Helmet Cam View of the War for Athens

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Democracy vs Mythology: The Battle in Syntagma Square

Photo Credit - SturdyBlog

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I have never been more desperate to explain and more hopeful for your understanding of any single fact than this: The protests in Greece concern all of you directly.

What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion; an invasion as brutal as that against Poland in 1939. The invading army wears suits instead of uniforms and holds laptops instead of guns, but make no mistake – the attack on our sovereignty is as violent and thorough. Private wealth interests are dictating policy to a sovereign nation, which is expressly and directly against its national interest. Ignore it at your peril. Say to yourselves, if you wish, that perhaps it will stop there. That perhaps the bailiffs will not go after the Portugal and Ireland next. And then Spain and the UK. But it is already beginning to happen. This is why you cannot afford to ignore these events.

The powers that be have suggested that there is plenty to sell. Josef Schlarmann, a senior member of Angela Merkel’s party, recently made the helpful suggestion that we should sell some of our islands to private buyers in order to pay the interest on these loans, which have been forced on us to stabilise financial institutions and a failed currency experiment. (Of course, it is not a coincidence that recent studies have shown immense reserves of natural gas under the Aegean sea).

Troopers would ‘absolutely’ use force on Wisc. protesters if ordered, police union president

But: 'That would not be something I recognize as the United States of America,' state patrol inspector adds

Dees Illustration

Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story

Amid the largest protests Madison, Wisconsin has seen in decades, newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker last week issued a stark message to public labor unions occupying the capitol building: we have options, and using the National Guard against protesters is among them.

Since then, a myrad of rumors have circulated through crowds gathered at the state capitol, united in protest of a bill that would strip public unions of their collective bargaining rights. One rumor, which had not yet come to pass, even suggested that like Egypt's former dictator did in Tahrir Square, Gov. Walker may call in police to forcibly clear out the capitol.

And according to a Wisconsin police union president, whether the police agree or disagree with their governor's politics, they would "absolutely" carry out any order given to them ... even if that order included using force against their fellow Americans gathered in peaceful protest.

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INCREDIBLE Raw Footage of UK Students Battling Police (VIDEO)

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Mass demonstrations by thousands of students and trade unionists in central London against an increase in tuition fees, are growing more violent. It's the latest and the largest in a string of rallies against sweeping austerity measures and budget cuts across Europe. What started as a relatively peaceful march later turned into violent clashes with the police, which is largely outnumbered by the demonstrators.



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Student tuition fee protests turn violent as Tory headquarters evacuated

The Telegraph
November 10, 2010

After initially being ejected from the lobby of Millbank by police and security staff, the protestors smashed their way in through windows.

Using sticks and chairs they destroyed CCTV cameras and broke windows from the inside of the office block. Employees had to be evacuated as masked youths rampaged through corridors and onto the roof.

Dozens of police officers stationed outside the entrance were overwhelmed as the crowd of thousands pelted them with rocks and bottles.

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Thank God for France

Mike Whitney
Counter Punch

Thank God for France. While American liberals tremble at the idea of sending an angry e mail to congress for fear that their name will appear on the State Department's list of terrorists, French workers are on the front lines choking on tear gas and fending off billyclubs in hand-to-hand combat with Sarkozy's Gendarmerie. That's because the French haven't forgotten their class roots. When the government gets too big for its britches, people pour out onto to the streets and Paris becomes a warzone replete with overturned Mercedes Benzs, smashed storefront windows, and stacks of smoldering tires issuing pillars of black smoke. This is what democracy looks like when it hasn't been emasculated by decades of propaganda and consumerism. Here's a blurp from the trenches:
Headline:

"French Energy Sector Crippled by Nationwide Strike... French energy facilities are close to total disruption in the wake of nationwide strike against the raise of the retirement age.....France has been hit by numerous protests across the country against a controversial pension reform that would rise the retirement age to 62 from 60....On October 22 morning 80 protesters blockaded Grandpuits oil refinery outside Paris, key supplier for Charles de Gaulle and Orly international airport." (The Financial)

Shut 'em down.



Take note, Tea Party crybabies who moan about restoring "our freedoms" while stuffing the backyard bunker with seed corn and ammo. Glenn Beck won't save you from the "mean old" gov'mint. Liberty isn't free anymore. If you want it, get out of the barko-lounger and organize. The amount of freedom that any nation enjoys is directly proportionate to the amount of blood its people spilled fighting the state. No more, no less. The man who is willing to accept the blunt force of a cop's truncheon on his back is infinitely more praiseworthy than the leftist/rightist scribe crooning from the bleachers. The state isn't moved by lyrical editorials or prosaic manifestos. It responds to force alone, which is why it takes people who are willing to "throw themselves on the gears" of the apparatus and stop it from moving forward. Unfortunately, most of those people appear to live in France.

The resistance is steadily building in France. The budding rebellion is cropping up everywhere---"secondary schools, train stations, refineries and highways have been blockaded, there have been occupations of public buildings, workplaces, commercial centers, directed cuts of electricity, and ransacking of electoral institutions and town halls..." And the big unions are calling for more strikes, more agitation, more ferment.

For more than a week, transportation has been blocked across the France due to the protests by students and workers. Sarkozy's popularity has plummeted. 65% of people surveyed don't like the way the French president is handling the strikes. 79% of the people would like to see Sarkozy negotiate with the Union on terms and conditions, but he won't budge. Thus, the cauldron continues to boil while the prospect of violence rises.

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Violent Anarchists Help French Authorities Crush Pension Protests

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Violent anarchists in France who have spent the last week pointlessly smashing shop windows and setting fire to cars have “shot the protest movement in the foot” by demonizing legitimate union demonstrators and allowing the government to crackdown with paramilitary forces, according to a leading French labor expert.

The actions of rioting black-clad youths in cities such as Lyon and Paris have scuppered any chance of derailing government plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62, highlighting once again the fact that nihilistic communists who foolishly think they are the vanguard of some potent revolution are in fact the greatest ally of the state.

As we pointed out yesterday, there are two different groups protesting in France at the moment, those who are having a genuine impact, the union workers who have shut down entire areas of the country with fuel blockades, go-slow protests and picket lines and in doing so garnered the support of 70% of the country, and the idiot rent-a-mob anarcho-communists who will seize on any opportunity to run rampage in the deluded belief that they are standing up to the evil forces of capitalism by throwing a rock at a Starbucks window.

“The violence this week, amid huge country-wide strikes, blockades and demonstrations, has weakened the unions and played directly into the hands of the government, according to Bernard Vivier, director of France’s Higher Institute of Labour (a leading French thinktank),”reports France 24.

“The unions are embarrassed by this violence, which is led by anarchist elements of the unions who want to derail any attempts to negotiate with the government,” said Vivier.

“It has put the brakes on the unions’ momentum, while they themselves recognise that reforms to the pension system are needed,” he added. “These violent protesters want to do anything possible to stop negotiations, and their actions have shot the protest movement in the foot.”

The riots have provided French President Sarkozy with the perfect justification to send in paramilitary forces to clear blockades at France’s fuel depots, and have also made his refusal to negotiate with unions look like a reasonable response.

It appears that most of the “anarchists” who have tagged themselves on to the genuine union protests are in fact a remnant of the immigrants from France’s Muslim ghettos who rioted back in 2005, violent demonstrations that were widely opposed by the majority of the French people.

As we have documented numerous times before, you can always count on the gangs of balaclava-wearing morons to ruin the credibility and effectiveness of any good protest.

Indeed, on many occasions their staged media stunts are often allowed to occur unimpeded by authorities to provide the press with images of gratuitous violence which can they be played endlessly and used to demonize legitimate protesters.

We have documented numerous different examples where the black bloc anarchists were completely infiltrated by the authorities to provide a pretext for a police state crackdown.

The union workers in France should immediately distance themselves from the actions of the self-proclaimed anarchists if they are to have any hope of success.

Every time a car is set alight or a shop window shattered, the state gets another opportunity to castigate the entire protest movement as a hoard of violent extremists, and with it meter out a more brutal and oppressive police response.

—

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.

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Will Americans Follow French Example Of Mass Civil Unrest?

Or will the sleeping middle classes continue to scratch their butts and watch Dancing with the Stars?

French Protests - REUTERS

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet

How will Americans react when the government begins to impose the same austerity measures that are causing riots, street battles, fuel blockades and other assorted chaos in France? Will we witness mass civil unrest or will the sleeping middle classes continue to scratch their butts and watch Dancing with the Stars?

Back in June we forecast that the imminent onset of so-called austerity measures, which in reality represent nothing more than an elevated phase of government-run looting of the taxpayer, would herald an “age of rage,” leading to “riots and even revolutions as people react with fury in response to their jobs, savings, basic public services, pensions and welfare money being seized by the financial terrorists who caused the economic collapse in the first place.”
Four months later and citizens of one of the most prosperous countries in the world with the highest standard of living have shut down France after six days of strikes and protestsin response to government plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the full state pension age from 65 to 67.

Undoubtedly, there are two different protests occurring in France. The more violent scenes are the work of the rent-a-mob anarchist youths who couldn’t care less about pensions but will waste no opportunity to don black hoods and pointlessly smash up shop windows in demonstrations against “capitalism,” when in reality government seizure of pensions has all the hallmarks of command and control socialism and nothing to do with true free market capitalism.

These youths are more concerned about their welfare checks being cut, but they won’t garner the sympathy of the rest of the French people by taking baseball bats to Starbucks forecourts in mocked up media stunts. 

The legitimate protests and the ones thatgenuinely hurt the establishment and put the idiot anarchists to shame are being run by French workers, truck drivers, and union leaders, and enjoy the support of around 70% of the population.

Over a thousand gas stations have now run out of fuel across France, with strategic reserves set to last just a few weeks. Flights and trains have been disrupted, organized slowdowns have snarled highway traffic. The French are showing Americans how it should be done, by uniting peacefully to shut down an entire country. This is genuine people power – the French are sending a message to the establishment that they will no longer play ball until the looting stops.

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U.S. Debt Woes Expose Hidden Austerity and Looting of Public Assets

Eric Blair
Activist Post

The austerity sharks are circling their wounded prey.  The U.S. economy continues to collapse amid dwindling stimulus funds, while states are barely able to keep their heads above water.  In addition to cutting vital services to taxpayers, and seeking tax increases, some states are also selling off public assets in the politically acceptable name of privatization. This mass looting is happening just below the surface where the public, buried by their own individual problems, can hardly tell that it is happening.

In June of this year Bloomberg reported that 46 states were facing bankruptcy with "Greek-style deficits," where Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, was quoted as saying that "States are going to have to cut back spending and raise taxes the same way Greece and Spain are."

The article goes on to say:

State budget woes are a worsening drag on growth as the federal government tries to wean the economy from two years of extraordinary support. By Jan. 1, funds from the $787 billion federal stimulus bill will dry up. That money from Washington has helped cushion state budgets as tax revenue has plunged.

State leaders won’t be able to ride out this cycle the way they have in the past. The budget holes are too large. For the first time since 1962, sales and income tax revenue fell for five straight quarters, through December 2009, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York at Albany.

Despite the fact that average American citizens, much like the Greeks, had nothing to do with creating these massive "budget holes," their Social Security is being raided, and public pensions have been invested in derivatives and other toxic time-bomb financial instruments.  Now, they will surely face austerity measures of similarly reduced benefits and services accompanied by increased taxes to absorb the damage.


Although spending cuts and smaller government through privatization might make sense when faced with growing deficits, we must be aware that austerity measures can also hide in the shadows of privatization.

Some politicians are touting the privatization of public services and assets as part of the economic solution.  However, the public is being left out of the discussion about which services will be affected, what public assets are being sold, who is getting contracts or purchasing assets and, finally, to what benefit to the people.  Given the self-serving track record of a crony corporate State, we can only assume the worst -- that none of these actions will actually benefit average Americans, but only provide continued cover for more looting.

After generations of taxpayer-funded construction of buildings, highways, hospitals, jails, public water systems and the like, cash-strapped states are increasingly looking to sell off assets in order to meet budget shortfalls.  This trend seems to be led by Governors like Chris Christie (R-NJ), with many candidates like Meg Whitman of California saying his privatization model for New Jersey is just what the doctor ordered for California.  Meanwhile, California recently announced the sale of 24 government buildings to a private equity firm, following the "Economic Hitman" methodology where deliberately-suffocating public debt results in financial institutions ending up with all of the real assets at an extreme bargain.

Privatization can actually cost the government more in many cases, yet result in reduced pay and benefits for workers -- a hidden form of austerity to be sure.  Even seemingly innocent privatization of things like toll booths and zoos, appears to be nothing more than austerity ploys by the government absolving itself from providing benefits like healthcare.  Incidentally, now that 29 of the largest private employers in the U.S. are conveniently exempt from the new healthcare mandates, it is likely that "Toll Booth Willie" will lose his benefits when his station is privatized.  Greek austerity protesters stormed the Acropolis for less.

In turn, privatization of public assets is taking place during a time of severe economic distress, therefore these assets rarely fetch their true value for the taxpayer. As John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."  Too often we are being forced to negotiate out of fear -- fear of losing our job or benefits, our home, our retirement savings, and even our lives. Government uses this full-spectrum fear to impose heavy-handed legislation like monopoly healthcare or illegal pre-crime techniques used to catch the "terrorists."

Additionally, privatization of vital government services seems to make little sense when we wind up paying more for those services, or where companies perform Big Brother duties that previously required government officials to swear an oath to the Constitution and our personal liberties.  For example, privatization of a war-making machine like Blackwater not only costs the public much more than the government's own elite forces, but also poses the threat of unaccountable violence and even murder.  Furthermore, what is to stop foreign companies from buying up critical public assets through "private equity firms," or corrupting governmental duties and turning them upon American citizens?

A somewhat recently privatized sector exemplifies the corrupting influence of privatization if not applied correctly (or legally):  the surveillance of American citizens.  It has been reported that over800,000 private-sector workers have top secret clearance in their roles to monitor "extremist" activities in America.  To accentuate the insanity, even private foreign companies are getting Homeland Security contracts for these duties.  In addition to draining American taxpayers of money and rights, the privatizing of these activities is critically dangerous to our individual and national sovereignty in a way never seen before.  Even the most staunch small-government advocates must see the folly in such privatization.

The establishment would like to focus our debate toward public employees vs. public employees, unions or not, or big government vs. privatization; when in reality all possible solutions under the current corporate-state seem designed to suck the average citizen dry, while limiting services to just below riot-inducing levels.  We're told to be angry at a particular group that may get better pay and benefits than our own, all while the system and the Fed continue to inflate the cost of living for everyone through taxpayer-backed debt.

Whether it is called big government austerity, or small government privatization, it's still a reduced standard of living and a blatant looting of the public.  This looting is meant to use the divisions between our separate groups as a distraction to enrich those without concern over such loyalties.

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Acropolis shut down in Greek protests

Riot police clash with workers who barricaded themselves inside ancient Athens site in protest over unpaid wages

Greek riot police - Reuters

Associated Press

Athens riot police clashed with protesting workers barricading the Acropolis today, using teargas to clear the entrance to Greece's most famous ancient site.

Culture ministry workers had shut down the Acropolis yesterday morning, complaining they were owed up to 22 months' back pay. About 100 protesters barricaded themselves inside, padlocked the entrance gates and refused to allow any tourists in until their demands were met.

Police in riot gear arrived this morning after a court order said the protesters were hindering access to an ancient site and its 2,500-year-old marble temples.


"Riot police and violence won't break the strike," the protesters chanted, clinging to the gates.


But police used a side entrance to break into the site, then used pepper spray to clear the protesters and journalists covering the standoff from the main gate. At least one protester was led away in handcuffs to a waiting police bus.


Dozens of tourists who had arrived early to visit the site looked on as the standoff unfolded, occasionally snapping pictures of the riot police.

"We know the workers have a right to protest, but it is not fair that people who come from all over the world to see the Acropolis should be prevented from getting in," said Spanish tourist Ainhoa García shortly before the clashes broke out.

Greece is in the midst of a tough austerity programme that has cut public workers' salaries and trimmed pensions in an effort to pull the country out of severe debt. The austerity plan has led to a series of strikes and demonstrations as workers' unions protest the cutbacks.

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Sarkozy stands firm as French pension protests escalate

Reuters

John Lichfield
The Independent

President Nicolas Sarkozy could face the greatest challenge of his presidency in the next few days as a month-old protest against pension reform swells towards outright confrontation.

More than 3 million demonstrators – one in 20 of all French people – marched yesterday against the President's plans to raise the standard retirement age from 60 to 62. Tens of thousands of students joined the marches for the first time, threatening to radicalise the protests and broaden them into a rebellion against a deeply unpopular presidency.

Militant union branches in the railway and oil-refining industries were pushing last night for a showdown with Mr Sarkozy, who has made reform of the loss-making state pension system the make-or-break issue of his final 20 months in office.

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