Is it Riot Season in Europe already? Posted by: McQ
on Friday, December 12, 2008
Where does the time go? A new year is ushered in, the economy melts down, you have a presidential election and the next thing you know is they're rioting in Europe again.
Naturally, the rioting is being driven by the ubiquitous European "youths". Of course they began in Greece over the police killing of a 15 year-old Greek youth. And they've spread:
In Denmark, protesters pelted riot police with bottles and paint in downtown Copenhagen at a rally Wednesday. In Spain, youths attacked banks, shops and a police station in Madrid and Barcelona Wednesday. Some of the protesters chanted "police killers." Eleven people were arrested at the two rallies that each drew 200 people.
Germany:
Elsewhere in Europe, more than 15 people occupied the Greek consulate in Berlin Monday, hanging a banner out the window with the dead Greek teenager's name, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, and the words "Killed by the State." About 100 people protested at the Greek consulate in Frankfurt on Tuesday.
And the firebugs in France:
In France, protesters set fire to two cars and a garbage can apparently stuffed with flammable material outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux early yesterday and scrawled graffiti on the building threatening more unrest, Michel Corfias, the Greek consul, said.
Graffiti sprayed on the consulate's garage door read "solidarity with the fires in Greece, the insurrection to come," he said, and the word "insurrection" was painted on the doors of neighbouring houses.
The problem? Well the pretext is the killing in Greece, but most think it has to do with lack of opportunity driven by "globalization". Others, like me, think it has to do with the cumulative effect of the economic policies of their particular governments over the past decades that have institutionalized "lack of opportunity".
The riots have apparently surprised the French Interior Ministry spokesman into a discovery I don't believe he thought he'd make:
"What's happening in Greece tends to prove that the extreme left exists, contrary to doubts of some over these past few weeks," French Interior Ministry spokesperson Gerard Gachet said.
Ah, Europe - the lifestyle the American left has been pining for for years, and, if everything works out well for them in the next 4 years, may soon have.
I love it when Europeans complain that America is such a crude and boorish society. Nothing like this has happened here for more than 15 years. It seems like something is burning down somewhere in Europe every night.
Unemployed youth. Ahhhhh. Who wants to throw paint bombs when you can throw petrol bombs. Solidarity with the dead Greek kid that we’d probably dislike if we knew personally. Hurrah for a cause, any cause, that allows us to burn, bomb and break things.
Now if the Europeans went back to their old method of dealing with large segments of the population being male, unemployed, and @20, the Germans could have their army spend the weekend in Paris for old times sake.
The English could side against whatever side seemed to be about to control the continent.
Russia would show up late after marching their armies around Poland and the Slovakias for a bit, and the Austrians would have to regain the Balkans before they’re allowed to play.
The Swedes could sit back and watch it all unfold, again.
BUT but, this is unpossible! I have been assured over and over again by my lefty friends that Europe was a much better place than America, that the people in Europe were prosperous, happy, and devoted to their socialism and the dictates of rational discourse and reason. Not like we overly religious, irrational, fat Americans.
"devoted to their socialism and the dictates of rational discourse and reason" But every once in a while something touches their souls on a personal level, like this unknown dead Greek kid, arbitrarily shot dead for arbitrarily throwing stones at a police car hundreds and hundreds of miles from where they live, in other countries, with no shootings, and completely different governments with completely different police forces.
The two Greek officers were arrested, the police chief suspended and it’s clear there will be no justice for the dead kid in Greece! No sir! And so it’s important for kids in Spain, and Germany, and Denmark and Russia and France to burn things and raise a ruckus because it’s as if they too have been shot, even though they weren’t and even though they don’t live in Greece and even though the law might actually prosecute the two officers involved in the shooting.
This is rational discourse taken to a higher plain that we crass Americans, clutching our Bibles and gunz, can’t comprehend (Dr Erb does though...)
Then again, there are some folks who not so secretly think it’s a bunch of loser Eurotrash sh!t head anarchists looking to burn things, and this is an awesome excuse to practice for "The big one".
It has to do with importing too many goddamned Arabs.
The first-generation "guest worker" types do ok. Then their kids grow up figuring out they aren’t Europeans and feeling alien in the place they live, which is horrible for anyone. So they go to war. This was completely predictable. And predicted. And everyone who predicted it got called a horrible racist nazi hater. Namecalling is _always_ a good substitute for reason.
Luckily for us, we are doing our best to replicate the experiment with ethnic Aztec Mexicans. Riots and social breakdown for everybody! Yay for the blank slate theory! Is there nothing it can’t destroy?
