Troika Driving Greece Towards Violent Revolution Transcript: Greek President Attacks German Minister's Taunts
By Nigel Farage
Greece is being driven into the ground, and I think, frankly, when it comes to chaos, you ain't seen nothing yet!
Nigel Farage MEP - European Parliament, Strasbourg, 15 February 2012 - Video
"Well Commissioner, you picked the right man. Puppet Papademos is in place and as Athens caught fire on Sunday night he rather took my breath away. He said, 'Violence and destruction have no place in a democratic country.'
What democratic country?
He's not even a democratically elected prime minister. He's been appointed by you guys. Greece is not run through democracy now, it is run through a Troika. Three foreign officials that fly into Athens airport and tell the Greeks what they can and cannot do.
The violence and destruction that you saw on Sunday is being caused directly because people are having their democratic rights taken from them - What else can they do?
And I must say, if I was a Greek citizen I would've been out there, joining those protests on Sunday. I'd be out there trying to bring down this monstrosity that has been put upon those people.
And in his efforts, in the Puppet's efforts to get the MPs to vote for the bailout package, he warned them, that if they didn't do so there would be a dramatic decline in living standards.
Well, has he looked out the front door?
Has he seen the fact that 50 per cent of the young people are unemployed already. Has he seen the fact, that the economy, far from stalling has contracted for five years in a row, and is now accelerating on a downward death spiral - a contraction of 7 per cent per annum.
Greece is being driven into the ground, and I think, frankly, when it comes to chaos, you ain't seen nothing yet!
These policies are driving Greece towards a revolution. They need to be set free. If they don't get the Drachma back you will be responsible for something truly, truly horrible."
By AFP
February 15, 2012 "AFP" -- Greece's president tore into Germany's finance minister, the Netherlands and Finland for "taunting" the country's troubled recovery efforts as Athens fights to stay in the eurozone and avert default.
"I do not accept having my country taunted by Mr (Wolfgang) Schaeuble, as a Greek I do not accept it," President Carolos Papoulias said during a visit to the defence ministry.
"Who is Mr Schaeuble to taunt Greece? Who are the Dutch? Who are the Finns?" the 82-year-old head of state said.
"We always had the pride to defend not only our freedom, but also that of Europe," said Papoulias, a former youth resistance fighter during Greece's wartime occupation by Nazi Germany who later studied law in Munich and Cologne.
Schaeuble had earlier in the day mooted the possibility of Greece becoming a "bottomless pit" ahead of a conference call by eurozone finance ministers on a new bailout for Athens.
"We can help but we are not going to pour money into a bottomless pit," he told SWR radio.
The Netherlands and Finland have also led calls in the eurozone for a tough line to force recession-hit Athens to honour its reform pledges and fulfil fiscal criteria set under a previous loan rescue in 2010.
The new bailout, pending since October, totals 130 billion euros ($US173 billion) and is tied to a 100-billion-euro debt write-off by private banks.
Greece needs money to repay a 14.4-billion-euro bond issue that matures on March 20.
Thursday, 16 February 2012
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