REMARKABLE: Greek Police Threatened to Arrest EU/IMF Officials Days Before Athens Burned, Not Protesters+*

by David Harris-Gershon

The brave Greeks are standing up against the world plutocrats and their instruments. Even dogs attend the demonstrations. Kanellos, in the image, has not missed any.
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Greece is burning after extreme austerity measures – which have cut the minimum wage by over a fifth and eliminated one in five civil service jobs – were passed at the behest of the EU and IMF.

The measures, which brought over 100,000 protesters into the streets today and sparked chaotic, desperate protests that spiraled out of control in at least seven cities, were passed by lawmakers in order for Greece to qualify for emergency loans from the IMF (totalling $172 billion).

And Greece’s police force, which has for months now been charged with containing anti-austerity protests, saw the chaos coming.

Officers saw what was about to happen. And they wanted to stop it. Not by targeting the protesters, but instead by targeting those officials responsible for pressuring Greece to rip the economic heart out of its lower and middle classes in order to keep the country afloat.

Specifically, Greece’s largest police union wanted to issue arrest warrants for the IMF’s leading Greek official, Poul Thomsen, the European Central Bank’s mission chief in Greece, Klaus Masuch, and several other top officials in the IMF and EU.

As reported by Reuters, Greek police representatives did not mince words days ago (in a letter addressed to IMF and EU officials) before today’s impending storm:

“Since you are continuing this destructive policy, we warn you that you cannot make us fight against our brothers. We refuse to stand against our parents, our brothers, our children or any citizen who protests and demands a change of policy.”

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“We warn you that as legal representatives of Greek policemen, we will issue arrest warrants for a series of legal violations … such as blackmail, covertly abolishing or eroding democracy and national sovereignty.”

Greece’s European creditors promised this latest emergency bailout of the country on the condition that harsh austerity measured were passed. And they were targeted with arrest warrants by Greece’s largest police union in a symbolic gesture. It was a way for police representatives to show that officers “refuse[d] to stand against”fellow Greeks, a way to show they stood against the slashing of social benefits for the working and poor as a way to save the country.

It was a way to show EU and IMF officials that they rejected such demands being forced upon their country – demands being made upon those who could least afford them.

And it was a way – in a moment of desperation – to try to reverse what today now seems inevitable: a country burning, a fire kindled by the financial transgressions of the world’s largest financial institutions and the wealthiest among us.

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