The Day's News...

Apologies once again for the delay between posts and thanks to everyone who sent encouraging e-mails. The new site is almost finished; a preview can be seen at anarchiststrategy.com. If you're interested in the ad spaces (currently represented by two small gray boxes on the right side of the column), send an e-mail to lobsterbeard@gmail.com. The new site will feature rolling news updates, multiple contributors (who are waiting, blog posts at the ready, for the new site to launch), fancy graphics, and a host of other luxurious features.

Anyway, here's a dose of news to hold you over:

• Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the FBI will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants. The F.B.I., with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 17-fold increase.

• New details have emerged about the FBI's homebrew spyware with the publication of some heavily redacted documents. Wired reports that "on page 152, the FBI's Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit (CEAU) 'advised Pittsburgh that they could assist with a wireless hack to obtain a file tree, but not the hard drive content.'" Be wary anarchist hackers, the FBI has learned to use the series of tubes.
  

• And everyone's favorite swashbucklers continue to wreak havoc on the world's busiest shipping lane, despite recent U.S. military intervention. Over the weekend, Somali gunmen seized a Belgian-registered vessel in the Indian Ocean; that ship is now being steered toward Somalia. And early this morning, a Maltese-flagged ship managed to shake off Somali pirates after they attacked it with rocket-propelled grenades. Illustrating one of the pirates' strategic advantages, Dutch commandos freed 20 Yemeni hostages on Saturday and briefly detained seven pirates who had forced the Yemenis to sail a "mother ship" attacking vessels in the Gulf of Aden, before freeing the pirates due to a lack of legal jurisdiction. Oh, and ship mounted non-lethal weapons aren't going to stop them either.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: “It is necessary to develop a strategy that utilizes all the physical conditions and elements that are directly at hand. The best strategy relies upon an unlimited set of responses.”--Morihei Ueshiba
  
  

Free The Passwords With Sslstrip

An anarchist superhacker has just released a powerful little program called "sslstrip." The C.S.A. barely understands even the most simple computer operations, but here's our boneheaded explanation of how it works: on encrypted web pages, the letter "s" appears at the end of "http." This program strips the "s" away, leading the victim to an unencrypted but otherwise identical version of the page. The victim then enters their log-in information unaware that the attacker is recording what they type. The program requires its operator to be between the victim's computer and its internet connection, such as on a free wireless internet server. And that's about it. You can read more about the details here and here.

Clearly there are uses for this program far beyond merely harvesting credit card numbers and Facebook passwords, as most users of sslstrip will probably do. Imagine there's a password for, say, a secure network containing information that may be useful to people facing persecution. And imagine that some users of that network are lazy, unaware, and apt to sign-in to the secure network at Starbucks. Well, if you're in the right place at the right time, sslstrip will allow you to get the log-in info for such a network.

Is that a little too vague? Here's a concrete example: an FBI agent logs-in to his network from a laptop at a coffeeshop. An sslstrip user harvests his password, then logs-in to the network to see whatever information is there. Or imagine the victim is an employee of a multinational corporation that does naughty things to trees or beagles. Or works for a private military firm. Or whatever.

Now imagine that those people are too cautious to log-in at Starbucks. So instead of sitting in an overstuffed armchair while stealing their passwords, the attacker uses an antenna to access the wireless network in their building, cracks the code to their secure wireless network, and then harvests their password.

Or imagine the intended victim doesn't use a wireless network at all. Then the attacker has to put a piece of hardware between the target computer and the network. Which means they may need to use some social engineering to access the building within which the victim uses the computer, perhaps by posing as an electrician who has to fumble with a bunch of wires. And so on and so forth.

Those are just some of the possible scenarios. Of course using sslstrip in those ways is completely illegal and the C.S.A. strongly discourages and condemns such uses, along with illegal activity of any kind.

Check back here for updates on this story, as it appears to be gathering steam across the series of tubes. You can download sslstrip here.

The Day's News...

Sorry for the delay between posts. The C.S.A. is in the midst of relocating and revamping this site to a vastly superior, more secure location. The new site will have much superior functionality that will allow for more frequent updates, greater ease of use, and much, much prettier design. Formal announcement coming soon; in the meantime, munch on this:

• Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there's a slim - but growing - chance the ad is watching you too. Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity - and can change the ads accordingly.

• Bad economic times are forcing the NYPD to slow down plans to assign 800 officers to the area near Ground Zero and Wall Street. The NYPD planned to deploy the officers along with 3,000 networked security cameras to Lower Manhattan; to date, 300 cameras have been installed and 30 police cars with roof-mounted cameras have begun reading license plates of passing and parked cars. And a 28th-floor command center is up and running, monitoring the spycam feeds.

• The new director of national intelligence told Congress on Thursday that global economic turmoil and the instability it could ignite had outpaced terrorism as the most urgent threat facing the United States. The assessment underscored concern inside America’s intelligence agencies not only about the fallout from the economic crisis around the globe, but also about long-term harm to America’s reputation. The crisis that began in American markets has already “increased questioning of U.S. stewardship of the global economy,” the intelligence chief, Dennis C. Blair, said in prepared testimony.

The Day's News...

• A logic bomb allegedly planted by a former engineer at mortgage finance company Fannie Mae last fall would have decimated all 4,000 servers at the company, causing millions of dollars in damage and shutting down Fannie Mae for a least a week. On the afternoon of Oct. 24, a Unix engineer was told he was being fired because of a scripting error he'd made earlier in the month, but he was allowed to work through the end of the day. Five days later, another Unix engineer at the data center discovered the malicious code hidden inside a legitimate script that ran automatically every morning at 9:00 a.m. Had it not been found, the FBI says the code would have executed a series of other scripts designed to block the company's monitoring system, disable access to the server on which it was running, then systematically wipe out all 4,000 Fannie Mae servers, overwriting all their data with zeroes.

• The relationship between photographers and police in Britain could worsen next month when new laws are introduced that allow for the arrest - and imprisonment - of anyone who takes pictures of officers 'likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.' A person found guilty of this offence could be liable to imprisonment for up to 10 years, and to a fine.The law is expected to increase the anti-terrorism powers used by police officers to stop photographers, including press photographers, from taking pictures in public places.
  

• The U.S. housing market lost $3.3 trillion in value last year and almost one in six owners with mortgages owed more than their homes were worth as the economy went into recession. The median estimated home price declined 11.6 percent in 2008 to $192,119 and homeowners lost $1.4 trillion in value in the fourth quarter alone. The U.S. economy shrank the most in the fourth quarter since 1982, contracting at a 3.8 percent annual pace, the Commerce Department said. Record foreclosures have pushed down prices as unemployment rose. More than 2.3 million properties got a default or auction notice or were seized by lenders last year.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are."-- Quentin Crisp

The Day's News...

• 

  Five Somali pirates drowned when a wave washed off their getaway boat as they squabbled over over how to split their $3 million ransom. The ransom had been paid to the pirates to end the world's biggest ship hijacking; the canister full of cash was parachuted onto the gargantuan oil tanker Sirius Star, which was captured in November with 25 crew members, 450 nautical miles southeast of Kenya in the boldest seizure to date by Somali pirates.

• Japan's new biometric immigration control system has been breached by a South Korean women who had been deported in 2007 for overstaying her visa and then slipped back in. She successfully got past the fingerprint system by purchasing a forged passport in South Korea and getting a piece of clear tape to put over her finger. The tape contained a fingerprint of someone who was not in the Japanese database.

• C.S.A. Patron Saint Jeff Monson--world champion submission grappler, UFC heavyweight championship challenger, and committed long-time anarchist--seems to have displayed some seriously bad judgment recently: a warrant has been issued for his arrest in Washington state after a photographer for ESPN The Magazine, who was with Monson as part of a profile for the magazine, took a picture of him apparently in the act of spray-painting anarchist and anti-war graffiti on the Washington state capitol building. The photo was published along with the profile in the December 29th issue of the magazine.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of the Day: "However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."--Winston Churchill
  

Actions In Oakland In Response To Police Shooting

As you may be aware, a cop shot and killed a man in Oakland, California on New Year's Day. The details make the incident particularly galling for many: the man, an unarmed African American, was laying prone beneath two cops while they restrained and handcuffed him. A third cop standing above them pulled his firearm and shot the victim, Oscar Grant, in the back, killing him. The incident, which took place on a commuter train platform, was witnessed by dozens of people and filmed from multiple angles, allowing news and evidence of the killing to spread rapidly.

On Wednesday, January 7th, a week after the killing, a protest march convened at the train station where the killing occurred. After listening to speeches for two hours, the crowd began marching towards downtown Oakland. At a nearby intersection, the windows of a police car were smashed and a dumpster was set on fire. Riot police arrived soon after and attempted to disperse the crowd with tear gas and targeted arrests. Marchers retreated and splintered, with some groups smashing the windows of businesses both local and corporate, torching two cars and smashing the windows of many others, and burning more dumpsters. As the rioting continued into the night, over a hundred marchers were eventually cornered by a large number of riot cops and arrested.

Yesterday, the windows of an Oakland police station were smashed during the night by anarchists. Further demonstrations are planned and solidarity actions are likely to continue in the coming days.

Corporate media reports of the mini-riot have focused on the damage caused to locally-owned small businesses and the destruction of private vehicles. The windows of a business called Creative African Braids were smashed, and the car of a local school teacher, a man taking tap-dancing lessons, and a local reporter were smashed or set on fire, all apparently at random. Part of what has attracted the media to this element of the story is that the owners of the damaged cars and businesses are mostly African Americans, as were many of the marchers seen carrying out the vandalism, muddying the racial narrative. It remains unclear how local businesses came to be targeted and by whom.

Undoubtedly, this aspect of the events in Oakland will cause the greatest controversy among anarchists. As the rhetoric of European insurrectionists has gained prominence in the American anarchist community, the literal manifestation of bombastic slogans like "Burn them all, big and small!" is bound to make some reconsider their language. Insurrectionary ideologues will likely accuse those made quesy by the sight of smashed Black-owned small businesses of bourgeois spinelessness or some other liberal pejorative.

Hopefully, a discussion of strategy will prevail in this debate. As long as an ideological commitment to one form of action or another remains the norm, whether pacifist or insurrectionary, strategy will be dictated by dogma instead of actual conditions. It's possible to have no sympathy whatsoever for small-time capitalists and still argue that destroying cars and stores at random, regardless of who does it, makes for bad strategy. It's also possible to argue the opposite and not have a fetish for window breaking. The C.S.A. encourages anarchists to discuss these events on their strategic merits rather than the dictates of their preferred doctrine.

As perceptive readers can probably discern from the tone above, the C.S.A. sees the destruction of random small businesses and the cars of tap-dancing students as a strategic mistake. The targeted attacks that have occurred in Oakland on cop cars, police stations, and the symbols of global capital such as banks, are far more effective at conveying the motivations of anarchists, and make a small but real dent in the institutions that actively reproduce capital and the state.

Lending support to undirected vandalism is often a misguided attempt to discover or encourage a direct action ethos among non-anarchists. But ignoring the context of actions and focusing exclusively on tactics is folly (Kristallnacht was a riot that involved a lot of window smashing, too.)

As a matter of power dynamics, hair braiding businesses probably cannot compare as oppressive institutions to cops and banks, and their wholesale destruction would lead no where. Anarchists who wish to participate meaningfully in solidarity actions ought to focus their attention on the institutions in their own communities that enforce hierarchies of oppression and privilege, whether those are physical spaces or social dynamics or something else entirely, not soft targets that are incidentally located along a parade route.

Riot Cop Shot in Athens

From the BBC: "A Greek riot policeman has been left seriously injured after being shot in central Athens.

Greece's police chief says bullet cases matched the Kalashnikov rifle used in another attack on police in December. The officer, 21-year-old Diamandis Matzounis, was part of a unit guarding the culture ministry when the pre-dawn attack took place.

Greece's police chief, Lt Gen Vassilis Tsiatouras, said an automatic rifle and a handgun were used, and that a hand grenade was also thrown during the attack.

He said the rifle was the same as that used on 23 December, when two gunmen hidden within the grounds of Athens University opened fire at a riot police bus as it passed by. (Editors' Note: Either the BBC or the Greek police are being disingenuous here. The only way to know if two bullets were fired from the same gun is to compare the 'fingerprint' of tiny scratches left on two intact, untouched bullets, a difficult and imprecise process that requires lab testing. All that can be reasonably claimed at this point is that the two bullets were of the same caliber, in this case 7.62x39mm, the caliber of an AK-47, the most common firearm on the planet. The AP makes even more far reaching claims here, citing ever-reliable and preternaturally rapid Greek ballistics tests. If that matters at all.)

The incident took place in the Exarchia district, close to where Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot last month. "

Occupied London is reporting that cops immediately moved in to Exarchia and began raiding, beating, and arresting people in bars, cafes, and anarchist community spaces. At least 72 and as many as 100 people have been detained.

A piece posted on Athens Indymedia, translated here, speculates that the two shooting incidents were orchestrated by the state to "neutralize the climate [created by] the shooting, in cold blood, of Alexis Grigoropoulos, and to create once again some sympathy for the police - who at the moment are spat on in the streets by pretty much everyone for anything they do. They are trying to create, at the same time, an atmosphere of violence and terrorism for all the rest who resist in any possible way."

While the C.S.A. detests conspiracy theories and generally believes that the state is blamed far too often for behavior that is usually just wing-nutty or misguided (which could often describe those who do the blaming as well, in addition to lazy), the jury would seem to still be out on this one. Either those responsible are wing-nutty and misguided, or some element within the Greek state is feeling desperate. Regardless, the Greek cops will undoubtedly make the most of this in their effort to restore equilibrium.

Of course, the percise motivations and identities of the shooters is no more important in this case than in the shooting of Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Hopefully Greek anarchists can avoid being sucked into the melodrama of bourgeois justice and will continue building on their impressive gains of the last month.

The Day's News...

• The Israel Defense Force has begun calling houses before they are targeted for destruction. Palestinians reported that in some cases, the caller leaves a message on their voice mail warning that the IDF will bomb any house where weapons or rockets are found. During the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Israelis used text messages to warn residents of incoming rockets. Last week, as the airstrikes against Hamas began thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons. Hamas has been sending Hebrew-language text messages to Israelis' phones, warning them that "all cities" will be threatened by the terror group's rocket attacks.

• The FBI said on Monday it had launched one of the largest hiring blitzes in its 100-year history, involving 2,100 professional staff vacancies and 850 special agents, aimed at filling its most critical vacancies. The agency said it currently has more than 12,800 agents and about 18,400 other employees. FBI Assistant Director John Raucci of the Human Resources division said the federal law enforcement agency is seeking to bring more people on board with skills in critical areas, especially language fluency and computer science.

• A French warship captured 19 Somali pirates on Sunday when it came to the rescue of two cargo ships threatened in the Gulf of Aden. The French naval vessel "Jean de Vienne" was on patrol off the Somali coast as part of a European Union anti-piracy force when it came to the rescue of a Croatian cargo vessel and a Panamanian ship crossing the Gulf of Aden.The European Union set up an anti-piracy naval task force under British command last month involving warships and aircraft from several nations in the first such naval operation of its kind. The 19 Somali pirates, armed and equipped with tools to board the vessels, were captured and have been handed over to Somali authorities, the statement said.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die."--Michel Houellebecq
  

Seeking Contributions For A Timeline Of Events In Greece

The C.S.A. is putting together a timeline of events in Greece over the past month for the forthcoming issue of Rolling Thunder. Any readers interested in contributing to this article should post items in the comments of this post with the date of the event, description, and a link, if possible.

Apologies for not updating recently; things have been busy at The Center. In addition to a spate of print articles for a variety of outlets, we're working on a complete overhaul of this site that will result in a major upgrade over Blogger, with much improved functionality and superior aesthetics. More details to come.

And remember, tips for news articles are always accepted and often published. Send them to lobsterbeard@gmail.com

C.S.A. Position Paper: The Greek Riots

It's been a very busy few weeks. What has happened in Greece is momentous. But since Christmas, the flow of news has slowed considerably, as evidenced by the shorter, sparser postings here, so this seems as good a time as any to reflect on these events and their implications for anarchists in the U.S. (with apologies to all of our new readers from around the world, although hopefully you'll get something out of this too.)

As we've learned from this excellent interview over at the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective blog, what happened in Greece was not accidental. In fact, the rioting, firebombing, street-fighting, occupying, looting, and marching was largely initiated and coordinated by autonomous affinity groups of anarchists, some more defined than others, with roots in the occupations and social centers around Greece. This should come as no surprise to observers; these actions bear all the hallmarks of non-hierarchical self-organization, from the break-away marches to the nighttime arsons to the spray paint. And it worked, beautifully.

If there's a lesson to be learned from such a structure--beyond a confirmation of our long-held belief that affinity groups form the basis of anarchy in action--it's that projects that sustain our communities are critical components of our fights elsewhere. That is not to say that mimicry of the Greek model will lead to success. Many anarchists have found that the maintenance of squats or occupations or social centers or infoshops in the U.S. is more draining than it is sustaining, and the events in Greece don't invalidate those criticisms; there may be reasons why such spaces are easier to maintain in Greece (and the rest of Europe for that matter.) What it does prove, though, is that we must build a sustainable, multi-generational anarchist community through projects that nurture and embolden our ranks over the long-term if we are to launch meaningful attacks on capital and the state. Inevitably that will look different here than it does in Greece; our task is to figure it out for ourselves.

Perhaps the most crucial point in the interview, however, is that anarchists in Greece have consciously worked to end their subcultural identification. It is worth quoting at length:

After ’93 we had a strong tendency in the Greek anarchist movement—accompanied by many serious internal fights—that eliminated the influence of “subcultural” styles inside the movement. This means that there is no punk, rock, metal or whatever anarchist identity in the Greek anarchist movement—you can be whatever you like, you can listen to whatever music you like, you can have whatever style or fashion you like, but that is not a political identity...The separation from subcultural identity politics made people understand that to call yourself an anarchist it takes much more serious participation, planning, creativity, and action than just wearing a t-shirt with the antichrist on it and walking around punk concerts drinking beer and taking hypnotic pills. Now there is an understanding that to call yourself an anarchist you have to come to demonstrations, to come out into the streets... Also, that you should participate every week in one, two, or three different assemblies with people for one, or two, or three different preparations of different actions, plans, or struggles to call yourself an anarchist. You have to be friends with people you trust 100% to plan anything dangerous, you have to be aware and informed about anything that is happening in this world to decide what the proper course of action is, you have to be crazy and enthusiastic, to feel that you can do incredible things—you have to be ready to give your life, your time, your years in a struggle that will never end.

Unfortunately, this could not be a less accurate description of anarchists in the U.S. Most anarchists here are content to languish in a subcultural ghetto comprised of amateur fashion critics and energetic music consumers. The strong subcultural affiliation of anarchist organizing in the U.S. is perhaps its greatest weakness, ensuring its inaccessibility and irrelevance to most people, even those with strongly-held anti-authoritarian politics. What is also obvious to most observers is that subcultures are rooted in fads, and only a tiny fringe of eccentrics remain attached to a dated fad. We cannot build a workable anarchist community if no one believes it has long-term viability, and our subcultural affiliation is in large-part responsible for that mostly accurate perception. Glorifying consumption habits, whether in clothes, music, or reading material, is not a strategy, it is a fetish, and in this case, a fetish that nullifies a great deal of otherwise valuable work. Pro-actively working to end this affiliation is necessary if anarchists are to become a force in American society, as they have become in Greece by doing the same.

On a different front, it is worth noting that the Greeks employed a combination of formal and informal consensus process. In the streets, the casual consensus of affinity groups gave them the mobility and flexibility necessary to carry out daring attacks and to make strategic retreats. In holding daily assemblies of occupied buildings, they employed the more formal process necessary for large groups of people. In both cases, the lack of centralized leadership, whether from individuals or federations, was pivotal to keeping apace of a dynamic and complex situation. Such a mix of non-hierarchical processes is nothing new, but in the U.S. it has largely been used in the context of summit actions. A greater awareness of process and its suitable deployment in everyday activities might prove fruitful for anarchists here.

Another important point raised in the interview is that many non-anarchists, especially youths, adopted direct action tactics due to the anarchist influence in youth struggles over the last four years. Anarchists in the U.S. have experienced a similar phenomenon with the adoption of consensus process by countless leftist and reformist groups as the de facto form of decision-making due to the influential role of anarchists in the anti-globalization movement. The point is that we can define the tactical framework for all radicals by engaging with others on our own terms. Anarchists did not spread consensus process by compromising with liberals and giving them extra votes at spokescouncils; we did it by proving the efficacy of our tactic while meaningfully engaging with people beyond our tiny subculture. The result was the widespread diffusion of our tactic and a larger audience for our ideas (in fact, some people arrived at anarchism simply by delving deeply into consensus.)

This is especially critical given the unprecedented attention paid to anarchists in the last three weeks. Even the most error-ridden, sensationalist news pieces have been forced to refer to "self-styled" anarchists as important actors in the revolt, bringing the term into the public consciousness for the first time in a good while. The challenge, and thus the opportunity, comes from the fact that anarchists are presented as being "over there"--in Greece--someplace far-off and exotic, unlike the mundane cities and towns most of us inhabit. By taking action locally and creating a public presence for anarchists, we can piggyback on the publicity afforded the Greeks and link anarchists here and there in the minds of the public.

By making our actions militant and avoiding symbolic protests which only serve to reinforce most peoples' sense that resistance is futile, we can create expectations for what anarchists do. This will, perhaps most crucially, shape our perception of ourselves as well. The Greeks have set a high bar for anarchist behavior; by rising to meet it, we can create a set of expectations for ourselves which will become our own standard for effective revolt.

Speaking of which, the call and response of international solidarity during the past three weeks illustrates the importance of building and maintaining contacts abroad. Greek anarchists and non-anarchists alike were impressed by the intensity and timeliness of solidarity actions in places like Spain and Germany, and indeed the media has formed a budding obsession with the use of mobile technology in spreading the word about the riots. But the truth is we could have done better in the U.S. The Greeks opened a window of opportunity for anarchists around the world to take action under a powerful spotlight. By reducing the layers of mediation and forming more direct contacts with anarchists elsewhere, such coordination will become faster and simpler.

In terms of what we can do in the very near term--aside from solidarity events, some of which have been powerful, other of which have been mundane--we can focus on January 20th. Even if nothing happens in Greece between now and then--and the smart money seems to believe something will--there is still plenty of momentum and opportunity to carry us forward. If ever there was a time to re-announce our presence and usher in an era of anti-political action, January 20th would seem to be the day. While some might object to synchronizing our efforts to the cycle of electoral politics, the date gives us a beautiful opportunity to convincingly and forcefully proclaim that, indeed, whoever they elect, we are ungovernable.

Furthermore, we can make the "Hope From People" call a swan song for anarchist leftism, rather than the beginning of a cowardly and counter-productive retreat into the failed bourgeois politics of mass and ideology. We can do that by outshining them, which shouldn't be hard since most people will ignore them. As has been proven decisively by our peers in Greece, anarchists can be as relevant and dangerous as we want to be--if we are organized, daring, and accountable. By holding ourselves to that standard, we too can make this moment our own.

Major Rioting in Greece (12/26/08)

Yeah, I took yesterday off; sue me. Updates will now continue as usual.

• I'm not sure how Uri Gordon got this mostly excellent piece published in Haaretz, but it's almost a call to arms. Excerpt: "These are no single-issue protests or vague grievances. This is full-blooded revolutionary anarchism.
  
  The mainstream media simply cannot stomach the notion that what is happening in Greece is by now a proactive social revolt against the capitalist system itself and the state institutions that reinforce it. It is time to acknowledge that the Greek anarchist movement has successfully seized the initiative after the killing of one of its own, framing the issues in a way that appeals to a larger - albeit mostly young - public...
  
  Will the riots in Greece lead to an anti-capitalist revolution? Only if the opening they have torn in the social fabric widens and deepens, involving ever-growing sections of society and creating new grass-roots institutions alongside the destruction of the old. This seems unlikely in the short term, as bureaucratic labor unions and the Communist Party attempt to domesticate the revolt and cut their own political coupon with their demand to disarm the police.
  
  But there is no doubt that a new benchmark has been set for what can be expected in Western countries during the coming era of economic depression and environmental decay. European governments will no doubt ratchet up their policies of surveillance and repression in anticipation of growing civil unrest. But that may not be enough to keep the population subdued, as crisis after crisis calls the existing arrangement of power and privilege into question."
  

• Here's a good report-back, including photos, from the lightly controversial solidarity march in San Francisco.

• As usual, CrimethInc. gets the goods. Here's a very insightful interview with a Greek anarchist on the riots, the structures used to support them, and the organizing that allowed them to happen in the first place. If anyone else with first-hand knowledge of the events in Greece wants to answer this same set of questions, feel free to send your answer to lobsterbeard@gmail.com. I'll post them here.
  

• Here are two documents posted on Occupied London from the School of Economics occupation and the Athens Polytechnic occupation, respectively. The first is an analysis of contemporary capitalism and the second an explanation for the end of the occupation.
  

• A Greek government official's car was firebombed in front of his house on Friday while assailants threw a Molotov cocktail at a bank and another group attacked a police car, authorities said. The government car used by a junior environment minister, Stavros Kaloyannis, was hit by a petrol bomb early Friday while it was parked in front of his house in the northwestern city of Ioannina.
  
  Assailants also threw a molotov cocktail at a branch of the Greek Farm Bank in Psychiko, a suburb of Athens, causing minor damage.
  
  In the evening, a group of youths banged up a police car that was passing in front of an Athens hospital, where they had gathered in support of a union member who was hospitalised there after being attacked by unknown assailants.
  
  The police officers fled and no one was injured.
  

Major Rioting in Greece (12/24/08)

• Greece has acquired an advanced security system from the United States.
  A leading U.S. firm has delivered a command, control, communications, coordination and integration system to Greek authorities. Science Applications International Corp. said the C4I system would coordinate police, coast guard, fire and ambulance services. "System acceptance is an important milestone in the implementation of this state-of-the-art system, and properly recognizes the tremendous efforts of the Greek state and SAIC to deliver an effective solution," SAIC executive vice president Donald Foley said.

• Here's another installment of the detailed and illuminating daily reports "dim" has been posting on the situation in Athens.
  

• From a conservative Athens newspaper: Hundreds of self-professed anarchists who have been squatting in university buildings over the past two weeks were reportedly packing their bags. According to sources, the premises of the National Technical University of Athens and the Athens University law school were slowly emptying.

  University rectors were due to start taking stock today of the damage wreaked during the sit-ins. Sources said windows had been smashed and chunks had been hacked out of marble staircases and floors for use as missiles against riot police.

• An anarchist group calling itself Nocturnal Arson Insurrection yesterday claimed responsibility for a bomb blast targeting the offices of far-right party LAOS in the coastal suburb of Alimos during yesterday’s early hours. The homemade device, comprising several gas canisters, caused damage when it detonated, but no injuries were reported.

• From the International Herald Tribune: "Ballistics tests show two military-type automatic rifles were used in an attack on a riot-police bus in Athens, authorities said Wednesday.

  While street violence sparked by the police shooting of a teenager has eased, the discovery raised fears that far-left extremist groups may be taking advantage of the unrest to renew attacks on the police. Despite a lull in violence over the past few days, protesters have vowed to keep on the streets.
  

  "Christmas is off this year, the Virgin had an abortion," read a slogan painted on a central Athens wall.

  On Christmas Eve Wednesday, about 700 mainly young protesters marched peacefully through Athens' main shopping district to demand the release of those arrested during the rioting. Demonstrators sang carols with protest lyrics and scattered fliers, as dozens of riot police looked on.

  Chanting "Priests, thieves, pedophiles," protesters sprayed slogans on metal boardings outside Athens Cathedral, painted anarchist logos on the 19th century building's marble columns and tore down a Greek flag.
  

  Cathedral officials said they were canceling a scheduled Christmas Eve service after the vandalism.

  Riot police cordoned off central Syntagma Square to protect the capital's main Christmas tree, which replaces one burnt by rioters two weeks ago. However, the protest ended without further incident."

Major Rioting in Greece (12/23/08)

• Occupied London reports that the various university occupations, now 17 days old, are expected to end later this week, due to fatigue.

• Here's a surprisingly long list of solidarity actions in Russia, including three in Siberia.
  

• Tests comparing the substances found on the bullet that killed 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos on December 6 and materials taken from the scene of the shooting in Exarchia, which sparked this month’s riots, suggest that the policeman charged with the boy’s murder shot at him and not in the air, as he has claimed.

  The results of the laboratory tests, due to be made public next week, reportedly suggest that the bullet hit a surface less than 40 centimeters above the ground before entering the boy’s body. “There is no evidence that a shot was fired in the air,” a source told Kathimerini.

• Here's a report on the campus asylum issue from a conservative Greek newspaper:
  

  The government yesterday refused to take a stance on the thorny issue of university asylum, saying it was an issue for the judiciary and academic community to tackle, as the capital’s main university faculties remained occupied by hundreds of students and self-styled anarchists.

  Meanwhile university deans told Kathimerini that the sit-ins would probably end over Christmas so it would be best to leave things alone.

  “Lifting university asylum is not an issue for the government,” said government spokesman Evangelos Antonaros, adding that “those whose responsibility it is to maintain order and the smooth operation of universities will do their duty.”

  Antonaros was reacting to a decision by an Athens prosecutor on Saturday night to send police into the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), which self-styled anarchists had been using as a base from which to attack riot officers.

  The planned intervention was averted by the NTUA’s dean, Constantinos Moutzouris, who said he feared the presence of police may reignite tension. “We believe that constant dialogue and persuasion are the best solution even in extreme, condemnable situations,” he told Kathimerini.

• More than 3,000 protesters chanting "Cops, Pigs, Murderers" marched through Athens on Tuesday. Earlier Tuesday, shots were fired at a riot police bus in Athens. None of the 19 officers on board was injured, authorities said, but the attack raised concern that violence against police could escalate. Police said the bus came under attack in Athens while passing a university campus. Authorities said they had recovered seven 7.62-millimeter bullet casings.
  

  Tuesday's march kept many stores in downtown Athens closed. A group of youths overturned a police car, but the incident ended without further violence. Protesters set fire to a papier-mache model of a pig wearing a policeman's hat, before the rally ended peacefully. Another protest is planned Wednesday's in the city's main shopping district.

• A group of high-school students staged a rally in front of the education ministry slated to be their last before the holidays.

  The students, who are expected to decide in early January whether or not to pursue their protests over the teenager's death, claim they continue to occupy about 700 schools and several universities in Greece. The education ministry claims only about 100 are occupied.

The Day's News...

• Home sales declined dramatically last month and housing prices posted their sharpest decline in four decades as a rapidly slowing economy discouraged many potential buyers from tip-toeing into the market. Sales of existing homes declined 8.6 percent last month, to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.49 million, according to the National Association of Realtors, a trade association. The median price of a home fell 13 percent in November , to $181,300 from $208,000 a year ago. That was the lowest price since February 2004.

• Shoplifters and employees who steal walked away with $34.8 billion in 2007, or an average of $350 per U.S. household, according to the National Retail Federation in Washington, D.C. The shoplifting portion is estimated at $12 billion. As the economy has worsened in the last few months, some retailers say they are seeing that figure grow 5 to 20 percent. Cities and states also lose vital tax dollars. The Retail Industry Leaders Association estimates that Missouri lost $27 million and Kansas lost $14 million in sales tax revenue due to shoplifting in 2007. (Brief commentary: shoplifting does make a difference.)

• A counterfeit casino chip scam has cost one casino more than $100,000 in recent weeks. A cashier had detected several $100 chips that were slighter thicker than the casino’s own and did not fit properly into storage racks. No one has been charged yet, said Lt. Bob Zubeck, the patrol’s gambling enforcement supervisor for the state’s western district. “These were really high quality, the best I’ve seen,” he said.
  

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."-- Thomas Jefferson

Major Rioting in Greece (12/22/08)

Sorry for the late start today folks...As usual, this post will be continually updated as news becomes available.

• Here's a report-back on a solidarity march and rally in Ankara, Turkey.

• Here's a report on vandalism in Milwaukee in solidarity with the Greek riots.

• Here are the Greeks once again setting a high bar for this type of action (under the fantastic headline "Cretan Attacks"): "Two banks and a car dealership were attacked early yesterday in Iraklion, Crete. Police said that assailants threw petrol bombs at a branch of the Pancretan Cooperative Bank at about 3 a.m. The branch was destroyed in the ensuing blaze. A branch of Alpha Bank was then attacked before the arsonists moved onto the car dealership. Nobody was injured in the attacks."

• Here's a report-back on some solidarity vandalism in Kansas City and a march in Portland.
  

• Here's a report-back from a solidarity march in St. Louis that got rowdy and ended with six arrests. And here's a video of some of the arrests from a local news affiliate.
  

• Greek police experts on Sunday carried out an on-site forensic investigation at the spot where Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead, trying to gather more evidence related to the case.

  The investigation lasted about two to three hours and was conducted in the presence of the 9th examining magistrate who is in charge of the case.

  Athens News Agency said that the additional specialized investigation, which seeks to find evidence to complement the findings of the ballistic report in light of eyewitness accounts claiming that the officer was aiming directly at the group of youths, was requested by lawyers representing the family.

• Here's some video of recent street fighting in Exarchia.

• Here's Occupied London's update on the current state of the Athens Polytechnic occupation:

  Last night was calm at the Polytechnic. As mainstream media report, the academic asylum at the campus has already been suspended - which means it is now entirely up to the police to decide if they will raid. Until recently, it used to be that the law, preventing the police and army from entering university grounds, could only be suspended after an explicit decision of the university senate. However, according to a voted amendment, an attorney general can also order its suspension should there be felonies committed in the university grounds and within 48 hours since this happens. Given that the most recent clashes with the police took place on Saturday night (Molotovs thrown against them: a felony) they have until tonight to attempt to raid the university, if they so decide...Meanwhile, the occupied GSEE (trade union) building was handed back to the GSEE yesterday, following a decision by the occupation’s assembly.

• Here's a video news report (in Greek) on yesterday's events.

• Here are some photos and on the ground info on the action in Germany.
  

• From Der Spiegel: While police and demonstraters continued to battle on the streets of Athens over the weekend, German police broke up a large sympathy protest after it grew violent.

  Scores of German riot police confronted an estimated 950 protesters in Hamburg over the weekend who were expressing their sympathy for student protesters in Greece by marching under the banner of "Solidarity is a weapon."

  Police reported that the protest actions -- which allegedly included numerous members of the far-left anarchist scene -- were broken up on Saturday after they escalated to rioting, with special police units and journalists being pelted with bottles, iron rods and fireworks. Four police officers were reported injured.Protest actions, some violent, also continued to bring chaos to the streets of Athens over the weekend as police battled riots and lawlessness sparked by the Dec. 6 police killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

  On Saturday, a memorial service to the slain boy turned violent and led to scattered groups of masked youths showering police with rocks and Molotov cocktails and igniting at least six police vehicles and numerous garbage containers. As black smoke lofted above the skyline of the vast city, heavily armed police broke up crowds of protesters with tear gas.

  Other incidents Saturday included the fire-bombing and destruction of a credit-reporting agency and clashes around the 18-meter-high (60-foot) Christmas tree in Syntagma Square between police and protesters trying to hang trash bags from its branches. The original tree was burned down by protesters on Dec. 8, the third day of riots, and replaced soon thereafter.

Major Rioting in Greece (12/21/08)

• Here's a report on the day's events in Greece, focusing on Athens.
  

• A band of demonstrators, many wearing black masks, stormed a bustling San Francisco mall Saturday evening, upending garbage cans and foliage and damaging crystal merchandise at one kiosk. An estimated 50 to 75 people were involved in the disruption at Westfield San Francisco Centre, police said.

  The disruption began around 6:30 p.m. as holiday shoppers crowded the mall on the last Saturday before Christmas. Some protesters threw food, police said. Others tried to toss a large planter onto the food court below.

  According to mall management, the protesters were part of a "Solidarity with Greek Uprising" demonstration, which began in the Mission District earlier in the afternoon. An international day of action was called on Saturday to protest the death of a young man in Greece in early December.
  

  A police source said five or six protesters were arrested for misdemeanor vandalism.

• Newspaper headlines in Athens focused on speculation that the current government might fall or be forced to reorganize.
  

• Six police vehicles were torched by unidentified hood-wearing assailants wielding petrol bombs in the west Athens district of Nea Philadelphia in the early hours of Sunday morning. The vehicles were parked outside the building of the police accounting department at Patriarchou Constantinou street, which also suffered damage in the attack.

  At around the same time, rioting and clashes with riot police continued in the area around the Athens Polytechnic (National Technical University of Athens), with protestors again lobbing petrol bombs at police.

  Earlier, a anti-racism rally in Syntagma Square had led to another violent confrontation between protestors and riot police when a group tried to deposit bags of rubbish at the foot of the new Christmas Tree set up in the square by the Athens municipality, replacing the tree torched on the first day of rioting triggered by the death of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos at the hands of police. Police used tear gas to disperse the protestors.

  Protests over the events in Greece were also reported from abroad. Dozens were arrested and four police officers were injured in Hamburg on Saturday during clashes that broke out on the margins of a rally in support of the protest movement in Greek high schools.

  There was also a small protest by some 15 demonstrators who picketed the Greek Consulate in New York to protest against police brutality worldwide.

• Occupied London is reporting that the administration of Athens Polytechnic has bypassed the usual process and given the police indirect authority to enter the campus:
  

  A few moments ago one of the pro-vice-chancellors of the Athens Polytechnic announced to the people inside the occupied building that the control of the building is no longer with the university senate and that it has been passed on to an attorney general instead. Anarchist radio 98 FM reports that the senate has ordered the university guards to leave their positions.

  There is a general assembly happening right now at the Athens Polytechnic, with people deciding whether they should leave the building or not.

  What the pro-vice-chancellor claimed to have happened is absurd and 100% illegal even by the state’s own laws. What we are all fearing is that a police operation inside the Polytechnic is imminent. This would be the first time in over a decade that such an operation takes place - and the first time ever that police enter university grounds with a mass operation without prior permission by the senate.

  If the occupiers remain and the police do attempt to clear the campus, the backlash from such an action could be intense. A defiant statement has now been issued calling for a mass convergence on the campus.
  

• Four gas stations were vandalized yesterday in Tacoma, Washington in solidarity with the Greek riots: "Early on the morning of the 20th, in memory of the 15 year old hero Alexandros Grigoropoulos and all those murdered by the police and other defenders of this false and rotting order, and in memory of our own lives, fuel hoses were slashed, pump consoles were destroyed, and the message 'walk to work and murder your boss' was left at two Shell stations and two Chevron stations in Tacoma."

• Here's a TV news report, containing some misinformation, on a solidarity protest in Turkey.
  

Major Rioting in Greece (12/20/08)

• Here's two separate video angles (1, 2) of the action around Athens' Christmas tree today. Next year in Rockefeller Center!
  

• As our commenter points out, here is a report on today's action in Greece, focusing on Athens.
  

• Greece’s most recent economic data was released today, further taking the wind out of the sails of the deterministic economic desperation narrative pushed by the corporate media: “Unemployment in the third trimester of 2008 fell to 7.2 percent, down from 7.9 percent in the same period in 2007, the Greek national statistics service said on Thursday. This is the lowest level of unemployment on record in the 3rd trimester of any year since records began in 1998.”

• Here's a very thoughtful, intelligent analysis of the situation in Greece and its implications for anarchists in the U.S. from the CrimethInc. blog. Worth discussing at length.
  

• The first 50 or so photos here are from today.
  

• From the AP: "Hundreds of rioters battled police in central Athens on Saturday, fire-bombing a credit reporting agency and attacking the city's Christmas tree two weeks after the police shooting of a teenager set off Greece's worst unrest in decades.

  Saturday's violence followed a memorial gathering at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) where 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos died Dec. 6, in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia.

  The rioters, using the National Technical University of Athens as a base, launched attacks against police, throwing rocks and petrol bombs and erecting roadblocks.

  Saturday evening, masked men broke into the building housing the offices of Tiresias SA, a company that keeps records of delinquent debtors and cardholders, and firebombed the company's offices. The fire was extinguished but the company's offices were destroyed, witnesses said. (Note: this action earns high marks)
  

  At around 4 p.m. Saturday, about 150 youth attacked the Christmas tree at Syntagma Square in central Athens, hanging trash bags from its branches before clashing with riot police. The square was cleared within two hours. At least three news photographers were injured by police batons. The tree survived the attack.

  Police said about 1,000 people turned out for a demonstration in Hamburg, Germany. Bottles were thrown at police during and after the protest, and four officers were lightly injured; nine people were detained."

• Stores in the northern and southern suburbs have seen a sharp dip in activity, as forecasts that shoppers avoiding the riot-shaken center of Athens would turn to them ended up being inaccurate.

  Managers and employees at shops in The Mall, Athens, the popular commercial complex in Maroussi, tell Kathimerini that their turnover has plunged by between 30 and 90 percent this year. The drop is partially attributed to the impact of the economic crisis but also to the riots in central Athens which, they say, has had a “numbing” effect on consumers.

• Here's the latest from Athens, via Occupied London:
  

  "The plan for today was for many small demonstrations to take place around the entire city of Athens, so that this decentralised action could bring the city to a standstill. There were demonstrations in the neighbourhoods of Gyzi, Peristeri (were the second student was shot), Chaidari, Petralona, Nea Smyrni, Victoria, Vyronas, Illion (that’s tomorrow) and in the cities of Thessaloniki, Heraclion and Larisa.

  Fresh “anarcho-transportation” actions took place at the metro stations of Brahami and Ayios Antonios. In the last few days, many stations around the city have been visited by small anarchist groups that sabotage the vending machines, handing out leaflets (”the self-organisation of the passengers will bring the end of the ticket inspectors”…)

  At least four more radio stations were occupied today (”Best,” “En Lefko”, “Athina 9.84″ and “Republic 100.3″; texts against state violence and in solidarity with the arrestees of the riots were read.

  Responding to a callout by the Athens Polytechnic occupation, we will be gathering at the point of Alexis’ assassination in the next couple of hours. We’ve been reading the reports from the solidarity actions across the world. Keep them coming. The states murder the people but tonight, a night against state murders, is a night of the people. This is our night."

• Here's a very good, freshly posted summary of yesterday's actions in and around Athens. Most of the events described here were not mentioned in corporate media reports, but this source has proved reliable.
  

• From the AP: "Protesters attacked a city-sponsored Christmas tree in central Athens Saturday, tossing garbage and hanging trash bags from its branches before clashing with riot police.

  In the northern city of Thessaloniki, a small-group of self-styled anarchists occupied a cinema in the city's main square and threw cakes and candy at Mayor Vassilis Papageorgopoulos and one of his deputies. The mayor was attending a Christmas-related event distributing the sweets to children with sickle-cell anemia, when the rioters seized the stand and threw its contents at the city officials.

  The Christmas tree protest had been advertised as part of a day of events in Greece and around the world exactly two weeks since a 15-year-old was shot dead by police.

  The crowd of about 150 clashed with dozens of police shortly after 4 p.m. after throwing garbage at the tree in Athens' central Syntagma Square. Riot police used pepper spray on the protesters.

  The square's first Christmas tree was burned to the ground on Dec. 8, the worst day of rioting in the Athens center.

  Another gathering was set for Saturday night at the site where teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot dead in the central neighborhood of Exarchia on Dec. 6. A similar gathering the previous Saturday ended with self-styled anarchists armed with rocks, iron bars and Molotov cocktails clashing with tear-gas-throwing riot police."

• Here's an incomplete list of announced solidarity events happening today. If you don't see something happening in your town or these events don't appeal to you, go make something happen on your own or with friends. We have the power to build on this momentum; let's not miss a golden opportunity.
  

  Atlanta - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 10:00 - 14:00
  * Location: Tower Place, Suite 1670 3340, Peachtree Rd., N.E., Atlanta, GA 30326, United States
  * Info: protest at the Greek consulate

  Napoli - 20 December 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 10:30
  * Location: Piazza del Gesù, Napoli, Italia

  London - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 11:00 am
  * Location: Embassy of Greece, 1A Holland Park W11 3TP, London, UK

  Boston - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 12:00
  * Location: Fanueil Hall, Boston, MA

  Santa Barbara - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 12:00 (noon)
  * Location: Meet in front of Java Jones on Lower State, Santa Barbara, California, USA
  * Info: Solidarity/Awareness Rally to Support Greece and Spread the Word

  Katovice - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 12:00
  * Location: not sure, Katowice, Poland
  * Info: Początek demonstracji na ul. Stawowej (przy fontannie z żabą).

  Cardiff - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 12:00 (noon)
  * Location: Nye Bevan statue, Queen Street, Cardiff, Wales
  * Source: [1]

  Nuuk - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 12:00 - 14:00
  * Location: Nuuk, Greenland

  Leiden - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 12:00 - 17:00
  * Location: (ergens op de)
  Haarlemmerstraat, Leiden, the Netherands
  * Info: Open lucht expositie + 20.00 openbaar debat en vergadering, Linkse
  Kerk, Vrijplaats Koppenhinksteeg

  New York - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 12:30
  * Location: Starbucks at 1117 Lexington Ave & 78th, New York City, NY, USA
  * Info: march to the Greek embassy

  Ankara - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 12:30
  * Location: exact location see link, Greek Embassy, Ankara

  Dublin - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 13:00
  * Location: Meet top of Grafton Street, Dublin, Ireland
  * Info: Demo against Repression and State Murder, Solidarity with Greek Uprising!

  Pamplona - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 13:00
  * Location: Plaza de Mercaderes, Pamplona, Spain

  Warszawa - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 13:00
  * Location: Krakowskie Przedmieście 47/51, przed biurem Radcy Handlowego Grecji Warszawa, Poland

  Frankfurt - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 13:00
  * Location: Bockenheimer Warte, Frankfurt, Germany
  * Info: Demonstration

  Paris - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 13:00
  * Location: la Fontaine des Innocents (Les Halles) Paris, France

  Paris - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 13:00
  * Location: Place St Michel (devant la Fontaine), Paris, France

  São Paulo - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:00
  * Location: Consulado Grego no Rio, Praia do Flamengo 344, São Paulo, Brazil

  Cyprus - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:00
  * Location: Parliament, Nicosia, Cyprus

  Hamburg - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:00
  * Location: Uni Hamburg, Allende-Platz, Hamburg, Germany

  Toulouse - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:00
  * Location: Metro Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France

  Montauban - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:00
  * Location: devant la préfecture, Montauban, France

  Eugene - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:00
  * Location: Fairgrounds, Eugene OR, US
  * Info: Bring music, banners, and anything else you can think of.

  Roma - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:00
  * Location: Colosseo, Roma, Italia

  London - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:00
  * Location: Wood Green Library, N22, London, UK
  * Info: Demonstration against Police Brutality and State Terrorism

  Istanbul - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:30
  * Location: Taksim Square, Istanbul Turkey

  Lyon - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 14:30
  * Location: Place de la Comédie (devant l’opéra - hotel de ville), Lyon, France

  Lisbon - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 15:00
  * Location: Praça da Figueira, Lisboa, Portugal

  Washington DC - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 15:00
  * Location: Greek embassy, 2228 Massachusetts Ave., NW (Metro-Dupont Circle), Washington DC, US

  Porto - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 15:00
  * Location: Casa Viva, Praça do Marquês, 167, Porto, Portugal
  * Info: cultural actions, popular dinner

  Brest - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 15:00
  * Location: Place de la Liberté, Brest, France

  Ankara - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 15:00
  * Location: Yüksel Ankara, Turkey
  * Info: demo and press statement

  San Fransisco - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 16:00
  * Location: 24th and Mission, San Francisco, United States
  * Info: March and General Assembly

  Brussels - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 16:00
  * Location: Solbosh (ULB), Brussels, Belgium
  * Info: Demonstration

  Rochester MN - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 16:00
  * Location: Apache Mall, Rochester, MN, US
  * Info: anti-capitalist drum circle

  Toronto - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 16:00 - 18:00
  * Location: 365 Bloor Street, Toronto, Canada
  * Info: protest at Greek Consulate

  Flensburg - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 16:30
  * Location: Südermarkt, Flensburg, Germany
  * Info: demonstration for squats showing solidarity with the greek anarchists.

  Smyrna - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 Dec 2008
  * Time: 16.30
  * Location: Konak, Smyrna (Izmir), Turkey
  * Info: The march starts from Old Sumerbank building

  Portland - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 17:00
  * Location: North Park Blocks, Portland, United States

  Rochester NY - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 17:00
  * Location: Washington Square Park (181 S. Clinton Avenue), Rochester, NY, US

  Hamburg - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 17:00
  * Location: Neue ABC-Strasse, Hamburg, Germany
  * Info: troubles with authorities about time and place, see source link

  Syracuse - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 17:00
  * Location: Hanover Square 133 E Water St, Syracuse, NY 13202, US

  Milwaukee - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 18:00
  * Location: CCC, Milwaukee, US
  * Info: Infonight

  Barcelona - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 18:00
  * Location: Portal de l’Àngel, Barcelona, Spain

  Strasbourg - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 18:00
  * Location: Place Broglie (à coté du “christkindelmarik”), Strasbourg, France

  Copenhagen - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 18:00
  * Location: Hammerensgade, Copenhagen, Denmark
  * Info: Rally at the Greek embassy

  Edinburgh - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 18:00
  * Location: W.Parliament Square Edinburgh, Scotland

  Valladolid - 20 Dec 2008

  * Date: Saturday 20 December
  * Time: 19:30
  * Location: Fuente Dorada, Valladolid, Spain

• A Wells-Fargo bank in Fort Collins, Colorado had a window smashed last night. This action was in solidarity with the social insurrection in Greece and with immigrants and prisoners everywhere.
  

• Today is an international of solidarity. If there's an action you'd like to see announced here, send information, including links, to lobsterbeard@gmail.com or post in the comments. Here's the call: "Following a collective decision of the occupied Polytechnicʼs general assembly on Saturday 13/12, we called for global actions against state terrorism on Saturday 20/12. Because we do not forget and we do not forgive. Because the use of murderous violence by the state and bosses against those that struggle is not a localized phenomenon but rather a universal suffocating reality. Because zero tolerance and repressive terrorism, wage slavery, poverty and social exclusion, exploitation, oppression and social control are not constrained by borders – but neither is the struggle for freedom."

• Here are some more details on yesterday's interruption of a premiere at the National Theater in Athens:

  The premiere of the national theatre in Athens was interrupted by around one hundred people tonight - they took the stage and held out a banner reading “everyone to the streets”. The text distributed to the audience and actors read, among others: “now that you’ve deactivated your mobile phones, it’s about time you activated your consciousness”. Once hitting the streets, the crowd quickly formed an impromptu demonstration through central Athens - by the time we had reached Omonoia Square, our number had doubled and seemed enough to scare off the ten or so Zeta force policemen (motorcyclists) who drove off at our sight. The cast and director refused to continue the play, in solidarity with our struggle. Yesterday, a similar action took place at the Athens concert hall.

Major Rioting in Greece (12/19/08)

• About 50 protesters interrupted the premier of a play at a newly-renovated stage of Greece's National Theater in downtown Athens. They carried a banner reading ''Everyone on the streets - Free all arrested (protesters) now.''

• Liberals continue to predict that the Greek riots are a harbinger of things to come in the rest of the West.
  

• Here's a report-back with photos from a rowdy solidarity march last night in New York City. Good job folks!
  

• Here are three translated communiques from the on-going occupation of the Athens headquarters of the Greek business union GSEE.

• The first dozen pictures here are from today.

• This TIME Magazine article was posted here when it came out eight days ago, but it's worth taking another look at in light of the global day of solidarity called for tomorrow. Here's an excerpt:

  Utilizing both peaceful and violent tactics, the "Seattle Movement," as it came to be known, was a grass-roots effort to fight the ill effects of capital-driven globalization. Two years later, in 2001, the movement came to a head at the G-8 summit in Genoa, which was marked by three days of violence and the fatal shooting by Italian police of a 23-year-old protester. Only the attacks on Sept. 11, seven weeks after the chaos in Genoa, diverted the debate from global capitalism to global terrorism. Now, the so-called No Global protesters, feeling vindicated perhaps by the financial crisis and the coming wave of unemployment, may hope that this week's attention paid to Athens will rejuvenate their cause.

  Tell us, insightful readers, do the recent events in Greece and the solidarity actions around the world signal the rejuvenation of anti-capitalist resistance? Debate in the comments! And make sure you have exciting plans for tomorrow!
  

• In Syntagma Square, riot police guard a new Christmas tree, erected by municipal authorities to replace the original burnt the week before.

• Here's a good first-hand recap of yesterday's action around Greece

• A branch of Emporiki Bank on Skoufa Street in the central Athens neighborhood of Exarchia was robbed by two armed men yesterday. It was not clear by last night how much money the two suspects, who left on foot, escaped with. Another branch of Emporiki, in the district of Galatsi, was also robbed yesterday. Again, it was not clear what amount the lone robber stole.

• Here's one nice condensed video of yesterday's action in Athens.

• The headlines in Athens on Friday focused on the shooting referred to below.
  

• Thousands of youths demonstrated in central Athens Friday as anger flared in the Greek capital following the shooting of another teenager.

  The situation began heating up during a protest rally Thursday that followed the bizarre shooting of a high school student in an Athens suburb earlier this week.

  The 17-year-old was hit in the hand by an unknown assailant as he was talking to a group of schoolmates in the western suburb of Peristeri. Initial police reports showed the student -- the son of a leading trade unionist -- was hit with a .38-caliber handgun.

• Greek youths firebombed the French cultural institute in Athens on Friday and hundreds of students marched in a 14th day of anti-government protests set off by the police killing of a teenage boy. A nearby bank ATM was also damaged.

  A gang of about 20 youths attacked the French Institute in Athens, burning its exterior and smashing windows in its interior courtyard, but no one was injured in the attack.

  In western Athens, hundreds of school pupils holding a banner reading "Their Terrorism Will Not Work" marched through the streets to protest against the shooting in the hand of a 16-year-old boy on Wednesday by an unidentified gunman.

The Day's (Other) News...

While news has been streaming out of Greece at a breakneck pace, we've been holding back one of our regular features, "The Day's News..." Have no fear, we'll return to Greek riot updates first thing in the morning. If you're new to this blog, we hope you'll enjoy this small taste of what we post when there aren't insurrections in Greece.

• In the past two months alone, Somali pirates have attacked more than 30 vessels, eluding beefed up naval patrols, going farther out to sea and seeking bigger, more lucrative game, including an American cruise ship and a 1,000-foot Saudi oil tanker. The pirates are recalibrating their tactics, attacking ships in beelike swarms of 20 to 30 skiffs, and threatening to choke off one of the busiest shipping arteries in the world, at the mouth of the Red Sea. UN officials recently estimated that Somali pirates had netted as much as $120 million this year in ransom payments. The UN recently authorized land and air attacks on pirates.
  

• U.S. foreclosure filings climbed 28 percent in November from a year earlier and a brewing “storm” of new defaults and job losses may force 1 million homeowners from their properties next year. Rising unemployment, expiring foreclosure moratoriums and state efforts that “run out of steam” will push monthly filings toward the record of more than 303,000 set in August. The number of homes that revert to lenders, the last stage of foreclosure and known as “real estate owned” or REO properties, will increase to 1 million from as many as 880,000 this year.

• Legions of Mexican immigrants have been exiting the U.S. because of the economic crisis. Municipal officials in Mexico City predict that 20,000 to 30,000 of the city's former residents will move back this Christmas alone.

• The world's first refrigerated beach is to be built at a luxury hotel in Dubai so vacationers don't burn their feet on the scalding hot sand. The beach will sit next to the new Palazzo Versace hotel and will include a system of heat-absorbing pipes built under the sand and giant wind blowers, designed to keep tourists cool in the searing 40-50C heat. The hotel, which is due to open late next year or early 2010, will be controlled by thermostats linked up to computers and feature a cooled swimming pool.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "If you find yourself in a fair fight, you failed to properly plan beforehand."--Anonymous (we've used this before, but it seems timely.)
  

Major Rioting in Greece (12/18/08)

NOTE: This post will be continually updated throughout the day. Please check back often.

• Alright, here's another series of short videos (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) of today's action from the same person who brought you the previous four short videos. Let's hope they start editing future installments into a single, longer video.
  

• Here's a series of short videos (1, 2, 3, 4) showing various elements of today's march in central Athens.
  

• For those you that enjoyed The Economist piece below, here's something of a study in contrasts: a Turkish newspaper interviewed a handful of what appear to be actual Turkish anarchists about what anarchists do and why the Greeks succeed in keeping it so real.
  

• Here's TIME Magazine's profile of Black Bloc tactics in today's actions, along with a half-assed attempt to understand the larger role of anarchists in keeping the riots going.

• Here's a series of photos of the clashes in central Athens today.

• Here's video and photos of a riot police bus set on fire today near the Athens Law School.
  

• Here's a video news report on today's clashes.

• For all you lovers of radical cartography out there, here's a series of maps on the Greek riots and solidarity actions around the world. And here's a version in French.

• A group of anarchists stormed a supermarket in the Thessaloniki district of Stavroupoli yesterday, filling shopping carts with food before charging past the checkouts and distributing the booty to passers-by. Before making their getaway, the youths scattered leaflets with slogans condemning the rising cost of living.

• Here's video of today's clashes in Syntagma Square.
  

• The Greek capital was suffocating under a barrage of tear gas today as 5000 protesters swamped riot police outside parliament, 12 days after the police killing of a teenager sparked riots.
  

  Militant youths tried to breach a cordon guarding the Syntagma Square complex, prompting police to use teargas, an AFP correspondent said. When the initial attack at the parliament was repelled, protesters came back with a hail of oranges - before setting cars, bins and pavement cafe furniture ablaze as they retreated towards their rallying point, the Athens Polytechnic university.
  

  More rallies were planned for after dark.

• Here are some great photos from today.

• The Economist, perhaps the most articulate and coherent media expression of capitalist ideology, fears this blog. That's right, blogs, along with a host of other newfangled technology (the Twitter, the YouTube, etc...) has the power to disseminate anarchy outwards from Greece like a techno-meme intent on bringing down all that is sacred to the Keynesian fraternity. Check this out:

  Is it possible to imagine an Anarchist International, a trans-national version of the inchoate but impassioned demonstrations that have ravaged Greece this month?...[T]he psychological impulse behind the Greek protests—a sense of rage against all authority, which came to a head after a 15-year-old boy was killed by a police bullet—can now be transmitted almost instantaneously, in ways that would make the Bolsheviks very jealous. These days, images (moving as well as still) spread faster than words; and images, of course, transcend language barriers...The spread of sympathy protests over what began as a local Greek issue has big implications for the more formal anti-globalisation movement. That movement has ignored the idea of spontaneous but networked protest, and instead focused on taking large crowds to set-piece events like summits. Such methods look outdated now. Governments are not the only things that networked “anarchy” threatens.

  If we could actually fulfill every one of these capitalist nightmares published by the corporate media in the last two weeks, we'd be unstoppable!
  

• A homemade explosive device, planted outside a branch of Eurobank in the Thessaloniki district of Kalamaria early yesterday by unidentified assailants, damaged the building’s facade when it detonated. A similar device smashed the windows of a local Citizens’ Information and Service Center (KEP).

• Sources told Kathimerini (Athens' conservative newspaper) that the results of a ballistics test on the bullet that killed 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, triggering the riots, appear to contradict the claims made by the policeman charged with the boy’s death. The results, to be published today, indicate that the officer had fired with his arm at a right angle to his body in the direction of the child, not straight above his head in a warning shot, as he has claimed.

• Lots of photos from today's clashes here.

• Riot police clashed with rock-throwing demonstrators in central Athens on Thursday, sending Christmas shoppers and people in cafes running for cover. Frightened parents scooped up their children from a Christmas carousel in the city's main square and fled.

  The protesters broke away from a peaceful rally and hurled rocks and firebombs at police and buildings near parliament, overturned a car and set fire to trash bins. They also splashed police with red paint.

  Police responded with tear gas.

  Firefighters and police also rushed to stop protesters from burning down the city's main Christmas tree, which was just replaced earlier this week after the first was torched in riots. Families abandoned the carousel in downtown Syntagma Square after happily going on rides all morning.

  Before the violence broke out, some 7,000 students and other protesters marched in a rally Thursday, chanting "We are the law, we'll stay on the streets." As they passed, fearful shop owners shuttered their store fronts. Some demonstrators painted white crime-scene-style body outlines on the streets.

• Greek marchers hurled firebombs and stones at police outside parliament on Thursday while unions grounded flights and shut down public offices in a 13th day of anti-government protests since police shot dead a teenager.

  Protesters waving red flags jostled with police, who formed a cordon around parliament, and attempted to burn down a Christmas tree in the square outside. Police fired teargas to disperse the crowd. Adding to tensions in the capital, before further protests planned on Thursday and Friday, police said a 16-year-old had been shot in the hand by an unidentified gunman in Athens late on Wednesday.

Major Rioting in Greece (12/17/08)

• Here's a nice overview of the day's events around Greece.
  

• Anarcho-punk youth in Oaxaca City, Mexico staged a march in solidarity with the riots in Greece. Excerpt: "Today at midday activists in Oaxaca marched in solidarity with their comrades in Athens and Greece. Leaving from the Fountain of the Seven Regions, the collectives of Dignidad Rebelde, Brigada Indigenas/94 and Brenalokos amongst others, made their way to the main square. Along the way they passed the headquarters of the women of the PRI party, which was spray-painted with messages of support. Later, the march passed by the Federal Courts and Secretariat of Foreign Affairs that recieved the same treatment. It finished with a mobilisation in the Zocalo, or main square."

• A series of announcements from New York City declare the New School University "occupied." Excerpt: "We have just occupied New School University. We liberate this space for ourselves, and all those who want to join us, for our general autonomous use. We take the university in explicit solidarity with those occupying the universities and streets in Greece, Italy, France and Spain...So we stress that the general nature of these intolerable conditions exists across the spectrum of capitalist existence, in our universities and our cities, in all of our social relations. For this reason, what begins tonight at the New School cannot, and should not, be contained here." Here's more information on the extent and aims of this action. And photos.
  

• Here's a montage of video and photos from the last few days.

• Occupied London is up with a comic about Alexandros and the circumstances surrounding his murder.

• Here's a ground-level progressive activist perspective on the riots.
  

• The occupiers of the GSEE union offices have issued a statement. Excerpt:

  The action forms part of a strategy to counteract the designs of the union bureaucracy to distance its membership from the current revolt, and protest its management and mediation of workers' struggles in Greece. The occupants aim to create a space in which to facilitate a grassroots and self organised workers response to the crisis, and bring the wider working class into the events unfolding on the streets of Greece.
  
  (One of our goals is) to flay and uncover the role of the trade union bureaucracy in the undermining of the insurrection -and not only there. GSEE and the entire trade union mechanism that supports it for decades and decades, undermine the struggles, bargain our labor power for crumblings, perpetuate the system of exploitation and wage slavery. The stance of GSEE last Wednesday is quite telling: GSEE cancelled the programmed strikers' demonstration, stopping short at the organization of a brief gathering in Syntagma Sq., making simultaneously sure that the people will be dispersed in a hurry from the Square, fearing that they might get infected by the virus of insurrection.

• Six cops were slightly injured and ten police and private vehicles were damaged by an attack that occurred yesterday (16 December 2008) at 12 o'clock in the afternoon, at a building of the Greek riot police forces in Kesariani in eastern Athens.
  
  The attackers, who are alleged to have worn hoods and anti-authoritarian masks, came from a University and split into two teams, the newspaper Eleftherotypia claimed. One team attacked the parking lot from Imitou St. and the other hit the entrance of the building. They threw rocks and wood in order to break the windows of the building and proceeded to use Molotov cocktails.
  
  The cops inside the building responded with "stun grenades" and tear gas in order to repel the youngsters.

• As in every situation like the current one Greece, various elements of the political and economic establishment attempt to use uprisings to advance their own interests. Today, the head of Greece's powerful industrialists' union called for a united front among the country's political parties after almost two weeks of continuing youth protests that have rocked the nation.

  "Today, more than ever, we need a united will to proceed with a long-term program of necessary changes in the functioning of institutions, in education, in public administration and economic structures," Dimitri Daskalopoulos, president of the Federation of Greek Industries, told journalists.

  "Today, more than ever, the circumstances require and the country needs a strong, credible and modern system of governance," he added.

  The remarks were widely interpreted in the Greek press as a call for the center-right New Democracy government to join forces with the opposition Socialists in a grand governing coalition.

• Here's a call for solidarity from the occupied Aristotle University in Thessaloniki. Excerpt: "Your solidarity reflexes were so immediate that they show that in the struggle for a more just and fair society, without exploitation and oppression, we are all together, and we must all claim the streets, with new social clauses, and fight against all those who steal our lives.
  
  At this moment, they fear us, and they will keep on fearing us if we are thousands and everywhere. We are calling everyone to actions of solidarity, to fight for the rights of all of us."

• Here's an excellent statement from the people who occupied the state television station yesterday. Excerpt:
  

  Our action is a response to the accumulated pressures that ravage our lives, and not simply an emotional outburst in the wake of the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos by the Greek police. We are yet another spontaneous collective that forms part of the social uprising in progress.In a symbolic move to prevent the media from subduing us, citizens & civilians, we interrupt the newscast of the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (NET). We believe that the media systematically cultivates a climate of fear, promoting misinformation as information, and portraying a multi-faceted uprising as an outburst of reckless violence...Let us organize ourselves. No authority can provide solutions to our problems. We must rally together and turn our public spaces – streets, squares, parks, and schools – into areas of unhindered expression and communication. Let us come together, face to face, side by side, to formulate our cause and our course of action as one.

• Here's a few more pictures from this morning's firebomb attack on the parking lot of the riot police headquarters in Athens.
  

• According to Occupied London:
  

  50 bureaucrats came along to the (occupied office of GSEE; see below for more info.) They came together with some “heavies” but disappeared at the sight of anarchist reinforcements from the Economic university, chanting slogans of solidarity.

  In Patras, the lawyer of the assassin cop is holding a press conference in the Pampeloponisiako football ground, having just purchased the local football club. Around 500 people are gathered outside; they have set fire to binds and erected barricades. The first few tear gas canisters are being thrown by the cops.

• And here's a video of the Acropolis banner hang. Those banners really are enormous.

• Here's a statement/analysis on the Greek call for an international day of resistance on Saturday. It's written by no one in particular and was just randomly posted on Infoshop, but the C.S.A. finds it to be compelling, solid stuff. Excerpt:

  What I want is shared experiences of physical revolt, to engrave in our bodies the same habits of confrontation that let Alexi’s friends attack decisively, without pausing to decide if they would alienate the population or unduly provoke the law – because when I die, I want my death to be a weapon, just like his.

  The Greeks knew what to do because they’ve been burning shit for years. They had built the capacity to retaliate. That doesn’t mean they’re better than us or more down. Their world is different, their problems are different from ours. But what it does mean is if we want a movement that can give us courage, we damn well better practice. I take the insurrection in Greece, and the call to join it this Saturday, as a challenge from their anarchy to ours, a dare for us to show what we would do for our friends. They’ve shown us what they’ll do for theirs.

• Protesters hung two giant banners off the Acropolis on Wednesday, with slogans calling for mass demonstrations across Europe and "resistance," after days of violent protests sparked by the fatal police shooting of a teenager in Athens.

  About a dozen protesters held the pink banners over the walls of the ancient citadel, Greece's most famous monument, one bearing the word "Resistance" written in large black letters in four languages: Greek, English, Italian and German. The other called for mass demonstrations across Europe on Thursday. The banners were taken down after two hours.

  Police said about a dozen youths on motorcycles set fire to a police bus in central Athens. The driver managed to escape the fire and no one was hurt. In Greece's second largest city of Thessaloniki, police said a bank and a local citizens advice office were firebombed before dawn Wednesday in attacks that caused damage but no injuries.

• At 8 am today, the building of GSEE (General Confederation of Workers in Greece) was occupied by insurgent workers. An open workers assembly has been called for 6pm. You can read the statement released in conjunction with the occupation here. Excerpt: "We, manual workers, employees, jobless, temporary workers, local or migrants, are not passive tv-viewers. Since the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday night, we have participated in the demonstrations, the clashes with the police, the occupations of the center or the neighborhoods. Time and again we had to leave work and our daily obligations to take the streets with the students, the university students and the other proletarians in struggle."

Major Rioting in Greece (12/16/08)

NOTE: This post is being continually updated as news becomes available. Check back often. And please bookmark this page and explore some of the other posts.

• Here's a very good series of fairly high-resolution images from the last eleven days.

• In the northern city of Thessaloniki, protesters made their way into three local radio stations, agreeing to leave only when a protest message was read out on the air. Also in Thessaloniki, riot police fired tear gas to disperse 300 youths throwing fruit and stones outside the city's main court complex. The disturbance followed a court decision that found eight police officers guilty of abusing a student following riots two years ago.
  
  Overnight, arsonists attacked three Athens banks with petrol bombs, causing extensive damage. Higher education in Greece has come to a standstill. Lessons have stopped at more than 100 secondary schools that are under occupation by students, according to the Education Ministry. Scores of university buildings across Greece are also occupied.

• Here's a freshly translated statement by the Occupation of the Law School in Athens. Excerpt: "The world became the street and the street became the world. Persons of every age go down into the street and declare their presence in a society that they feel that was ignoring their existence. They are not only 15 year-old boys and girls that rebel. Each person, regardless their age, has felt that basic freedoms and rights are repressed, their dignity is lost."

• Here's a continually updated list of solidarity actions planned for cities around the world. Some brief commentary, to be expanded upon as time allows: If momentum is to be maintained, it is vital that the tone of solidarity actions be militant. Peacefully protesting outside of consulates and hanging banners on buildings are nice showings of symbolic support, but direct action will do far more to build on the momentum that has been created by our brave Greek peers. Remember: solidarity means attack.
  

• Some solidarity actions in Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Murcia, Spain.

• Here's a video from yesterday's clashes outside of police headquarters (and another.)
  

• Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis warned Tuesday that 10 days of protests over the police killing of a teenager had hurt the country's economy and borrowing clout amid the global economic downturn.

  "The problem with the Greek public debt is related to the cost of borrowing... but it is exacerbated by the latest events which hurt our country's image and which do not do Greece justice," Karamanlis told his ruling party's parliamentary group, which only has a one-seat majority in the legislature.

  On Tuesday morning, the Athens headquarters of Greece's riot police was targeted in a brief arson attack by a group of youths throwing firebombs and stones, damaging a number of cars before fleeing, a police source said.

  Another attack on police occurred at a Thessaloniki courthouse, where eight officers charged with beating a Cypriot student on the sidelines of a 2006 demonstration were convicted but set free pending an appeals trial.

• The Greek government continues its clumsy efforts to placate demonstrators, this time by promising to combat corruption.

• Marches and planning meetings are scheduled for many different parts of Athens today.
  

• Here's an interview with a friend of Alexandros Grigoropoulos, in which he described what happened the night of Alex's murder.
  

• The riots and sit-ins continued for a second week across Greece yesterday as protesters kept up pressure on the government to step aside and commentators described the country as being on the verge of "societal collapse."

  Universities and 400 high schools are occupied by student activists as a leaked police report revealed official fears that the current crisis will fuel a recruitment drive for Greece's anarchist movement.

  "Changing governments is not enough," wrote commentator Giannis Pretenderis in the Athens daily newspaper Kathimerini, "because whichever government replaces the current one – whether a better or worse one – the country will remain ungovernable."

• Protesters forced their way into Greece's state NET television news studio Tuesday and interrupted a news broadcast featuring the prime minister so they could urge viewers to join mass anti-government demonstrations (video.)

  For more than a minute, about 10 youths blocked a broadcast showing a speech by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. Instead, they displayed banners reading: "Stop watching, get out onto the streets," and "Free everyone who has been arrested." No one was hurt, and no arrests were reported.

  Earlier Tuesday, masked youths attacked riot police headquarters in Athens and protesters clashed with police in the northern city of Thessaloniki.

  Police said 30 youths threw petrol bombs and stones at the riot police building, causing extensive damage to seven cars and a police bus parked outside.

• Here's a statement issued yesterday by the Liberated City Hall of Aghios Dimitrios. Excerpt: "Within the frame of this insurrection, the City Hall of Aghios Dimitrios has been occupied since the morning of Thursday (11 December 2008), so that it may become a place for counterinformation, meeting, and self-organizing of the residents of the wider region and for the collective formation and implementation of actions. A main component of this occupation is the daily popular assembly with the participation of up to 300 people, a process that functions in contrast to the entrusting of the management of our demands as well as of our struggles to whichever "representatives," elected or not."

Major Rioting in Greece (12/15/08)

ROLLING UPDATES: The one giant post was getting unwieldy, so I'm breaking it up by date. Today's post will be continually updated as usual. Check back often. And please don't forget to bookmark and explore this blog! Here, here, and here are examples of other C.S.A. authored articles.

A riot cop following today's sit-in outside of police headquarters in Athens

• Riots in Greece sparked by the police shooting of a teenager last week will cost retailers about 1.2 billion euros ($1.62 billion) in lost sales, the head of their association said on Monday.

  Hundreds of shops were damaged by rioting youths with the violent protests hurting the mood of shoppers, making things worse for the country's retail sector which is also affected by the world economic downturn.

  The sector, which has annual sales of about 14 billion euros or 5 percent of Greece's gross domestic product, is likely to take a hit this year as consumers tighten their belts.

  "We estimate the unrest will continue for another seven days and could cost Greek retailers foregone sales which could reach 1.5 billion euros," Theodoros Vardas, head of Greece's retailers association (SELPE) told Reuters.

  "The state will lose about 20 percent of this amount from value added tax (VAT), while Greek retailers will lose the remaining 1.2 billion," he said.

• Here's a video news report on yesterday's clashes.

• French officials are moving to placate protesting students amid rising fears that violence could break out across France. Concern is growing in France that the dismal economic outlook could push the current anti-reform protests into the kind of wild insurrection that has rocked Greece. Protesters vowed to carry on with nationwide demonstrations on Tuesday and Thursday.

• In Larissa, youths were met with tear gas as they hurled stones at the central city's main police station after four protesters were bound over facing fire-raising charges. The group retreated to the occupied medical school.
  

  Greece's education system remains beset by student occupations and mass truancy with just a handful of teaching days left before Christmas, while in a sign of enduring anger, banks were targeted in the central town of Volos.

  'There's real class hate around, particularly when you see people carrying five bags of shopping, not caring about others who starve,' said 29-year-old protester Zachi as well-to-do Athenians exited nearby boutiques.
  

  AFP witnessed demonstrators shoving a water pistol into the face of a riot policeman or - in the case of one passing elderly woman - sheltering from a hail of tangerines and tomatoes aimed at security forces, under an umbrella.

• Here's another look inside the occupation of Athens Polytechnic from the corporate media. Excerpt: Inside the gates of Athens' main university, bonfires rage and masked gangs stockpile petrol bombs, broken paving stones and marble hacked from the neoclassical buildings. It's their arsenal for more possible clashes with weary police.
  

  The self-proclaimed anarchists and revolutionaries based at the Polytechnic have become outnumbered on the streets by more typical demonstrators _ such as labor unions and opposition parties _ who have called for Greece's increasingly unpopular conservative government to resign.

  Yet it's the rage and destruction of the masked youths that have become the symbols of the showdown.

  Nearly every night in the past week, the streets around the Polytechnic become an urban battleground. Riot police emerge through clouds of tear gas and the smoke of flaming barricades.

  Black-clad youths _ their faces covered by masks, scarves and motorbike helmets _ hurl petrol bombs over the hulks of torched cars. Late on Saturday night, one pushed a shopping cart full of rocks and chunks of marble to replenish the stocks. Another stumbled into the campus wearing a Spiderman mask.

  "Stones! We need more stones!" someone bellowed in the dark. One young man, his face hidden behind a bandanna and a hood, began smashing pieces of concrete from one of the university's buildings, lit only by the orange glow of bonfires.

  "Don't waste the Molotovs, damn it! Use them wisely!" another shouted, his voice hoarse from the tear gas fired by riot police night after night.

• A solidarity demo has been called in the city of Xixon, in Asturias, Spain for Tuesday. It's pretty amazing how many small towns with just a handful of anarchists have managed to put together solidarity actions of all kinds.
  

• Here's a video of this weekend's action outside of Athens Polytechnic and the surrounding streets.
  

• Here's a video from today's action outside of the police headquarters in Athens.
  

• And here's the update on the below post: "The protest at G.A.D.A. has ended with police brutality.
  
  Students conducted protests outside the General Police Directorate of Attica (G.A.D.A.) and plan to protest outside police stations in the rest of the country. At G.A.D.A., eyewitnesses reported a substantial number of protestors.
  
  Greek police had surrounded the G.A.D.A. building to keep out the demonstrators.
  
  Demonstrators conducted acts of civil disobedience and the protest was generally peaceful at the outset. After a large group of protestors departed and only students remained, the police forces charged the assembly of demonstrators and sent volleys of chemicals into the crowd. Police arrested at least one student, who was brutally beaten and sprayed with chemicals while handcuffed. A lawyer was dispatched to assist the detainee.
  
  Students also blocked roads on Gregoriou Lambraki St. in Korydallos and marched towards the prison. Clashes ensued and Molotov cocktails were deployed against the police."
  
  
• Here's a translation of report on the street demos today around the country and plans for the next few days: "The protest movement against the murder of sixteen year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos shall continue, the students have decided.
  
  Students will conduct protests outside the General Police Directorate of Attica (G.A.D.A.) and outside police stations in the rest of the country.
  
  At this hour, students have blocked roads on Gregoriou Lambraki St. in Korydallos. In addition, students plan to shut-down the streets near the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defense, the Square of Kalogiron, and a number of other streets.
  
  The spiritual center and public radio station of the municipality of Ioannina, the old City Hall of Halandri, and the City Hall of Aghios Dimitrios remain under the occupation of anti-authoritarians, with the goal of felicitating grassroot meetings.
  
  The Ministry of Education claims that 100 schools are under the occupation of the students, but information from the students suggests between 400 to 600, and about 100 universities are under student occupation."
  
  The students plan to remain on the streets all week and continue their protests.

• Here's a report-back with photos from a solidarity demo in Pittsburgh: "The protest was held outside the Pittsburgh Police Zone 2 Headquarters in the Hill District, a fitting location given the police’s universal role as agents of state control and repression. Fliers were handed out to passing drivers and pedestrians explaining the situation in Greece and related police killings there to the police violence and the specific killing of Michael Ellerbe locally."

• Here's a blog from the "Liberated City Hall of Aghios Dmitrios", with some statements on the riots and calls for solidarity with those arrested. And one from the occupation of the the Old Town Hall in Chalandrioy. And one from the occupation of the radio station 98.7 in Ioanninon. And the occupation of the School of Theater in Thessaloniki. And the occupation of the School of Economics in Athens (has to be translated one post at a time...) And finally, Athens Polytechnic.
  

• Here's a CNN report from Friday on events in and around Athens.

• A demonstration was held outside the education ministry in Maroussi by schools in the well-to-do northern suburbs of Athens, carrying on until late in the afternoon. Protests were also held at several points along the length of Messogion Avenue, especially outside the national defence and the former public order ministries, as well as in the Korydallos and Peristeri areas.

  Demonstrations and protests continued outside Athens as well, in cities around the country. Groups of young protestors took over the municipal radio station in the northwestern Greek city of Ioannina - where a group of youths had earlier attacked the offices of the local newspaper 'Proina Nea - and put out their own broadcast with their positions.

  Students at the Aegean University also took over the state radio station ERA Aigaio on Lesvos from 10:00 in the morning until shortly after 1:00 and put out their own programme regarding the events since the death of Grigoropoulos. They then attempted to take over three local radio stations and succeeded in broadcasting the programme they had prepared from Astra radio.

  Another protest rally by young people was held in the city of Hania on the island of Crete, while several high schools in the region were not working due to student sit-ins or boycotts.

  Schools in Thessaloniki are also planning to continue protest action after a meeting held by student body representation committees on Sunday, including a march at noon on Tuesday and picketing roads on Wednesday.

• Here's a translation of a text distributed at the sit-in outside police headquarters in Athens today, care of Occupied London. Excerpt:

  For us, the politically organised migrants, this is a second french November of 2005. We never had any illusions that when the peoples’ rage overflew we would be able to direct it in any way. Despite the struggles we have taken on during all these years we never managed to achieve such a mass response like this one. Now is time for the street to talk: The deafening scream heard is for the 18 years of violence, repression, exploitation and humiliation. These days are ours, too.

  These days belong to all the marginalised, the excluded, the people with the difficult names and the unknown stories. They belong to all those who die every day in the Aegean sea and Evros river, to all those murdered at the border or at a central Athens street; the belong to the Roma in Zefyri, to the drug addicts in Eksarhia. These days belong to the kids of Mesollogiou street, to the unintegrated, the uncontrollable students. Thanks to Alexis, these days belong to us all.

• On the island of Lesbos and Ioannina, in western Greece, students took over local radio stations demanding they be allowed to make live broadcasts. A local newspaper in Ioannina was also attacked.

• The headlines in Athens today focused on the political crisis faced by the prime minister due to the uprising and recent corruption scandals.
  

• Here's another report on today's sit-in and subsequent clashes: "More than 4,000 students hurled eggs, oranges and flour at police outside Athens' main police headquarters Monday in a second week of anti-government protests, sparked by the police shooting of a teenager. The students, yelling "You have got old, fat and have forgotten," blocked one of the Greek capital's main avenues and threw projectiles at riot police, who eventually responded with teargas. Protesters also hurled eggs at police outside the main courthouse on the other side of town, where hearings went ahead involving dozens of people arrested during the country's worst riots in decades. Across the country, students have occupied nearly 600 school buildings in protest."

• Here's the Occupied London version of events outside of police headquarters in Athens: "The peaceful student sit-in outside the police headquarters on Aleksandras Ave. was attacked without provocation by police with tear gas. The crowd dispersed in three groups, all of which started fighting back with stones and spontaneous small barricades. At least two arrests - one young male student was arrested, handcuffed and then teargassed and kicked in front of us. People tried to save him from the police, but it was impossible. Indymedia reports that another young female student was injured in the head by the pigs. The anti-police sentiment on the streets is simply phenomenal."
  

  They go on to note that arrestees may be facing up to a year of pre-trial detention. It seems vital that pressure be exerted on the Greek government to release all those arrested during the revolt.
  

• Greek police fired teargas at small groups of protesters who threw stones and firebombs in central Athens on Monday in a second week of anti-government demonstrations since a policeman shot dead a teenager. Youths outside Athens' main court and central police station clashed with riot police, while acts of vandalism against shops were reported in two northern cities in protests against the Dec. 6 killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
  

  IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned there was a risk of social unrest spreading unless the global financial sector shared wealth more evenly. Copy-cat demonstrations have taken place in many European countries.

  Students and police exchanged firebombs and teargas on Monday and more rallies have been called for Thursday and Friday against education and pension reforms, privatizations and tax rises as the budget goes to parliament.
  

  Central Athens braced for further violence later on Monday, when an anarchist group plans to march on parliament.

  The tourist industry worries that more unrest will put off foreign visitors and badly hit the sector which accounts for nearly one-fifth of gross domestic product.

• Youths protested outside of Athens' main police headquarters on Monday, pelting riot police with flour and other objects to protest the shooting death of a teenager. Riot police responded tear gas.

  Some 2,000 youths at the rally blocked one of the capital's main avenues, chanted slogans and setting fire to trash bins before dispersing. Two demonstrators were arrested.

  Students also staged peaceful blockades of several other busy roads Monday in the capital and protested outside Athens' main court complex, where five people arrested during last week's riots were to appear before an examining magistrate. Riot police guarded the complex and no disturbances were reported.

• Here's a call for a solidarity action tomorrow in Boston.

• Occupied London reports that a sit-in began outside of police headquarters in Athens, and if the comments are to be believed, the demo was quickly attacked by riot police, among other news: "In the next few minutes, high school students will be gathering outside the police headquarters on Alexandras Ave - an unprecedented move even for lefty/anarchist groups. But the students have already overcome nearly all conventional forms of political action, so far. A solidarity meeting is called for today outside the main courthouse in Athens, in solidarity with the arrestees - the pre-trial detention (or not) of many of them is to be decided today."

Major Rioting in Greece (12/14/08)

A laser pointer is aimed at a riot cop outside of Athens Polytechnic

• Here's a summary of the day's (12/14/08) events:

  After a night of clashing with the police around the Polytechnic University and in the Exarchia area, unjustified police violence against one of the most peaceful sit-in gatherings at Sintagma square and mass arrests (50 or so people) during a spontaneous demonstration (all people released hours later without charges), it was time for reorganization, meetings and propagandizing.
  
  During the day, 4 major radio stations were occupied and the protesters broadcast their views on the recent events, read communiques and made a call for more people to take part in the protests. Apart from those major stations that were occupied for a few minutes, there are two radio stations in Athens and one in Thessaloniki operating from inside the occupied universities.
  
  A few demonstrations and gatherings took place today: In Athens there was a gathering on the point that Alexis was killed, called by the Exarchia residents and even though it was raining hard, lots of people showed up. Also there was a demonstration in Petroupoli. Around 11pm, a group of 50 or so pupils tried to have a sit-in outside the parliament and the police forbid them to do so! It is said that a top-rank cop who was there suggested to the kids to “go have a coffee instead” and that is illegal to be on the square! There was a motor and bike demonstration in Thessaloniki which was driven within residential neighborhoods and not through the city center as usual. Moreover gatherings or demonstrations were organized in Corfu, Volos (banks and politican offices smashed here), Xanthi and Peraia. Many assemblies and conventions took place to determine further actions and demonstrations.
  
  The TV channels for the past few days have stopped most of the reports about the protests and the police oppression, trying to keep the news out of the peoples' TV sets, homes and lives.

• Here's are some photos and a report-back from a solidarity action in Ljubljana, Slovenia: "On Tuesday evening, 9th December 2008, a spontaneous protest took place in front of the Greek embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Around 70 anarchists gathered in an autonomous center to march through the city center towards the embassy of Greece. In front of the embassy they lit 15 candles in memory of Alexandros Grigolopous and hung a banner and the anarchist flag on the building. In front of the entrance, they wrote with red paint 'ALEXANDROS - MURDERED BY THE STATE.' Red paint was also spilled on the doors and signs of the Embassy."

• Corporate media outlets are again pushing the storyline that the riots are dying down, likely leading to a second series of headlines that the riots have "flared up" again when some direct action or street fighting occurs in the coming days. It is worth pointing out that hundreds of universities, high schools and municipal buildings around the country are still occupied and many more demonstrations are planned for the coming days.

• A poll by a conservative Athens newspaper on Saturday found that 60% of respondents identified what has occurred in the past 8 days as a broad-based "social uprising", rather than the work of fringe elements. Also, nearly 70 percent of people surveyed said the government did not handle the crisis well.
  
  Only 20 percent of those polled said Karamanlis, of the center-right New Democracy party, could handle the issues. Seventeen percent said the socialist opposition leader Papandreou could best manage.
  
  The most popular choice of those polled, however, was the option of "nobody," creating parallels to the Argentine uprising of 2002.
  

• A reminder: Saturday, December 20th has been called by the occupation of Athens Polytechnic as an international day of resistance in memory of all those assassinated by the state. That's six days from now. Make a plan; make something happen. Anarchists everywhere have the power to extend and deepen and spread this insurrection.

• Here's an action from Olympia, Washington claimed in solidarity with the Greek riots.
  

• Here's an account from the BBC of police carrying out punitive violence on demonstrators. This has been reported before during these riots and is indeed a feature of virtually every protest and uprising in Greece, which perhaps lends some insight into why many "average" Greeks have such antipathy for the police. Here's a Greek news video from a few days back of a police beating.
  

• Students at mass demonstrations have been handing out timetables scheduling another week of the civil unrest that has brought violence to Athens and other parts of Greece.

  Rallies outside police stations and courthouses and blockading areas of main cities are among the plans as a leading union official said that anger among disenchanted youths would only get worse in the months ahead, with as many as 100,000 jobs under threat after the Christmas period.

• Here's a new statement from the occupation of the Athens School of Economics and Business, care of the Occupied London blog. It's very much worth reading. Here's a highlight:

  The global capitalist crisis has denied the bosses their most dynamic, most extorting response to the insurrection: “We offer you everything, for ever, while all they can offer is an uncertain present”. With one firm collapsing after the other, capitalism and its state are no longer in a position to offer anything other than worse days to come, tightened financial conditions, sacks, suspension of pensions, welfare cuts, crush of free education. Contrarily, in just seven days, the insurgents have proved in practice what they can do: to turn the city into a battlefield, to create enclaves of communes across the urban fabric, to abandon individuality and their pathetic security, seeking the composition of their collective power and the total destruction of this murderous system.

  At this historical conjuncture of crisis, rage and the dismissal of institutions at which we finally stand, the only thing that can convert the systemic deregulation into a social revolution is the total rejection of work. When street fighting will be taking place in streets dark from the strike of the Electricity Company; when clashes will be taking place amidst tons of uncollected rubbish, when trolley-buses will be closing streets, blocking off the cops, when the striking teacher will be lighting up his revolted pupil’s molotov cocktail, then we will be finally able to say: “Ruffians, the days of your society are numbered; we weighted its joys and its justices and we found them all too short”. This, today, is no longer a mere fantasy but a concrete ability in everyone’s hand: the ability to act concretely on the concrete. The ability to charge the skies.

• Here's a report-back from a short but sweet solidarity demo in St. Petersburg, Russia (photos): "On the 13th of December 2008, around 6 p.m., anarchists and members of DSPA (leftist group) organised an action near Greek consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia. The action was not permitted by the authorities so it was rather short and lasted for about 5 minutes. Activists distributed some leaflets to the people passing by and spoke about the Greek way of dealing with police oppression. Then they lit some torches and threw them at the consulate and police cars, chanting 'Cops murder, the authorities cover it up.' The cops did not manage to arrest anyone"

• Here's a corporate media profile of the occupation of Athens Polytechnic and the role of anarchists, unfortunately a much more biased and less honest effort than the Independent (UK) article posted below. Excerpt:

  Early Saturday morning inside the gates of Athens Polytechnic University, a dozen groggy young people in hooded sweatshirts slumped on folding chairs around a smoky fire. Others trickled in, holding cups of coffee. Small gypsy children scampered around with wheelbarrows, collecting empty beer bottles. One lit a cigarette. But the young people and their friends were not simply recovering from a long night of drinking or studying. They were regrouping for revolution.

• Here are some photos and a report-back from a heavily policed but enthusiastic solidarity demo in London today.

• A solidarity demo took place in Macedonia outside of the Greek embassy on Saturday. Greek/Macedonian relations have been strained lately by a variety of issues. Nationalists on both side have tried to stir up jingoistic divisiveness, making yesterday's demo particularly significant.
  

• Here's some news video from the solidarity rioting in Madrid, complete with translated subtitled. Let's see more of this elsewhere!
  

• Here's some more information on the bombing of two offices of the Greek communist party, the KKE, which, in typical fashion, has been actively working to end the uprising and has tried to block popular assemblies from forming. According to police, unknown perpetrators attacked KKE offices in Thessaloniki with firebombs and home-made incendiary devices in the early morning hours. And for the truly masochistic, here's an interview with the leader of the KKE on the riots, complete with psychotic conspiracy theories and nonsensical jargon. The KKE and the Greek orthodox church appear to be in agreement that the riots are the work of foreign agents conspiring to undermine the country.
  

• Here's a better quality video of last nights clashes around Athens Polytechnic, including some those cinematic laser pointer shots and a healthy does of Molotov throwing.
  

• Protesters used laser pointers to try to blind police as unrest continued in Greece over the fatal shooting of a teenager. The laser pointers were used on Saturday night as youths clashed with police in Athens just hours after peaceful candlelight vigils were held.
  

• Greek protesters say they are planning sit-ins in front of police headquarters across the country.

• The students have called for the sit-ins Monday, 10 days after the police shooting death of a 15-year-old boy sparked nationwide riots in which at least 70 have been injured, stores and international businesses attacked and at least 280 people detained.

  Protesters say Monday's sit-ins are to take place in front of Greece's national police headquarters in Athens, as well as in front of police precincts across the country.

• Greek militants warned of new protests Sunday after an attack on an Athens police station became the latest clash with authority over the police killing of a teenager. Also, two blasts hit Greek Communist Party offices in the country's second city. Meanwhile, Stathis Anestis of Greece's most powerful union, the General Confederation of Greek workers (GSEE), said, "A massive wave of redundancies will kick in come the New Year when, according to our estimates, 100,000 jobs will be lost, which represents an additional five percent on the unemployment rate."
  

• Here's a piece looking at the legal asylum of Greek university campuses, with some audio as well. Excerpt: "A heavy cloud of tear gas and smoke hung over Exarchia, which felt like a rebel-held enclave in a city at war. Police lingered warily on its edges as young people set up burning barricades and attacked government buildings and banks. And clashes erupted once again outside the Polytechnic. Few here think the unrest will end anytime soon, and the rage of Greece's youth continues to smolder."

• Some new pictures from the last few days.

• Demonstrations in solidarity with the Greek youth movement continued in a number of European cities on Sunday, including London, where a sit-in took place outside the Greek embassy, Moscow, Paris, Berlin and several other German cities. In Moscow, 15 demonstrators were arrested.

• Here's a video from last night's actions around Athens Polytechnic. The video quality is low, but it's the only street-level view of the action we've come across so far.
  

• A radio station in Athens was occupied for half an hour today. News about street actions and upcoming events were broadcast.

• Here's a tightly edited video montage of rioting from the last week, set to appropriately fast punk rock.
  

• Some more details on last night's events, which, given the targets (banks, government offices, and chain stores) and tools (Molotovs), sounds very much like coordinated direct actions by anarchists: "Hooded youths hurled firebombs at the environment ministry, banks and businesses in more attacks across Athens in the early hours of Sunday. Angry youths hurled firebombs at several banks along a busy avenue in central Athens as well as a McDonald's restaurant and two stores of Spanish clothing chain Zara. More school students were expected to mobilize in central Athens for further rallies on Monday and throughout the week. Students occupied more than 400 school buildings across the country in protest."

• It looks like Athenian newspapers are in the same boat as the international corporate media. Many of the Sunday headlines of Athens' 19 (!) daily newspapers are variations on the question, "Who are the rioters and what do they want?"

• Continued protests in Greece on Saturday left 86 arrested and a police station firebombed. The police station that was attacked (this link includes some informative audio) is holding the two police officers who are awaiting trial over the death of Alexis Grigoropoulos, the 15-year who was killed by police fire last weekend.
  

  "Very near the university, the economics university and the law school - which have been occupied by the students - there were several banks which were firebombed, there was a Mc Donalds restaurant as well as two shops" correspondent Christina Pirovolakis said on Sunday.

  "There was chaos along this main strip right in downtown Athens last [Saturday] night. There was close to 90 arrests," she added.

  On the question of whether the protests will continue into next week, she says "I think a lot of young people are very determined [...]. As of tomorrow morning there is going to be demonstrations towards the main police headquarters by students."

  She said that anarchists had called "for everyone to go to the main courthouse tomorrow morning and to riot against the police that are holding a lot of the so-called anarchists."

• 
  
• More news from Crete. Here's a new translation of an account of events in the capital city of Heraklion. Excerpt:

  In plain view of the cops, pupils donned scarfs and hoods, broke the pavement, and attacked the cops with stones. Stone and fire is a weapon of the weak harks the Muse of Rebellion. The cops retreated. A police van and a government car were overturned in front of the prefecture building. Many migrant workers, hooligans, Roma, and poor folk from Heraklion's neighborhoods join the rebellion. Most banks in the city center were burnt. Cops attacked with rubber bullets. One demonstrator was injured.

• The Independent (UK) makes the most serious attempt by the corporate media so far to understand--in their own convoluted way--anarchists and their role in the Greek riots. It's worth quoting at length:

  "People from 12 to 70 have taken part in the revolt," claimed an anarchist website yesterday. "People who would never have expected to find themselves in such a situation. Fashionable youth, respectable family men, elderly ladies, all those normally labeled 'the common people.'"

  Greece's anarchists, pejoratively known as the koukoulofori (balaclava-wearers), have been a force since they emerged during the violent clashes that accompanied the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Today they are a presence in both university areas such as Exarchia and many other urban neighbourhoods, and their numbers include not just students, but the local plumber or electrician, unemployed youths living at the corner and football hooligans. They have a foothold right across the country.

  The different groups vary, from studiously political ones who hark back to 19th-century anarchist pioneers such as Kropotkin and Proudhon, to groups involved in squats and those committed to violent action. Some talk in moderate tones, others rob banks. What they share is the willingness to come together with great speed behind a common cause.

  In a state where the police are despised for their arbitrary violence, and are increasingly incapable of carrying out normal law and order functions, these lawless groups have acquired extraordinary influence. They attack people and property identified with the state and with capitalism, yet they take pains not to cause serious injury or death. As they subscribe to none of the discredited ideologies of the past, the state has its work cut out demonizing them.

  The Greek anarchists' power was confirmed on Friday when, despite the violence in the streets, the Justice Ministry said it would go ahead with the release of about 40 per cent of the prisoners in Greece's jails to relieve overcrowding. The government's concession was the victorious conclusion to a hunger strike by prisoners and a month-long campaign outside the prisons by anarchists. They have also fought against proposals to create private universities.

  "If all this doesn't bring the revolution," commented an anarchist site about the present clashes, "at least we should enjoy ourselves in this process of humanization" – by which they mean wrecking banks and other "dehumanizing" capitalist institutions.

• Here's another overview of the days events in Athens, including some photos and video.

• Here's the Occupied London post on today's events in Athens, focusing on Exarchia.

• A march 5,000 strong took place in Patras today and it looks like some windows got smashed in the process.
  

• Based on the ultra-sophisticated translation tools available to the C.S.A., it sounds like a march in Chania (the second largest city on the island of Crete) led to the occupation of a radio station. Various statements were then read over the air, including the statement of the Polytechnic occupation and anarchist texts, among other things. Actions in Crete have been particularly heartening, since it is known mostly as a placid tourist destination rather a hotbed of anarchy and insurrection.

• Here, someone who appears to be affiliated with a rival Marxist sect unsympathetic to the main Greek communist party (the KKE), comments a bit on their role in attempting to end the uprising, among other things.
  

• Here's a video from the Moscow solidarity march and some nice photos from the march at the bottom of this post.

• The first two dozen images here are from tonight's clashes near Athens Polytechnic (including plenty of green laser pointer shots); the rest are from the past few days.
  

• At 1am local time (2300 GMT) police charged a peaceful candlelight vigil in central Athens, when the crowd of several hundred people refused to move. The protesters retreated but the tense confrontation continued.

• Youths — some on foot, others riding motorcycles — attacked a police station with petrol bombs in central Athens as well as at least three banks, several stores and a government building, police said.

  Several hundred protesters set up burning barricades and attacked police with rocks and flares. Riot police fired tear gas and chased the youths through parts of the city. The protesters chanted "murderers out" and used laser pointers to target police for attack.

Major Rioting in Greece (12/13/08)

• Two banners were dropped today in Milwaukee on Saturday December 13th. They read "SOLIDARITY MEANS ATTACK: this is global social war" and "BURN GREECE BURN: Alex was here." A statement released in conjunction with this action read in part:

  Our incendiary device is the generalization of our struggles, it is to connect out of our collective isolation as an ungovernable multiplicity ensuring that with our own weathered hands one day our friends, some now facing potential prison time for their alleged actions during the RNC, will never again go to prison, because there will be no more prisons.

• Youths in Greece have firebombed a police station next to the Exarchia district. Police fired tear gas at about 100 youths who had congregated, with similar numbers in Thessaloniki also vandalising a gymnasium before holing up in a university premises.

• “Athens must burn, especially the banks,” said a teenager in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans called Marios to a reporter during a protest on Friday.

  Nearby, rioters had smashed the display screens of cash dispensers and shattered dozens of shop windows, carting off mobile telephones, watches, clothes and computers. A few rioters dragged a drinks refrigerator on to the street, ripped off the back and filled their arms with bottles and cans. They drank a few and used the rest as projectiles.

• This reprint of an earlier news story includes some new details, including this quote from one of the occupiers of Athens Polytechnic: "We have no leaders, we have no organization, we make our policies by meetings and consensus."

• Authorities say dozens of youths on foot and on motorcycles attacked a police station in central Athens, at least three banks, several stores and a government building. The youths threw at least one petroleum bomb at the police station this evening before smashing paving stones and setting up barricades with burning trash bins.

• Here's an exhaustive list of the various marches, occupations, and direct actions over the last week in Greece, many from small towns unmentioned in the corporate press.

• According to Occupied London: "Around 300 anarchists attack the offices of the Ministry of Planning and Public Works in solidarity with the struggle of the people of the village of Leukimi in Corfu (a local woman was assassinated by the police there in the summer). Two banks are also smashed and burnt. High street shops are smashed. The police are nowhere to be seen.

  Thousands of people have gathered at the point of death of Alexandros (at the corner of Messologiou and Tzavella Street in Eksarhia) and a demonstration is about to begin."

• Here are videos (1, 2) of the demonstration today in Syntagma Square. And a report from the scene there last night, with some general updates and this quote: "'Speaking as an anarchist, we want to create those social conditions that will generate more uprisings and to get more people out in the streets to demand their rights,' said 32-year-old protester Paris Kyriakides."

• Here are some photos and details from the rowdy solidarity march in Madrid on Wednesday: "400 people gathered at Sol in the city center, painted and sprayed the windows of companies and [marched] to Gran Via, the cities biggest road, to stop all the cars. After this a police station was attacked with paint bombs, the walls sprayed with slogans. Soon the people began to smash the windows and to throw stones.
  
  From all directions riot cops began to storm into the people, to beat up people. 3 people were arrested, 1o hurt and 3 cops hurt. The newspaper El Pais reported that the damage done to the police station was 15,000 Euro and that 12 banks were smashed."

• The focus of widespread protests following the police killing of a teenager shifted to the scene of his death Saturday. Alexis Grigoropoulos was killed exactly one week ago on the night of December 6, and radicals occupying nearby university buildings said they would gather over the weekend at the spot where the 15-year-old died.

  Swelled by anarchists, students blocked off the central Syntagma Square after an earlier sit-down protest by around 300 school pupils ended peacefully, and mostly dispersed by around 6:00 pm. As darkness fell, around 100 of the more militant among them continued to loiter -- amid growing police frustration, going by one officer's conversation on his mobile and not least due to low stocks of tear gas.

  Student pamphlets also announced rallies planned in front of the Athens police headquarters on Monday and back at parliament square on Thursday, when school pupils and teachers are expected to back the protests.

• Hooded youths firebombed banks and businesses in pre-dawn attacks across Athens Saturday in the eighth day of civil unrest triggered by the shooting of a 15-year-old boy by police.
  Angry youths hurled firebombs at four banks in the southern Athens suburb of Paleo Faliro as well as a supermarket, the offices of newly privatized telephone company OTE and the local party offices of the ruling conservatives. One more bank was reportedly torched in central Athens.

• Here's a call for a popular assembly in Athens, which, based on the number of these calls that have appeared recently, seems to be part of a developing trend across Greece.

• On Tuesday, anarchists occupied the TV station Super B in Patras and broadcast their own message over the airwaves. A video of the broadcast can be found here. If someone wants to translate this, that would be a major service; please post in the comments or send to lobsterbeard@gmail.com. But even if you don't understand a word of it, it's pretty entertaining to watch the news anchor clip off his microphone and walk away, leaving the bearded anarchists to deliver their spiel into the camera.
• An edgy stand-off developed on Saturday as up to 2,000 demonstrators squared up to police outside the Greek parliament in Athens on day eight of their protest movement over the killing of a teenager. Students and anarchist blocked off Syntagma Square after an earlier sit-down protest of around 300 school pupils ended without incident.

• Here's a solid report on some of the details of yesterday's actions in Athens.

• Here's a brief report from the city of Larisa in Greece: "Monday's demonstration had about 2,500 people, an unheard of number for Larisa and as a result 36 banks, the justice building, city hall, and the military justice center were attacked." Larisa is also apparently hosting a popular assembly every day in an occupied school.

• Here's a report-back from a solidarity demo in Helsinki: "Around fifty people gathered to the Greek embassy on Friday to express their support for the rebellion in Greece. There was also a demonstration in the city of Turku. In Helsinki the protesters blocked the road in front of the embassy for almost an hour and then took to the surrounding streets and made their way towards the university of Helsinki and the central railway station. A Greek comrade was teaching people their most popular chants like: Cops, Pigs, Murderers! The cops kept their distance and the demo was completed without any trouble. More protests are planned in Helsinki."

• Here's a call for a solidarity demo in London on the 14th.

• The education ministry on Friday said 130 high schools were under occupation or otherwise shut across Greece. Police said yesterday that since the start of the riots on Saturday, 176 people have been arrested, 100 of whom are foreigners. Of those, 131 have been charged with causing damage to shops and 45 with rioting.
  
  An office of the ruling Nea Dimokratia party was attacked Friday night, while a mobile telephone business was destroyed. The attacks lasted only a few minutes, the television report said.
  
  Shortly before midnight some 50 cyclists blocked the main road in front of the parliament building for 30 minutes and shouted chants against police brutality, the television report said. The protest caused traffic problems in central Athens.

• Here's another glib attempt by the corporate media to find an all-encompassing explanation for the riots, with one decent quote thrown in: "'I can't keep waking up every day not wanting to wake up,' the young man wearing the helmet said. 'We see how our parents were manipulated by the system and how afraid they were to take chances...This is a rage against that kind of decay.'"

• Saturday's newspaper headlines in Athens focused almost entirely on the fate of Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis, who doesn't seem like he's going anywhere fast (note: are there really 18 daily newspapers in Athens?) If Greek voters seem fed up with the conservative New Democracy government -- despite having re-elected them only last year -- they may simply be trading one political dynasty for another were an election to be held. In all, a Karamanlis or a Papandreou has ruled the country for 32 of the last 53 years -- including 21 years since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974.
  

• Four different protests related to the shooting death of 15 year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by a policeman a week ago have been planned for Saturday in Athens. The mostly youthful protesters are were also demonstrating in a number of Athens' outlying districts as well.

  Unknown suspects firebombed four bank branches, several shops and a supermarket in the coastal Athens suburb of Kalamaki early Saturday morning.

  A peaceful rally was held on Saturday outside Greece's diplomatic liaison office in Skopje, in protest over the death of 15-year old Alexis Grigoropoulos last Saturday in Athens. Protestors held a large banner with the word "Solidarity", while condemning what they called the Greek state's methods and the situation prevailing in the country. The rally ended 45 minutes later.

  On Friday in Melbourne, protestors held a rally outside the Greek embassy, expressing their support to demonstrators in Athens and condemning police for the fatal shooting of Grigoropoulos. Demonstrators held banners and shouted slogans against Greek police. The rally was organised by self-styled anarchists in Melbourne.

• Here's a video on last night's events in Athens, with some nice footage from what look like strong solidarity demos in Paris and Germany.

• A week after the police killing of a 15-year-old boy sparked riots across Greece, young protesters on Saturday promised to remain on the streets until their concerns are addressed. Several dozen students took part in a peaceful sit-down demonstration in Athens' central Syntagma Square. More demonstrations are scheduled later in the day, including a vigil at the place and time that 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was fatally shot by a police officer a week ago.

• Here's a better translation of the call for an international day of solidarity on Saturday, December 20th.

• Here's a report-back from solidarity actions in Germany:

  As the economy crumbles and prices increase all over Europe, we too raise the price of what it costs to kill one of us. On Friday late evening more than 1,000 marched in Berlin in solidarity with Greek comrades, police brutality and repression in Germany. Small protests of between 20 and up to 200 protesters took place in about ten cities across Germany. During the night there were minor arson attacks across Berlin on banks, cars and garbage bins.

• The results of forensic tests indicate that the bullet that killed 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, and sparked this week’s rioting, appears to have entered the youth’s body directly. This casts doubt on claims by the 37-year-old policeman charged with the boy’s murder that the bullet had been fired as a warning and ricocheted.
  

  Also, in Piraeus, youths attacked a police station with stones, prompting officers to respond with tear gas. In Athens a protest march that began outside Athens University at 6 p.m. had escalated into violence by nightfall. Earlier, around 200 youths had staged a sit-down protest opposite Parliament.

  In the central district of Patissia, hundreds of pupils from a local school rallied outside a police station, some hurling stones at police. In the suburb of Korydallos, near Piraeus, more than 700 pupils from local schools clashed with police outside a prison and were met with tear gas and stun grenades. Local authorities were critical. “The attack by police was unprovoked, these were children,” Korydallos Mayor Stavros Kassimatis said.

  Students staged sit-ins at about 100 university faculties yesterday in protest at the death of the 15-year-old and the government’s education reforms. A rally is to begin in Omonia Square at noon today.

• Here's a list of planned solidarity demos. Be sure to check and see if one is happening near you, and if you're planning one in your town, be sure to post it to this list.

• The assembly of the Athens Polytechnic occupation has designated Saturday, December 20th as a day for worldwide resistance in memory of all youths, immigrants and fighters that have been murdered by the state. That should give everyone plenty of time to come up with a plan for an impressive show of solidarity with the Greek uprising. Remember: solidarity means attack!

• Here's a photo montage set to what sounds like Greek hip-hop.

• Here's an updated version of the communique from the Athens Polytechnic occupation. Excerpt:

  In these conditions of fierce exploitation and oppression, and against the daily looting and pillaging that the state and the bosses are launching, taking as spoils the oppressed people’s labor force, their life, their dignity and freedom, the accumulated social suffocation is accompanying today the rage erupting in the streets and the barricades for the murder of Alexandros.

• In Moscow, a one hundred strong solidarity bloc marched to the Greek embassy--which was fire bombed two days ago--hitting banks with paint bombs and anti-cop graffiti along the way. Much respect to anarchists in Russia, who put up with a lot of fascist craziness and still manage to keep it real.

• While the Greek police are rushing to get more tear gas sent from Germany and Israel, protesters claim that they have been using old stock from the 1980s in a desperate bid to contain the rioting. They claim that corroded chemicals were causing some demonstrators to collapse and need medical attention. “We found tear gas canister dated from 1981,” said one demonstrator, calling himself only GK. “The old chemicals make us sick, people have fainted and have trouble breathing,” he said.

• Here's a report-back and photo from a solidarity action outside of the Greek consulate in Chicago.

• A bunch of events are evidently planned for tomorrow in Athens and elsewhere. If someone wants to post a better translation in the comments, that'd be helpful.

• Here's a compilation of video clips, including a distant but discernible shot of the now notorious cop-getting-hit-by-a-Molotov incident. Pretty intense.

• The Greek government defended its handling of the riots, while the Socialist opposition took every opportunity to announce that it could have done a better job of crushing the uprising.

• More riot video.

• The corporate media continues to grope for answers. The Independent (UK) have dubbed the events in Greece the "first credit-crunch riots" and claims the weak European job market means rioting may crop up in other countries facing similar economic conditions. The Scotsman (UK) fears that rioting will become the tool of "opponents of globalization, disaffected youth and others outraged by economic turmoil." Obviously what is lost in these deterministic explanations of the Greek riots are the Greeks themselves, who do considerably more than simply react to contemporary economic condition. Anyway, more analysis later.

• Some solidarity bank smashing in Santa Cruz last night:

  Last night rocks were thrown through the windows of 2 Bank of Americas and another ATM location. We did this because the uprising of our comrades in Greece, England, Moscow and elsewhere will not go without a response. People here are killed by cops, screwed by banks, and we will revolt with just as much fury. These and the outbreaks in Europe show that it is simple for us to respond in the most direct way to the forces of repression in order for them to fall.

• The media seems pretty intent on making a story of the use of Facebook and YouTube in spreading news about the riots.

• Greek Justice Ministry officials say the government will proceed with plans for a major prison release despite this week's rioting. Authorities are planning to release some 5,000 inmates, or about 40% of Greece's prison population, starting this month. The decision followed a mass hunger strike staged by inmates last month to protest overcrowding. Justice Ministry officials said Friday that the plan would not be delayed. They did not say how many inmates would be released this month.

• In Paris, about 300 demonstrators gathered outside the Greek Embassy. Some scuffled with police and spilled over onto the Champs-Elysees, partly blocking Paris' most famous avenue, some ripping out streetlights from the center of the road as they moved along. Outside the embassy, demonstrators shouted "Murderous Greek state!" and "A police officer, a bullet, that is social justice!"

  Hundreds of protesters also marched through Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood, behind a van broadcasting messages of solidarity with the Greek protesters.

• Some highlights from an entertaining Times (UK) account from inside Athens Polytechnic: "Fresh-faced students, anarchists, workers and unionists huddle in discussion around camp fires fueled by looted goods from gutted chain stores... The 'masked ones', as they are known, hold informal assemblies each day, where everyone has a chance to discuss where this 'revolution' is headed. They even debate whether it is a revolution. 'It is a social riot,' said a gate guard, 'and it’s still going on. We don’t know yet where it will lead.'"

• Protesters in Spain, Denmark and Italy this week have smashed shop windows, pelted police with bottles and attacked banks in solidarity, while in France, cars were set ablaze outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux.

• A news video on today's rioting and the damage to chain stores.

• A group of young protesters in Piraeus attacked a police station as more than 700 students in the suburb of Korydallos clashed with police.

• Here's a rough translation of a report-back from a building occupation in solidarity with the Greek rioters in Granada, Spain.

• If you happen to be in New York City, there will be a showing of footage from the Greek riots tonight (12/12/08.) Perhaps a plan for further action in the 5 boroughs will come out of that gathering as well.

• Here's a fresh video taken from within a crowd of rioters clashing with police; intense and awesome. There's some speculation that the cops are retreating faster from these clashes due to their lack of tear gas.
  
• This is Greek news video is from a couple of days ago, but it's got a lot of solid riot footage.

Major Rioting In Greece

NOTE: If you've arrived at this post from a link, you probably want to be here instead for the latest news; this post has been broken up by date. And please don't forget to bookmark and explore this blog! Here, here, and here are examples of other C.S.A. authored articles.

Riots police following today's sit-in outside of police headquarters in Athens

• A solidarity demo has been called in the city of Xixon, in Asturias, Spain for Tuesday. It's pretty amazing how many small towns with just a handful of anarchists have managed to put together solidarity actions of all kinds.
  

• Here's a video of this weekend's action outside of Athens Polytechnic and the surrounding streets.
  

• Here's a video from today's action outside of the police headquarters in Athens.
  

• And here's the update on the below post: "The protest at G.A.D.A. has ended with police brutality.
  
  Students conducted protests outside the General Police Directorate of Attica (G.A.D.A.) and plan to protest outside police stations in the rest of the country. At G.A.D.A., eyewitnesses reported a substantial number of protestors.
  
  Greek police had surrounded the G.A.D.A. building to keep out the demonstrators.
  
  Demonstrators conducted acts of civil disobedience and the protest was generally peaceful at the outset. After a large group of protestors departed and only students remained, the police forces charged the assembly of demonstrators and sent volleys of chemicals into the crowd. Police arrested at least one student, who was brutally beaten and sprayed with chemicals while handcuffed. A lawyer was dispatched to assist the detainee.
  
  Students also blocked roads on Gregoriou Lambraki St. in Korydallos and marched towards the prison. Clashes ensued and Molotov cocktails were deployed against the police."
  
  
• Here's a translation of report on the street demos today around the country and plans for the next few days: "The protest movement against the murder of sixteen year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos shall continue, the students have decided.
  
  Students will conduct protests outside the General Police Directorate of Attica (G.A.D.A.) and outside police stations in the rest of the country.
  
  At this hour, students have blocked roads on Gregoriou Lambraki St. in Korydallos. In addition, students plan to shut-down the streets near the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Defense, the Square of Kalogiron, and a number of other streets.
  
  The spiritual center and public radio station of the municipality of Ioannina, the old City Hall of Halandri, and the City Hall of Aghios Dimitrios remain under the occupation of anti-authoritarians, with the goal of felicitating grassroot meetings.
  
  The Ministry of Education claims that 100 schools are under the occupation of the students, but information from the students suggests between 400 to 600, and about 100 universities are under student occupation."
  
  The students plan to remain on the streets all week and continue their protests.

• Here's a report-back with photos from a solidarity demo in Pittsburgh: "The protest was held outside the Pittsburgh Police Zone 2 Headquarters in the Hill District, a fitting location given the police’s universal role as agents of state control and repression. Fliers were handed out to passing drivers and pedestrians explaining the situation in Greece and related police killings there to the police violence and the specific killing of Michael Ellerbe locally."

• Here's a blog from the "Liberated City Hall of Aghios Dmitrios", with some statements on the riots and calls for solidarity with those arrested. And one from the occupation of the the Old Town Hall in Chalandrioy. And one from the occupation of the radio station 98.7 in Ioanninon. And the occupation of the School of Theater in Thessaloniki. And the occupation of the School of Economics in Athens (has to be translated one post at a time...) And finally, Athens Polytechnic.
  

• Here's a CNN report from Friday on events in and around Athens.

• A demonstration was held outside the education ministry in Maroussi by schools in the well-to-do northern suburbs of Athens, carrying on until late in the afternoon. Protests were also held at several points along the length of Messogion Avenue, especially outside the national defence and the former public order ministries, as well as in the Korydallos and Peristeri areas.

  Demonstrations and protests continued outside Athens as well, in cities around the country. Groups of young protestors took over the municipal radio station in the northwestern Greek city of Ioannina - where a group of youths had earlier attacked the offices of the local newspaper 'Proina Nea - and put out their own broadcast with their positions.

  Students at the Aegean University also took over the state radio station ERA Aigaio on Lesvos from 10:00 in the morning until shortly after 1:00 and put out their own programme regarding the events since the death of Grigoropoulos. They then attempted to take over three local radio stations and succeeded in broadcasting the programme they had prepared from Astra radio.

  Another protest rally by young people was held in the city of Hania on the island of Crete, while several high schools in the region were not working due to student sit-ins or boycotts.

  Schools in Thessaloniki are also planning to continue protest action after a meeting held by student body representation committees on Sunday, including a march at noon on Tuesday and picketing roads on Wednesday.

• Here's a translation of a text distributed at the sit-in outside police headquarters in Athens today, care of Occupied London. Excerpt:

  For us, the politically organised migrants, this is a second french November of 2005. We never had any illusions that when the peoples’ rage overflew we would be able to direct it in any way. Despite the struggles we have taken on during all these years we never managed to achieve such a mass response like this one. Now is time for the street to talk: The deafening scream heard is for the 18 years of violence, repression, exploitation and humiliation. These days are ours, too.

  These days belong to all the marginalised, the excluded, the people with the difficult names and the unknown stories. They belong to all those who die every day in the Aegean sea and Evros river, to all those murdered at the border or at a central Athens street; the belong to the Roma in Zefyri, to the drug addicts in Eksarhia. These days belong to the kids of Mesollogiou street, to the unintegrated, the uncontrollable students. Thanks to Alexis, these days belong to us all.

• On the island of Lesbos and Ioannina, in western Greece, students took over local radio stations demanding they be allowed to make live broadcasts. A local newspaper in Ioannina was also attacked.

• The headlines in Athens today focused on the political crisis faced by the prime minister due to the uprising and recent corruption scandals.
  

• Here's another report on today's sit-in and subsequent clashes: "More than 4,000 students hurled eggs, oranges and flour at police outside Athens' main police headquarters Monday in a second week of anti-government protests, sparked by the police shooting of a teenager. The students, yelling "You have got old, fat and have forgotten," blocked one of the Greek capital's main avenues and threw projectiles at riot police, who eventually responded with teargas. Protesters also hurled eggs at police outside the main courthouse on the other side of town, where hearings went ahead involving dozens of people arrested during the country's worst riots in decades. Across the country, students have occupied nearly 600 school buildings in protest."

• Here's the Occupied London version of events outside of police headquarters in Athens: "The peaceful student sit-in outside the police headquarters on Aleksandras Ave. was attacked without provocation by police with tear gas. The crowd dispersed in three groups, all of which started fighting back with stones and spontaneous small barricades. At least two arrests - one young male student was arrested, handcuffed and then teargassed and kicked in front of us. People tried to save him from the police, but it was impossible. Indymedia reports that another young female student was injured in the head by the pigs. The anti-police sentiment on the streets is simply phenomenal."
  

  They go on to note that arrestees may be facing up to a year of pre-trial detention. It seems vital that pressure be exerted on the Greek government to release all those arrested during the revolt.
  

• Greek police fired teargas at small groups of protesters who threw stones and firebombs in central Athens on Monday in a second week of anti-government demonstrations since a policeman shot dead a teenager. Youths outside Athens' main court and central police station clashed with riot police, while acts of vandalism against shops were reported in two northern cities in protests against the Dec. 6 killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.
  

  IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned there was a risk of social unrest spreading unless the global financial sector shared wealth more evenly. Copy-cat demonstrations have taken place in many European countries.

  Students and police exchanged firebombs and teargas on Monday and more rallies have been called for Thursday and Friday against education and pension reforms, privatizations and tax rises as the budget goes to parliament.
  

  Central Athens braced for further violence later on Monday, when an anarchist group plans to march on parliament.

  The tourist industry worries that more unrest will put off foreign visitors and badly hit the sector which accounts for nearly one-fifth of gross domestic product.

• Youths protested outside of Athens' main police headquarters on Monday, pelting riot police with flour and other objects to protest the shooting death of a teenager. Riot police responded tear gas.

  Some 2,000 youths at the rally blocked one of the capital's main avenues, chanted slogans and setting fire to trash bins before dispersing. Two demonstrators were arrested.

  Students also staged peaceful blockades of several other busy roads Monday in the capital and protested outside Athens' main court complex, where five people arrested during last week's riots were to appear before an examining magistrate. Riot police guarded the complex and no disturbances were reported.

• Here's a call for a solidarity action tomorrow in Boston.

• Occupied London reports that a sit-in began outside of police headquarters in Athens, and if the comments are to be believed, the demo was quickly attacked by riot police, among other news: "In the next few minutes, high school students will be gathering outside the police headquarters on Alexandras Ave - an unprecedented move even for lefty/anarchist groups. But the students have already overcome nearly all conventional forms of political action, so far.

  A solidarity meeting is called for today outside the main courthouse in Athens, in solidarity with the arrestees - the pre-trial detention (or not) of many of them is to be decided today."

• Here's a summary of the day's (12/14/08) events:

  After a night of clashing with the police around the Polytechnic University and in the Exarchia area, unjustified police violence against one of the most peaceful sit-in gatherings at Sintagma square and mass arrests (50 or so people) during a spontaneous demonstration (all people released hours later without charges), it was time for reorganization, meetings and propagandizing.
  
  During the day, 4 major radio stations were occupied and the protesters broadcast their views on the recent events, read communiques and made a call for more people to take part in the protests. Apart from those major stations that were occupied for a few minutes, there are two radio stations in Athens and one in Thessaloniki operating from inside the occupied universities.
  
  A few demonstrations and gatherings took place today: In Athens there was a gathering on the point that Alexis was killed, called by the Exarchia residents and even though it was raining hard, lots of people showed up. Also there was a demonstration in Petroupoli. Around 11pm, a group of 50 or so pupils tried to have a sit-in outside the parliament and the police forbid them to do so! It is said that a top-rank cop who was there suggested to the kids to “go have a coffee instead” and that is illegal to be on the square! There was a motor and bike demonstration in Thessaloniki which was driven within residential neighborhoods and not through the city center as usual. Moreover gatherings or demonstrations were organized in Corfu, Volos (banks and politican offices smashed here), Xanthi and Peraia. Many assemblies and conventions took place to determine further actions and demonstrations.
  
  The TV channels for the past few days have stopped most of the reports about the protests and the police oppression, trying to keep the news out of the peoples' TV sets, homes and lives.

• Here's are some photos and a report-back from a solidarity action in Ljubljana, Slovenia: "On Tuesday evening, 9th December 2008, a spontaneous protest took place in front of the Greek embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Around 70 anarchists gathered in an autonomous center to march through the city center towards the embassy of Greece. In front of the embassy they lit 15 candles in memory of Alexandros Grigolopous and hung a banner and the anarchist flag on the building. In front of the entrance, they wrote with red paint 'ALEXANDROS - MURDERED BY THE STATE.' Red paint was also spilled on the doors and signs of the Embassy."

• Corporate media outlets are again pushing the storyline that the riots are dying down, likely leading to a second series of headlines that the riots have "flared up" again when some direct action or street fighting occurs in the coming days. It is worth pointing out that hundreds of universities, high schools and municipal buildings around the country are still occupied and many more demonstrations are planned for the coming days.

• A poll by a conservative Athens newspaper on Saturday found that 60% of respondents identified what has occurred in the past 8 days as a broad-based "social uprising", rather than the work of fringe elements. Also, nearly 70 percent of people surveyed said the government did not handle the crisis well.
  
  Only 20 percent of those polled said Karamanlis, of the center-right New Democracy party, could handle the issues. Seventeen percent said the socialist opposition leader Papandreou could best manage.
  
  The most popular choice of those polled, however, was the option of "nobody," creating parallels to the Argentine uprising of 2002.
  

• A reminder: Saturday, December 20th has been called by the occupation of Athens Polytechnic as an international day of resistance in memory of all those assassinated by the state. That's six days from now. Make a plan; make something happen. Anarchists everywhere have the power to extend and deepen and spread this insurrection.

• Here's an action from Olympia, Washington claimed in solidarity with the Greek riots.
  

• Here's an account from the BBC of police carrying out punitive violence on demonstrators. This has been reported before during these riots and is indeed a feature of virtually every protest and uprising in Greece, which perhaps lends some insight into why many "average" Greeks have such antipathy for the police. Here's a Greek news video from a few days back of a police beating.
  

• Students at mass demonstrations have been handing out timetables scheduling another week of the civil unrest that has brought violence to Athens and other parts of Greece.

  Rallies outside police stations and courthouses and blockading areas of main cities are among the plans as a leading union official said that anger among disenchanted youths would only get worse in the months ahead, with as many as 100,000 jobs under threat after the Christmas period.

• Here's a new statement from the occupation of the Athens School of Economics and Business, care of the Occupied London blog. It's very much worth reading. Here's a highlight:
  

  The global capitalist crisis has denied the bosses their most dynamic, most extorting response to the insurrection: “We offer you everything, for ever, while all they can offer is an uncertain present”. With one firm collapsing after the other, capitalism and its state are no longer in a position to offer anything other than worse days to come, tightened financial conditions, sacks, suspension of pensions, welfare cuts, crush of free education. Contrarily, in just seven days, the insurgents have proved in practice what they can do: to turn the city into a battlefield, to create enclaves of communes across the urban fabric, to abandon individuality and their pathetic security, seeking the composition of their collective power and the total destruction of this murderous system.

  At this historical conjuncture of crisis, rage and the dismissal of institutions at which we finally stand, the only thing that can convert the systemic deregulation into a social revolution is the total rejection of work. When street fighting will be taking place in streets dark from the strike of the Electricity Company; when clashes will be taking place amidst tons of uncollected rubbish, when trolley-buses will be closing streets, blocking off the cops, when the striking teacher will be lighting up his revolted pupil’s molotov cocktail, then we will be finally able to say: “Ruffians, the days of your society are numbered; we weighted its joys and its justices and we found them all too short”. This, today, is no longer a mere fantasy but a concrete ability in everyone’s hand: the ability to act concretely on the concrete. The ability to charge the skies.

• Here's a report-back from a short but sweet solidarity demo in St. Petersburg, Russia (photos): "On the 13th of December 2008, around 6 p.m., anarchists and members of DSPA (leftist group) organised an action near Greek consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia. The action was not permitted by the authorities so it was rather short and lasted for about 5 minutes. Activists distributed some leaflets to the people passing by and spoke about the Greek way of dealing with police oppression. Then they lit some torches and threw them at the consulate and police cars, chanting 'Cops murder, the authorities cover it up.' The cops did not manage to arrest anyone"

• Here's a corporate media profile of the occupation of Athens Polytechnic and the role of anarchists, unfortunately a much more biased and less honest effort than the Independent (UK) article posted below. Excerpt:

  Early Saturday morning inside the gates of Athens Polytechnic University, a dozen groggy young people in hooded sweatshirts slumped on folding chairs around a smoky fire. Others trickled in, holding cups of coffee. Small gypsy children scampered around with wheelbarrows, collecting empty beer bottles. One lit a cigarette. But the young people and their friends were not simply recovering from a long night of drinking or studying. They were regrouping for revolution.

• Here are some photos and a report-back from a heavily policed but enthusiastic solidarity demo in London today.

• A solidarity demo took place in Macedonia outside of the Greek embassy on Saturday. Greek/Macedonian relations have been strained lately by a variety of issues. Nationalists on both side have tried to stir up jingoistic divisiveness, making yesterday's demo particularly significant.

A laser pointer is aimed at a riot cop outside of Athens Polytechnic

• Here's some news video from the solidarity rioting in Madrid, complete with translated subtitled. Let's see more of this elsewhere!
  

• Here's some more information on the bombing of two offices of the Greek communist party, the KKE, which, in typical fashion, has been actively working to end the uprising and has tried to block popular assemblies from forming. According to police, unknown perpetrators attacked KKE offices in Thessaloniki with firebombs and home-made incendiary devices in the early morning hours. And for the truly masochistic, here's an interview with the leader of the KKE on the riots, complete with psychotic conspiracy theories and nonsensical jargon. The KKE and the Greek orthodox church appear to be in agreement that the riots are the work of foreign agents conspiring to undermine the country.
  

• Here's a better quality video of last nights clashes around Athens Polytechnic, including some those cinematic laser pointer shots and a healthy does of Molotov throwing.
  

• Protesters used laser pointers to try to blind police as unrest continued in Greece over the fatal shooting of a teenager. The laser pointers were used on Saturday night as youths clashed with police in Athens just hours after peaceful candlelight vigils were held.
  

• Greek protesters say they are planning sit-ins in front of police headquarters across the country.

• The students have called for the sit-ins Monday, 10 days after the police shooting death of a 15-year-old boy sparked nationwide riots in which at least 70 have been injured, stores and international businesses attacked and at least 280 people detained.

  Protesters say Monday's sit-ins are to take place in front of Greece's national police headquarters in Athens, as well as in front of police precincts across the country.

• Greek militants warned of new protests Sunday after an attack on an Athens police station became the latest clash with authority over the police killing of a teenager. Also, two blasts hit Greek Communist Party offices in the country's second city. Meanwhile, Stathis Anestis of Greece's most powerful union, the General Confederation of Greek workers (GSEE), said, "A massive wave of redundancies will kick in come the New Year when, according to our estimates, 100,000 jobs will be lost, which represents an additional five percent on the unemployment rate."
  

• Here's a piece looking at the legal asylum of Greek university campuses, with some audio as well. Excerpt: "A heavy cloud of tear gas and smoke hung over Exarchia, which felt like a rebel-held enclave in a city at war. Police lingered warily on its edges as young people set up burning barricades and attacked government buildings and banks. And clashes erupted once again outside the Polytechnic. Few here think the unrest will end anytime soon, and the rage of Greece's youth continues to smolder."

• Some new pictures from the last few days.

• Demonstrations in solidarity with the Greek youth movement continued in a number of European cities on Sunday, including London, where a sit-in took place outside the Greek embassy, Moscow, Paris, Berlin and several other German cities. In Moscow, 15 demonstrators were arrested.

• Here's a video from last night's actions around Athens Polytechnic. The video quality is low, but it's the only street-level view of the action we've come across so far.
  

• A radio station in Athens was occupied for half an hour today. News about street actions and upcoming events were broadcast.

• Here's a tightly edited video montage of rioting from the last week, set to appropriately fast punk rock.
  

• Some more details on last night's events, which, given the targets (banks, government offices, and chain stores) and tools (Molotovs), sounds very much like coordinated direct actions by anarchists: "Hooded youths hurled firebombs at the environment ministry, banks and businesses in more attacks across Athens in the early hours of Sunday. Angry youths hurled firebombs at several banks along a busy avenue in central Athens as well as a McDonald's restaurant and two stores of Spanish clothing chain Zara. More school students were expected to mobilize in central Athens for further rallies on Monday and throughout the week. Students occupied more than 400 school buildings across the country in protest."

• It looks like Athenian newspapers are in the same boat as the international corporate media. Many of the Sunday headlines of Athens' 19 (!) daily newspapers are variations on the question, "Who are the rioters and what do they want?"

• Continued protests in Greece on Saturday left 86 arrested and a police station firebombed. The police station that was attacked (this link includes some informative audio) is holding the two police officers who are awaiting trial over the death of Alexis Grigoropoulos, the 15-year who was killed by police fire last weekend.
  

  "Very near the university, the economics university and the law school - which have been occupied by the students - there were several banks which were firebombed, there was a Mc Donalds restaurant as well as two shops" correspondent Christina Pirovolakis said on Sunday.

  "There was chaos along this main strip right in downtown Athens last [Saturday] night. There was close to 90 arrests," she added.

  On the question of whether the protests will continue into next week, she says "I think a lot of young people are very determined [...]. As of tomorrow morning there is going to be demonstrations towards the main police headquarters by students."

  She said that anarchists had called "for everyone to go to the main courthouse tomorrow morning and to riot against the police that are holding a lot of the so-called anarchists."

• More news from Crete. Here's a new translation of an account of events in the capital city of Heraklion. Excerpt:

  In plain view of the cops, pupils donned scarfs and hoods, broke the pavement, and attacked the cops with stones. Stone and fire is a weapon of the weak harks the Muse of Rebellion. The cops retreated. A police van and a government car were overturned in front of the prefecture building. Many migrant workers, hooligans, Roma, and poor folk from Heraklion's neighborhoods join the rebellion. Most banks in the city center were burnt. Cops attacked with rubber bullets. One demonstrator was injured.

• The Independent (UK) makes the most serious attempt by the corporate media so far to understand--in their own convoluted way--anarchists and their role in the Greek riots. It's worth quoting at length:

  "People from 12 to 70 have taken part in the revolt," claimed an anarchist website yesterday. "People who would never have expected to find themselves in such a situation. Fashionable youth, respectable family men, elderly ladies, all those normally labeled 'the common people.'"

  Greece's anarchists, pejoratively known as the koukoulofori (balaclava-wearers), have been a force since they emerged during the violent clashes that accompanied the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. Today they are a presence in both university areas such as Exarchia and many other urban neighbourhoods, and their numbers include not just students, but the local plumber or electrician, unemployed youths living at the corner and football hooligans. They have a foothold right across the country.

  The different groups vary, from studiously political ones who hark back to 19th-century anarchist pioneers such as Kropotkin and Proudhon, to groups involved in squats and those committed to violent action. Some talk in moderate tones, others rob banks. What they share is the willingness to come together with great speed behind a common cause.

  In a state where the police are despised for their arbitrary violence, and are increasingly incapable of carrying out normal law and order functions, these lawless groups have acquired extraordinary influence. They attack people and property identified with the state and with capitalism, yet they take pains not to cause serious injury or death. As they subscribe to none of the discredited ideologies of the past, the state has its work cut out demonizing them.

  The Greek anarchists' power was confirmed on Friday when, despite the violence in the streets, the Justice Ministry said it would go ahead with the release of about 40 per cent of the prisoners in Greece's jails to relieve overcrowding. The government's concession was the victorious conclusion to a hunger strike by prisoners and a month-long campaign outside the prisons by anarchists. They have also fought against proposals to create private universities.

  "If all this doesn't bring the revolution," commented an anarchist site about the present clashes, "at least we should enjoy ourselves in this process of humanization" – by which they mean wrecking banks and other "dehumanizing" capitalist institutions.

• Here's another overview of the days events in Athens, including some photos and video.

• Here's the Occupied London post on today's events in Athens, focusing on Exarchia.

• A march 5,000 strong took place in Patras today and it looks like some windows got smashed in the process.
  

• Based on the ultra-sophisticated translation tools available to the C.S.A., it sounds like a march in Chania (the second largest city on the island of Crete) led to the occupation of a radio station. Various statements were then read over the air, including the statement of the Polytechnic occupation and anarchist texts, among other things. Actions in Crete have been particularly heartening, since it is known mostly as a placid tourist destination rather a hotbed of anarchy and insurrection.
  

• Here, someone who appears to be affiliated with a rival Marxist sect unsympathetic to the main Greek communist party (the KKE), comments a bit on their role in attempting to end the uprising, among other things.
  

• Here's a video from the Moscow solidarity march and some nice photos from the march at the bottom of this post.

• The first two dozen images here are from tonight's clashes near Athens Polytechnic (including plenty of green laser pointer shots); the rest are from the past few days.
  

• At 1am local time (2300 GMT) police charged a peaceful candlelight vigil in central Athens, when the crowd of several hundred people refused to move. The protesters retreated but the tense confrontation continued.

• Youths — some on foot, others riding motorcycles — attacked a police station with petrol bombs in central Athens as well as at least three banks, several stores and a government building, police said.

  Several hundred protesters set up burning barricades and attacked police with rocks and flares. Riot police fired tear gas and chased the youths through parts of the city. The protesters chanted "murderers out" and used laser pointers to target police for attack.

• Here's a news video on the estimated 200 million euros in economic damage caused by the riots.

• Here's a BBC video on the occupation of the TV station in Patras. It doesn't lend a great deal of insight, unfortunately.
  

• It appears that most of the occupied universities in Greece are either holding popular assemblies or plan to hold them in the coming days. Hopefully the growing number of popular assemblies will deepen and extend the uprising, radicalizing participants and building networks for continued action. Of course, popular assemblies have also become platforms for recuperation and pacification in other struggles. Rather than merely hoping for the best, let's help keep the tone militant and radical by continuing to take direct action in solidarity with Greek anarchists.
  

• Here's some freshly released video of rioting, seemingly in Athens. And a Spanish news video with some nice riot footage, including the smashing of a Citibank.
  

• Two banners were dropped today in Milwaukee on Saturday December 13th. They read "SOLIDARITY MEANS ATTACK: this is global social war" and "BURN GREECE BURN: Alex was here." A statement released in conjunction with this action read in part: Our incendiary device is the generalization of our struggles, it is to connect out of our collective isolation as an ungovernable multiplicity ensuring that with our own weathered hands one day our friends, some now facing potential prison time for their alleged actions during the RNC, will never again go to prison, because there will be no more prisons.

• Youths in Greece have firebombed a police station next to the Exarchia district. Police fired tear gas at about 100 youths who had congregated, with similar numbers in Thessaloniki also vandalising a gymnasium before holing up in a university premises.

• “Athens must burn, especially the banks,” said a teenager in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans called Marios to a reporter during a protest on Friday.

  Nearby, rioters had smashed the display screens of cash dispensers and shattered dozens of shop windows, carting off mobile telephones, watches, clothes and computers. A few rioters dragged a drinks refrigerator on to the street, ripped off the back and filled their arms with bottles and cans. They drank a few and used the rest as projectiles.

• This reprint of an earlier news story includes some new details, including this quote from one of the occupiers of Athens Polytechnic: "We have no leaders, we have no organization, we make our policies by meetings and consensus."

• Authorities say dozens of youths on foot and on motorcycles attacked a police station in central Athens, at least three banks, several stores and a government building. The youths threw at least one petroleum bomb at the police station this evening before smashing paving stones and setting up barricades with burning trash bins.

• Here's an exhaustive list of the various marches, occupations, and direct actions over the last week in Greece, many from small towns unmentioned in the corporate press.

• According to Occupied London: "Around 300 anarchists attack the offices of the Ministry of Planning and Public Works in solidarity with the struggle of the people of the village of Leukimi in Corfu (a local woman was assassinated by the police there in the summer). Two banks are also smashed and burnt. High street shops are smashed. The police are nowhere to be seen.

  Thousands of people have gathered at the point of death of Alexandros (at the corner of Messologiou and Tzavella Street in Eksarhia) and a demonstration is about to begin."

• Here are videos (1, 2) of the demonstration today in Syntagma Square. And a report from the scene there last night, with some general updates and this quote: "'Speaking as an anarchist, we want to create those social conditions that will generate more uprisings and to get more people out in the streets to demand their rights,' said 32-year-old protester Paris Kyriakides."

• Here are some photos and details from the rowdy solidarity march in Madrid on Wednesday: "400 people gathered at Sol in the city center, painted and sprayed the windows of companies and [marched] to Gran Via, the cities biggest road, to stop all the cars. After this a police station was attacked with paint bombs, the walls sprayed with slogans. Soon the people began to smash the windows and to throw stones.
  
  From all directions riot cops began to storm into the people, to beat up people. 3 people were arrested, 1o hurt and 3 cops hurt. The newspaper El Pais reported that the damage done to the police station was 15,000 Euro and that 12 banks were smashed."

• The focus of widespread protests following the police killing of a teenager shifted to the scene of his death Saturday. Alexis Grigoropoulos was killed exactly one week ago on the night of December 6, and radicals occupying nearby university buildings said they would gather over the weekend at the spot where the 15-year-old died.

  Swelled by anarchists, students blocked off the central Syntagma Square after an earlier sit-down protest by around 300 school pupils ended peacefully, and mostly dispersed by around 6:00 pm. As darkness fell, around 100 of the more militant among them continued to loiter -- amid growing police frustration, going by one officer's conversation on his mobile and not least due to low stocks of tear gas.

  Student pamphlets also announced rallies planned in front of the Athens police headquarters on Monday and back at parliament square on Thursday, when school pupils and teachers are expected to back the protests.

• Hooded youths firebombed banks and businesses in pre-dawn attacks across Athens Saturday in the eighth day of civil unrest triggered by the shooting of a 15-year-old boy by police.
  Angry youths hurled firebombs at four banks in the southern Athens suburb of Paleo Faliro as well as a supermarket, the offices of newly privatized telephone company OTE and the local party offices of the ruling conservatives. One more bank was reportedly torched in central Athens.

• Here's a call for a popular assembly in Athens, which, based on the number of these calls that have appeared recently, seems to be part of a developing trend across Greece.
  

• On Tuesday, anarchists occupied the TV station Super B in Patras and broadcast their own message over the airwaves. A video of the broadcast can be found here. If someone wants to translate this, that would be a major service; please post in the comments or send to lobsterbeard@gmail.com. But even if you don't understand a word of it, it's pretty entertaining to watch the news anchor clip off his microphone and walk away, leaving the bearded anarchists to deliver their spiel into the camera.

• An edgy stand-off developed on Saturday as up to 2,000 demonstrators squared up to police outside the Greek parliament in Athens on day eight of their protest movement over the killing of a teenager. Students and anarchist blocked off Syntagma Square after an earlier sit-down protest of around 300 school pupils ended without incident.

• Here's a solid report on some of the details of yesterday's actions in Athens.
  

• Here's a brief report from the city of Larisa in Greece: "Monday's demonstration had about 2,500 people, an unheard of number for Larisa and as a result 36 banks, the justice building, city hall, and the military justice center were attacked." Larisa is also apparently hosting a popular assembly every day in an occupied school.
  

• Here's a report-back from a solidarity demo in Helsinki: "Around fifty people gathered to the Greek embassy on Friday to express their support for the rebellion in Greece. There was also a demonstration in the city of Turku. In Helsinki the protesters blocked the road in front of the embassy for almost an hour and then took to the surrounding streets and made their way towards the university of Helsinki and the central railway station. A Greek comrade was teaching people their most popular chants like: Cops, Pigs, Murderers! The cops kept their distance and the demo was completed without any trouble. More protests are planned in Helsinki."

• Here's a call for a solidarity demo in London on the 14th.

• The education ministry on Friday said 130 high schools were under occupation or otherwise shut across Greece. Police said yesterday that since the start of the riots on Saturday, 176 people have been arrested, 100 of whom are foreigners. Of those, 131 have been charged with causing damage to shops and 45 with rioting.
  
  An office of the ruling Nea Dimokratia party was attacked Friday night, while a mobile telephone business was destroyed. The attacks lasted only a few minutes, the television report said.
  
  Shortly before midnight some 50 cyclists blocked the main road in front of the parliament building for 30 minutes and shouted chants against police brutality, the television report said. The protest caused traffic problems in central Athens.

• Here's another glib attempt by the corporate media to find an all-encompassing explanation for the riots, with one decent quote thrown in: "'I can't keep waking up every day not wanting to wake up,' the young man wearing the helmet said. 'We see how our parents were manipulated by the system and how afraid they were to take chances...This is a rage against that kind of decay.'"

• Saturday's newspaper headlines in Athens focused almost entirely on the fate of Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis, who doesn't seem like he's going anywhere fast (note: are there really 18 daily newspapers in Athens?) If Greek voters seem fed up with the conservative New Democracy government -- despite having re-elected them only last year -- they may simply be trading one political dynasty for another were an election to be held. In all, a Karamanlis or a Papandreou has ruled the country for 32 of the last 53 years -- including 21 years since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974.
  

• Four different protests related to the shooting death of 15 year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos by a policeman a week ago have been planned for Saturday in Athens. The mostly youthful protesters are were also demonstrating in a number of Athens' outlying districts as well.

  Unknown suspects firebombed four bank branches, several shops and a supermarket in the coastal Athens suburb of Kalamaki early Saturday morning.

  A peaceful rally was held on Saturday outside Greece's diplomatic liaison office in Skopje, in protest over the death of 15-year old Alexis Grigoropoulos last Saturday in Athens. Protestors held a large banner with the word "Solidarity", while condemning what they called the Greek state's methods and the situation prevailing in the country. The rally ended 45 minutes later.

  On Friday in Melbourne, protestors held a rally outside the Greek embassy, expressing their support to demonstrators in Athens and condemning police for the fatal shooting of Grigoropoulos. Demonstrators held banners and shouted slogans against Greek police. The rally was organised by self-styled anarchists in Melbourne.

• Here's a video on last night's events in Athens, with some nice footage from what look like strong solidarity demos in Paris and Germany.

• A week after the police killing of a 15-year-old boy sparked riots across Greece, young protesters on Saturday promised to remain on the streets until their concerns are addressed. Several dozen students took part in a peaceful sit-down demonstration in Athens' central Syntagma Square. More demonstrations are scheduled later in the day, including a vigil at the place and time that 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was fatally shot by a police officer a week ago.

• Here's a better translation of the call for an international day of solidarity on Saturday, December 20th.
  

• Here's a report-back from solidarity actions in Germany:

  As the economy crumbles and prices increase all over Europe, we too raise the price of what it costs to kill one of us. On Friday late evening more than 1,000 marched in Berlin in solidarity with Greek comrades, police brutality and repression in Germany. Small protests of between 20 and up to 200 protesters took place in about ten cities across Germany. During the night there were minor arson attacks across Berlin on banks, cars and garbage bins.

• The results of forensic tests indicate that the bullet that killed 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, and sparked this week’s rioting, appears to have entered the youth’s body directly. This casts doubt on claims by the 37-year-old policeman charged with the boy’s murder that the bullet had been fired as a warning and ricocheted.
  

  Also, in Piraeus, youths attacked a police station with stones, prompting officers to respond with tear gas. In Athens a protest march that began outside Athens University at 6 p.m. had escalated into violence by nightfall. Earlier, around 200 youths had staged a sit-down protest opposite Parliament.

  In the central district of Patissia, hundreds of pupils from a local school rallied outside a police station, some hurling stones at police. In the suburb of Korydallos, near Piraeus, more than 700 pupils from local schools clashed with police outside a prison and were met with tear gas and stun grenades. Local authorities were critical. “The attack by police was unprovoked, these were children,” Korydallos Mayor Stavros Kassimatis said.

  Students staged sit-ins at about 100 university faculties yesterday in protest at the death of the 15-year-old and the government’s education reforms. A rally is to begin in Omonia Square at noon today.

• Here's a list of planned solidarity demos. Be sure to check and see if one is happening near you, and if you're planning one in your town, be sure to post it to this list.

• The assembly of the Athens Polytechnic occupation has designated Saturday, December 20th as a day for worldwide resistance in memory of all youths, immigrants and fighters that have been murdered by the state. That should give everyone plenty of time to come up with a plan for an impressive show of solidarity with the Greek uprising. Remember: solidarity means attack!
  

• Here's a photo montage set to what sounds like Greek hip-hop.
  

• Here's an updated version of the communique from the Athens Polytechnic occupation. Excerpt:

  In these conditions of fierce exploitation and oppression, and against the daily looting and pillaging that the state and the bosses are launching, taking as spoils the oppressed people’s labor force, their life, their dignity and freedom, the accumulated social suffocation is accompanying today the rage erupting in the streets and the barricades for the murder of Alexandros.

• In Moscow, a one hundred strong solidarity bloc marched to the Greek embassy--which was fire bombed two days ago--hitting banks with paint bombs and anti-cop graffiti along the way. Much respect to anarchists in Russia, who put up with a lot of fascist craziness and still manage to keep it real.
  

• While the Greek police are rushing to get more tear gas sent from Germany and Israel, protesters claim that they have been using old stock from the 1980s in a desperate bid to contain the rioting. They claim that corroded chemicals were causing some demonstrators to collapse and need medical attention. “We found tear gas canister dated from 1981,” said one demonstrator, calling himself only GK. “The old chemicals make us sick, people have fainted and have trouble breathing,” he said.

• Here's a report-back and photo from a solidarity action outside of the Greek consulate in Chicago.

• A bunch of events are evidently planned for tomorrow in Athens and elsewhere. If someone wants to post a better translation in the comments, that'd be helpful.

• Here's a compilation of video clips, including a distant but discernible shot of the now notorious cop-getting-hit-by-a-Molotov incident. Pretty intense.
  

• The Greek government defended its handling of the riots, while the Socialist opposition took every opportunity to announce that it could have done a better job of crushing the uprising.
  

• More riot video.
  

• The corporate media continues to grope for answers. The Independent (UK) have dubbed the events in Greece the "first credit-crunch riots" and claims the weak European job market means rioting may crop up in other countries facing similar economic conditions. The Scotsman (UK) fears that rioting will become the tool of "opponents of globalization, disaffected youth and others outraged by economic turmoil." Obviously what is lost in these deterministic explanations of the Greek riots are the Greeks themselves, who do considerably more than simply react to contemporary economic condition. Anyway, more analysis later.
  

• Some solidarity bank smashing in Santa Cruz last night:

  Last night rocks were thrown through the windows of 2 Bank of Americas and another ATM location. We did this because the uprising of our comrades in Greece, England, Moscow and elsewhere will not go without a response. People here are killed by cops, screwed by banks, and we will revolt with just as much fury. These and the outbreaks in Europe show that it is simple for us to respond in the most direct way to the forces of repression in order for them to fall.

• The media seems pretty intent on making a story of the use of Facebook and YouTube in spreading news about the riots.
  

• Greek Justice Ministry officials say the government will proceed with plans for a major prison release despite this week's rioting. Authorities are planning to release some 5,000 inmates, or about 40% of Greece's prison population, starting this month. The decision followed a mass hunger strike staged by inmates last month to protest overcrowding. Justice Ministry officials said Friday that the plan would not be delayed. They did not say how many inmates would be released this month.

• In Paris, about 300 demonstrators gathered outside the Greek Embassy. Some scuffled with police and spilled over onto the Champs-Elysees, partly blocking Paris' most famous avenue, some ripping out streetlights from the center of the road as they moved along. Outside the embassy, demonstrators shouted "Murderous Greek state!" and "A police officer, a bullet, that is social justice!"

  Hundreds of protesters also marched through Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood, behind a van broadcasting messages of solidarity with the Greek protesters.

• Some highlights from an entertaining Times (UK) account from inside Athens Polytechnic: "Fresh-faced students, anarchists, workers and unionists huddle in discussion around camp fires fueled by looted goods from gutted chain stores... The 'masked ones', as they are known, hold informal assemblies each day, where everyone has a chance to discuss where this 'revolution' is headed. They even debate whether it is a revolution. 'It is a social riot,' said a gate guard, 'and it’s still going on. We don’t know yet where it will lead.'"

• Protesters in Spain, Denmark and Italy this week have smashed shop windows, pelted police with bottles and attacked banks in solidarity, while in France, cars were set ablaze outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux.

• A news video on today's rioting and the damage to chain stores.

• A group of young protesters in Piraeus attacked a police station as more than 700 students in the suburb of Korydallos clashed with police.

• Here's a rough translation of a report-back from a building occupation in solidarity with the Greek rioters in Granada, Spain.

• If you happen to be in New York City, there will be a showing of footage from the Greek riots tonight (12/12/08.) Perhaps a plan for further action in the 5 boroughs will come out of that gathering as well.

• Here's a fresh video taken from within a crowd of rioters clashing with police; intense and awesome. There's some speculation that the cops are retreating faster from these clashes due to their lack of tear gas.
  

• This is Greek news video is from a couple of days ago, but it's got a lot of solid riot footage.

• Demonstrators are blocking Paris' most famous avenue after gathering in protest at the Greek embassy. The protesters on the Champs-Elysees are shouting: "Police pigs everywhere!" Traffic has been halted on part of the avenue that is adorned with Christmas lights, and riot police with shields raised are moving down the broad street in the wake of the demonstrators. At least one car window has been broken. The protesters had called the gathering to demonstrate their solidarity with Greek youths who have been rioting for seven days. Let's see more like this!

• Confirmation that the office of Alexis Kougias, the lawyer for the cops who shot Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was trashed in a planned attack.

• An excellent, powerful statement from the Athens School of Economics and Business occupation, excerpted here: If something scares us, it is the return to normality. For in the destroyed and pillaged streets of our cities of light we see not only the obvious results of our rage, but the possibility of starting to live. We no longer have anything to do, other than to install ourselves in this possibility and transform it into a living experience: by grounding on the field of everyday life, our creativity, our power to materialize our desires, our power not to contemplate but to construct the real. This is our vital space. All the rest is death.

• Pictures from today's march and rioting.

• Here's a very condensed timeline of this whole affair, from the perspective of the corporate media.

• Here's one guy's subjective explanation of the dynamics on the ground and their possible implications.
  

• Nice solidarity action in England: "In the early hours of this morning (12/12/08) individuals visited a police station in the Canton area of Cardiff. Slogans in support of the Greek rioters, in memory of Alexandros and anti-police were painted on the front of the building. Two Police vans outside the station were also painted and covered in paint stripper." Remember: solidarity means attack.

Here's the full sequence of photographs from the intense image of a burning riot cop below. It's worth checking out.

• There is a story up on Athens Indymedia which appears to claim that the office of Alexis Kougias, the notorious lawyer for the cops who shot Alexandros Grigoropoulos, has been destroyed. A better translation and any further info would be great. Apparent confirmation but no more details here.
  

• Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said Friday he had no intention of quitting after nearly a week of riots sparked by the fatal shooting of a teenager by police, saying it was time for firm leadership. "It's evident that we are undergoing a very serious financial crisis as well as a crisis in terms of what has been happening in the last few days and we therefore need a consistent, responsible government and a firm hand to guide the country," Karamanlis told reporters at an EU summit in Brussels.

• The National Bank of Greece announced that it will issue special loans to cover the costs of repairing damages to stores incurred during the riots. Also, more capitalist fears that the riots will destabilize Greece and hurt investment there.
  

• Statement entitled "We Are In Civil War" issued by the association of employees of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens.

• A statement from the occupied School of Theater in Thessaloniki.
  

• Fresh video from today's rioting outside Parliament in Athens. This march has apparently ended and retreated to the occupied universities.
  

• Decent set of photos at the bottom of this article.

• Translation of an account of youths fighting off cops and communists yesterday.

• Some solid quotes from students at Athens Polytechnic: "We don't have a council of representatives. We meet twice a day to decide on the next step in our struggle," said one of 12 masked protesters. "We're not calling for the Government to resign," the students say in a leaflet, "What we want is for the anger in the streets to grow." About 15 university campuses are still occupied in Athens and Salonika.

• Several different demonstrations turned rowdy Friday afternoon. About 4000 people started out from the University of Athens and marched toward the Greek Parliament, about one kilometre away. Television images showed groups of masked youth charging through downtown Athens, smashing festive decorations and overturning Christmas trees. Two more demonstrations were scheduled in the eastern port city of Thessaloniki on Friday afternoon.

• Protesters, described as mostly students, were seen smashing the glass doors of a Citibank on Friday, throwing a metal barricade at police lined up along a street and scuffling with police wearing white helmets. Also, anarchists stopped cleaning crews from clearing two streets and taking away burned-out vehicles, saying they wanted to use the cars for barricades.
  

• Police sources said they have begun to run out of teargas after using more than 4,600 capsules in the last week and have urgently contacted Israel and Germany to replenish supplies (an ironic pair of nations to supply crowd control weaponry.) In bond markets, the spread between Greek debt and German benchmark bonds -- a measure of perceived risk -- reached its widest point this decade on Friday, at over 2 percentage points.

• Intense rioting continued Friday. Greek youths hurled rocks and Molotov cocktails at riot police in Athens, who responded with stun grenades and tear gas; protesters shattered windows just replaced days ago. Protesters also smashed their way into the main branch of the National Bank of Greece, sending employees fleeing in panic. Authorities said protesters also briefly occupied a private Athens radio station on Friday and read a statement on the air. A municipal building in the northwestern city of Ioannina were also occupied.

• A statement from some Greeks in the western suburbs of Athens. Not my favorite piece, but re-posting it here for information's sake.
  

• Here's a video of rioters in Athens overwhelming a line of riot police.

• Images from a solidarity march in Olympia (1, 2, 3)

• Over 5,000 people demonstrated today in the city center of Patras. A police officer was apparently beaten by vendors in the course of the demonstration. The translation is iffy, but that seems to be the gist of it. This may be a clearer version of the same account.
  

• Alas, a report-back from the Olympia solidarity march has been located. A 50-strong bloc of black-clad trouble makers smashed out the windows of a Bank of America after marching around town and spreading the word about the riots in Greece. Inquiring minds want to know: which U.S. city will win the award for keeping it the most real?
  

• More nice black and white photos.
  

• Police said there was unrest at the Athens agriculture university, which has been occupied by students, and that rampaging youths were attacking stores in the upmarket Nea Smyrni and Galatsi districts of the capital.

• Rioters attacked police stations throughout Athens on Thursday as sporadic violence continued for a sixth day after the fatal shooting of a teenager by police. Athens News Agency reported that protesters threw stones, overturned police vehicles and smashed windows, causing damages to at least six precincts.

  Earlier on Thursday, protestors clashed with riot police outside the Korydallos prison where the two officers charged with the shooting death of 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos were due to be transferred pending trial.

• Meanwhile, authorities have charged three local residents and two foreign nationals with participating in the violence in central Athens. They were remanded in custody pending trial.

• Fresh news video on today's rioting.

• The corporate media is hesitantly pushing the storyline that the riots are starting to die down, which appears to be based on information from the Greek cops. Hard to tell from this vantage point if there's any truth to it, but based on the paragraph below, there would seem to be some cause for disagreement.
  

• The Occupied London blog is up with a post entitled "What to expect tomorrow", which includes plans for a "revolutionary alleycat race" and a potentially interesting translation. Anarchists around the world can help keep the momentum going by taking actions in their own areas. Solidarity does indeed mean attack.
  

• A series of very nice black and white photos from today.

• Here's a report-back from the solidarity protest in New York City, with additional photos.

• Cleanup teams started work on repairing an estimated $300 million worth of damage in Athens Thursday.

• Amnesty International, displaying its knack for stating the obvious, claims that Greek police are engaging in punitive violence against peaceful protesters, venting their frustrations via baton on various slow-moving pacifists. Such would in fact seem to occur every time there is a riot in Greece.

• Here's some personal info on Alexandros Grigoropoulos, who friends and acquaintances say was a reserved boy who spent a lot of time reading. His musical tastes ranged from punk to hip hop and he loved to skateboard. Plenty of readers can probably relate to such an adolescence; it's saddening to think of who he might have become if given the chance. Also, another 15-year old was killed today by police, this time at an Australian skate park.
  

• A report from UK Indymedia says that the Youth of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) have taken up positions inside and outside of occupied universities and are trying to prevent students from assembling in order to decide on ways to escalate the struggle. This would seem to be a predictable and straight-forward example of the role of the Left in insurrections.
  

• The mainstream media just cannot figure out the "how" and the "why" of this situation. One says Facebook and YouTube turned a minor incident into an international riot, as though coordinated rioting had never occurred before the internet. And this one claims that the rioters (as though they were a monolithic group) have no aims whatsoever, showing just how ill-equipped the corporate media is to make sense of these events.
  

• Photos from a solidarity demo in New York City outside the Greek consulate. Please send photos and report-backs from solidarity actions to lobsterbeard@gmail.com or post them in the comments.
  

• A summary of yesterday's testimony from the cop charged with the killing of Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

• Here's a great report on what things look like at ground-level, apparently written by anarchists in Athens. This is the most coherent explanation of the situation in Athens yet.

• More photos.
  

• A correspondent and a cameraman for Russian television channel NTV were reportedly injured in the confrontation with about 50 youths in Exarchia.
  

• The mainstream media desperately wants to connect the economic recession to the rioting. The C.S.A. thinks they're mistaking context for causation.
  

• More photos, some duplicates from previous posts.

• More worries that the riots could spread across Europe, with the declining economy setting the stage for widespread unrest. And, well, the C.S.A. kind of predicted that, so get out there and make it happen!

• Brief reports from today's marches across Greece.

• From Indymedia UK: "Over 30 police vehicles, both marked and unmarked, were attacked in Bristol last night by anarchists with catapults. 2 sites were targetted, Broomhill Road in Brislington and Poplar Way in Avonmouth and extensive damage done. Seems like Big Brother can't be watching everywhere." Catapults? Any further information on this would be greatly appreciated.

• A series of grainy videos of students attacking police stations in Athens this afternoon.

• 4,000 Greek students marched through Athens today. Helicopters hovered overhead as the protesters set fire to piles of garbage in the middle of deserted Athens avenues. The violence was less intense then in previous days, but more protests were planned for Friday and Monday.

• Tons of images from last night and today.

• Greece's second largest city Thessaloniki saw violent clashes Wednesday night as the protesters tried to storm the city police department and the regional ministry for Macedonia and Thrace. A car dealership and a metro station construction site were set on fire, and the police had to shield the fire fighters who were trying to put them out. In the northern city of Larisa eleven high school students, who were arrested during the riots there on Monday, have been charged with arson, looting, property damage, and even participation in criminal organization. The students are defended by a solidarity committee that wants all charges against them removed.
  

• This video claims Athens is calmer today but rioting is still happening in the suburbs. It also notes that students surrounded the mayor's office in an organized action.

• A court in Greece has given a 20-year-old man labeled one of the instigators of the riots that have shaken the country for the past week a one-year suspended sentence, the Athens news agency said on Thursday. If anyone has any details on this, please post to the comments; the report doesn't say much.

• A German newspaper illustrates just how little the mainstream media knows about anarchists.

• There are reports that at this point 10 major roads in Athens are blocked off by high school students. Reports come in, one after the other, of university departments being occupied by their students. Also, 25 police stations are besieged across Athens, with heavy clashes at some. Greek news is reporting that more than 4500 tear gas canisters have been thrown by the police these days; their supplies are running out (!) and more are being ordered from abroad.

• Police clashed with demonstrators and groups of looters across Athens on Thursday as the Greek government confronted a sixth day of protests over the police killing of a schoolboy. Demonstrators clashed with security forces outside the country's biggest prison and a university in central Athens while police said groups of youths attacked stores in several districts or blocked main roads.

• Student protesters pelted 20 police stations with rocks and bottles, overturned cars and blocked streets in central Athens on Thursday. Police responded with tear gas as sporadic violence persisted amid Greece's worst rioting in decades.

• More than a hundred schools and at least fifteen university campuses remain occupied by student demonstrators. A major rally is expected Friday, and as solidarity protests spread to neighboring Turkey, as well as Germany, Spain, Italy, Russia, Denmark and the Netherlands, dozens of arrests have been made across the continent

• Solidarity actions occurred in Madrid where there was an attack against the Municipal Police in the central Calle Montera, which ended with several police being injured. In Barcelona a demonstration with some 800 people ended with incidents between the demonstrators and the regional police force. Authorities fear rioting will spread around the globe.

• Capitalist continue to worry about what the riot might mean for them.

UPDATE 10: Police and members of the far-right appear to be collaborating to suppress the riots in Patras. Fascists have made an appearance in Athens as well, as the photo above from Yahoo! News is accompanied by the following caption: A far-right supporter, holding a knife, threatens protesters during riots outside the Athens Polytechnic December 10, 2008.

Protesters attacked Athens' main courthouse with firebombs during a hearing for police officers whose shooting of a teenager set off rioting across the capital.

Here's some footage of police and rioters clashing in Patras.

Here's the full cell phone video of the murder. It looks like a straight-up execution, nothing like what the cops described today in their testimony. Needless to say, the C.S.A. heartily encourages rioting regardless of the details of this specific incident.

Global round-up of solidarity actions:

Detailed list of solidarity actions across Germany. Molotov thrown at the Greek consulate in Moscow. Rioters broke the window of a bank, destroyed garbage cans, and tore down a fence during a Frankfurt solidarity riot. A paint-intensive protest at the Greek consulate in Istanbul.

Photos.

10,000 people turned out for today's union marches, fewer than organizers expected.


UPDATE 9: A solidarity march of about 150 people in Copenhagen lead to 32 arrests after demonstrators threw bottles and paint bombs at police and buildings.

"On The Greek Riots" has testimony from today's court appearance by the officer who shot Alexandros Grigoropoulos. It reads, in part:
Seeing a group of around 30 youths at a distance of 10-15 meters from me, not being able to intercept their aggressive move toward us and being in a state of fear for our own lives, we moved, turning our backs against them. At the same time, in order to secure our exit, being shocked and in fear and since the crowd did not stop moving toward us despite my colleague throwing them a “sound” grenade, I pulled out my gun and guided by the instinct of survival I shot two warning shots in the air, maybe a third one that I hadn’t noticed but my colleague reminded me of later.

The Greek government on Wednesday defended its response to the crisis that has gripped the country since a teenager was fatally shot in a clash with the police last weekend, saying that leaders in Athens had chosen not to crack down on a violent minority in an effort to avoid further bloodshed.

“I think it’s going to fade out,” said Panos Livadas, general secretary of the Information Ministry. “I think reason will prevail. I also think we will keep on doing our best not to have a future risk of innocent life. No more innocent blood. It’s O.K. if we have to wait a day or two.”

Meanwhile, In New York City, someone hurled a brick through a window of the Greek consulate and spray-painted "Alex was here" on the East 79th Street building, near Park Avenue. They also spray-painted the anarchist symbol, a capital "A" within a circle, and "Murderer." (Video)

The capitalists over at the Telegraph (UK) worry that Greece is proving itself to be the "weakest link" in the EU and that full-scale insurrection there might destabilize the entire economic sphere.


UPDATE 8: Protesters threw fire bombs at police outside parliament on Wednesday during a general strike which paralyzed Greece and piled pressure on a conservative government reeling from the worst riots in decades. (Video, photos; note the 8th image, which ought to be titled "Just Do It.")

In Athens alone damage is estimated at about 200 million euros ($259 million), the Greek Commerce Confederation said. "In Athens, we had 565 shops suffering serious damage or being completely destroyed," said Vassilis Krokidis, vice president of the federation. Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis announced financial support for businesses damaged in five days of rioting.

Meanwhile, clashes have broken out at Athens' main court complex, where two police officers accused in the fatal shooting of a teen were testifying. Protesting youths hurled Molotov cocktails at the courts and police fired tear gas. The protesters also attacked and damaged a television satellite truck. At least two people were hurt.

A detailed report from someone on the ground on yesterday's events.

More photos. More video (for the completist only, this video is almost as boring as actually participating in a union march.)

Indymedia Patras is reporting that fascists are attacking rioters in that city. Mainstream news reports are identifying them as "shopkeepers" and "residents."

Protesters entered part of the Greek consulate in Paris on Tuesday. "This is a symbolic occupation. There are about 20 students outside and 60 inside," a spokesperson for the protesters said.

A solidarity march has been announced for Thursday in Olympia, Washington. Given Olympia's reputation, that could be a feisty one.


UPDATE 7: Masked youths and looters marauded through Greek cities for a fourth night Tuesday.

In the western port of Patras, some 500 youths laid siege to the police headquarters during the evening -- with police saying around 100 subsequently made for the sanctuary of university buildings where ongoing violence flared.

In Thessaloniki, Greece's second biggest city, a policeman was wounded by a firebomb and hundreds of youths attacked cars and looted dozens of shops.

In Athens, firemen struggled to cope with the scale of the arson, racing from one location to the next and fighting fires in 49 office buildings, 47 shops, 14 banks, 20 cars and three government ministries.

Greece is braced for further turmoil as unions stage a general strike in protest against the government's economic policies; the industrial action was planned weeks ago. Unions called off a major demonstration in Athens but will instead hold a rally outside the Greek parliament



UPDATE 6: Readers, whether in Greece or elsewhere, who would like their first-person accounts published here are encouraged to send them to lobsterbeard@gmail.com. Reportbacks from tomorrow's solidarity demonstrations would be great.

Also, rioters set fire to a gigantic Christmas tree outside of the Parliament building.

UPDATE 5: Greece's two largest labor unions said they would push ahead with a planned 24-hour strike Wednesday to demand more state social spending. But they canceled a protest march in an attempt to avoid further violence.

Flights and ferry links are expected to be cut and train services severely limited. Hundreds of flights to and from Greece have been cancelled ahead of a 24-hour strike by air traffic controllers.

Let hope some rank and file union members ignore their leaders' pathetic attempts at recuperation by spreading the direct action to their workplaces.

Here's a video of rioting outside of Parliament and at Alexandros Grigoropoulos' funeral.

A call has now gone out for a solidarity demo at the Greek consulate in San Francisco. The C.S.A. would like to officially encourage this trend and remind those readers in cities where a similar demo is unfeasible that solidarity actions needn't be limited to public demonstrations or Greek consulates.

UPDATE 4: It now appears that in at least one instance, and possibly more, police have fired live ammunition at rioters in Greece. Reports claim as many as ten shooting incidents in Palaio Faliro, the southern Athens suburb where Alexandros Grigoropoulos' funeral was held today.

The AP has this photo it says was taken Sunday in Athens, which at least confirms that police are drawing their sidearms on rioters:

Athens Indymedia has a post with the same photo here, but online translation of the text doesn't really provide any insight. Once again, any help with translation, posted in the comments, is greatly appreciated.

We'll update regularly as information becomes available.


UPDATE 3: Rioting continued overnight across Greece. Following the funeral of Alexandros Grigoropoulos in a south Athens suburb, which was attended by about 6,000 people, mourners clashed with riot police, who eventually used tear gas to disperse the funeral procession. Rioting was reported to have continued nonetheless.

Here's a blog in English and German that appears to be written by people on the ground in Athens, Thessaloniki, and Patras, with fairly regular and detailed reports on the rioting.

Unions and opposition parties staged demonstrations as well, with varying levels of militancy. The Socialist party, in typical fashion, is pushing to end the rioting and take control of the government. Political observers say the riots have already weakened the Conservative government.

Here's a good series of photographs; note the instructive fifth image, in which a demonstrator sprays a fire extinguisher at the cops, creating a harmless but effective smokescreen.

More raw footage from the AP of rioting in various Greek cities.

The BBC has a largely unsympathetic first person account of a demo-turned-riot in Thessaloniki, but it provides some details not found elsewhere.

Tonight’s UEFA Champions League match between Panathinaikos and Anorthosis Famgusta in Athens is in danger of being postponed, with the riots in the Greek capital into their fourth day and showing no signs of slowing down.

Coordinated arson attacks damaged government and media offices on Friday.

UPDATE 2: CNN is up with a series of videos from Greece, including raw footage of rioting (always from behind police lines, of course), a very grainy cell phone video supposedly of the young person being shot by the cops, a report from the Greek consulate being occupied in Berlin, and then a series of standard news bits. You'll only have to endure a couple of short ads.

And here the BBC tries rather lamely to give some historical context to the riots, but then startlingly says that "it is premature to see the troubles as Greece's reprise of the Paris uprising of 1968," a rather weakly qualified observation.

An appropriately furious communique has been posted on Athens Indymedia signed by the Polytechnic School Occupation in Athens.

Also from Athens Indymedia, some updates on actions across Germany, including consulate vandalism and occupations in Hanover and Cologne.

And finally, a solidarity protest has been called for in New York City this Wednesday outside of the Greek consulate. Let's hope it's as energetic and aggressive as possible.

Remember: solidarity is action.

UPDATE: Monday brought another day of heavy rioting to cities across Greece. But some of the most intense action is likely still to come, with several major marches planned for this evening across Greece.

A slew of updates: although many of these are largely redundant, they each contain a bit of unique info, usually in the first three paragraphs: here, here, here, here, and here.

Greek consulates have been occupied in London and Berlin in solidarity with the Greek rioters, which earns the anarchists in these cities dozens of bonus points for keeping it real.

A speculative piece in the conservative Telegraph (UK) asserts that investors ought to fear the riots and their potential to spread social unrest throughout the world. Anarchists can help ensure that they are proven correct.

________________________________

The fatal police shooting of a teenager has set off major riots in Greece, with anarchists and militant youths rampaging through Athens and the northern city of Thessaloniki over the weekend. Riots also spread to the tourist destinations of Corfu and Crete, where three banks in the main city of Iraklion were damaged while molotov cocktails were tossed at city hall in the town of Chania.

Rioters in the heavily-policed district of Exarchia, where the shooting occurred, set on fire bank branches and anything parked outside them. Police and crowds of rioters later faced off in central Athens.

Video of the rioting and police violence can be seen here, here, here, and here (the opening shot of the last video ought be titled "How Not To Approach A Police Line.") A series of pictures, including one of the young person killed by the police, can be seen here (if you know any Greek, feel free to post a translation of this page in the comments section.) A few more pictures here. Even more pictures here.

If the past is any indication, rioting will likely persist for days or weeks. That should give anarchists in the rest of the world a bit of time to plan solidarity actions in support of their relentlessly impressive and brave Greek peers. Some U.S. anarchists stepped up after the murder of Brad Will in Oaxaca two years ago by taking actions against Mexican consulates; such an approach would seem appropriate now as well.

The Day's News...

• One in 10 American homeowners fell behind on mortgage payments or were in foreclosure during the third quarter as the world’s largest economy shed jobs and real estate prices tumbled. The share of mortgages 30 days or more overdue rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.99 percent while loans already in foreclosure rose to 2.97 percent, both all-time highs in a survey that goes back 29 years, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report today. The gain in delinquencies was driven by an increase of loans with payments 90 days or more overdue.

• An alarming half-million American jobs vanished virtually in a flash last month, the worst mass layoffs in over a third of a century, as economic carnage spread ever faster and the nation hurtled toward what could be the hardest hard times since the Great Depression. Staring at 533,000 lost jobs, economists were anything but hopeful. Since the start of the recession last December, the economy has shed 1.9 million jobs, and the number of unemployed people has increased by 2.7 million -- to 10.3 million now out of work. Some analysts predict 3 million more jobs will be lost between now and the spring of 2010 -- and that the once-humming U.S. economy could stagger backward at a shocking 6 percent rate for the current three-month quarter.

• A manhunt is under way in western Germany for a convicted drug dealer who escaped by mailing himself out of jail. The 42-year-old Turkish citizen - who was serving a seven-year sentence - had been making stationery with other prisoners destined for the shops. At the end of his shift, the inmate climbed into a cardboard box and was taken out of prison by express courier. His whereabouts are still unknown.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."--Herm Albright

The Day's News...

• A huge infestation of mountain pine beetles are turning a blanket of green forest into a blanket of rust red. Montana has lost a million acres of trees to the beetles, and in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming the situation is worse. In Wyoming and Colorado in 2006 there were a million acres of dead trees; last year it was 1.5 million; this year it is expected to total over two million. It is the largest known insect infestation in the history of North America, officials said; experts fear that the beetles could travel all the way to the Great Lakes. In the next three to five years virtually all of Colorado’s lodgepole pine trees over five inches in diameter will be lost, about five million acres.

• With retailers struggling to find credit and ordinary Russians being forced to change their spending, a vast lake of undrunk vodka is accumulating in distilleries across Russia. Official statistics indicate a collapse in demand for vodka over the past two months. November inventories of unsold vodka stock have risen to 82 million litres, a 600 per cent increase from 2007, according to the National Alcohol Association. The vodka lake has grown even as desperate producers have slashed output, which fell by 15 per cent in October according to industry estimates.

• Here's an interesting series of stories on the ways certain cities are attempting to manage what appear to be perpetual declines in their populations (Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland.) The articles promote city planning efforts to suburbanize decaying urban areas with malls, cul-de-sacs, and high-end housing, which appears to be the preferred approach of city governments seeking to expand their tax bases while reducing the costs of maintaining declining areas. An analysis of this state strategy is due, but in the meantime readers are directed back to the C.S.A.'s "High Pressure, Low Pressure" post.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."--James M. Barrie

The Day's News...

• A computer science professor at the University of Buffalo is building a search engine populated with thousands of shoe images scraped from internet shoe stores that would let police forensics units submit a photo of a shoe print from a crime scene and quickly learn the gender, size and brand of shoe a killer or thief was likely wearing.

• Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands of cars worth tens of millions of dollars are being warehoused on increasingly crowded wharfs at the Port of Long Beach. Dozens of acres of the nation’s second-largest container port are being turned into a parking lot, creating a vivid picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril. The backlog at the port is just part of a broader rise in the nation’s inventories, which were up 5.5 percent in September from a year earlier, according to the Commerce Department.

• It is one of London's most exclusive addresses. Michelin-starred restaurants are just a block away, the US embassy is around the corner and Hyde Park is at the end of the road. To share the same postcode ought to cost millions. But the new residents of 18 Upper Grosvenor Street, a raggle-taggle of teenagers and artists called the Da! collective, haven't paid a penny for their £6.25m, six-storey townhouse in Mayfair. The black anarchist flag flapping from the first-floor balcony gives a clue what they are up to: since finding a window open on the first floor on October 10, the group has been squatting in the house, and only plan to leave when evicted. (Photo)

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Always presume that the enemy has dangerous designs and always be forehanded with the remedy. But do not let these calculations make your timid."--Frederick the Great

The Day's News...

• Squatters have begun moving in to foreclosed homes in Miami, one of the cities hardest hit by the collapse of the housing bubble. With 40,342 properties foreclosed upon this year in Miami-Dade County, enterprising individuals and at least one activist group have begun making a concerted effort to move people in to a few of the tens of thousands of empty buildings across Miami.

• Global shipping is facing its worst crisis in decades and Greece is set to take the brunt of it. In just a few months, dry cargo rates have fallen by more than 90 percent as a five-year boom has turned to bust. For Greece, which owns a fifth of the world's fleet, that spells trouble, with strikes and unrest likely to follow on the heels of unemployment and cutbacks, favorable conditions for the informed riot tourist.

• More senior citizens are picking pockets and shoplifting in Japan to cope with cuts in government welfare spending and rising health-care costs in a fast-aging society. Criminal offenses by people 65 or older doubled to 48,605 in the five years to 2008, the most since police began compiling national statistics in 1978, a Ministry of Justice report said.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "You can't fake endurance." --Anonymous

The Day's News...

• Somali pirates have nabbed their biggest prize yet -- a Saudi-owned supertanker about the length of an aircraft carrier. The ocean-going hijackers managed to pull off this latest assault, on a ship named "Sirius Star", despite a swarm of international warships now working to ward off such strikes. The Star "held a cargo of as much as two million barrels of oil -- more than one quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily production," Reuters notes. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff pronounced himself "stunned" by the seizure. (Update 1, Update 2, Update 3, Photos) (More pirates here and here.)

• Every person has a unique fragrance, similar to a fingerprint or DNA sample, which could be used to create a database of human scents, according to a recent study. "These findings indicate that biologically based odourprints, like fingerprints, could be a reliable way to identify individuals," said Jae Kwak, lead author of the study at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

• The Commerce Department said Friday that retail sales fell by 2.8 percent last month, surpassing the old mark of a 2.65 percent drop in November 2001 in the wake of the terrorist attacks that year.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "If you find yourself in a fair fight, you failed to properly plan beforehand."--Anonymous

What Would Lucy Parsons Do?

We anarchists perceive there are actual, material barriers blockading the way. These must be removed. If we could hope they would melt away, or be voted away or prayed into nothingness, we would be content to wait and vote and pray. But they are like great frowning rocks towering between us and a land of freedom, while the dark chasms of a hard-fought past yawn behind us. Crumbling they may be with their own weight and the decay of time, but to quietly stand until they fall is to be buried in the crash.--Lucy Parsons, The Principles Of Anarchism

Now that the presidential election is over and the outcome known, we can, as always, begin to consider the ways in which this situation might work to our advantage. You may recall the C.S.A.'s earlier post on the topic, which generated a bit of controversy, and essentially argued that an Obama win would create a more favorable environment for anarchist organizing than would a McCain win: such a point is now academic.

As the C.S.A. sees it, anarchists in the United States have been presented with an outstanding opportunity. We appear to have gained real momentum from this summer's summit demonstrations, with the networks formed during the build-up to those demonstrations, Unconventional Action and Bash Back! among them, gaining visibility and strength of late (see here and here.) Direct actions and night-time activities appear to have increased in pace and intensity since this summer, with a dose of inspiration apparently coming from Greek-style bank and ATM attacks. Such reproducible, small-scale actions seem to speak to an increased cohesiveness and militancy among anarchists; such boldness had been in relatively short supply since the more active days of the ELF and ALF.

The change in presidential administration has produced a unique dynamic. The expectations accompanying the election of Barack Obama are, by any measure, impossible for a president to satisfy. While the promises of any politician may be utterly false, his supporters' messianic presumptions represent their very real frustrations and alienation. That they have foisted their hopes for a more meaningful life on the shoulders of an opportunistic politician only ensures that they will be disillusioned; the only question being to what extent.

Disillusionment does not lead to radicalism, but it can be a fertile state in which to begin a discussion of broader issues. However, without the propaganda (of the tree, pixel, and deed) and organizing that can connect people to those radical ideas, apathy and reaction are all but assured. As we've seen with the outgoing administration, a focus on the personal traits of the specific individuals in power must be avoided; such issues only serve to focus attention on stylistic preferences rather than the structures that maintain hierarchy. To put it simply: as the disillusionment with Obama grows, we must strive to keep attention off of his personal failings--upon which the media and right-wing will undoubtedly focus--and on the hierarchy of power. Such a focus can be maintained in both rhetoric and action not by dismissing the relevance of politics or by being cowed into an obsequious deference for them, but by taking advantage of them.

If we are to successfully capitalize on the opportunities presented by this situation, it is crucial that we establish our opposition early. If we wait until disillusionment becomes public and widespread, it will be too late, and we will be (correctly) judged political opportunists with no more credibility than the jurassic Left. Events such as the presidential inauguration present a chance to articulate our critique of institutional racism, capitalism, and the state in a timely and relevant setting.

In summary, if there was ever a time for anarchists in the United States to shift into a higher, louder, fiercer, bolder gear, it is now. We have been getting 50 cents on the dollar for our efforts for the last seven and a half years. The exchange rate has just improved and looks to be getting even better as the capitalist economy downshifts. We have already begun to make up lost ground, let's be sure not to let up just as the iron starts to get hot.

Steal From The Unsteady, Give To The Militant

Some of you have no doubt heard the story of Enric Duran, a clever Spanish gentleman who has garnered quite a bit of publicity for taking out hundreds of thousands of Euros in loans and giving the money to various anti-capitalist projects before splitting town. Whether you've heard about him or not, be sure to read his manifesto. It's wildly entertaining.

The tactic is a fascinating one, with noteworthy advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, Duran was able to raise more cash in a shorter period than is possible by almost any other means; even robbing a bank, unless it's some serious movie-type shit, will usually only net something in the range of tens of thousands of dollars, with the distinct disadvantage of threatening the life of the robber and others.

Duran also didn't have to spend years writing grant applications or begging from the government. Lots of anarchists receive this type of funding for themselves or their projects, and by comparison it's pretty small potatoes and a fairly large time commitment (to say nothing of the mutilating effects this type of fund raising can have on the people and projects themselves.) And unlike institutional funding, Duran was able to do whatever he wanted with the money without regard for the demands of the "donors", since he had no intention of paying back the loans to begin with.

This action also serves as a powerful piece of propaganda. The level of daring and ingenuity alone is inspiring, upping the ante in a suitably kick-ass way. It's timeliness is also significant, as it makes it's point about the nature of the banking system--and its vulnerability--at a time when it will have maximum effect (and strategic timeliness always receives a scratch-and-sniff sticker from the C.S.A.)

The disadvantages are pretty obvious. This type of fraud can land you in federal prison for years or decades. Although Duran claims that he'll resurface soon, the perpetrators of such a scheme seemingly have no choice but to either do the time or fall off the face of the earth for the rest of their lives.

Another thing to consider is that getting rid of half a million dollars isn't as easy as it may sound. Where do you put that kind of cash? In the cash drawer at the infoshop? In a bank account? Not unless you plan on explaining where it came from to the IRS. Even if you dispersed it to dozens of different people and projects, they still have to either keep tons of cash laying around or find a way to launder it.

Some of these disadvantages arise from the fact that Duran was intent on making a public propaganda point with his scheme, which has tremendous value but also eliminates any need for the state to prove his intentions should he be caught. Failing to repay loans isn't illegal unless the borrower intends to commit fraud, which can sometimes be tricky to prove if the money is spent properly.

As we all know by now, plenty of average people run up humongous credit card debt or take out large mortgages they can't pay back; these people don't go to jail, they just have their credit ruined and sometimes have most of their possessions seized. There are various ways to avoid this fate, however, such as joining an association that holds its members' possessions in common (this is the financial structure of some egalitarian eco-villages) for instance.

Whether or not a huge amount of money is what anarchists really need is debatable, but we can probably all agree that some money is useful. Duran's scheme has highlighted an approach to getting money that may be be useful to other inventive and daring anarchists.

Links, Not Really News...

• Here's an interesting report on the booming pirate industry in Somalia. It gives a bit of first hand insight into a story the C.S.A. posted a few weeks ago about a ship loaded with Ukrainian arms captured by Somali pirates and held for ransom.
  

• Fun and potentially helpful animated slideshow on time management for anarchists.

• Gloating is immodest, but readers should be aware that the analysis they read here has some basis in reality. Way back in August of 2007, in the C.S.A.'s early days, it was noted here that readers might want to take advantage of riot tourism opportunities in Europe 12-24 months hence. The argument was that the speculation-driven European economy and the over-inflated Euro would come back down to earth in rather dramatic fashion, leading European governments to cut social welfare spending, which in turn would lead to anti-CPE-style riots. Well, it would appear that exactly that scenario is beginning to unfold. Here's the word on the Euro (and the dollar, with its own set of consequences), and here's the beginning of the fall-out.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do."--Henry Ford

A Note On Readership

This month--the Center's first since an extended lay-off--has been its best ever for site traffic. Although a substantial number of our visitors come from other sites that graciously link to the C.S.A., the largest bloc of readers have no referring link, a good sign that the C.S.A. is building its own committed audience.

The distribution of visitors to the site is also heartening. Although focused primarily on matters within the United States, in just the last week the C.S.A. has received visits from readers in at least 26 different countries. A special shout out goes to our readers in Bahrain and Egypt!

We'd also like to say "Hello!" to our readers in Quantico, West Point, and Annapolis; hopefully you are disaffected soldiers or people resisting the presence of giant military complexes in your town rather than military intelligence officers. If you are soldiers looking for something better to do with your lives, know that there is a community waiting to lend its support, friendship, and solidarity should you choose to end your military career. If you are people resisting militarism in communities overwhelmed by its dominance, your work is vital and we hope that what you've read here has strengthened your efforts. If you are military intelligence officers, you too can build better lives for yourselves, but only by abandoning your loyalty to the forces of misery; in the meantime, we'll continue encouraging the soldiers around you to have second thoughts about their own loyalties to their officers.

And to the FBI agents who haven't bothered hiding your IP addresses when visiting this site, you're a bunch of fucking amateurs.

So, a big "thank you" to all of the C.S.A.'s readers who aren't cops! Keep coming back and please pass along our address to your friends; your support and enthusiasm is greatly appreciated.

The Day's News...

• A draft US Army intelligence report has identified the popular micro-blogging service Twitter, Global Positioning System maps and voice-changing software as potential terrorist tools. A chapter on "Potential for Terrorist Use of Twitter" notes that Twitter members sent out messages, known as "Tweets," reporting police movements at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. "Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences," the report said.

• Blackwater--the US government’s preferred private military contractor in Iraq--is considering ambitious plans for a small fleet of two or three anti-piracy vessels, each able to carry several dozen armed security personnel. The idea is still in its early stages, and will only proceed if there is sufficient demand from shipowners and their insurers for such protection, executive vice-president Bill Matthews told Lloyd’s List. As reported last week, Blackwater has already acquired and converted a former survey ship for such purposes. The 183-foot vessel, McArthur, is likely to be deployed in the Gulf of Aden by the end of this year, once its current training contracts are completed.

• Emerging markets that seemed healthy, even thriving, barely a month ago are beginning to find themselves caught in the worldwide panic. This sharp turn has caught even the local financial guardians and experts by surprise, as they have clung to their indicators of fundamental economic soundness while forgetting that capital stampedes rarely tarry for fine distinctions. From Europe’s former Communist bloc to South America, fear and disbelief mingled with frustration that a breakdown in the United States mortgage market — one that most investors and institutions in emerging markets had avoided — was beginning to lead once again to their punishment. In related news, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to offer a $16.5bn loan to Ukraine and has agreed an as yet undisclosed package with Hungary to "maintain confidence and economic and financial stability."

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."--Napoleon Bonaparte

Death In The Time Of Repression

October 27th is the second anniversary of the death of Brad Will, an anarchist who was killed by paramilitaries in Oaxaca. Brad was a unique and wonderful human being who holds a special place in the heart of the C.S.A. He exuded a non-judgmental warmth and kindness along with an instinctive bravery and an astute mind. Like everyone, Brad was imperfect, but his presence in the anarchist milieu was a powerful inspiration to many. He is missed every single day.

Long-time readers of this blog may remember last year's post on the same subject, in which the C.S.A. discussed memorializing Brad by marking the anniversary of his death with autonomous direct action. While there have been a few mentions of actions coinciding with the anniversary this year, the greatest potential for this concept lies in unannounced actions that are uncoordinated, unclaimed, and unforeseen. Just as petty arsonists have Devil's Night and stoners have April 20th, those who wish to ensure that Brad's death becomes a rallying cry rather than a faint memory can continue to claim October 27th.

With that said, the C.S.A. would like to take a moment to reflect on the struggle in Oaxaca and the role played by anarchists from the U.S. Almost two years after the Mexican Federal police stormed Oaxaca City, largely on the pretext of restoring order after Brad's death, organizing there has not ceased. But a great deal has changed, and, sadly, it has not been for the better.

The coalition of forces that brought the city to a standstill has been torn apart in predictable fashion; indeed, the various factions now spend more of their time struggling against each other for power than resisting state repression. Some leaders of APPO--the Leftist social democratic coalition--have used their visibility to run for state office, which they had promised not to do, drawing the ire of anti-electoral elements and those who passed up similar opportunities. APPO has responded by ex-communicating its critics and even calling for police action against them, tacitly implying that the police would face no resistance if they were to target APPO's enemies, which they did and which APPO witnessed in smug silence. The Popular Revolutionary Front (FPR), a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist organization, has made its own play for state favor by collaborating with the police to arrest its own critics, along with other Machiavellian maneuverings favored by the authoritarian Left. Oaxacan anarchists, a comparatively small but disproportionally effective cluster of collectives, have largely born the brunt of their former allies back stabbing, and yet they continue, with great difficulty, to organize and build the infrastructure of resistance.

The role of anarchists from the U.S. in the Oaxacan conflict illustrates the dangers of sloppy international solidarity. APPO came to embody some anarchists' romantic vision of a people's uprising. Portrayed as a consensus-based council of regular people seeking a direct democracy, APPO became synonymous with the uprising itself, as though the conflict in Oaxaca, a place with a byzantine political history, could be reduced to a four letter acronym. The nature of APPO's coalition, which consisted of every civil society element with a beef against the state's governor and plenty of opportunists who knew a good thing when they saw it, was almost completely misunderstood. Images of Oaxacans in indigenous dress taking to the streets, who were assumed to represent APPO, seemed to validate the unequivocal support for the group.

The fact that uprisings of varying intensity are cyclical events in Oaxacan political life was also unknown. A look back through decades of Oaxacan newspapers shows that uprisings like that of 2006, and some even more militant than that, have been a regular occurance. Organized groups take an uncompromising position against the state or city government, engage in direct action--often blocades--and then mysteriously disappear from the headlines, only to appear weeks or months later on the receiving end of a state concession. This game has been played metronomically in Oaxaca since the Mexican revolution and is well understood by Oaxacan political elements.

What was missing from the solidarity work of U.S. anarchists was almost any communication with Oaxacan anarchists. Perhaps it was hard to believe that some of the most inventive and militant actions and projects in Oaxaca were organized by teenagers in anarcho-punk band collectives, cliché as that may seem. For whatever reason, many U.S. anarchists preferred the romantic narrative pushed by the Leftist groups, which capitalized on the actual participation of average people to create a false image of universal support for their aims. This lead to the ironic result that many U.S. anarchists in anarcho-punk band collectives threw their weight behind the very Leftist organizations that were seeking to co-opt and marginalize patch-wearing Oaxacan anarchists.

The failure to understand the situation on the ground in Oaxaca led to more than just vocal support for APPO. In one particularly horrendous example, popular poster-makers Just Seeds held a benefit for a "Oaxacan street art collective" called the Oaxacan Assembly of Revolutionary Artists (ASARO), a student front group of the FPR. ASARO was in the habit of spray painting giant stencils of Stalin's head all over Oaxaca City and served as the recruitment arm for the FPR at the city's art school. In this case, the failure to grasp the situation on the ground led a U.S. anti-authoritarian group to give money and support to an organization that violently targeted Oaxacan anarchists and promoted a Stalinist agenda.

It is difficult to understand why U.S. anarchists didn't seek out Oaxacan anarchists for support and guidance. Were U.S. anarchists to approach a similar situation in their own context, they would be no more likely to support APPO and the FPR than they would UFPJ and ANSWER, with the difference being that the stakes are considerably higher in Oaxaca, where such support can literally mean life or death. Inexplicably, U.S. anarchists often take more care investigating situations in other U.S. cities before lending their help than they do with international solidarity. While it is impossible to say what it would have meant and could still mean for Oaxacan anarchists to receive support from U.S. anarchists, it is clear that in the future greater care must be taken before jumping into complex events abroad.

The Day's News...

• U.S. intelligence officials increasingly fear that computer hackers could wreck banks and large financial institutions, or send stock markets into one more panicked frenzy, by covertly manipulating data and spreading false information. In interviews and speeches over the past few months, senior counterintelligence and security officials laid out some dire scenarios. They're all predicated on a determined individual or small group fabricating information in such a way that the public sees a different picture of financial health than exists, either at a particular company or in broad markets.

• The Air Force has published a new manual on the handling of "Directed Energy Weapons", or "DEWS" in Air Force lingo. Death rays by any other name, the DEWS "include, but are not limited to, high-energy lasers, weaponized microwave and millimeter wave beams, explosive-driven electromagnetic pulse devices, acoustic weapons, laser induced plasma channel systems, non-lethal directed energy devices, and atomic-scale and subatomic particle beam weapons," manual instructs. They "create unique hazards that are different from conventional and nuclear weapons," says the manual, before noting that some DEWS use ionizing radiation, which can scramble a person's DNA.

• Officials say that a John Travolta movie has suspended filming in one of the Paris area's toughest housing projects after 10 cars to be used in the movie were burned. Filming of some scenes of the action movie "From Paris With Love" was supposed to start this week but local officials and the production company say it was put on hold because the cars were burned by unknown suspects early Monday. Cars are regularly burned in French housing projects, most famously during rioting that raged for three weeks in 2005 in poor neighborhoods across the country.

• C.S.A. Strategy Quote Of The Day: "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."--Will Rogers

The Elephant In The Room

The C.S.A. is doing something that might strike you as a little odd: obsessively following the upcoming presidential and congressional election. Why would anyone seeking to end electoral politics spend hours at a time hunched over a computer searching for the latest poll from North Dakota? Because the outcome of the election will have a major effect on anarchist organizing.

Fortunately, the C.S.A. is not alone in this thinking. Check out the very good analysis from the interesting but problematic document "Unconventional Futures":

If Obama becomes president, many anarchists and other radicals predict, the euphoria on the part of liberals and progressives will quickly give way to disillusionment as the shining star of the Democrats fails to follow through on his empty promises of hope and change. It’s extremely unlikely that an Obama administration will end the occupation in Iraq, threats against Iran, police repression, anti-immigrant crackdowns, escalating poverty, oil dependence, or any of the other crises facing the US; given this, how will the country respond? One possibility is that the vast liberal/progressive base of Obama’s campaign and the new Democratic Party followers will find themselves disaffected from the two-party path and open to new, increasingly radical directions. In this case, anarchists should be ready to seize the moment with consistent, visible, exciting actions and propaganda, and provide accessible points of entry for people to become involved in anti-political organizing and direct action. On the other hand, another possibility is that large sectors of the US population will respond to the failure of the hope/change rhetoric by moving in a more overtly fascist direction (supporting heavily authoritarian leadership, accelerating imprisonment and police repression, intensified scapegoating of immigrants, etc). In this instance, a solidly functioning network of communication and action will be crucial to anarchist self-defense, to oppose right-wing reaction from the community level and promoting anti-authoritarian analyses of the situation.

It’s also possible that McCain will become president, in which case two distinct trends may emerge with possibilities for anarchists. For one, military involvement abroad and border militarization at home will likely increase even more swiftly, along with social conservative attacks on reproductive rights and queer and transgender people. In all of these areas, direct action will be crucially necessary to stem the tide of militarism and oppression, and the haphazard, disconnected, and sporadic undertakings of these past years won’t be enough. Also, the massive grassroots swell behind Obama will find their hopes frustrated, and many will seek new political outlets for their disappointment. Anarchists demonstrating alternatives in practice to the electoral system can provide a path for this energy away from the two-party black hole and towards direct action.

The C.S.A. quibbles with the use of dramatic words and phrases such as "vast", "large", and "many" to describe the numbers of people that will be disaffected, reactionary, or open to radical ideas, on the grounds that this overstates the case and can lead to unrealistic expectations and/or delusions of grandeur. Other than that though, this is a pretty spot-on analysis of the possible environments in which anarchists will be working for the next four years.

If you accept the descriptions of the various scenarios presented above, it's hard not to arrive at a second conclusion: a Democratic president means we can go on the offensive, while a Republican means we're forced to continue playing defense.

Why? For one, we are far better equipped to take advantage of liberal disillusionment than liberal outrage. The last four years have been a testament to this, with the clearest beneficiaries of outrage being the Democratic party and the authoritarian Left (see: the anti-war movement.) While it's true that anarchists have been building some momentum of late, the Bush years, especially after 9/11, have not been good to us.

Liberal disillusionment has been far kinder to anarchists. The C.S.A. is of the opinion that it is no accident that the surge of anarchist activity in the late '90s overlapped with a Democratic administration in the process of moving to the right. While it has been nearly impossible to break the liberal obsession with the current president's personality and grammar, it was relatively easy to point out that life under a likable Democrat still sucked.

As the Clinton administration abandoned its social democratic agenda--especially in its decisive move towards a neoliberal economic policy--progressive liberals got involved in the anti-globalization movement, which, due to its pluralism, exposed some to anarchists and their propaganda. This is largely what led to the swelling of anarchist ranks at the time and thus allowed for the various dramatic events now immortalized on Hollywood celluloid.

Another reason a Democratic administration favors us is that it forces us into fewer reactionary stances. As stated in the paragraphs quoted above, a Republican administration would likely busy itself with all manner of offensive actions in a continuation of the current administration's agenda--possibly at an accelerated clip--to which anarchists have struggled to effectively respond. Being the militant reaction to Republican offense does not suit anarchists for a variety of reasons, from the demographics of the anarchist milieu to the strengths of the anarchist critique of postmodern life.

Certainly there are grounds for disagreement, especially now, when anarchists seem to be gaining their footing. But the C.S.A., for one, finds the first scenario quoted above far more enticing than the last.

Addendum: Congressional Democrats have apparently begun operating on the assumption of an Obama victory, and in a rare step, are attempting to gain traction for their legislative agenda ahead of the election. To further support the C.S.A.'s comparison of the Clinton years to a likely Obama administration, check out this snippet from a larger piece about the Democrats "economic recovery plan":

Some aides are even floating trade-offs that might sweeten the pot for Senate Republicans and President Bush, including the Colombia free trade agreement, long seen as a possible lame-duck item.

Anarcho-Friendly Hollywood Movies: Top 10

While the C.S.A. doesn't usually approve when people tout their personal preferences as though they were newsworthy, it seems worthwhile to throw in some lighthearted material along with all the dour news and analysis found here. So in the interest of amusement and propagandizing, here are ten films with themes that may appeal to anarchists and the anarcho-curious. Feel free to disparage/endorse these choices or add your own recommendations in the comments.


10. Office Space (1999) by Mike Judge. Although lacking any sort of analysis whatsoever, "Office Space" is surprisingly awash in anti-work themes. While the protagonist eventually abandons white collar cubicle work for the supposed honesty and security of blue collar labor--a cop-out obviously taken because the filmmakers didn't have any better ideas--the portrayal of white collar misery is uncompromising and hilarious. The tacit endorsement of workplace theft and arson are gravy on the potatoes.

9. A Scanner Darkly (2006) by Richard Linklater. Set in a near-future dystopia filled with drug-addiction, hi-tech surveillance, police infiltration, (well-founded) paranoia, deteriorating suburbs, and crony capitalism that thrives on destruction. While Philip K. Dick's novels are uniformly better than the films made from them, Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson are memorably comic as paranoid drug addicts, and the quasi-animation is neat.

8. Wag The Dog (1996) by Barry Levinson. It's hard to believe this movie was made before 9/11, such is its prescience. Almost every lame trick that has popped up in the media during the last two wars seems to have been lifted directly from this surprisingly sharp and cynical movie. The acting alone makes it worth watching.

7. Wattstax (1973) by Mel Stuart. An amazingly astute, penetrating look at Black America in the early '70s. This documentary about the 100,000 people who attended the Stax Records-promoted 1972 concert in L.A. billed as the "Black Woodstock" features captivating interviews with regular people on virtually everything from the cops to personal relationships, incredible (and hilarious) commentary by Richard Pryor, and music that will blow the doors off your life.

6. Eraserhead (1977) by David Lynch. Ever felt like your brain were going to implode during the course of a routine but soul-crushing bourgeois interaction? Ever wondered what it would be like if that interaction were ridiculed and caricatured in the most bizarre but insightful way by a demented visionary? Well, here you have it. The result is like a cross between a snuff film and "Meet The Parents", if that synthesis were filmed by a schizophrenic coming down from a peyote trip.

5. They Live (1988) by John Carpenter. Not a B movie, or even a C movie, but a D movie with what could easily be described as an anti-authoritarian agenda. Rowdy Roddy Piper stars as the hero who lands in a mutual aid-based homeless encampment in Los Angeles, only to discover by sci-fi happenstance that the world is awash in messages encouraging conformity, mindless reproduction, and blind obedience to cops and the rich. What ensues is difficult to summarize since it doesn't make a great deal of sense, but a quote from Piper gives a hint: "I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubble gum."

4. Children Of Men (2006) by Alfonso Cuarón. This futuristic thriller is of greatest interest for its portrayal of authoritarian Leftists, who appear as brutish psychos willing to adopt the worst features of their enemies in pursuit of a millenarian armed revolution. Hard to argue with that. The heroes are self-determined, critical thinkers caught between the Leftists and the dominate neo-fascists, ultimately hoping to meet up with an underground group of single-minded world savers.

3. Do The Right Thing (1989) by Spike Lee. Perhaps the only major film to address gentrification in a believable, interesting way, Spike Lee refused easy conclusions and tidy plots for a multi-faceted look at life in a changing ghetto in New York. Race, violence, and Rosie Perez dancing better than you could ever hope to.

2. Putney Swope (1969) by Robert Downey Sr. 85-minutes of sheer, unadulterated genius. A painfully funny, surreal satire of the 1960's advertising revolution that created hip capitalism. It's genius lies in its skewering of both '60s radicals and the white power structure they sought to attack. After watching it, read The Conquest Of Cool by Thomas Frank (written while he was still in his The Baffler/situationist-ti