Athens Wrap-Up, Maybe

Before things calmed in Greece (they have calmed, haven't they?) my friend in Athens wrote these words:

Report for today (Thursday? Friday? It's all a blur): it's raining cats and dogs, and Greeks don't like getting rained on, so the hooligans have gone indoors until the weather blows over. Arrived home a short while ago, however, after picking my daughter up at the bus-stop, to a very upset babysitter who had watched from our balcony (we live on the fifth floor of a building on a hill that has a sweeping view of downtown Athens) a bunch of protesters hurling rocks and what-all from the roof of the university building (Panepistimiou). Large explosions, flames, and so on, and then a report that a passing bus had been hit with molotov cocktails. Escalation and retreat. Escalation and retreat. You may be wondering how "students" can storm the roof of a university building in order to create mayhem... It works this way: there is a legal (perhaps even constitutional) amnesty that forbids police from entering university premises--amnesty that came about after the infamous events of November 17, 1973, when army tanks drove through the Polytechnic gates to end a standoff between between students the the ruling military junta. I think about two dozen students were killed. So it's a "never again" kind of thing that now permits students (and others) to stockpile petrol bombs and other weapons on university property, and to seek refuge there. It's like a sprawling "home base" in a grown-up(ish) game of tag. I throw a rock, a home-made bomb, and run to base. Whew!



Forgive the tone problems, but this has gone on for about a week now, and there is not much to show that it's going to let up soon. Is it the American in me that wants to know why they haven't called in the Greek version of the National Guard and rounded everybody up by now? Whatever happened to the concept of the candlelight vigil after a shooting, anyway? What happened to the idea that police are supposed to protect the public (granted, this goes wrong sometimes, but shouldn't they be protecting the mom-and-pop shops that are being smashed and looted?) Here they say that the police are supposed to be "a presence" that doesn't "get involved" and is "meant to observe"--which makes them, what? Bystanders.



We will see where this leads.