August 20, 2018
After eight years of austerity, four governments, three bailout programs, a country full of misery, a capital full of protesters, and a whole galaxy of Molotov cocktails, firecrackers, riots, and clashes with police, Greece does not seem to have moved forward at all. As Greece prepares to exit its third bailout program since 2010, The Daily Stirrer takes a look at the latest outbreak of Greek street protests, the result of almost nine crisis-filled years.
In one particularly violent episode, a mass brawl broke out outside the Ministry of Administrative Reform in Athens, this clip shows demonstrators being rather brutally pushed back by riot police.
Mass rallies in Athens always seem to descend into violence, like the one featured below, as Greece's parliament voted on further erosions of Greek sovereignty to unlock the EU bailout money, with protesters chanting against Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and throwing incendiary flares at police wearing anti-riot gear.
Since the Greek crisis started in late 2009, the country has racked up a massive debt and pursued strict austerity policies to unlock international emergency loans. In 2015, Greece's creditors — the Eurozone and the IMF — launched a third stability support program in eight years. The bailout, which made up some 86 billion euros, was provided in exchange for austerity measures that included pension cuts and tax increases. It is scheduled to expire on August 20, 2018, but Greece's road to recovery is not over yet, and will not be over until the nation is released from the suffocating constraints of The Euro (€) the European Union single currency.
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