Greece to start austerity drive as nation seethes

http://www.thebeerbarrel.net/showthread.php?7947-Greece-to-start-austerity-drive-as-nation-seethes

Greece's international lenders have made clear that the new bailout package, which would replace a 110 billion euro deal agreed only a year ago, depends on Athens keeping to its promises for further austerity and accelerated privatizations. But the government is under huge pressure, not from the hooded radicals who battled police in the early days of the austerity drive, but from ordinary Greeks who are suffering badly under pay and pension cuts and soaring unemployment.
On Sunday night people from Athens and far beyond the capital crammed into the city's Syntagma Square to show they are close to the limit of their endurance.
"Thieves - hustlers - bankers," read one banner raised above a sea of splayed hands waved at the parliament building which overlooks the square, an offensive gesture in Greek culture. Turnout was the biggest so far in a series of 12 nightly rallies inspired originally by Spain's protest movement. Police put the turnout at 80,000, but many were stuck in side streets, unable to squeeze into the square, and protesters accuse authorities of routinely underestimating their numbers.