five minutes from where I live, but I’m doing fine. Pretty calm about it all, said calm further reinforced by the media monkeys and their dramatics and my poor mum calling me from abroad every two hours to at turns remind me not to go out in the center and yell at me to switch on the news.

I keep my TV watching to a bare minimum. I’m at turns angry at a bunch of professional rioters (just as likely to smash and burn stuff after a football game than a genuine political rally) co-opting the anti-government sentiment to just smash stuff and the media for their appalingly sensationalist and simplistic coverage (not to moron journalists: not all ‘extreme elements’ are monolithic, not all rioters are politically motivated, and not all protesters are rioters), angry at our lovely cops/hired thugs who sit around basically scratching their balls faced with the looting but the next day proceed to intimidate and attack a rally consisting mostly of school kids (I guess a bunch of teens are easier to take on than actual looters) and almost getting the urge to go downtown and possibly throw some rocks myself.

By the way, my ex called from Thessaloniki, and said that rioters had torched most shops with the exception of snack shops and patisseries (McDonald’s was, of course, burned to a crisp again. One wonders why they bother reopening after all the times that’s happened). Whoever said the violence was mindless?