515 Crew

[Bullet Tooth]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/1 ... riots.html

im surprised no one has brought this up yet. seems like a fucked up situation. really vivid pictures in that link too.

attn anonymous, taking a trip?

[TooManyHumyns]

apparently gov't leaders said they would begin policy change if the riots continue into the new year...

[Bullet Tooth]

apparently gov't leaders said they would begin policy change if the riots continue into the new year...

but not if they dont continue?

policy change to what? that could go either way.

[TooManyHumyns]

i couldn't exactly tell you....it was a very vague interview with a 'gov't official' in greece...there has been mass rioting in Greece on and off for a long time now, the 15year old getting shot and killed seemed to be the last straw to the 'protestors'...
the rioters said they will stop at nothing when asked by officials what they could do to get them to stop the rioting...

sorry im fucking tired, my typing may be all fuct up and confusing

[kylervk]

kids punk!!!



pepe420!!!


JUST DO IT!!!

[TooManyHumyns]

thats the kid who got shot and killed....there is also a pic of a cope on fire

[Smoking Guns]

i thought this said "geek riots". i got excited.

[Hank Fist]

I've heard interviews with teenage rioters. They have no idea why they're doing it(they claim the kid getting shot, but don't have explanations as to why they are burning buildings and businesses) they're just having fun rioting.

[El Rhino]

I've heard interviews with teenage rioters. They have no idea why they're doing it(they claim the kid getting shot, but don't have explanations as to why they are burning buildings and businesses) they're just having fun rioting.

When I first read about the riots in Greece earlier this month it was "asylum seekers" upset over the bureaucracy involved with processing asylum seekers and the treatment of illegals/asylum seekers/whatever. Since these people are owed something by Western nations, it's only natural that you start breaking shit and burning things when you don't get what you want.

[Big Fat Retard]

One night when I was waiting for a bus in Minneapolis some dude with a lisp asked me if I wanted to come over to his house and watch a movie called "Greek Riot".

[@nonymous]

greece has always been a stronghold for anti-authoritarians, anarchists and anti-capitalists, dating back to the late 1800's. the current situation however, though news to some, is really just a logical extension of what's been happening there since the late 60's and early 70's--during the Greek military junta("The Regime of the Colonels"), where in 1967, Greek Colonels led a coup d'état that would rule all of Greece until July of 1974. this environment gave way to many of the radical elements there today.

a great site to check out with sharp analysis and updates is Center for Strategic Anarchy: http://anarchiststrategy.blogspot.com/

rather than attempting to explain the entire situation, here is a great account from someone on the ground in Greece:

Friends,

I don't know if others have been following the daily news of what is unfolding in Greece. The press here has mostly reported events as another explosion of "riots" in response to a police killing, without context.

In fact, what is taking place in Greece is much larger than that. In its immediate context, the uprising of the last 10 days comes on the heels of a rising oppositional movement: recently, the Greeks managed to achieve a general strike with support from 80-90% of the working population against privatization of national industries and other neoliberal policies, and for doubling the minimum wage. A broad hunger strike among Greek prisoners, with mass solidarity from Greek society, has also compelled the government to agree to the release of about half the prison population (and the movement declared that this would not be enough).

The "spontaneous" anger of young people against police violence has beneath and alongside it long-standing movement structures that are allowing it not simply to "discharge" and dissipate, but to grow, strengthen itself and expand into new political areas. It is taking place in a population that is highly politicized and has a history of resistance to draw from.

But it's extraordinary to see the mass mobilization of very young people--high-school students between the ages of 11 and 17, taking to the streets, taking over their schools, developing a politics that addresses their lives directly. It's not just resistance to police repression now, but a wider discussion is taking place about education social organization--with students holding mass assemblies in their occupied schools, trying to decide what the meaning would be of an education that is part of the life they want for themselves, and not the life that is being prepared for them by the existing society.

(The flyer at the this link, from the website of the Coordination of Occupied Schools Alexandros Grigoropulos, says it well. The slogans translate as follows: across the top "The time has come for us to take the future into our hands." On the left, is the image of a student sleeping over books with the caption "School, home, tutoring". On the right are students filling the streets, marching behind a banner that says "These days belong to Alexi: cops, pigs, murderers!" and above it, the caption reads, "Struggle, rupture, revolution." )

At this point, hundreds of schools, colleges and universities have been occupied and are being transformed into centers of organizing. They are running their own radio stations, some of which are private stations now under occupation. They are occupying public buildings; attacking police stations and government ministries.

Yesterday, students occupied the central state-run television station during its news broadcast of the Prime Minister's speech and stood with a banner saying, "Stop watching and go out into the streets!" Two smaller placards read, "Freedom for all those who have been arrested," and "Immediate release for all the arrested." (Video here.)

In a separate action, another group attacked the central Athens headquarters of the MAT, burning vehicles and a portion of the building. The MAT (Monades Apokatastasis Taxis "Units For Restoring Order") are the "riot police"--a specifically political branch of the police force developed to suppress "civil unrest." They were developed by police who received training in the US. (Greece has been a central recipient of US police training and technology for repression.) The dissolution of the MAT is one of the central demands that has come out of the assemblies of occupied schools and universities. (This also has a particular topical appropriateness: the MAT were first introduced by Konstantinos Karamanlis, father of the current Prime Minister and leader of the same right wing party Nea Dimokratia, in the years following the fall of the Greek junta. The leader of the junta would later write in his memoir that if the MAT had existed at that time, the junta might not have fallen.)

A video from this past weekend shows a battle with MAT police in the Exarchia neighborhood--the area in which the police murder took place that sparked the current uprising, and a center of left organizing--in which youths defending their neighborhood are using laser beams to blind the police and also to pinpoint them as targets so that they can maximize the effect of their crude firepower (molotov cocktails and stones) by focusing a barrage on one target at a time. (Video.)

At the center of the battle in Athens is the historic Polytechnion--the university famous for the events of November 17, 1973, when the junta attacked protesting students with tanks. As a result of that history, the police are constitutionally unable to enter the university, making it a protected enclave for political organizing and a tactical base of operations. Every evening now, after the protests and street battles, students and other active members of the movement gather for a general assembly. The Coordination of the General Assemblies and Occupations in Athens has given the movement both a political face and a structure of continuity for building, planning and deepening its political consciousness. (Website and
blog.)

The uprising in Greece has a particular relevance at this moment in history. If you read the military manuals and strategy papers of the US architects of empire, Greece is a centerpiece of "counterinsurgency" doctrine. In the immediate postwar period, the US and England fought an extended counterinsurgency war to suppress the left (communist and anarchist), which had become the most powerful political force in the country through the years of resistance to the German occupation. The strategy was to brutally repress the armed resistance (80,000 British troops and the arming of domestic fascists to kill, imprison, and torture left guerillas), while at the same time promoting elections and including a legitimate "socialist" opposition, which supported surrendering arms and using the parliamentary system.

This is the "handbook" which the US uses in its imperial wars of conquest and occupation. It's called "promoting Democracy." Appropriate then, this declaration of the Greek uprising: "Their Democracy murders..."

[tylerjames515]

Fuck shit up, these pictures are ridiculous.

[Walking Thunder]

God damn I can't get enough of current.com.

http://current.com/items/89629399/greec ... ntinue.htm

[KY Jelly Belly]

[quote="@nonymous"]But it's extraordinary to see the mass mobilization of very young people--high-school students between the ages of 11 and 17, taking to the streets, taking over their schools, developing a politics that addresses their lives directly. It's not just resistance to police repression now, but a wider discussion is taking place about education social organization--with students holding mass assemblies in their occupied schools, trying to decide what the meaning would be of an education that is part of the life they want for themselves, and not the life that is being prepared for them by the existing society.[quote]

It seems like people in European countries rise up and fight for what they believe in more often than any other country/territory. In American society we tend to be "scared" of what the government or authority is going to do to us and we lack that ability to stand up and fight. Or in other words we bitch about things but never actually do anything about it. It's suprising to me to see such young kids with an opinion about the state of thier nation.

[@nonymous]

It seems like people in European countries rise up and fight for what they believe in more often than any other country/territory. In American society we tend to be "scared" of what the government or authority is going to do to us and we lack that ability to stand up and fight. Or in other words we bitch about things but never actually do anything about it. It's suprising to me to see such young kids with an opinion about the state of thier nation.

part of the reason is because these areas are much older than the United States, and have long histories of revolt.

it's interesting that liberals have begun to predict that what's happening in Greece could become a harbinger for things to come in other western areas, due to the world-wide economic upheaval.

[@nonymous]

and as always, critical analysis of this event can be found at: http://www.crimethinc.com/blog/2008/12/ ... s-to-come/

[El Rhino]

It seems like people in European countries rise up and fight for what they believe in more often than any other country/territory. In American society we tend to be "scared" of what the government or authority is going to do to us and we lack that ability to stand up and fight. Or in other words we bitch about things but never actually do anything about it. It's suprising to me to see such young kids with an opinion about the state of thier nation.

I think it's more of a Mediterranean thing than a Europe as a whole thing. Those people are extremely hot-blooded. Pretty much every culture around the Mediterranean is a hell of a lot more expressive than we are, as are their descendants in places like Latin America or North Africans in Paris, etc.

[joseph]

It seems like people in European countries rise up and fight for what they believe in more often than any other country/territory. In American society we tend to be "scared" of what the government or authority is going to do to us and we lack that ability to stand up and fight. Or in other words we bitch about things but never actually do anything about it. It's suprising to me to see such young kids with an opinion about the state of thier nation.

i think its more to do with the new attitude that the govt is here to take care of us. wellfare, stimulus checks blah blah etc. where it seems to me that when other countries have actual protests/riots they have actual life thrreatening reasons. but thats my limited opinion