Clashes in protest against IMF in Athens

15/11/2010

Over 3000 protested today in Athens as Greece's finance minister prepared to meet with officials from the IMF. Minor clashes occurred and a US citizen was reportedly beaten by police and later hospitalized. Athens, Greece.

Minor clashes occurred during the protest as a small number of hooded protesters lit up garbage and threw stones at the police.

However, when the protesters were heading to the Athens Polytechnic on Patision Avenue, a motorcycled police force charged the crowd without obvious reason and started beating a female protester of American citizenship. She was knocked semi-unconscious and was hospitalised.

On Wednesday a mass protest is expected as it is the anniversary of the Athens Polytechnic Uprising.

~ Source: Demotix; Images ~

American activist seriously injured in the head by Delta motorcycle police during tonight’s anti-IMF demonstration in Athens

From the Occupied London Blog:

UPDATE, 00.48. Tests so far on the injured comrade show there are no broken bones and no internal bleeding. She is, however, very badly hit in the face by the cops and the doctors have asked for her to stay in hospital for another 24 hours at least. Cops had followed her to hospital, harassed her and tried to interrogate her, only to back off when other comrades arrived. At the time of writing (00.45) the cops have left the hospital.

What follows is a compilation of accounts of comrades who were at tonight's demonstration in central Athens, close to the injured activist and whose reports are verified and trustworthy. Please spread. We will post more information here, as it comes.

The events unfolded toward the end of tonight's demonstration against the presence of representatives of the IMF in central Athens. As we were marching at the last block of the demonstration on Patision Avenue, having left Omonoia square and heading back toward the Polytechnic, a number of "Delta" motorcycle police appeared at the back of the demonstration. They roared their engines and charged toward the crowd. People started running toward the Polytechnic. The delta managed to get hold of a female American activist who was at the last part of the demonstration. They knocked down, kicked her and stamped her head. She was knocked semi-unconscious, taken inside the Polytechnic by other comrades and a few moments later, transported to a central Athens hospital.

We are currently waiting to hear back from the doctors as of the state of her health. Her injuries are serious, but in no case life-threatening.

DJ Taylor: Whoever you vote for, the Government always gets in

From Commentators, The Independent:

On Friday week the distinguished novelist Ferdinand Mount will deliver this year's George Orwell Memorial Lecture. There is a particular piquancy about both lecturer and subject.

Mr Mount is not only a former head of Margaret Thatcher's policy unit; he is also the Prime Minister's cousin. As for his theme – "Orwell and the Oligarchs" – well, it just happens to coincide with the unveiling of David Cameron's plan to redefine the citizen's relationship with the state.

The fact that we live not in a parliamentary democracy but in a cunningly contrived counterfeit of one, where whoever wins an election the same kind of people are still working the levers of power, is not always appreciated by party activists. Mr Cameron, on the other hand, certainly seems to appreciate it. Above all, he seems to recognise the fact that to most UK citizens the link between a vote and what gets done as a result of it is so convoluted as to barely exist. Hence his assurance that reform will be driven not by short-term political calculations, "but by the consistent, long-term pressure of what people want and choose in their public services".

This sounds a terrific idea until you realise that it is based on an assumption that people know what they want from government, and that government, in its turn, is able to quantify these desires and set about appeasing them. So, how does the average British citizen regard the state? The first problem lies in the existence of that shadowy entity known to social historians as "them". In their myriad guises, "they" can be positively protean, taking in everything from the tax authorities to park-keepers. To my father "they" were a malign and anti-meritocratic force at work to obstruct his and his family's path through life. Sometimes "they" could be confounded – "That's shown the bastards" he once remarked when notified of a favourable examination result – but more often than not "they" would move mountains to ensure that everyone who laboured under their yoke would suffer as much inconvenience as possible.

But if you get rid of "them", what do you put in their place? Here you face another problem; the almost complete lack of civic awareness and communal spirit shown by a good 80 per cent of the population. Orwell himself once proposed that most of the patriotic flag-waving that takes place in this country was carried out by small minorities. The same is true of collective action. It is not even that we are all sturdy individualists, for whom collaboration is a kind of selling out, merely that, rather than having any deeply held opinions about how our relationship to the state might be better managed, we simply want to be left alone while, paradoxically, enjoying all the benefits that the state has to offer. I think Mr Cameron has his work cut out here.

Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says

Eric Lichtblau reports for The New York Times:

A secret history of the United States government's Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a "safe haven" in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.

The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.

It describes the government's posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official's drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government's mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.

The report catalogs both the successes and failures of the band of lawyers, historians and investigators at the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, which was created in 1979 to deport Nazis.

Perhaps the report's most damning disclosures come in assessing the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.'s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.

The Justice Department report, describing what it calls "the government's collaboration with persecutors," says that O.S.I investigators learned that some of the Nazis "were indeed knowingly granted entry" to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. "America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well," it said.

The report also documents divisions within the government over the effort and the legal pitfalls in relying on testimony from Holocaust survivors that was decades old. The report also concluded that the number of Nazis who made it into the United States was almost certainly much smaller than 10,000, the figure widely cited by government officials.

The Justice Department has resisted making the report public since 2006. Under the threat of a lawsuit, it turned over a heavily redacted version last month to a private research group, the National Security Archive, but even then many of the most legally and diplomatically sensitive portions were omitted. A complete version was obtained by The New York Times.

The Justice Department said the report, the product of six years of work, was never formally completed and did not represent its official findings. It cited "numerous factual errors and omissions," but declined to say what they were.

More than 300 Nazi persecutors have been deported, stripped of citizenship or blocked from entering the United States since the creation of the O.S.I., which was merged with another unit this year.

~ more... ~

Sussex University goes into occupation

From Stop the Cuts - Defend Sussex:

200 students went into occupation today ( Monday 15th November) at Sussex University. We are occupying against cuts and rising fees in education.

Please rush in messages of support to sussexstopthecuts@gmail.com.
If you are a student at Sussex or Brighton please join us in the Fulton building on Sussex campus and bring along your friends, food, drink, sleeping equipment etc…

Follow the occupation on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stopsussexcuts


Statement from the occupation:
November 15, 2010

This afternoon, over 170 students occupied the lecture theatre in the Fulton building at the University of Sussex in protest of the trebling of tuition fees and the attack on our education system.
In light of Wednesday's demonstration, which saw 52,000 people come out in opposition to the government's proposed cuts to education and raising of fees, we feel it is necessary for further action to consolidate the efforts made so far and push on in the opposition to these ideologically motivated cuts to both education specifically and public services as a whole.
We reject the notion that these cuts are necessary or for the benefit of society. There are viable alternatives which are not being explored. While the government has suggested that 'we are all in this together', we completely reject this and are insulted that these cuts are being pushed through alongside reductions in corporate tax. We feel these cuts are targeting those who are most vulnerable in our society.
Furthermore, not only are these cuts damaging our current education, but are changing the face of the education system as we know it. The hole in finances left by government cuts will inevitably be filled by private interest. This marketization of education will destroy the prospect of free and critical academic enquiry, on which universities should be based. The trebling of tuition fees will further exclude another swathe of society and make university accessible only to the rich.
We reject the media manipulation of the occupation of Millbank. The cost of the damage to 30 Millbank is less than insignificant when set against the damage of lost livelihoods and destruction of public services for future generations.
This occupation recognises that Aaron Porter's statements condemning the demonstration are counter-productive and serve only to divide and segregate the movement. We are disappointed that, as a national representative of students, Aaron Porter's statements have detracted from the real issue at hand by focusing on the events at Millbank Tower.
We believe that this Tory led coalition government has no mandate for lifting the cap on tuition fees. Nick Clegg has openly manipulated student voters in his campaign for election, and following the recent exposure of plans to drop his pledge to reject any rise in tuition fees, this occupation condemns his dishonesty and undemocratic methods.
Education is a right, not a privilege.

-    We demand the University of Sussex management makes a statement condemning all cuts to higher education and rise in tuition fees
-    We are opposed to all cuts to public services
-    We oppose a rise in tuition fees
-    We call for solidarity and support for those arrested or victimised on Wednesday's demonstration
-    We stand in solidarity with others taking action, both nationally and internationally, in the fight against austerity measures.
-    We call for all other university, college and school students and staff to strike and occupy in defence of the future of our education system, and to participate in the national day of action on the 24th November 2010.

~ more: http://defendsussex.wordpress.com/ ~