Last week, Greeks all over the country bore witness to the biggest wave of protests and demonstrations since the killing of a teenage boy by Athens police in 2008, as their unelected “national unity government” voted on a controversial second bail out deal for the troubled state.

The new 130 billion Euro package, deemed vital to keep the country afloat beyond an inescapable March debt repayment worth 14.43 billion Euro, thus avoiding the feared Greek default, aims to bring the overall public debt down from a forecasted 173% to 121.5% of Gross Domestic Product by 2020.

At least 80,000 protesters waited with baited breath in the ironically named Syntagma (Constitution) square from 5:00 to almost midnight in a last push to make their opinion heard by the technocrats inside the Greek parliament the Vouli.

Protesters clashed with a heavy handed riot police, shouting: “Cops! Pigs! Murderers!” and “Bread! Education! Freedom! The Junta didn’t end in ’78!”. Skirmishes broke out in the side streets all over central Athens, trapping many protesters and preventing them from joining the main body of the demonstration. Tear gas and police violence broke out early as protesters were still gathering and demonstrations had yet to begin.

Contrary to the government portrayal of “Vandalism, violence and destruction (which) have no place in a democratic country” (Papademos), many participants were obliged to defend themselves from police violence, indiscriminate and numerous volleys of teargas fired directly into the crowds, and volatile exchanges of missiles thrown by both parties, predominantly marble torn up from the streets, with 65 injured in total. Each new clash between police and protester was met with loud booing, insults and renewed chants decrying what were seen as police and government atrocities on a people who are fighting for their lives as they know them.

45 buildings were ablaze in the capital as the people expressed their anger by setting alight to banks and multinational chains and organisations. Aspiring Byrons of the world will decry in the name of Romantic Philhellenism damage done to some of the older buildings in the Athenian architectural landscape, and despair at the descent the birthplace of democracy into “vandalism, violence and destruction”. But we should remember that Greece is not one big museum to Classical civilisation, but rather a place where living, modern day Greeks are fighting for survival.

So why are they so angry? The new austerity measures imposed by the “Troika” (The European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) will further cripple the country’s economy, in its fifth year of recession, with state budget deficit predicted at 6.7% of GDP for 2012, GDP reduced by 7% last year, and unemployment having risen from 16.5% to 18% in the last quarter (the figure much higher amongst the young at 43.5%).

Pensions have been cut further and the minimum wage devalued by 22% to 586 Euros per month.

Many workers are not being paid at all, such that some cannot afford heating or electricity (even without the new “Haratsi” electricity-property tax deemed illegal by much of the population), rent, or even clothes. News reports feature Greeks fighting for donated clothes for their children during an unusually cold winter, resorting to living in a cave on Crete, or being taken ill with malnourishment. The new austerity measures will cap health benefits for medicines at 30 Euros a month, a limit applying indiscriminately across the health spectrum, from colds to psychological illnesses or lifelong, debilitating diseases.

The Greeks have reached their limit, and this new wave of protests, far from mindless “vandalism”, is a desperate plea to an unelected government and the Troika for an end to their punishment, and the rhetoric of economic morality.