Thread: EMERGENCY: Research and Analysis needed on Greek Riots

W,

I found this blog( Irish Bulletin) that has discussed the Greek riots, with a few comments apparently coming from some that claim to be Greek ( not sure if they are living in Greece or Ireland). I have also read articles from BBC, the Guardian, and a few other MSM publications. The majority of those claim radical leftist youth (they really do not say if they are immigrants or in fact Greek citizens) as those responsible for the civil unrest. The shooting of a 15 year old Greek boy by police seems to have been the catalyst that sparked this unrest, or so is claimed.

There certainly seems to be issues that could be attributed to illegal immigration,( high unemployment, financial instability, high unemployment for Greeks, lack of bank credit, etc) but I have yet been unable to confirm the riots are immigration related per se. Anyway, here is the link, which also has other links at this site. If I come across any additional or new information, I will post...

http://theirishbulletin.blogspot.com...lly-about.html

time.com
Greece's Immigrant Odyssey
By JEFF ISRAELY / MYTILENE Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008

[excerpt]

The number of illegal immigrants arriving in Greece has surged over the past year. Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos estimates that 150,000 of them will be picked up sneaking into Greece in 2008, more than three times as many as five years ago. Thousands more are likely to arrive undetected. "We're facing a state of emergency," Pavlopoulos says. "Right now, Greece has the biggest immigration problem in Europe."

full article:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 08,00.html

Some info here on decades old illegal immigration problems in Greece.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-83151312.html

It seems a good number are from the middle east and are muslim.

Here's an interesting article posted by domack at:

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-140180.html

Originally Posted by domack

Riots erupt after immigrant stabbing

From correspondents in Madrid

Agence France-Presse

December 09, 2008 02:44am

RIOTING immigrants set fire to cars, shops and rubbish containers in a town in southern Spain overnight after a Malian was stabbed to death while being mugged, police say.
A Civil Guard statement said Sega S, 24, was stabbed on Sunday night and died from his injuries early on Monday. Police arrested three Moroccans, one of them the suspected killer.

After the stabbing, a score of angry sub-Saharan immigrants gathered in La Mojonera, in southern Almeria province, and started fires in shops and rubbish bins.

Police in riot gear were deployed to quell the riot and arrested two men from Ivory Coast and one from Guinea Bissau.

There were similar riots in September in nearby Roquetas de Mar after a Senegalese man was stabbed to death when he tried to intervene in a dispute.

Many emigrants from sub-Saharan Africa drown or die of exposure trying to cross the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain aboard small vessels and flimsy rafts in the hope of finding a better life in Europe.

Some five million of Spain's 45 million population are immigrants, many of whom found work in a 12-year construction boom that has collapsed in the last year.

Spain's unemployment rate is now the highest in the European Union, and the government has said it will pay unemployed foreigners to go home, an offer few seem to have taken up.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599...rom=public_rss

DESTABILIZATION THROUGH ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IN GREECE

http://rieas.gr/index.php?option=com_co ... &Itemid=89


Strategic Analysis

Copyright: www.rieas.gr

Greece over the past decade has become a source country concerning the entrance of an unspecified amount of illegal immigrants, mostly from Asian and African states, that enter mainly through the Greek-Turkish borders and with the complicity or indifference of the authorities of the neighbouring country, despite the bilateral and international agreements that have been sealed for this matter.

Illegal immigration is actually an asymmetrical threat aimed at destabilizing the Greek state and it is of critical interest to view it under the prism of Ankara’s stance concerning Greece’s role in the region. In simple terms Turkey uses the masses of desperate people being gathered in its territory in order to inflict great losses in the Greek economy and alter its ethnic and social profile. The latest information that have verified the above writings are videos and images depicting the Turkish Coast Guard deploring immigrants in the Greek Islands; that were shown in Greek national TV without any denial from the other side.

Turkey as a Eurasian Crossing

The Turkish authorities have announced from time to time that they expel some 100,000 illegal immigrants from their territory each year, whilst between 1995 and 2005 they managed to expel over 575,000 and arrest 6,100 smugglers. Even though the flow of people from the East to the West seems unstoppable, and an 8 billion USD illegal industry has been created, cantered on the main metropolitan Turkish centres.

The same criminal groups that are apt into securing great earnings from the modern slave trade, are also involved in the narcotics and arms trade, thus presenting the real magnitude of the threat involved which is the multiplication of organized crime activities and the existence of a multifunctional parallel crime syndicated state in Turkey that is also a threat to Greek and European stability.

The prices for a “crossingâ€

The "Christian Science Monitor" remains a reliable source of information, However, a problem is the use of the word "Anarchists", a term which comes from a far earlier time, both in Europe and the U.S. Here the CSM seems to refer to a decades-old problem of groups of violent-prone radicals which include quite a number of Greek students. Remember that an 'Muslim Anarchist' began World War I by assasinating a Balkan prince!


Anarchists' fury fuels Greek riots

An uneasy truce between anarchists and police was shattered following a weekend shooting of a teen. A similar event in 1985 sparked months of daily clashes.

By Nicole Itano | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the December 8, 2008 edition

ATHENS - Greece's worst rioting in years erupted late Saturday night after an Athens policeman shot and killed a teenage boy in a central neighborhood known as the base of anarchist and other antiestablishment groups.

By Sunday morning, with the riots continuing, a trail of devastation had been blazed across central Athens – with the stench of tear gas and smoke from charred vehicles and buildings hanging over parts of the ancient city. The violence quickly spread to other parts of the country, including Greece's second-city, Thessaloniki, and the vacation islands of Crete and Corfu.

The shooting and its violent aftermath threatens to escalate a decades-long conflict that has simmered between police and far-left groups. The conservative government, which was already struggling to stay in power in the wake of a recent land-exchange scandal, attempted to calm the rioters by arresting the two police officers connected with the shooting.

The fatal shooting took place in the Athens neighborhood of Exarchia, a dense warren of concrete apartment buildings home to a mix of students and anarchists. Clashes between police and radicals are common in the neighborhood.

Anarchist groups frequently set off small bombs throughout the city – on Wednesday alone a bomb damaged the offices of the French news service Agence France Presse and arsonists torched a Bosnian embassy car and a bank cash machine.

Brady Kiesling, a former US diplomat, who is writing a book about the Greek militant group November 17, says Greek police have limited power to use force against these groups because public sentiment will not tolerate it. This has resulted in a delicate balance in Exarchia, with neither pushing the other too far. Many Greeks cite the events of November 17, 1973 – a day that is still commemorated, when the army stormed the Athens Polytechnic University and killed a number of striking students – as a reason why the police must be restricted.

"The police stay out of certain areas, unless there's a major emergency, and the anarchists don't trash things badly unless there's a good reason," Mr. Kiesling says. But "once someone gets killed, the doctrine is massive retaliation."

Details of the shooting are disputed, but police issued a statement saying the two officers had been attacked by a group of youths. One officer threw a stun grenade while the other responded with three shots. At least one bullet hit the boy, reported to be 15 or 16. According to police, he died on the way to the hospital.

The last fatal police shooting of a minor in Greece, in 1985, sparked months of nearly daily clashes between police and anarchists. The terrorist group November 17 also bombed a bus full of riot police in retaliation, Kiesling says.

Both officers involved in Saturday's incident have been arrested. Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the country's Interior minister, who is responsible for the police, promised punishment for those responsible.

Mr. Pavlopoulos, and his deputy minister, also offered their resignations, a move that was rejected by the prime minister.

"It is inconceivable for there not to be punishment when a person loses their life, particularly when it is a child," Pavlopoulos said in a press conference Sunday morning. The Interior minister also condemned the actions of the rioters. "No outrage, no matter how ideologically established it is, can lead to such incidents as we witnessed last night."

Shortly after the shooting, which took place before 10 p.m., an angry crowd – summoned by text message and the Internet – gathered in Exarchia. They clashed with police, shouting "Murderers in uniform," and burned and looted local shops.

Later that night, the rioters moved to other areas of the city center, burning or damaging at least 31 shops and breaking windows in the tourist neighborhood of Monistiraki and along one of central Athens' major shopping streets, Ermou. Just a few hundred yards from the ancient site of Hadrian's Library, a charred building still smoldered late Sunday morning. Some two dozen police officers were reportedly injured in the clashes.

On Sunday afternoon, more than 2,000 people gathered near the Athens Polytechnic to march towards Athens' central police station in protest of the killings. Greek law bars police from university buildings.

"The feeling is anger," says John Gelis, a 28-year psychologist, shortly before joining the march. "A kid was killed just like that. It's a sign of arrogance by the police. It's an act against democracy."

Mr. Gelis joined in the riots on Saturday night, saying the targets of the unrest included banks and multinational companies, not small businesses. "No one has anything against the little owners."

But some small businesses had been ransacked, including a family-run computer store in the heart of Exarchia. Business owners and residents say they are weary of the unrest. "I'm fed up with this," says Elina Dimitriou, a long-time resident of the neighborhood. "It needs to stop. But I don't know who to blame."

• Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1208/p06s02-wogn.html

Factual information on the historical background of the Greek riots, the specific events which led up to them, and their spread to other areas of Greece and Europe is available from "Wikipedia, the free encylcopedia, 2008 Greek Riots":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Greek_riots

A young protester interviewed below identifies himself as an "anarchist". This is quite an old term in European politics, going back at least to the latter part of the 19th Century. According to my American Oxford Dictionary, an "anarchist" is "A person who believes that government and laws are undesirable and should be abolished."

Greece Calm After 8 Days of Riots

Sunday, December 14, 2008
AP

ATHENS, Greece — Athens was calm Sunday after eight days of the worst riots Greece has seen in decades, sparked by the police killing of a teenager.

No demonstrations were planned for Sunday. In Athens, traffic returned to normal in the center of town and an open-topped double-decker bus carried tourists round the city's main sights.

Greek youths who have protested daily since the boy's death are angry not just at the police but at an increasingly unpopular government and over economic issues.

Overnight, youths attacked a police station, stores and banks and fought running battles with police, as candlelit vigils were being held to mark a week since the shooting.

Click here for photos.

Several hundred protesters set up burning barricades and attacked police with rocks and flares. Riot police fired tear gas and chased the youths through parts of the city. The protesters chanted "murderers out" and used laser pointers to target officers for attack.

Violence has wracked Greece every day since the death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. The riots in cities throughout the country have left at least 70 people injured. Hundreds of stores have been smashed and looted, and more than 200 people have been arrested.

While most of the protesters have been peaceful, the tone of the demonstrations has been set by a violent fringe. And more young people have been willing to join those fringe elements than in the past.

A poll Sunday found that most Greeks see more in the violence than a simple reaction to the shooting.

Asked whether the riots were a social uprising, 60 percent responded yes. Some 64 percent considered police were unprepared for the violence.

The poll of 520 people published in the Kathimerini newspaper gave a 4.5 percent margin of error.

The young protesters promised to remain on the streets until their concerns — including opposition to the increasingly unpopular government and worry over economic issues — are addressed.

"SPEAKING AS AN ANARCHIST, we want to create those social conditions that will generate more uprisings and to get more people out in the streets to demand their rights," said 32-year-old protester Paris Kyriakides.

"In the end, the violence that we use is minimal in comparison to the violence the system uses, like the banks," Kyriakides said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,466806,00.html

Socialist Workers Party? Seems to me like a liberal radical youth uprising. Spoiled kids brainedwashed by liberal teachers, want to impose their will on society. Here it already happened, although without violence, through elections. They organized and managed to elect their liberal "messiah" Obama.

Now these liberals expect Obama to create for them a socialist paradise where government will correct all wrongs, at the cost of our freedoms. The communist "To each according to his need", is their credo, rather than the capitalist "To each according to his contribution".

So increasing the government's size and power is in our future, which is what both Obama and the Illuminati want. Obama is also likely to use this radical youth to help establish his socialist "paradise", just like Hitler used Hitler Jugend to consolidate his power.

"Greek Protesters Break Into TV News Station, Take Over"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,467724,00.html