Greeks strip country for scrap cash

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/377030/Greeks-strip-country-for-scrap-cash ^ | February 11, 2013

[dennisw]

Greece has been hit by an unprecedented wave of metal thefts as its recession-hit people turn to crime.

Train lines, bridges, cables and even cemeteries have all been targeted for scrap to feed a market driven by China and India.

Police now arrest an average of four metal thieves every day, compared to a few cases every month before the crisis started in late 2009. The profile of the metal thief is also changing, authorities say, from gypsies and immigrants living on the margins of society to mainstream Greeks who have fallen on hard times.

Roadside crash barriers, storm-drain covers, heavy factory doors, as well as mining equipment, irrigation machinery and even cemetery planters made of metal have all gone missing in and around Thessaloniki, the country's second largest city, amid concerns that previously law-abiding Greeks are turning to crime in growing numbers.

In northern Greece, rogue merchants have an additional advantage: An 800-mile border with four countries that makes it easier for them to dodge stepped-up police checks on local scrap yards.

Police near the frontier with Turkey last month arrested 18- and 19-year-old suspects accused for stripping nearly 1,000 feet of cable from street lights, blacking out a stretch of newly built road that runs across northern Greece.

Recent inspections also turned up more stolen cable on a passenger bus headed to Albania, along with a cache of candle holders, snatched from graveyards and loaded onto small trucks, that were stopped and searched at the Greek-Bulgarian border.

[wjcsux]

I find this very hard to believe. After all, the utopian statists were telling us a mere 20 years ago that Greece was the ideal socialist state.

[Cyber Liberty]

Sounds like Greece is becoming a lot like Detroit....

[no-to-illegals]

Could you explain?

[no-to-illegals]

To be precise, I do understand your point though when this nation was first settled and a representative form of government was instituted and the Founders formed a Republic after having defeated the British, my thoughts vary in significant understanding of the time at our beginning where good people sent good leaders to perform miracles through the grace of God. Don't think I'm wrong when viewed from the perspective of History of two hundred and fifty plus years ago. Of course as History has progressed one might surmise our nation has taken paths which have been less than what the Founders intended or paths which were intended by God and God's miracle of America. If yours is a different perspective, would love to view your opinion.

[taildragger]

Our grim future.

Thayrone-X, 1600 am talker here in SE Michigan was talking about Detroit yesterday.

It is not lit at night because the thiefs are going after the lighting infrastructure mainly street lights and note, this is a city own and operated operation if my memory is correct. To the point one guy recently electrocuted himself doing it....