I just got a video from an event in Paris that shows the Greek vice president of the government [*] been kicked out by several Greek protesters. A few days ago, in Berlin, the Greek prime minister had also troubles with Greek demonstrators that interrupted his speech. I think the one place Greeks haven’t demonstrated yet is… space!
I’m trying to put myself in the place of some German guy that went to listen to the Greek prime minister giving out his nice speech and suddenly all hell breaks loose. People shouting in Greek, raising banners and throwing pamphlets out of nowhere. It’s got to be a big surprise for the poor foreign person.
On the other hand, protesting in Greece is often equally surprising to most of the people. Usually people get informed only by the TV media that hide away (or censor if you like) the reasons why people protest or even the protests altogether. In Paris for example, the reason was the hunger strike of 300 immigrants in Greece that’s been going on for more than 30 days now. In a certain small city close to Athens, ordinary people of all age have been clashing with riot police for about two months now in complete and deafening silence from the Greek media. So my point is that when it comes to Greece, protesting abroad is the same as protesting in Greece: most of the time nobody has a clue on what the protest is about. And most of the time, nobody cares.
At least protesting abroad has an extra advantage: it takes place far away from the reach of the Greek police and its usual practices (framing people, attacking people, etc). No foreign cop will start tear-gasing people who are just shouting. So it’s safer! Hm… maybe protesting in space isn’t such a bad idea after all. It achieves the same results it would achieve if it would be done back home, plus you don’t risk getting sent to the hospital or jail.
At the risk of extending this post to any analysis of Greek politics, here’s a video from the Muppet Show Pigs in Space that gave the inspiration for the title of this post.
And since we’re headed for space anyway, we can adapt the legendary Star Trek line:
“these are the protests of the Greeks. Their mission, to boldly protest where no man has protested before!”
[*] so it’s like his only superior is the prime minister.