John Ward April 9, 2012 NEW GREEK VIOLENCE

GREECE BREAKING: GOVERNMENT BUILDING TORCHED BY ARSONISTS

Same bomb type as last week’s attack on former Prime Minister

A deliberately planted home-made gas canister gutted the Ministry of Administrative Reform’s ground floor offices in the Neos Kosmos district of Athens earlier this morning (Monday).

The MAR has been the focal point of delivering the Troika’s sweeping reform programme. The bomb, which exploded at 1.50 am local time, also destroyed three cars.

The modus operandum – propane gas canisters – is the same as that used in the bomb that exploded outside the office of former prime minister Costas Simitis six days ago. But although the two attacks may have a single source, nobody has, as yet, claimed responsibility.

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1

John Ward – Euroblown : A Small Clue As To Why The Main Greek Parties Are Struggling For Support…And Why Brussels Has A BIG Problem – 12 April 2012 | Lucas 2012 Infos on April 12, 2012 at 9:00 pm

[…] In the last few weeks, The Slog has reported upon the arrest of a senior pol on bribery charges, Greek bombs aimed at Troika offices, Papademos lies and Greek suicides, how the Troika bailout deal is […]

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EUROBLOWN: A small clue as to why the main Greek Parties are struggling for support…and why Brussels has a BIG problem | The Slog on April 12, 2012 at 5:29 pm

[…] In the last few weeks, The Slog has reported upon the arrest of a senior pol on bribery charges, Greek bombs aimed at Troika offices, Papademos lies and Greek suicides, how the Troika bailout deal is […]

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3

Tim on April 11, 2012 at 2:47 am

“Sheesh,where do these people learn to live so long and learn so little?”

Go ahead, Jwoo, enlighten us. Tell us, in your 63 years of voting an endless array of new entitlements for your own benefit, who exactly you’re supporting. Now that the game is up and there’s no more credit to fund your viagra IV drip, all you can do is wank about how powerless you are. Perhaps today’s youth will take pity on. On the other hand, perhaps they’ll give you exactly what you’ve earned.

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Jwoo on April 10, 2012 at 4:57 am

@Chris L

I have to step off the road you are treading at this point Chris.

Understanding why desperate people will resort to desperate measures is one thing. Particularly when the target is government buildings which are empty. As is beginning to come to the realisation that nothing less than violence will achieve any meaningful change.

But advocating it is quite another.

If we get some of these scum through a judicial system and convict them, I’ll happily volunteer for the hangman’s job. Even if the present judiciary have to be purged to facilitate it. But it will have to happen under controlled circumstances. That doesn’t mean anarchy.

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Mudplugger on April 9, 2012 at 8:42 pm

It’ll need to be headlining in the Guardian before anyone at the BBC will read it.

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Chris Loughrey on April 9, 2012 at 7:28 pm

@tim. Your argument is predicated on the idea that politicians represent the interests of the people who voted them into power. That’s not true. Self-interest is the driving force of modern politics.

I’d be happy to lay a vote for a leader that could achieve what you claim is so easily set in motion, the only problem being that anyone who is capable probably wouldnt lower themselves to the level required to get in the cesspit.What’s happening is basically unprecedented in modern history and trying to predict the outcome/who gets saddled with the bill is almost impossible.

Spend cash, avoid tax, defend yourself with intelligence and teamwork.

Anyone who lives in a free society where the laws are unjust has an obligation to break the law. Hence my conclusion that standard action won’t work and directed violence being a logical alternative. Sad, but true.

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Jwoo on April 9, 2012 at 7:21 pm

My apologies Tim, I’ve misjudged you, I thought you were just an intellectual who had no real experience in life and could only speak in Slogans.

But I was wrong. You are clealry a world authority in all things who knows everyone else better than they know themselves and who can swing from one trite chant to another as required. That takes practice.

Forgive me if you have the field to yourself now, I must take the air before going abed. I need my 8 hours before rising at 5am so that I may continue to work out ways to have my Grandchildren pay for me to live as you insist. (Although I’d much rather continue to work out ways to provide for the next generation which thanks in no small part to the cloud cuckoo clowns spouting your sort of stuff, are going to struggle).

Sheesh,where do these people learn to live so long and learn so little?

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Tim on April 9, 2012 at 7:13 pm

“I have spent the last 63 years disapproving of violence…”
No you haven’t. You just resent the fiscal threat to your future as a pensioner. You don’t need a “detailed plan for doing the impossible peacefully”. You need to grow some fortitude and demand that the government default on the slavery you’re trying to impose on your grandchildren.

The world doesn’t owe you or your generation anything.

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Jwoo on April 9, 2012 at 6:41 pm

“rather than take responsibility for yourself & get off the public dole”

Goodness knows what that means but you haven’t addressed any of the points raised in response to your wonderfully enlightened speech. Don’t misunderstand me, I have spent the last 63 years disapproving of violence in response to anything. Someone less enlightened than yourself might ask why it is that now, finally, I am beginning to believe that no peaceful means will rid any of us of the cancer we flounder under, so deeply entrenched and impregnable has it become.

So, keep making speeches if you must, but a detailed battle plan for doing the impossible peacefully would be much more helpful.

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Tim on April 9, 2012 at 6:20 pm

Political corruption will only exists to the extent it is tolerated by the governed. If, as I suspect, you prefer to continue this tired, “down-trodden proletariat” fiction and bash-in someone’s brains, rather than take responsibility for yourself & get off the public dole, so be it.
Europe is way over-due for an ole’ fashioned slug-fest, as far as I’m concerned. ‘Bash-away’, morons. I suspect the Greek sewer system, dilapidated as it is, will accomodate the blood.

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Caratacus on April 9, 2012 at 6:12 pm

None taken jwoo.

To an extent I was playing devil’s advocate there; I agree wholeheartedly that the industry needs to get its act together … I’ve been pushing relentlessly for years! What is needed is for every LPG company – without exception – to reinstitute hire charges for their cylinders. Unfortunately it only takes one company to suddenly start giving them away again with no hire charge and they’ll clean up in a dog-eat-dog market. So, in a world where competition is encouraged and any hint of a cartel (where a number of different companies coordinate their marketing policy to customers) is frowned upon, we are unlikely to see an improvement in this untidy little corner of UK activity.

Bernard – the travellers usually get their cylinders by paying cash to hard-pressed LPG dealers who are only too ready to add to their meagre stipend in such a way as to avoid the tax man! The idea of the travelling community paying hire charges for gas cylinders would provoke an outpouring of mirthless laughter amongst gas cylinder dealers. Once they’ve emptied them, the travellers couldn’t give a flying fornication what happens to them next…

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Bernard from Bucks. on April 9, 2012 at 5:42 pm

Soft green background. Very nice.
My grandma used loads of it.
It was called ‘Eau de nil’.
My German is not what it used to be but is that – “Water of nothing”?

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Bernard from Bucks. on April 9, 2012 at 5:37 pm

I’m not quite sure where this comment will end up now?
But, it is true there are, or must be, thousands of unaccounted cylinders knocking around. Just up the road from here (Bucks) a load of friendly ‘travellers’ set up camp. When they eventually left, the field was littered with those orange propane cylinders. Double figures at least.
If there was a deposit on them, why did they not return them?

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Bankrupt Taxpayer on April 9, 2012 at 5:19 pm

@JW: I like the nice new soft green background a lot better.
In fact it would look quite nice on my walls ;-)

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Jwoo on April 9, 2012 at 4:59 pm

@CL
You went further than I did Chris, but it seems to me in the right direction.

I would be interested to know of any country that has pulled off the trick Tim suggests is so readily available to the Greek nation.

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Jwoo on April 9, 2012 at 4:52 pm

Apologies if I appear pedantic Caratacus but indeed you did not refer to the deposits in the way I did. That was my point. This is a problem created by the industry which formerly ran a scheme which allowed some degree of incentive for citizens to at least not discard these potential bombs. Thus they acted responsibly and I for one did not object to them holding the deposits.

Until that is they suddenly, for whatever spurious reason, decided they wouldn’t return it. Then the damn things began turning up everywhere they shouldn’t. Less important for stuff that isn’t volatile.

I’m happy to oblige any car hire company that wishes to play by the same rules by keeping the car. (To play with your own example.)

But in truth, terrorism is not usually run on a shoe string, so one has to assume that ‘bombs on the cheap’ are not the deciding factor. What they do provide though is an endless supply of very anonymous obtainable material. Now that is a problem which authority, assisted by the industry might usefully address.

Forgive me if I don’t anticipate any urgent practicable action by either.

No offence.

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Chris Loughrey on April 9, 2012 at 4:51 pm

Thanks tim, that’s just the giggle I needed.

The Greek political system is more corrupt than most (the conduct of their representatives over the last couple of years proves this). What makes you think they’ll be given a democratic choice that doesn’t equal more of the same faces, same policies and same cowardice that they’ve been forced to pick from previously.

Politics is a closed shop, for itself and nobody else. The very idea that someone with the capacity to act for the greater good would be allowed to run for office, let alone win, is laughable.

Violence is a reasonable policy to pursue. Given that the Greek people have been assaulted in every manner possible in the recent past by those who were sworn to defend their interests.

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Caratacus on April 9, 2012 at 4:12 pm

jwoo – I did say ‘responsible members of the public’ :-)

You may have noticed that I did not once refer to deposits, only hire charges.

When you hire a car, you pay a hire charge AND a deposit. If you return the car undamaged you get the deposit back but not the hire charge. Those naughty car hire companies – they pay a fortune for the cars and then have the gall to sit on all those unreturned hire charges.

Anyway, the point remains that there are thousands of unexploded bombs – whoops … I mean – potential lumps of ordnance for irresponsible people to acquire and use for harmful purposes up and down the country. This stuff is far more potentially dangerous than petrol due to its explosive and expanding nature when released to atmosphere under pressure, yet a couple of hundred little minibulkers carrying around six tons of liquefied product toddle off out of the yards each morning on their rounds. I am pleasantly surprised and relieved that no-one has had a go at them yet. And the councils are allowing themselves to be persuaded that they have no duty of care to ensure that unwanted bombs – whoops, there I go again – cylinders are handed in and accounted for.

Don’t be concerned by the masked man at your door – his name is Henry and he works for HMRC :-)

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Bill Casso on April 9, 2012 at 3:54 pm

Maybe Greece can get the EU (Germany) to supply the Greeks with hi tech gas containers that have built in GPS, and a camera with WiFi internet access. Outlaw all the old gas containers and make the Greeks buy the new “security gas containers” from the EU (German) suppliers.

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John on April 9, 2012 at 3:37 pm

No… the German weapons we are financing from Germany that we’re a German and French condition of the first bailout.

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Cornish on April 9, 2012 at 2:33 pm

At least the news has just made it onto the Telegraph site –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/9194125/Firebomb-explodes-outside-Greek-government-building.html

Perhaps the Beeb might cover it now.

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Jwoo on April 9, 2012 at 1:55 pm

“Hence it is now difficult to differentiate between cylinders that were hired and those that were FOC.”

Yes, how inconvenient for those companies sitting on all those deposits.

Well, I paid for mine and it isn’t going for nothing. Hang on someone at the door offering to buy my cyclinder. He has a mask on, should I be concerned?

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stuart on April 9, 2012 at 1:40 pm

Ah you mean the German weapons they have not got the money to pay for?

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Caratacus on April 9, 2012 at 1:29 pm

Time was you did get a refund (partial) on the hire charge, but in the 80s a number of newcomers to the industry began giving the cylinders away like a man with four arms to poach custom from competitors and not charging any hire fee at all. Hence it is now difficult to differentiate between cylinders that were hired and those that were FOC. If people don’t pay anything, they don’t respect the item in question – hence they use it and then chuck it away, it’s easier.

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Jwoo on April 9, 2012 at 1:22 pm

@Tim

“….they have the opportunity here to put in place exactly the policy they want and deserve.”

Well if you say so. That I assume is based on how well the system has worked in our own and other ‘democracies’. We, being the majority, have exactly those policies do we?

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Jwoo on April 9, 2012 at 1:05 pm

Doh, companies!

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Morris on April 9, 2012 at 12:58 pm

Nothing on bbc.co.uk/news/world. I can’t recall hearing about the attack on Greece’s former prime minister last week either. If these attacks happened in an American state, the BBC would linger on it for days.

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j24601 on April 9, 2012 at 12:52 pm

The young Greek has done an excellent job, not only of explaining some myths, but also in rallying the troops. Great stuff; thanks for the link.

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John Ward on April 9, 2012 at 12:50 pm

BT
I’m trying out a few things. Be patient.

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Bankrupt Taxpayer on April 9, 2012 at 12:42 pm

Oh! It’s gone already :-)

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Bankrupt Taxpayer on April 9, 2012 at 12:40 pm

Nice site. Please convey my thanks to the author…

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Jwoo on April 9, 2012 at 12:39 pm

@Caratcus

I must have missed something over the years because there was a time when you could take an empty cylinder in and get a return on deposit. Now the only time that will happen is if you take it to your original supplier and have the original purchase receipt.

Bearing in mind you have to ‘buy’ the cylinder in the first place how is it that they now claim to be ‘losing’ some every year.

Make a deposit returnable and the company’s would soon get them all bacvk.

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Γιώργος on April 9, 2012 at 12:29 pm

It worth’s to have a look , a young Greek is trying to explain some Greek myths.

http://9gag.com/gag/2681884

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Bankrupt Taxpayer on April 9, 2012 at 12:22 pm

PING: JOHN:
Sorry, I don’t like this new background:

Please at least locate it in its own directory (folder) so I can block it :-)

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Tim on April 9, 2012 at 12:07 pm

Violence is *not* the only option. Greece still has national elections scheduled for this spring. If these people have any genuine political will and/or moral conviction, they have the opportunity here to put in place exactly the policy they want and deserve.

Anything less is a total abdication of what it means to be ‘Greek’.

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Caratacus on April 9, 2012 at 12:06 pm

Well – it’s not often I can bring a bit of real expertise to these hallowed pages, but this is one of those times.

There are variously estimated to be between 8.5-10 million (some estimates say up to 12m) propane and butane gas cylinders at large in the UK. Of these, perhaps 5 million may be accounted for via the LPGas companies auditing departments in their customer accounts. The others are to be found undisturbed in people’s garages, last used perhaps in the 90s, in farmer’s yards and fields, on disused industrial sites and – far more importantly – in the waste stream. That is, they fetch up at council recycling centres and waste transfer stations where responsible members of the public have taken them as they have been unable to find anyone else to accept them. For example, Flogas (currently No.2 in the UK market) owns over 100 brand names including Shellgas, Essogas and British Gas LPGas – gets confusing doesn’t it? Anyway, there is currently an effective and efficient collection system where the vast majority of these ‘waste’ cylinders are cleared regularly and returned to their owner companies; any that are true ‘orphans’ (bless) are taken to the relevant professional companies for destruction Excellent so far.

Where it starts to fall apart is in the attitude of councils and the appointed contractors who run the recycling centres. Even though the huge majority of gas cylinders are collected and returned free of any charge to the council tax payer (the owner company pays for their return), some inevitably attract a cost for removal – cylinders from France, Germany and the US are unlikely to find their way back to their owner companies. The cost is not a lot in CC budget terms, perhaps £15-18K p.a. per county, but every little helps… So some councils refuse to accept ANY gas cylinders on their sites (step forward Somerset and take a bow) and so propane cylinders will end up fly-tipped in the countryside and other quiet places just ready for any would be idiot/terrorist wannabe/attention seeker and so forth to take back to his garage for a bit of a play with fertiliser, bleach and a bag of six inch nails.

Perhaps if your council is contemplating this you might want to have a quiet word. Of course I have a vested interest (a) the company I do consultancy work for wants its cylinders back and (b) the existing collection system has been working unobtrusively for years and should be applauded and encouraged, not buggered about with.

Calor (not my company, but the best known) estimates that it costs them £200K per annum in lost cylinders. It only takes a couple of EMPTY ones to make a big bang… as they have just found out in Greece.

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Send in the clowns on April 9, 2012 at 11:40 am

And now, rent-a-cop: Have a Greek policeman do your bidding – http://www.zerohedge.com/news/greece-launches-rent-cop-fill-empty-public-servant-coffers. one can own a 24/7 full-time militia of 20 policemen for as little as €14,400 a month.

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Γιώργος on April 9, 2012 at 11:36 am

IT will come , wait when our calves will be starving.

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Send in the clowns on April 9, 2012 at 10:59 am

Please remember, every time a politician/elite/banker opens his stupid mouth to spout some recovery/bluesky/green shoots fantasy, he/she has only one intention – to keep the the population in a state of sufficient delusion and stop them taking to the streets in peaceful protest/civil disobedience/armed insurrection. And all to sustain a mad political monetary dream for Europe which ultimately will bankrupt us all. .

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j24601 on April 9, 2012 at 10:57 am

Sadly, violent resistance may be the only option.

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green gecko on April 9, 2012 at 10:23 am

AW, the military are waiting for the latest shipment of German equipment.

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Andy Williams on April 9, 2012 at 10:18 am

Given Greece’s proven track record I’m only surprised the country isn’t in the hands of a military junta government with revolutionary terror groups running amok.

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Bankrupt Taxpayer on April 9, 2012 at 10:03 am

Way to go :-)

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oldasiahand on April 9, 2012 at 9:52 am

Everyone will benefit from a change of policies, personnel.

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Chris Loughrey on April 9, 2012 at 9:40 am

The realisation that the troika invaders aren’t capable of listening to common sense means that violent resistance is a logical option. With any luck they’ll nail a few politicians before summer kicks in.

There will be a number of job openings in Greek ministries soon for “letter openers” (must not mind losing fingers and/or face in explosions).

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Oldrightie (@OldRightie) on April 9, 2012 at 9:29 am

it is an inevitable last resort against an EU stubborn arrogance and pathetic ambition. This will sadly sweep across Europe and no one will benefit.

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