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."