The new wave of Greek riots. May 2011

[Nordic]

Haven't seen these anywhere else:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/pictur ... exhibition

Lots of photos. Here are a few.









And I gotta love this guy:



It's what happens when banks are allowed to con a nation out of its wealth.

[undead]

The anger on display at these demonstrations is a side effect of an informed public. As far as the violence is concerned, rioting at the general strike is the premature ejaculation of political action. It is completely counterproductive and often directly provoked by police saboteurs. There are plenty of angry and sexually frustrated youths that are willing to do exactly the same thing, though. Wilhelm Reich is probably the best person to read to understand this kind of behavior. The anarchist youth culture is so fragmented / infiltrated that you sometimes see squats bombing other squats. Political violence has been happening in Greece on an ongoing basis since WW2, with a civil war that went underground in the form of November 17 and now with splinter groups. While I support the cause of liberation by any means necessary, I think that violence for the sake of violence is futile and that the rapidly worsening situation is a strong indicator of this.

Finding something creative and productive to do in order to improve your situation is more difficult than having a tantrum, both on a personal and national basis.

[edited for clarification]

[American Dream]

Joke:

Two greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails.

One says to the other, "So who will we throw these at then?"

The other replies "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?!?"

http://redleftreview.blogspot.com/2007/ ... jokes.html

[undead]

There was going to be a revolution but then everyone went on vacation for 3 weeks.

[undead]

A much better way to have a demonstration:

[undead]

Even better:

[JackRiddler]

Joke:

Two greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails.

One says to the other, "So who will we throw these at then?"

The other replies "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?!?"

http://redleftreview.blogspot.com/2007/ ... jokes.html

All too true.

Well, except that "the other" anarchist in this joke is often (not always) a cop.

.

[Fresno_Layshaft]

Finding something creative and productive to do in order to improve your situation is more difficult than having a tantrum, both on a personal and national basis.

Agreed. Have they even tried a Twitter or Facebook campaign yet? That shit gets results.

[vanlose kid]

Greek Police Brutality Caught On Tape
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/11/2011 19:08 -0400

This won't sit too well with the GCLU. We are, in fact hearing, that there is already a protest organized to protest police brutality, which will culminate with more cops beating the austerity out of more protesters, and so forth at an exponential pace.



*

[American Dream]

Greek Cops Caught on Video Posing as Anarchists



Greek police acting as anarchists to make the protesters look bad. A video which is pulled of YouTube many times. A video from Greek media itself

[2012 Countdown]

Any photos of our favorite canine, 'riot dog' appear?

[undead]

Finding something creative and productive to do in order to improve your situation is more difficult than having a tantrum, both on a personal and national basis.

Agreed. Have they even tried a Twitter or Facebook campaign yet? That shit gets results.

Social media was a huge deal in North Africa because it caused a free speech gradient in countries that were/are under extremely brutal dictatorships that censor the traditional media. Greece is a much more free country than any in North Africa, so any opportunity to organize provided by these new media tools has been in effect for a while now. The difference is the level of desperation in the general population. People are remarkably free to gather and demonstrate, but that is not stopping the Troika from continuing the S&M session.

Some friends who have friends and family in Athens told me today that this rioting was set off by an incident in which an immigrant killed a Greek during a robbery. It has turned into an all out war in the streets between neofascists and immigrants, and the city is burning. People are afraid to go outside. Police are obviously on the side of the neofascists, as always. At this point there are 5-7 million people living in Athens and at least 1 million of them are refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other countries in the middle east. Somebody correct those numbers if I'm wrong (Jack) but there are at least that many immigrants.

Here it is:

Greece: Fatal stabbing triggers violent far-right protest

By The Associated Press – 2 days ago

ATHENS, Greece — Police say 25 people have been detained in central Athens following a violent anti-immigrant protest by a far-right group.

Several hundred youths took part in the march late Tuesday, chanting "Foreigners Out" and "Greece for Greeks" in a rally held after man was stabbed to death during a street robbery in an area of Athens where many immigrants live.

Police said the protesters smashed the glass entrance of an apartment building and a nearby storefront. The youths, some carrying clubs, also chased immigrants through a central district of Athens before riot police intervened.

Violent far-right groups have won growing support in recent months. The leader of extremist group Chrysi Avgi won a seat on Athens city council for the first time in a November election.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadi ... Id=6810878

Calm urged after several hurt in Greece's austerity protest

(AFP) – 5 hours ago

ATHENS — Greece on Thursday suspended four policemen and urged calm after a dozen people were hurt, one seriously, in clashes during a protest against austerity measures to tackle the country's debt crisis.

As hundreds of people took to the streets of Athens to denounce police brutality, the police department said it had sidelined three riot policemen and their platoon commander caught on video kicking and striking a prone protester in the anti-government demonstration Wednesday.

The department identified the offenders after the clip was posted online (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w15ALLIiYM).

Another protester, Yiannis Kafkas, 31, was hospitalised with near-fatal head injuries after clashes broke out with police near parliament.

Doctors accused police of "barbarity" and said Kafkas had been hit with a blunt instrument, which a communist group said was a police truncheon.

"Only rarely have I seen such violent blows," Panos Papanikolaou, the neurosurgeon who treated the protester, told Vima Radio.

Another 29-year-old protester was rushed to hospital with a burst spleen and internal bleeding.

In a radio interview, Deputy Prime Minister Theodore Pangalos described the filmed beatings as "unacceptable", while a government spokesman expressed regret and said: "We must all keep our calm and poise in the difficult conditions our country is going through."

In 2008, the police killing of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos sparked five days of rioting across Greece, leaving dozens wounded and causing widespread destruction.

The latest clashes came as Greece undergoes a critical audit of its finances by experts from the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, which last year rescued the country from imminent bankruptcy with a 110-billion-euro ($158-billion) loan.

Anti-austerity protests were also held in other Greek cities.

As the police countered that 15 of its officers were also hurt in Wednesday's clashes, about a thousand protesters took to the streets of Athens Thursday chanting: "Down with the assassin government".

Members of anarchist and extreme left groupings, some among the protesters, occupied a government building and hoisted a black banner with the word "assassin" painted onto it.

As the group arrived at Syntagma square, close to parliament, police fired teargas grenades to disperse the crowd.

The Socialist government has been facing a growing wave of protests against its economic policies since last year.

Greece needs to show progress on economic reforms to secure a scheduled 12-billion-euro loan instalment it needs to pay its bills. But the recession threw its deficit reduction targets off-mark in 2010, and this year it has struggled to keep its finances in balance.

European officials have admitted that Athens is likely to need more help to stay abreast of repayments stemming from its huge 340-billion-euro debt.

Rising social tension amid growing unemployment has also targeted the country's burgeoning immigrant population who are blamed for higher poverty and crime.

This week, several hundred people including neo-Nazis assaulted dozens of migrants in the working-class district of Patissia near the city centre after a man was killed by muggers for his video camera on Tuesday as he prepared to take his pregnant wife to the maternity hospital.

Early on Thursday, a 21-year-old Bangladeshi was found fatally stabbed in the same area and police did not immediately rule out a reprisal racist attack.

Meanwhile right-wing opposition leader Antonis Samaras called for the bailout terms to be renegotiated, accusing the government of a "disastrous" economic policy.

Rejecting any consensus with the ruling socialists, the New Democracy party chief said the government's austerity measures had failed and the bailout plan was going nowhere.

Samaras called for cuts in taxes on companies and housing to boost the economy.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... b4995b.c01

[MinM]

Analysis: Secretive far-right Golden Dawn party taps into Greeks' anger, fear

By Renee Maltezou
PIRAEUS, Greece | Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:15pm EDT

In the port of Piraeus, dozens of young men with shaven heads and black t-shirts packed a small room one evening to hear Golden Dawn's dream of a Greece purged of foreigners, its borders sealed with landmines.

"We want all immigrants out, we want to take their stench out of this place," said Frangiscos Porihis, an election candidate for the ultra-nationalist and highly secretive party.

"They shouldn't be here and they will leave one way or the other - the good or the bad way," he told the Piraeus meeting.

With Greece deep in economic and social crisis, the party is promising voters in next month's elections to start by expelling illegal immigrants - before moving on to the legal ones.

Nevertheless, Golden Dawn denies it is neo-Nazi, although its leader Nikolaos Mihaloliakos did introduce himself to Athens city council last year with a Nazi salute.

With its anti-foreigner message plus some welfare parcels for Greece's many needy, Golden Dawn has emerged from obscurity in the last few months and now seems certain to enter parliament comfortably when the nation votes on May 6.

Flanked by bookshelves lined with books on Aryan supremacy and nationalism, the Piraeus audience listened in rapt attention. Leaflets declaring "Not a single unemployed Greek, not a single illegal immigrant in Greece" lay on tables, alongside manifestos proclaiming "Greece belongs to Greeks".

Outside, the group's flag - with an ancient Greek symbol that resembles the swastika set against a red background - fluttered in Piraeus, 10 km (six miles) south of central Athens.

Opinion polls suggest that Golden Dawn could win around 5 percent of the vote, comfortably above the 3 percent threshold for entering parliament. This would be a staggering feat for a party considered until now by many Greeks as little more than a rabble-rousing fringe group which took 0.23 percent in the last general election three years ago.

Linked to racist, anti-immigrant attacks, Golden Dawn is set to become the most extreme right-wing party to sit in parliament since Greece returned to democracy after the fall of a military dictatorship in 1974.

MESSAGE TO THE SYSTEM

Golden Dawn's rhetoric resonates with Greeks who blame rising crime on the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants flocking to the country's porous borders.

Nine out of 10 illegal immigrants entering the European Union in 2010 arrived in Greece, largely from Turkey by land or sea. Last year Italy took the top spot due to a jump in arrivals of people fleeing the Arab Spring upheaval.

Nevertheless, Greece has more than one million immigrants, legal and illegal, in a country of 11 million people.

West African hawkers are a common sight on the streets of Athens, playing a game of cat-and-mouse with the police. However, many are also from Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Africa, hoping to make their way to more prosperous EU countries to the north where work is available.

The party's community-based efforts and anti-politician talk have also won fans among Greeks bristling with anger at an entire political class which they see as corrupt and self-serving, analysts say.

With repeated waves of wage and pension cuts to save the country from bankruptcy, Greece has sunk into its deepest recession since World War II.

"It's not that Greeks became right-wing overnight," said Thomas Gerakis, head of the Marc pollster group. "They just want to send a message to the political system as a whole."

Golden Dawn's candidates are not career politicians; they include farmers, shepherds, workers and retired army officers.

The party has no recognizable names apart from its leader Mihaloliakos, who served in the Greek special forces and was elected to the Athens city council in 2010 - giving the Nazi salute on his first appearance there last year.

"Golden Dawn has the advantage of being invisible," said a political analyst, who declined to be named. "Apart from Mihaloliakos, even I don't know any of the other faces in the party and I'm in the business. That works as a protective shield for them."

Polls show the party taking between 4.1 and 5.7 percent next month. Much of that has come at the expense of the nationalist LAOS party, whose ratings plummeted after it joined the outgoing coalition government last year. It later quit after refusing to accept the austerity conditions of Greece's latest bailout.

PASTA AT THE DOORSTEP

In working class neighborhoods of Athens, Golden Dawn has been quietly building itself up as a friendly, reliable face among hard-hit Greeks that the state has failed to help.

For over a year, party members have given needy families bags of rice and pasta, olive oil and clothes in cartons labeled: "I vote for Golden Dawn to clean up the place" and "For Athens to become Greek again".

Former Socialist voter Katerina Karousi, a 76-year old cancer patient, broke down in sobs when party members showed up at her doorstep with large bags of food on Friday morning.

"I hear they are doing nice things for people. Why not vote for them?" said her husband, 79-year old Andreas Karoussis.

On their way out, a Golden Dawn member bade the couple farewell with: "Call us if you need anything - I mean anything."

At another stop, 41-year-old Constantina Tassiou looked bewildered and overwhelmed as Golden Dawn members piled clothes and supermarket bags at her doorstep.

"It's the first time someone has brought us clothes and food. Only the church has helped us so far," said Tassiou, an epilepsy sufferer whose family lives on her welfare benefits. "I'll vote for Golden Dawn, maybe it's time for something new."

Elsewhere, Golden Dawn escorts the elderly who are wary of immigrants to bank ATMs, said spokesman Elias Panagiotaros.

"RACISM AGAINST GREEKS"

Golden Dawn's manifesto is less benevolent than the good-neighbor image its food drive has helped to cultivate. Illegal immigrants must be immediately arrested and deported, and legal immigrants eventually expelled as well, the group says.

It wants crimes committed by immigrants to fall under a special category, with their sentences carried out in special detention centers where the immigrants are put to work.

"There are people who have been living in a building for 40-50 years and they suddenly realize that it's only them and maybe another family and that the rest are third-world foreigners who live in groups of 30-40 in one apartment," said Panagiotaros.

The group has little sympathy for the political class. Politicians behind Greece's crisis must be hauled before a special court, jailed and their property seized, the group says, while any Greek refusing to join the conscript army will be stripped of their citizenship and exiled.

Despite the comparisons with neo-Nazism, Golden Dawn has paradoxically tapped into anti-German sentiment by attacking the bailout package from the EU and International Monetary Fund and what it calls German domination of Europe.

Set up in 1992 and relaunched in 2007, the party admires Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas, who refused to surrender to the Axis powers in 1940.

It calls itself nationalist and insists its logo is the ancient Greek Meander symbolizing bravery and endless struggle.

The group remains enigmatic. Its leader Mihaloliakos declined to be interviewed and ruled out in a campaign speech on Monday any cooperation to forge a coalition government.

"We will never, ever make a deal with the powers of the bailout. A war to the end! We will win our homeland back!" he told cheering supporters.

Members say discipline and years of unwavering dedication are required to win acceptance. One said it can take up to three years to become a member - starting first as a supporter, then as trial-members before joining the "family".

"For the Communists we are Nazis, for the Socialists we are fascists and for the conservatives we are extreme right," said Nas, a Golden Dawn member who declined to give his last name. "Let them call me what they want. I do what I do with honor."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/ ... YE20120425

[MinM]

Greek exit poll projects extreme right Golden Dawn party wins enough votes to enter parliament

Published May 06, 2012
Associated Press

ATHENS, Greece – Greek exit poll projects extreme right Golden Dawn party wins enough votes to enter parliament.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/06 ... -votes-to/

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/03/151915923 ... parliament

[Jeff]

Better news here: the anti-austerity left alliance Syriza is projected to finish second, with 16.3%, ahead of "socialist" PASOK (13.6%) and behind conservative New Democracy (19.18%). I think that's more than a tripling of the vote for Syriza.

The Neo-Liberals circle the wagons:

Socialist party leader Evangelos Venizeloshas called for a broad coalition government of pro-European parties, saying a two-party coalition is impossible given the likely final results.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012 ... ction.html