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.