discipline posted:
Look at these baby whiners!!! What are you going to do????

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-theres-no-more-left-to-cut-6660306.html

That's enough, we can't take it anymore." That was the popular chant coming from protesters in Athens yesterday during the latest 24-hour general strike against the country's austerity measures. Teachers and doctors joined bank employees to demonstrate against a new round of expected cuts as the cash-strapped country continued to negotiate new reductions in spending to help keep the economy afloat.

Several thousand demonstrators from the public and private-sector unions braved the heavy rainfall, gathering outside Parliament to voice their opposition at the latest proposed measures to secure a €130bn (£108bn) bailout package. Minor clashes broke out when protesters tried to remove a cordon near the parliament building. Police sprayed tear gas and at times clashed with strikers, whose anger intensified overnight when a further 15,000 job cuts were announced.

Since the onset of the crisis, the austerity drive has sent unemployment to a record high of 18.2 per cent and the country's finances into a spiral of recession. Despite the deepening pain, crowds at protests have increasingly dwindled.

"People are scared and haven't really realised what's happening yet," George Pantsios, an electrician for the country's public power corporation, said. He has only been receiving half of his €850 monthly wage since August. "But once we all lose our jobs and can't feed our kids, that's when it'll go boom and we'll turn into Tahrir Square."

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos was scheduled to wrap up a new reforms package with party leaders that back his unity government last night, which will pave the way for more bailout money.

The conservative daily Kathimerini newspaper's headline said: "Merkel and Sarkozy's asphyxiating pressure." It was a reference to lenders' demands to axe another 15,000 civil servants by the end of the year and cut the minimum wage by 20 per cent.

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund said the measures are needed to restore Greece's competitiveness and reduce its mounting €300bn debt.

Many in the crowds yesterday said the talks were being used as an excuse to squeeze extra revenue from the sick man of Europe and they fear additional cuts will only stifle any hopes of growth. "We're already bankrupt. This new agreement will simply be our tombstone and the meeting will be the final curtain of this play," said Corinna Panopoulos, a state psychologist who demonstrated outside the parliament building.

Ms Panopoulos, who is single and has two children, said she had seen her salary drop by a third and has moved in with her mother to make ends meet. Her sister, Christina, who works as a supply teacher, will lose her state job in June.

Another woman had been forced to close her business: "I should leave and go abroad for work, but I want to stay and fight because my country needs me now."

The patience of Greece's creditors is wearing thin as the financial woes threaten to spill into other countries.

What are you going to do about these baby whiners! Turn into Tahrir Square HAH! Big words from small men amirite? What u gonna cut next in the game of life??

Sell 51% of the territory of Greece to Turkey so they can have a stronger claim at EU membership, have them pay Greece's debt. Sell arms to both sides of the war between them, get more concessions as the war goes on, and as they auction every single thing to european banks, give them covert assitance until they win back all of their territory. Call it a war of turkish aggression and make them pay indemnities that the banks can siphon off. Tell Turkey that you have some economic advice to help them pay the future indemnities, and on and on

At some point, I asked Hadjigeorgiou how the crisis was affecting him personally. Life was getting difficult, he acknowledged. Then, prodded a bit more, he mentioned that he had not been paid by his newspaper, the major left-leaning daily, in four months. Nor had any of his colleagues at the paper. Yet despite the lack of paychecks, few if any employees had left the paper (which has since filed for bankruptcy), for the good reason that there was nowhere else to go.

Which pretty much sums up Greece. Everyone talks incessantly about the economy — about Merkel and Sarkozy and the E.U., about the tightly knit elite that has run Greece for so long and about their neighbors’ troubles and their own — but somehow everyday life rumbles on, in a collective trance, shot through with gallows humor.

By many indicators, Greece is devolving into something unprecedented in modern Western experience. A quarter of all Greek companies have gone out of business since 2009, and half of all small businesses in the country say they are unable to meet payroll. The suicide rate increased by 40 percent in the first half of 2011. A barter economy has sprung up, as people try to work around a broken financial system. Nearly half the population under 25 is unemployed. Last September, organizers of a government-sponsored seminar on emigrating to Australia, an event that drew 42 people a year earlier, were overwhelmed when 12,000 people signed up.

littlegreenpills posted:

shame this didnt go on it looked a lot better than toms game. whats happening in greece now does anyone care. last i heard there are a lot of stray dogs in athens

the Coalition of the Radical Left placed first in the elections and that was like half a year ago. there are also people in Athens btw

daddyholes posted:

NNNNNNnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!! *screams and hurtles sixth grade plaster bust of lenin against wall*

this is usually how i wake up in the morning