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Athens Greece: Cops murder a 16 year old

Rather off topic but just read this on wikipedia (aye, ok, i know...) earlier, relates to Greece in 1945 pre civil war btw:

Although many members of the Security Battalions and the organisation 'X' (leader of the X team was the Colonel, at the time, Georgios Grivas), which had collaborated with the German occupying forces, were rounded up and detained in Korydallos Prison in Athens, the majority of their officers were allowed to join the new Greek police force, organised by the British. The new Greek police force was formed under the expert leadership of British officers who had formed the paramilitary organization in Ireland called the 'Black & Tans'.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aris_Velouchiotis#Death
linky no likey
 
co-op said:
Finally, I've literally just put down a copy of the Literary Review and they have reviewed a book about the siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944. Millions died, mostly of starvation the suffering must have been almost unendurable. Cause? The Nazi invasion, right? Wrong; apparently it was Stalin's stupidity and carelessness with the lives of Russians that was "nearly" as much to blame. I mean my jaw drops when I read this kind of shit, but that's the Official Version right there.
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When reading 'Battle of Stalingrad' by Antony Beevor I found it unbelievable, the incompetence, suffering and sheer horror that took place on a massive scale, as described in his book. It brings home to the reader (even to those who think they know) the stark reality of that carnage, that most people are really unaware of and of the huge sacrifice made by the Russian people, made worse, as you've already made clear, by Stalin's "stupidity", but it was far more than just his "carelessness". It was wholesale slaughter on an unimaginable scale, both by the Nazi's, along with Stalin, using terror as a weapon, to drive people into carrying out unimaginable feats to: "Defend the Motherland!". Hard to put into words, but Beevor manages to do that.
 
audiotech said:
When reading 'Battle of Stalingrad' by Antony Beevor I found it unbelievable, the incompetence, suffering and sheer horror that took place on a massive scale, as described in his book. It brings home to the reader (even to those who think they know) the stark reality of that carnage, that most people are really unaware of and of the huge sacrifice made by the Russian people, made worse, as you've already made clear, by Stalin's "stupidity", but it was far more than just his "carelessness". It was wholesale slaughter on an unimaginable scale, both by the Nazi's, along with Stalin, using terror as a weapon, to drive people into carrying out unimaginable feats to: "Defend the Motherland!". Hard to put into words, but Beevor manages to do that.
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TBH my point was the opposite of yours. Blaming Stalin for the murderous siege of Leningrad or for the millions who died there seems ridiculous to me. My point is that if anyone has to be blamed, let's focus on the Nazi invaders.

My wider point was that there is an obsession with "equivalence" between Nazism and Soviet Communism in the Official History, it's one I reject personally. Doubtless, with the benefit of hindsight even a fool can see "mistakes" or "stupidity" in the decisions of historical actors but it's a meaningless game. The fact that the best that reactionary historians can come up with is "mistakes" is pretty good sign of just how hard it is to lay the dead of WW2 at Stalin's feet.

Beevor is a perfect example of a right wing historian of the type I've tried to describe btw. He is desperately trying to appear to be even-handed but he cannot help sneering at the USSR and often clearly writes from the pov of the Nazi invaders, perhaps not surprising given his background (Winchester and Sandhurst).
 
An error on my part co-op - my apologies. The word "both", placed as it is, gives the impression that I was stating an "equivalence". You're right of course, the murderous siege of Leningrad and the millions who died there does lie at the Nazi's door.

My point, not that well written, was meant to impart that Stalin was not short on using terror as a weapon of war when he felt it necessary, particularly on his subordinate's in the military, threatening to have them shot (that event actually taking place in many cases), who then engaged in similar tactics to drive on Soviet troop divisions, in a catalogue of military blunders costing tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of lives. This, together with the civilian population, who were to bear the brunt of these catastrophes, is, as said, unimaginable.

Beevor's book, despite his background and politics, is still well worth a read imo.
 
A glaring example that unmasks all the BS about the supposed "sectarianism" of KKE vis-a-vis other "left" parties:

During the municipal elections of 2010, SYRIZA (the so-called Coalition of the Radical Left) allied with the main bourgeois parties (PASOK and ND) and with the right-wing, xenophobic LAOS in the island of Ikaria and supported a common candidate in order to prevent the election of a communist mayor. Ikaria is an island in the Eastern Aegean with a large KKE vote, partly due to the fact that it had served in the past as an exile location. In the 2010 elections the KKE candidate for mayor received 43,9% of the vote and was defeated by the common candidate of all other political parties, including SYRIZA.

And today SYRIZA has the gall to ask KKE for an electoral alliance in Ikaria and in other locations supposedly to defeat the pro-"Memorandum" parties ("Memorandum" = the package of measures accompanying the recent loan). Mind you, actions such as the one exhibited in Ikaria are not unique for SYRIZA - its forces quite often ally with PASOK trade-unionists to prevent the election of PAME militants in trade-union federations.

Talking abstractly about "third-period" Stalinism does nothing to clarify the difficulties and the necessities of the class struggle on the ground. Historical analogies have obvious limitations, but there is one element that has become even more threatening for workers' interests than when the Comintern tried to deal with it in the 1920's and 1930's. That element is the treacherous role of social democracy in the trade unions, which cannot be dealt with through practicing the type of moronic tailism that opportunists (such as SYRIZA) and trots are so fond of. If KKE's absolute opposition to this leads to accusations of "sectarianism", so be it. We are in good company indeed and it is the working class who will be the ultimate judge.
 
papageorgiou12 said:
A glaring example that unmasks all the BS about the supposed "sectarianism" of KKE vis-a-vis other "left" parties:

During the municipal elections of 2010, SYRIZA (the so-called Coalition of the Radical Left) allied with the main bourgeois parties (PASOK and ND) and with the right-wing, xenophobic LAOS in the island of Ikaria and supported a common candidate in order to prevent the election of a communist mayor. Ikaria is an island in the Eastern Aegean with a large KKE vote, partly due to the fact that it had served in the past as an exile location. In the 2010 elections the KKE candidate for mayor received 43,9% of the vote and was defeated by the common candidate of all other political parties, including SYRIZA.

And today SYRIZA has the gall to ask KKE for an electoral alliance in Ikaria and in other locations supposedly to defeat the pro-"Memorandum" parties ("Memorandum" = the package of measures accompanying the recent loan). Mind you, actions such as the one exhibited in Ikaria are not unique for SYRIZA - its forces quite often ally with PASOK trade-unionists to prevent the election of PAME militants in trade-union federations.

Talking abstractly about "third-period" Stalinism does nothing to clarify the difficulties and the necessities of the class struggle on the ground. Historical analogies have obvious limitations, but there is one element that has become even more threatening for workers' interests than when the Comintern tried to deal with it in the 1920's and 1930's. That element is the treacherous role of social democracy in the trade unions, which cannot be dealt with through practicing the type of moronic tailism that opportunists (such as SYRIZA) and trots are so fond of. If KKE's absolute opposition to this leads to accusations of "sectarianism", so be it. We are in good company indeed and it is the working class who will be the ultimate judge.
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:facepalm: Maybe your party's tender feelings over past insults shouldn't be the most important priority here?
 
As you can see, Idris, we are not talking about the distant past. The municipal elections too place a year ago, while the behavior of the SYRIZA-affiliated trade-unionists is taking place everyday, even as we speak. It is not an issue of KKE holding a grudge, but of the opportunist/reformist strategical line of SYRIZA that pushes this party to anti-KKE positions in every field of the mass movement. Their pre-election posturing about "left alliances" et al stands, therefore, on thin ground. No respectable party (even more, a revolutionary party) would give them any credence.
 
elbows said:
Bartering returns!

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Petty-bourgeois illusions (conveniently promoted by the BBC) to confuse the working class about the way out from its declining living conditions: instead of going forward to the overthrow of capitalism, the socialization of the means of production and the central planning of production, going backwards to bartering, village life and the like. And at the center of it the mayor of Volos: a renegade ex-communist (until 1991), then a SYRIZA cadre, being elected as mayor with the combined votes of PASOK and SYRIZA. "Yes to bartering, yes to EURO" - glory to the perpetuation of the capitalist system!
 
you tell 'em papa G, may the vanguard rally the troops and lead them to glory! oh wait, sorry, i meant defending the parliament and encourage protesters to turn on and fight each other. ah, the respectable revolutionary party leading the working class to glory and challenging the 'divide and rule' doctrine and symbols of the bourgeois capitalist state...

you do realise people have to eat and clothe themselves yeah? keep yelling from the ivory tower, let's not get the working class 'confused' by it all. :facepalm:
 
You obviously have no idea what is happening in Greece, Riklet! Otherwise, you would know that it is the communists, through PAME and other mass movement organizations, that are at the forefront of the daily struggles of the working people "to eat and clothe" themselves. There is no other political force ("left" or alternative or what have you) that is on a daily basis outside and inside factories, offices,construction sites, everywhere where working people live and work. There is no larger or smaller strike where communists are not at the forefront. We leave the "ivory tower" positions to the academics of SYRIZA and the hooded provocateurs of pseudo-anarchism, all of them absent from the workplaces.
 
hmm. I can't help thinking that when unemployment for Greeks under 25 is over 50%, and the majority of those you'd be dismissing as pseudo-anarchists would probably fall into that category, or maybe a bit older now, and this is a massive part of what they're protesting about and have been for the last few years... that it's a bit off to object to them being absent from the workplaces.
 
free spirit, a lot of the younger communists are also unemployed. This does not prevent them to struggle in an organized and collective fashion inside and outside workplaces as part of the class-based trade unions of PAME. It is this type of action that can move history ahead, rather than stupid cat-and-mouse games with the police.

Anyway, my problem is not with young people who "don't mind throwing a brick", but with the leaders of these pseudo-anarchist organizations and their buddies in the state agencies.
 
papageorgiou12 said:
free spirit, a lot of the younger communists are also unemployed. This does not prevent them to struggle in an organized and collective fashion inside and outside workplaces as part of the class-based trade unions of PAME. It is this type of action that can move history ahead, rather than stupid cat-and-mouse games with the police.
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so, unemployed activists in PAME are free to operate inside work places.

why does this smell of bullshit to me?
 
Come on, free spirit, stop being childish. Trade-union activists work both outside workplaces and inside, as part of trade-union delegations. This is standard practice in Greece, not always easy, of course, due to restrictions imposed by the bosses. But the difficulty of these actions was not the issue we were discussing here. The issue was that many young PAME activists, unemployed but members of their unions, work daily in trade-union activities, rather than pontificating in coffee shops and occassionally throwing a molotov cocktail.

As for "proof" about the collaboration of the leaders of the pseudo-anarchist organizations with the state agencies (that albionism is asking for), one needs only to ask the simple question: who profits from the break-up of demonstrations of tens of thousands of people, which is the natural outcome of the games of a few tens of hooded individuals with the police forces? Who profited when a demonstration of hundreds of thousands was dispersed by the police due to the looting (!!! great anarchist action) and arson of downtown buildings (including small shops, theaters, coffee shops, etc)? The answer is a logical one: the bourgeois state and its agencies.
 
albionism said:
Got any proof of that?
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"Proof" of this kind of thing is always going to be very hard to produce. I know absolutely nothing about the situation on the street in Greece in the last year or so but - imo obviously - the use of (state) agents provacateur in street protests is incredibly normal - I think I have seen them in the UK (although I have no proof).

I mean why wouldn't it be normal? It's the obvious thing to do if you want to (a) discredit street protest, (b) frighten 'ordinary' people (i.e. normally apolitical) away (c) justify new repressive legislation or more violent police 'reaction'.
 
6/12/2008

NEVER FORGET NEVER FORGIVE

THESE ARE THE DAYS OF ALEXIS

6_december-red.jpg
 
papageorgiou12 said:
As you can see, Idris, we are not talking about the distant past. The municipal elections too place a year ago, while the behavior of the SYRIZA-affiliated trade-unionists is taking place everyday, even as we speak. It is not an issue of KKE holding a grudge, but of the opportunist/reformist strategical line of SYRIZA that pushes this party to anti-KKE positions in every field of the mass movement. Their pre-election posturing about "left alliances" et al stands, therefore, on thin ground. No respectable party (even more, a revolutionary party) would give them any credence.
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A truely 'communist' party's role would be to intervene - especially in a movement that was gaining ground while the communists stagnate (electorally and in terms of membership) - to push a clear revolutionary programme and win over that membership - split them from opportunist/reformist leaders. Standing aside, talking about the 'one true' party from the sidelines, is the textbook definition of what marxists define as political sectarianism.

I agree with your earlier point that the Greek communists have a strong and solidly built working class base - on building sites, on the docks (even if you were using this to back-up an earlier seemingly sectarian point) - but that organisation will loose everything it has struggled hard to build over decades if it does not take a clear position and intervene when tested by events. That would be such a shame and such a waste of decades of hard work. It is now being tested. Idris's comment stands
 
A video from last night in Exarchia, central Athens.

More info about yesterday later, I need some time to get my thoughts together first.

 
Passing on a message:


if you want to hear the latest news from greece, you can listen to
the pirateradio 1431 AM from Thessaloniki, now in english translation!

www.1431am.org/en
its the grey box at the top part of the page with the play botton
on it,
(if you cant find there the actual news, look at the greek version
of the website, cause of technical problems)

You might be able to catch it on your radio on 1431 AM, MW band.

They are repeated for 3 days every 3 hours starting at 8 am greek
time (7 german time), at the 3rd January there will be the next
recording (if the station isnt raided by the cops by then).

There is a lot of repression going on during holidays, it needs
attention.
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3 new videos have been uploaded from the 2nd day of the riots of December 2008, after the assassination of Alexis Grigoropoulos by the police. This is unpublished footage up to now, at that time no one had realized that we were a part of something much bigger, that those riots would escalate in whole Greece for nearly a month and that there would be global solidarity to this greek uprising. Also have in mind that there is not a lot of video footage from the first 3 days of riots that started in central Athens, because everyone who was on the streets on those days was actually taking part on what was happening.

There are descriptions in english under every video.








NEVER FORGET NEVER FORGIVE

THESE ARE THE DAYS OF ALEXIS
 
5 years after Alexis murder....

Last night in Exarchia , central Athens ....



There were 2 demos yesterday in Athens, 1 was organized by school students during the morning and other left and anarchist movements were calling for a demo yesterday afternoon. The morning teenager demo was heavily policed, hundreds of teenagers were detained by the police, some are even arrested although they did basically nothing. The police was kettling teenagers for hours at Propylaia at the start of the demo, lot letting them go any further ...



also some photos can be found here https://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=1504929

The afternoon demo was also quite big but extremely heavily policed. It did its usual route towards the parliament and back with no real problems, although the police was provocative throughout the whole demo. Trouble started after the end of the demo at Exarchia, you can see a part of it on the very first video. The police presence in Exarchia was HUDGE (maybe the biggest ever ! ) and there were riots happening in every little street of the area. Out of the 136 people that got detained during the demo, the 85 were from Exarchia. A lot of people entered buildings and shops in order to flee, the police on some occasions stormed in buildings in order to evacuate them. There were even people who were opening their houses in order to give shelter to comrades as they were chased by the police. The resistance towards the police was massive though, a lot of people managed to regroup and attack again against the police lines with a number of petrol bombs.

There were also demos in all over Greece in nearly all cities. In Thessaloniki, there was nearly more police than demonstrators at the streets, and generally there was big police presence in all demos in all Greece, it seems that the system fears a new December more than we think ....
 
there was a 'documentary', about 20 minutes of the events in the days after Alex's murder. What was it called again. I remember it had Natalie Maerchant's cover of Which Side are You on
 
Last night Athens Greece.


10419979_10152579803223043_670716955050032476_n_zpse4da4fd7.jpg


No arrests no detentions, the police clear intention was to destroy the demo, just a few days before the annual 17th of November demo. This fascist coalition government is standing on shaky ground....
 
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