Greek riots: ritual outlet for frustrated nation

Christopher Torchia reports for Forbes:

A stun grenade exploded in the hand of a Greek riot policeman, severing a finger. Police and demonstrators ceased combat and scoured the debris-strewn street, uniting in a frantic search for the missing digit.

They found it. The finger was rushed off in a wet towel to a hospital, where doctors reattached it to the injured man. The brief scene of solidarity, witnessed by an Associated Press photographer, was one of many twists in a wild drama on the stage of central Athens this week.

[ ... ]

Greeks had indulged in another contained eruption, heavy with choreography and symbolism, to convey disgust with their political class. The culture of protest and violence by a hardened minority is now a routine form of collective therapy.

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Musical Innerlube: Rage Against The Machine - Sleep Now In The Fire

In Defense of Flogging

By Peter Moskos, The Chronicle of Higher Education

A crazy idea came from a dinner in New Orleans. I had cold-called (or whatever the e-mail equivalent is) a writer and his wife because I was a fan of his work and thought we had much in common. They were gracious enough to arrange a meal and treat me, without much justification, as a professional equal more than a stalker. The conversation turned to corporal punishment in public schools. They were amazed not that such a peculiarity existed in a city ripe with oddities, but that such illegal punishments were administered at the urging of and with the full consent of the students' parents.

"Fascinating," I drolly replied, but I wasn't shocked. If I'd learned one thing as a police officer patrolling a poor neighborhood, it was the working- and lower-class populations' great fondness for corporal punishment. No punishment is as easy or seemingly satisfying as a physical beating. I learned this not because I beat people, but because the good citizens I swore to serve and protect often urged me to do so. It wasn't hard for me to resist (I liked my job, and besides, I wasn't raised that way), but I agreed that many of the disrespectful hoodlums deserved a beating. Why? Because, as the old-school thinking goes, when people do wrong, they deserve to be punished.

For most of the past two centuries, at least in so-called civilized societies, the ideal of punishment has been replaced by the hope of rehabilitation. The American penitentiary system was invented to replace punishment with "cure." Prisons were built around the noble ideas of rehabilitation. In society, at least in liberal society, we're supposed to be above punishment, as if punishment were somehow beneath us. The fact that prisons proved both inhumane and miserably ineffective did little to deter the utopian enthusiasm of those reformers who wished to abolish punishment.

Incarceration, for adults as well as children, does little but make people more criminal. Alas, so successful were the "progressive" reformers of the past two centuries that today we don't have a system designed for punishment. Certainly released prisoners need help with life—jobs, housing, health care—but what they don't need is a failed concept of "rehabilitation." Prisons today have all but abandoned rehabilitative ideals—which isn't such a bad thing if one sees the notion as nothing more than paternalistic hogwash. All that is left is punishment, and we certainly could punish in a way that is much cheaper, honest, and even more humane. We could flog.

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A new book explores the highly peculiar legacy of Wilhelm Reich

From The Great Proselytizer of Orgasm by Peter D. Kramer:

Christopher Turner, author ofAdventures in the OrgasmatronToday when sex combines with politics, the likely result is humiliation. We think of the crotch shot, the Sofitel suite, the airport restroom stall, the stained blue dress. The sex, which we see as sleazy and compulsive, is a sign of a defective self: risk-prone, greedy, compartmentalized, deluded, and hypocritical.

It's hard, perhaps, to recall that once sex was—in the ideal—radical politics conducted by other means. When Wilhelm Reich coined the phrase "the sexual revolution," he meant transformation in every sphere: health, marriage, economics, morality, and government. It was in sex, he believed, that we found the integrated self, liberated from the alienating culture and the authoritarian state. Christopher Turner's Adventures in the Orgasmatron is in part a report from that past, when sex held the promise of social reform. His book bears the subtitle, How the Sexual Revolution Came to America, but mostly what Turner offers is a sex-centered biography of Reich, the great proselytizer of orgasm.

Because of his belief in orgone, an imagined form of energy, Reich is now a figure of fun. (Orgasmatron is Woody Allen's name, in Sleeper, for a parody of Reich's orgone accumulator, a telephone booth-sized plywood and metal box said to store a healing and enlivening force.) But Reich is a fascinating, unfairly overlooked figure. If he had done nothing else, he would perhaps be known for the great work of his youth, Character Analysis, a book that forever changed the way psychotherapy is done. What he went on to do—crazily, confusingly—was to elaborate a dream of a society saved by sex.

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Women against sexism - the new French revolution

By John Costello, Independent

They may have a reputation for being skilful and sensuous lovers, but when it comes to sex it appears Frenchmen are more Benny Hill than Casanova.

Despite its reputation for cultural superiority and sexual sophistication, a tidal wave of revelations in the wake of the scandal surrounding former IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn has unmasked France as the dirty old man of Europe.

Since Strauss-Kahn was charged with sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid, complaints against "casual" sexism in the country have rocketed an astounding 600%.

Women have been marching on the streets of Paris vowing to expose the pervasive macho culture in France, where sexism and abuse can thrive.

While Strauss-Kahn's alleged behaviour caused outrage, it was the reaction of prominent Frenchmen who questioned the victim's judgment and the seriousness of the charges that sparked the reaction from French feminists.

Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy claimed Strauss-Kahn had been "thrown to the dogs" and asked why had the maid entered his hotel suite alone and without knocking.

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Globalization, Governance, and Rhizomes Of Reality

As Mr Lamy says there is a lack of governance in the global economy. This is in my mind code for the need for social control or socialism. My contention is that a world government is emerging but there are key impediments, one is the persistence of the nation state, and the tendency for local interest to overwhelm the interests of the whole. This is very evident in the EU where Greece may end up leaving the body finding restrictions to be intolerable. Germany resents having to bail out Greece, after German banks were allowed to promote such great debt. The problem is the German people were not involved in generating the loans that incurred the debt but they must participate in the bailout. This is the same with the Greek people. They were not asked if they wanted the government to go into debt. They were simply told that the government had things under control and when they didn't they were asked to pay as if it was their responsibility. Even if they had benefited from going into debt with better salaries etc., it was essentially not their choice. 

That is the problem with globalization as far as I can see. There is no mechanism for a world vote by citizens. Only governments which are theoretically representing the people are represented in the UN. Economically there is the dictatorship of the capitalist class, with economic democracy limited to shareholders, similar to the 19th century concept of the vote being limited to property holders, now it is limited to proxy holders. This is obviously the next step in democratization, direct economic voting power for all workers, whether they are owners or not. With the logical development that the capitalist class becomes superfluous except as some sort of coordinating body responsible to the voting workers. This would make the executive of any corporate entity responsible to the workers who have become the voters instead of merely the stock holders, although there could be a vote for stock holders and workers.

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Red State Update Ad for Aleister Crowley in 2012

From Guide to the Campaign Ad:

It’s about freedom, and government oppression, and slave morality…

That is, the same government oppression and slave morality as mentioned above, in the section on human sacrifice. Freedom of speech and sexual expression are two of the major issues that Aleister Crowley confronted in his activities and writings, including his commentary on the Law of Thelema and his political essays, often quoted here on AC2012.

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Jan Svankmajer - Virile Games (1988)

Jan Švankmajer (born 4 September 1934 in Prague) is a Czech surrealist artist. His work spans several media. He is known for his surreal animations and features, which have greatly influenced other artists such as Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, The Brothers Quay and many others.

Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish and yet somehow funny pictures. He is still making films in Prague at the time of writing.

Švankmajer's trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses very sped-up sequences when people walk and interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects coming alive and being brought to life through stop-motion. Food is a favourite subject and medium. Stop-motion features in most of his work, though his feature films also include live action to varying degrees.

A lot of his movies, like the short film Down to the Cellar, are made from a child's perspective, while at the same time often having a truly disturbing and even aggressive nature. In 1972 the communist authorities banned him from making films, and many of his later films were banned. He was almost unknown in the West until the early 1980s.

Today he is one of the most celebrated animators in the world. His best known works are probably the feature films Alice (1988), Faust (1994), Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), Little Otik (2000) and Lunacy (2005), a surreal comic horror based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. Also famous (and much imitated) is the short Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), which shows Arcimboldo-like heads gradually reducing each other to bland copies ("exhaustive discussion"); a clay man and woman who dissolve into one another sexually, then quarrel and reduce themselves to a frenzied, boiling pulp ("passionate discourse"); and two elderly clay heads who extrude various objects on their tongues (toothbrush and toothpaste; shoe and shoelaces, etc.) and use them in every possible combination, sane or otherwise ("factual conversation"). His films have been called "as emotionally haunting as Kafka's stories[1]."

He was married to Eva Švankmajerová, an internationally known surrealist painter, ceramicist and writer until her death in October of 2005. She collaborated on several of his movies including Faust, Otesánek and Alice. They had two children, Veronika and Václav.

~ ~ ~

Alex Jones: Hell is Coming Rant!!

Amnesty condemns Greek crackdown on anti-austerity protests

Amnesty International has condemned the use of "excessive force" by Greek security forces in suppressing protests against EU-IMF-imposed austerity.

In a statement issued Wednesday (29 June) night, the human rights group described how their supporters had catalogued a series of abuses against the largely peaceful demonstrators in Athens' central Syntagma Square in front of the national parliament.

"Video footage and witness testimony points to the repeated use of excessive force by police in recent demonstrations, including the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of tear gas and other chemicals against largely peaceful protesters," the group said in a statement.



"Amnesty International representatives present in Syntagma square have witnessed incidents of peaceful protesters being beaten by police officers."


Throughout the day, riot police numbering some 5,000 fired multiple volleys of tear gas and stun grenades into crowds, including into the metro station where a makeshift medical shelter had been set up.

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Athens ablaze as Greece austerity riots continue into the night

UPDATE: Syntagma Square was repopulated with peaceful protesters in the early hours of the morning and they intend to continue their efforts to bring meaningful change.

How To Pick Up Women Protesters

Learn from LamHaklam, practicing among Real Democracy NOW! protesters in Thessaloniki:

Greece: Provocateurs caught on video

Behind police lines, provocateurs are led into parliament grounds!

"Greek police beating Greek citizens on behalf of the international banksters"

Paper Terrorists - German journalist Lars Schall talked with Max Keiser

[ Via Information Clearing House - See also: A World Overwhelmed By Western Hypocrisy by Paul Craig Roberts ]

500 casualties of police brutality around Syntagma Square. The First Aid Station of the protesters was attacked by police and had to be moved into the Metro station at the square.

Greece - Video Report As Thousands Protest Sweeping Austerity Cuts

Democracy NOW! - As our broadcast went to air, lawmakers in Greece were voting on — and later approved — a new round of sweeping austerity measures amidst a general strike that's brought tens of thousands into the streets. Riot police have fired volleys of tear gas, smoke bombs and stun grenades in a bid to clear the masses of Greek protesters surrounding the parliament in Athens. The chaotic standoff began Tuesday when police stormed the adjacent Syntagma Square, where demonstrators have camped for over a month. Democracy Now! producers Aaron Maté and Hany Massoud were there just as the unrest broke out and spoke to many of the demonstrators who refused to leave the square. "They sell our country," said one protester. "They sell our national dignity ... they have signed away ... our constitution!" Another person said, "We need the solidarity of working class people and youth from around the globe. The only way to stop the cuts, the attacks and austerity packages is by struggling, this includes everything, strikes, demonstrations, occupations of squares and uniting the different movements from around the world."

The Greek government has voted in favour of a new round of austerity cuts - securing the next multi-billion instalement of cash from the EU and staving off a default. But furious protesters have reacted violently to the vote, with battles between police and demonstrators continuing just meters from Parliament. Scenes from downtown Athens resemble a warzone - as protesters fought with riot squads amid volleys of tear gas. Hundreds of thousands of people nationwide walked off their jobs for a two day strike against the austerity cuts

The Greek government has voted in favour of a new round of austerity cuts - securing the next multi-billion instalement of cash from the EU and staving off a default. But furious protesters have reacted violently to the vote, with battles between police and demonstrators continuing just meters from Parliament. Scenes from downtown Athens resemble a warzone - as protesters fought with riot squads amid volleys of tear gas. Hundreds of thousands of people nationwide walked off their jobs for a two day strike against the austerity cuts. They say drowning the country in debt at crippling interest rates has failed once - and it'll fail again. For more on what the vote means for Greece and the EU RT talks to financial journalist Demetri Kofinas.

I was around Vasilissis Sofias street yesterday afternoon, and all of a sudden I saw an army of motorcycles, there must have been 500 of them, all driving past us. One would have thought a coup was happening. [ via A Letter From The Greek Rioters.]

Violent scenes in Athens as bloody Greek riots keep on raging (2)

From RealDemocracy.GR

Violent scenes in Athens as bloody Greek riots keep on raging (1)

The most important 48 hours in EU history?

By Jérôme E. Roos, ROAR

Amidst mass protests and an historic 48-hour strike, one ‘no’ vote by a Greek MP could tip Greece into bankruptcy and the world into global financial meltdown.

The eyes of the world are on Greece. Or, to be more specific, on Syntagma Square, where 300 MPs prepare for a crucial vote on the EU-IMF imposed austerity package — and where hundreds of thousands of Greeks will converge to stop the vote from being passed in the country’s first 48-hour strike since the fall of the dictatorship.

There is an uneasy tension in the air in Athens. Just yesterday, Communist protesters stormed the Acropolis and unfurled a giant banner calling for a massive organized counterattack. Today, over 5,000 policemen have mobilized in central Athens to prepare for an epic stand-off with hundreds of thousands of striking workers and indignants.

What is going on in Athens right now is truly historic. Indeed, superlatives aside, it is nearly impossible to describe the gravity of the situation at hand. What happens in the next 48 hours in Athens will determine the fate of the entire eurozone, the EU and — indeed — the world economy as a whole. This is the very climax of the eurocrisis.

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Ex-Spy Alleges Bush White House Sought to Discredit Critic

James Risen writes for the New York Times:

A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

It is not clear whether the White House received any damaging material about Professor Cole or whether the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies ever provided any information or spied on him. Mr. Carle said that a memorandum written by his supervisor included derogatory details about Professor Cole, but that it may have been deleted before reaching the White House. Mr. Carle also said he did not know the origins of that information or who at the White House had requested it.

Intelligence officials disputed Mr. Carle’s account, saying that White House officials did ask about Professor Cole in 2006, but only to find out why he had been invited to C.I.A.-sponsored conferences on the Middle East. The officials said that the White House did not ask for sensitive personal information, and that the agency did not provide it.

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Diabolic - Truth Pt.2 Lyrics

Yes, today begins a new order. Your lands, your possessions,
Your very lives will be gladly given in tribute to me.
In return for your obedience, you will enjoy my generous protection.
In other words, you will be allowed to live.

[Verse 1]
Yo,
Freedoms been overthrown by Skull and Bones scroll and key,
Lunatics, upside down crucifix on their rosary,
It's the home of the brave, land of the supposed free,
And Trilateral Commission expeditions overseas,
Opposing me's a socially accepted secret known to me,
The Jason Group mistakes the truth as its golden fleece,
Am I supposed to believe masons who have a mixture,
Of Satan and Catholic scripture, traded some gas to Hitler?
Should I believe when your forefather's Jack the Ripper?
And you worship statues in the forest to practise Wicca,
I seen it unfold, summer season, reading a scroll,
Translating masons speakin' in code at Bohemian Grove,
Prince Bernard of the Netherlands left some evidence,
And the Bilderberg chose our presidents ever since,
Veteran Illuminati invaded the Scottish Rite,
Denounced god and Christ, worshipped man, and forgot the light,
So I got to fight, coz' I don't care how it sounds,
The CIA planted C4 to bring the towers down,
Planes hit, a weapon's born trackin' us with Echelon,
When a video exists of a missile hitting the pentagon,
What a masterpiece, the past repeats, it's never gone,
In daddy's footsteps junior re-enacts Desert Storm,
Like let's get it on, act righteous, cause a fast crisis,
Double gas prices and blame the fact we tax-hyped it,
But observing optics can see through a vermin's logic,
To just turn a profit and fatten Halliburton's pockets,
Making Satan's fire lakes out a higher place,
So this time I break, there's only so much I can take.

[Hook x2]
Here's the truth, we the people have been seeing your attempts,
And realized we the ones you declared war against,
Here's the truth, I refuse to have you controlling me,
With my faith in a bunch of snakes I just don't believe,

[Verse 2]
The holy Roman crown is sacred and it seems the House of David,
Left Black Nobility and Jesus somehow related,
Black don't refer to the colour of these cowards faces,
Their powder pasted skin makes them the proudest racists,
Illuminated lineage on lonely chromosomes,
Known for seeking the return of the holy Roman throne,
Committee of 300 call the shots close to home,
Tappin' in your mobile phones, matchin' up your vocal tones,
It's your darkest belief, started with Harvard's elite,
And Yale's fraternal orders marketing the mark of the beast,
Deceiving as a demon playing the part of a priest,
Habsburg's causing famine while we starve in the streets,
Old School psychology basing fate on numerology,
The newest colony and Lucifer's future prophecy
In aristocracy with souls in the devils hands,
And architecture plans, city streets designed as pentagrams,
Hidden cams on every inch of this blessed land,
A Verichip GPS attached to your genetic strands,
But I'll be damned if I allow some coward to drown me,
In the powers he proudly learned from Aleister Crowley,
Coz' outta' my county on the turnpike, word life,
There's Nazi propaganda promoting Bush's Third Reich,
Turn right at the left wing and find these coke leaders,
Then expose FEMA before you take The Fall like colt severs,
No Geneva Convention peace treaty will be safe,
When the elite make a one world government police state,
I know y'all relate and even I hope I'm wrong,
But I know I'm not, coz' I know what the fuck is going on.
[Hook x2]

The Matrix of Illumination

Postcard From Greece: This Should Not Be About Austerity, It's About the Future of Democracy

By Arriana Huffington:

Given that the Greeks invented democracy, it's only fitting that they're now being given the chance to reinvent it. And yes, I know we Greeks have a reputation for mythmaking and drama -- but, as I found out during my trip to Greece last week, those really are the stakes.

Until I went over and witnessed what's happening, I too had become convinced that the real issues were the ones the media were obsessively covering: the effects of a potential sovereign default on the Euro and worries about the crisis spreading to other European countries.

But here's the bigger issue: Can a truly democratic movement break the stranglehold of corrupt elites and powerful anti-democratic institutional forces that have come to characterize not just the politics of Greece, but most Western democracies, including our own? Greece is only an extreme example of an unfolding seismic social shift that is challenging democracies the world over.

What happens in Greece might very well tell us whether democracy will recover from the crisis of legitimacy exacerbated by the financial crisis or whether it will shrink -- undermined by the very forces that brought on the crisis in the first place.

It's way too early to tell whether the forces of democracy will prevail, but I came away extraordinarily moved and heartened by the courage, passion, engagement and dedication I witnessed during a trip in which three different perspectives converged.

First and foremost, there was The Square.

The happenings in Cairo's Tahrir Square led the news for weeks earlier this year, but from what we are being shown back in America, you wouldn't know that there's a remarkably similar scene unfolding in Athens. Not only are the physical setting, the demographics of the participants, and the way they're being organized similar to Tahrir Square, but so are the demands being made. In Athens, the place of the moment attracting thousands of people a day is Syntagma Square, situated directly across from the Greek parliament.

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America has REAL PROBLEMS, not Greece

From Monday Madness - Greece Is a Drop in the Bucket Compared With Us by Philip Davis:

When do we own up to reality? 500%? 600%? 1,000%? Do we just keep lending them more and more money and pretending they are not in default? Before you say, that's ridiculous, keep in mind THAT's JUST WHAT THE U.S. IS DOING NOW! That's right, I fooled you - who cares about Greece and their silly $400Bn total debt when the US is borrowing $140Bn PER MONTH! Wake up America - Greece is the distraction of the moment because it's THIS country, America, that has REAL PROBLEMS, not Greece.

Greece can just default. If Greece defaults, they wipe out their debts and they simply can't borrow more money but, at this point, any cutbacks the Government has to make and any taxes the Government has to impose are nothing compared to what is being asked of them to service their debts. Not only that, but if Greece defaults, then that money stays in Greece, rather than the Greek people putting in all their efforts to fill the vaults of European Bankers and PIMCO.

America, on the other hand, has a REAL problem. Like a heroin junkie - we NEED our fix! Greece has a 10.5% budget deficit but 10% of their budget is paying interest in Debt and another 10% is paying principal on debt.The US has a budget deficit that is also 10% of our GDP (and we are not even going to get into UNfunded liabilities = $114Tn) yet interest on our debt is "only" about $400Bn a year at the moment (2.5% of GDP) but, at the current rates - have nowhere to go but up.

In fact, if we were paying Greece's average rate of 10% instead of our average rate of 2%, we're need $2Tn more dollars a year JUST TO PAY OUR INTEREST!

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New round of clashes, stones & tear gas in Greece

Peaceful protesters prevailed. They formed chains to pass water bottles and clean the massive amounts of police chemicals off the square and surrounding streets. Some videos from the clashes

Motorcycle riders show support for protesters

Things will be dicey tomorrow with a greater crowd expected and a plan to encircle parliament in a bid to show popular opposition to the medium term austerity program. 

Photos here and here. 

UPDATE: New wave of violence unfolding late in the evening. Authorities must be desperate to break up tomorrow's actions. Follow updates here and here.

Greek police fire tear gas on protesters

Greek police fired tear gas at demonstrators in central Athens at the start of a 48-hour strike to protest austerity measures demanded by international lenders as the price for more financial aid.

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Update from RealDemocracy.Gr:

• 14:33:48 chemi A few minutes ago, at Othonos street. police has used chemicals in order to facilitate the escape of an extreme rightwing group which has previously been disapproved by part of the protesters. Now the clashes have moved to Filellinon and Karagiorgi Servias. In the square people are remaining and insisting on keeping the square as decided by the peoples Assembly of Syntagma the previous days
• 14:36:00 collective Just a while ago, the police fire the fist canisters of tear gas, in order to make way for an ultra righ wig group, which had previously been hissed by part of the demonstrators. On and atound the square people is holding ground as was decided in the popular assembly
• 14:55:13 chemi Despite the clashes people with drums and music insist and do not retreat. We stay at the square and we do not succumb to warmonger blackmails
• 15:14:09 chemi 60 protesters have been transferred to the first aid station with intense breathing problems. Rescuers and 30 doctors have arrived. In the square police is keep using teargas, yet the dance is continuing holding together the gathered people at Syntagma square.
• 15:15:56 chemi In a short while people are arriving from Thessaloniki!

Greece Crippled by General Strike

By Roddy Thomson, AFP [Industry Week]

Greece ground to a halt Tuesday as angry workers launched a 48-hour general strike against an austerity drive ordered by its bankruptcy-threatened government in exchange for a European bailout.

Crowds converged early on Syntagma Square, where parliament will vote on sweeping spending cuts as planes, ships and most public transport came to a halt.

Europe's economic tsar, Olli Rehn, in Brussels warned that Greece faced "a critical juncture" and the austerity program was the "only way to avoid immediate default."

But that view was not shared by protesters, determined to block passage of the package.

"We don't want your money Europe," a protester named Iamando, 36, told AFP on the square where police were already out in force at 11 a.m. GMT. "Leave us alone -- please, please, please."

The number of police in the center of the capital rose to 4,000, according to the authorities, with traffic unable to circulate in central Athens.

Public transport was halted in Athens for the fourth general strike called this year by the country's two biggest unions, with the exception of the metro, whose drivers decided not to strike so as to allow Athenians to swell protest numbers.

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2012 - The Aquarian Shift

2012, Human consciousness & a planetary shift.

The world is going through all kinds of strange upheavals - both man-made and natural - that seem to be serving as a wake-up call of sorts. We are being challenged to open our eyes to other possibilities and new ways of thinking... and that's a good thing! We have lived too long in fear and darkness. Peace is a choice, and now is the time to act in accordance with our belief in peaceful coexistence. Be the change you wish to see in others!

Unprecedented 48-Hour General Strike Begins in Greece

-we were deceived
-we were underestimated
-they thought we were asleep in their nightmare
-but we woke up!
-we gathered at the squares, 
-we came to know each other 
-we started to transform our dreams into reality
-all together
-united
-with solidarity and dignity
-Now it is US who talk, and THEY that are afraid!
-We will not rest in, until those who stole from us, pay! 
-We will not go unless all those who plunder our lives
and burn our future, go first! 
-28 and 29 of June, 48 hours in the streets! 
-All Greece in Syntagma square! 
-The midterm agreement shall not pass! 

People's Assembly of Syntagma square 1.34
People's Assemblies of districts and region
Unions and Syndicates

Direct Democracy Now

Breaking,news-THOUSANDS EVACUATED NEAR NUCLEAR PLANTS, 28/06/11