when the pigs broke free

It was just after noon, one shiny spring day in the year twenty-ten.

Everybody was on strike, except perhaps me.

I was fearing what happened and had my camera ready to take with me to the demonstration. I finally decided not to, having sensed that there was not much to be won from such a protest. I have taken part in protests before and have only seen them turning into dangerous demonstrations of anti-propaganda.

Then this demonstration also turned into a riot. No wonder. It has happened before and will happen again, all the more often I am afraid. It is too hard to contain oneself when one feels so suddenly deprived of what he deserves. When from one day to the next, he is being asked to radically re-adjust his lifestyle in the same way some stokebrokers believe they can re-adjust the figures on their screen.
But it is as simple as that. If you apply "shock-treatment" you have to be ready to face seizures.

Then fires broke out all over the city center and three people fell dead, due to the firebombing of a bank in downtown Athens.
And then the markets became "nervous". CDS spreads went up, the Euro started to fall, Bloomberg reported a rapid decline in oil prices.
The three people were still dead.
Portugal's prime minister started to sweat while listening to his minister. Spain's government bonds were under attack. The Greek Government was passing an austerity bill.
The three people were dead, suffocated, burnt.

The dark lords of economy, the invisible hands of the markets, the abominable speculators that have realized they can bankrupt entire countries overnight have called us PIGS. PIGS stands for Portugal-Ireland-Greece-Spain, PIGS stands for economies on the verge of collapse, PIGS stands for meat for the markets.

Now the PIGS are finally being sent to the slaughterhouse. And as it happens with real pigs, they are not behaving as politely as one might have expected.

And that was the day that my government took away my mom's pension.