Police car flipped by protesters

A POLICE car was overturned by angry protesters in Heraklion, Crete, on Wednesday morning as the latest general strike in Greece got underway.

A timeline on the From the Greek Streets site added: "All metro stations in the centre are closed following police orders. There is an unusually high police concentration and checks around the Victoria (Green line) station."

Live footage from Athens is being streamed at http://www.livestream.com/stopcarteltvgr

Greece remains in the front line of the global battle against plutofascism.

Fascism or revolution? Our choice is clear

FASCISM or revolution is the clear choice now facing the people of Greece, as the neoliberal regime stamps down even harder on people's basic rights.

On Friday January 25 riot police stormed the Athens metro's main depot and attacked striking workers staging a blockade.

Reports The Guardian: "State-run television showed police handing strikers civil mobilisation papers. The workers, who had defied court decisions labelling the action 'illegal and abusive', face immediate arrest and loss of jobs if they refuse to return to work in the next 24 hours."

Kathimerini adds that the head of the metro workers’ union, Antonis Stamatopoulos, has accused the government of being a “junta” and said that the protesting workers at the metro’s main depot in Sepolia would not be brought out of there alive.

"All the other public transport unions came out in support of the metro workers by announcing 24-hour strikes for Friday. Greece’s main private sector union, GSEE, also backed the action. Two senior SYRIZA MPs, Panayiotis Lafazanis and Dimitris Stratoulis, visited the Sepolia depot to express support for the strikers and their opposition to the government’s decision."

The plutofascist system is prepared to use brute force to push the population of Greece into slave-labour conditions - and if they succeed there they will extend their new 21st century authoritarian version of capitalism to the rest of Europe and beyond.

Our only hope for the future is to defy them all the way and to risk everything for the freedom of tomorrow's children.

G8 to front plutofascist war on North Africa

ENDLESS war and plutofascist imperialism will be the hallmark of the UK's presidency of the G8, says prime minister David Cameron.

Ten years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, neoliberal powers are launching a new phase of their phoney "War on Terror", now on the south side of the Mediterranean.

The Daily Telegraph reports that speaking at Chequers, Mr Cameron claimed there was a growing "terrorist threat" in North Africa and talked up the need for a "prolonged struggle" to counter it.

He said: “It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months, and it requires a response that is patient, that is painstaking, that is tough but also intelligent, but above all has an absolutely iron resolve; and that is what we will deliver over these coming years.

“It will also require countries to work together, and I will use our chairmanship of the G8 this year to make sure this issue is right at the top of the agenda where it belongs.”

The Western powers are using the usual bogeyman of "al Qaeda" as the excuse for a military assault on the territory of Azawad, which declared its independence from Mali last year.

But, beyond the shrill warmongering of the corporate media, informed voices are exposing the other agendas that, inevitably, lie behind the military involvement.

Stéphane Lhomme, director of  l'Observatoire du nucléaire, points out that the real reason for the French intervention is to secure the supply of uranium to the country's powerful nuclear industry - the mineral is sourced from mines in the north of Niger, a desert area separated from Mali only by a hypothetical line on the map.

And in a letter published in the Evening Standard on January 17, Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed responded to Nabila Ramdani's endorsement of France's Mali intervention, supposedly "aimed at ridding Mali of particularly sinister insurgents," saying  it overlooks key factors which have now made themselves manifest in the hostage seizures in Algeria.

"Firstly, 'al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb' (AQIM) was, according to experts like Professor Jeremy Keenan from SOAS - the most cited academic in the world on North Africa - virtually manufactured in the region by Algerian intelligence services with clandestine US support.

"This short-sighted policy originated with the Algerian military junta's attempts to fabricate a justification for exterminating members of the peaceful Islamic Salvation Front after it won democratic elections decades ago. The policy was reinforced by NATO's intervention in Libya, shoring up Islamist militias with AQIM affiliations across the region.

"Secondly, Ramdani naively ignores NATO's strategic interests in North Africa, described in 2007 by State Department adviser J. Peter Pham as "protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources... a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.”

"Mali is believed to have significant oil and gas potential.

"A confidential US embassy cable (8 May 2006) obtained by Wikileaks observes that a "significant impediment" to "extracting and transporting oil" in Mali is "regional political instability and terrorist activities."

"With reports of extensive civilian casualties due to French airstrikes, it is far from clear that they will be  beneficial for Mali, even if Ramdani concedes they may be troublesome for France. Such military action will only lend legitimacy to the most virulent AQIM components of the insurgency.

"A better approach would be to cut off AQIM at source - by reigning in Algerian military intelligence. But perhaps that's not the point."

Cameron's declaration of the G8's key role in the neoliberals' war on North African war will intensify protests against the June summit currently being planned in the UK by Stop G8.

 

Athens squat defies police raid

RESISTANCE against the plutofascist state in Greece continues in the face of continuous attacks by the authorities.

An attempt to crush Greece’s oldest anarchist squat, Lelas Karagianni 37, was defeated on Tuesday January 15 when it was reoccupied later the same day.

At about 12.00pm, cops raided the famous squat, reports Contra Info.

Supporters and neighbours gathered at Amerikis square and then outside the squat, trying to prevent the eviction.

There were several comrades chanting slogans on the rooftop of the building that were caught by the police. Also, two supporters were beaten by cops on the street and detained as well. Heavy repressive forces were deployed downtown, plus a police helicopter.

Soon thereafter, more people were assembled near the squat. A gathering was called for 15.00 outside the police headquarters on Alexandras Avenue, in solidarity with the 14 squatters who were arrested from inside Lelas Karagianni, and a discussion was announced for 19.00 in the Athens Polytechnic (entrance from Stournari street).

Reports Contra Info: "All of the arrested comrades were released at about 17.00 and Lelas Kariagianni squat was reoccupied!"

Last weekend saw a big Athens protest in solidarity with squatters, as this video shows.

Jackboot comes down hard on Greece

THE JACKBOOT of plutofascism is coming down hard on the people of Greece, first European victims of the new post-democratic capitalist order.

Ahead of the visit by German chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday October 9, authorities took the unprecedented step of banning "all gatherings and protests in the wider centre of Athens plus the city’s airport and the main thoroughfares to it", reports From The Greek Streets.

The physical presence of Merkel in Greece is so unnecessary and provocative, that the event seems stage-managed as part of an attempt to finally break the opposition to the neoliberal rape of the country.

It is no coincidence that at the same time as the fascist measures were being announced,  the head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers was warning Greece to speed up the economic measures being imposed on it by the global money system.

It is as if the elite want to send a message to the rest of Europe, and beyond - no matter how angry you get, no matter how hard you try to rise up against us, we have the physical means to keep you in your place.

Unfortunately for them, they have forgotten that resistance to tyranny springs from the deepest wells of the life force itself and can never be extinguished

¡Viva la Revolucion!

'When shit is fucked, fuck shit up'

ANGER is spreading over the Quebec authorities' fascistic new laws, as anti-neoliberal rebels call for global solidarity.

Reports The Edmonton Journal: "The unpredictable nightly protests that helped spur a government crackdown have largely been a Montreal-only affair — until now.

"Since Premier Jean Charest passed a law last week limiting protests in the province, defiant demonstrations have popped up in cities not known as hotbeds of activism.

"Small groups from Granby, south of Montreal, to Jonquiere, north of Quebec City, have joined Montrealers in taking to the streets with pots and pans to protest Bill 178.

"Their message is clear: This conflict is not just about tuition anymore."

And a call-out for worldwide solidarity with the struggle has been posted on Contra Info and elsewhere on the internet.

It says: "We want you to feel what we’re feeling. We know you feel something, but we want you to feel it like we feel it.

"We know that every time one of us goes to jail, every time a comrade in the streets loses their eye to the shrapnel of a concussion grenade or their ear to a rubber bullet to the head, that there are so many others who feel the heat of vengeance swell inside them.

"Knowing the global situation, knowing that people are approaching the breaking point not just here but everywhere, it needs to be insisted upon that what is happening in Québec is not exceptional.

"What has happened here can happen elsewhere and it needs to happen elsewhere. Everything we’re doing has been inspired by the revolts and uprisings that have taken hold in other places. If it can’t inspire social disruptions of its own, then it will die out quick.

"So this is a call out for solidarity as much as it’s our heartfelt hope that one day you’ll feel this around you as well. This needs to spread past Montréal, past Québec. Bring it to your cities and communities in whatever way you can, using whatever methods and means are at your disposal.

"Our hearts and heads are tired, but we’re still smiling.
We want to see the strike spread.
We want to see this social upheaval spread.

When shit is fucked, fuck shit up."

Quebec protesters resist plutofascism

MORE than 500 protesters have been arrested in Quebec, Canada, after they took to the streets to defy a neoliberal clamp-down.

The progression from phoney 'democracy' to real plutofascism could hardly be more clearly exposed than here.

The now-familiar laws are passed to increase student tuition fees as education and all other aspects of our society are privatised for the profit of the elite.

Faced with a massive and determined revolt by a new generation, what is the response of the authorities?

To back down and go along with the democratic consensus? No - to ramp up repression and pass draconian new laws to try and crush dissent.

Happily, the Quebec rebels are fighting the plutofascists every inch of the way, sending shockwaves across the world.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports, from Australia:  "What began as a protest against university fee increases has expanded to a wider movement to oppose Bill 78, which was rushed through by legislators in Quebec in response to the demonstrations.

"The bill imposes severe restrictions on protests, making it illegal for protesters to gather without having given police eight hours' notice and securing a permit.

"On Wednesday night, police in Montreal used 'kettling' techniques - officers surrounding groups of protesters and not allowing them in or out of the resulting circle - before conducting a mass arrest."

Adds the BBC: "Bill 78, passed last Friday, requires marches to follow pre-approved routes, but protesters say it infringes their democratic rights, and have pledged to legally contest it."

Below is the artwork submitted by protesters to police when they were asked to provide a map of their route.

General strike called in Spain as anger grows

SPANISH people are gearing up for a massive fight against neoliberal dictatorship.

Huge protests were held across the country at the weekend and a national strike has been called for Thursday March 29.

Meanwhile Bilbao was last week the latest city in the Spanish state where anger against 'austerity' and the theft of people's rights has erupted onto the streets.

Anti-capitalist protesters backing the strike call started fires in the streets of the Basque city and smashed the windows of a bank.

The Spanish people are next in line to be crushed by the gold-plated jackboots of the global plutofascist elite.

Keep up to date with the global insurrection - follow VM on Twitter.

Anonymous hacktivists hit back

 
HACKTIVISTS have hit back against repression by the global plutofascist system.

Anonymous defaced  web pages of the leading internet security firm Panda Security.

The business is thought to have helped the FBI by infiltrating chatrooms and message boards.

The promo page, Panda Security’s “Cybercrime Files”, was given a long statement accusing the security company of “working with Law Enforcement to lurk and snitch on anonymous activists”.

Hacktivists may have been behind a two-hour downing of Facebook in the UK and also hacked into the Vatican website.

Robert Harris, a member of the UK Pirate Party, told RT hacking groups like Anonymous and LulzSec are movements that have “resorted to direct action,” and prosecuting their members is only going to make things worse.

­“I think prosecuting and locking them up will not actually cause any significant damage,” he said. “It is only going to make things worse and encourage more people to join the group.”

On Tuesday top members of the infamous computer-hacking group LulzSec were arrested by the FBI and charged with conspiracy after it emerged a prominent member - Hector Xavier Monsegur, known in LulzSec circles as Sabu - was working for the authorities.

Following the arrests Anonymous posted on its Twitter feed: “LulzSec was a group, but Anonymous is a movement. Groups come and go, ideas remain.”

Meanwhile, some security suggestions for hacktivists have been published here.

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Protesters battle with Italian police - videos

  


PROTESTERS in Italy have blocked a motorway with burning barricades in protests against a high-speed rail line being imposed on the area.

As riot cops were sent in to try and crush their resistance to the plutofascist project, which is intended mainly for freight, full-scale battles broke out.



Many people were injured including, claim the authorities, ten policemen.

Opposition to the TAV scheme on the Italian-French border near Turin goes back 20 years and has been subjected to repeated police repression.

Explains an in-depth report on Indymedia: "TAV is the italian acronym for Treno ad Alta Velocità i.e. HSR, High-Speed Rail.

"This is a railway that allows a sustained speed higher than 200 km/h (124 mph) and its peak speed is around 300 km/h. Even though for the most recent project of the Turin-Lyon it would be more appropriate to call it TAC (Treno ad Alta Capacità, High-Capacity Train), since it’s intended mainly for transport of goods, the misleading name of TAV remains.

"Works were supposed to start during the second half of the Nineties, but as of 2011 just a few side structures located in France have been finished. Today’s expectation is that it can’t be completed within 2030.

"The project consists of two twin tunnels, each of them 56-km (35-mile) long and 6-m (20-foot) wide, reaching 2,000 meters of depth underground, plus many other satellite tunnels – each longer than 10 kilometers – one of which is planned to run under Turin."

A shocking video (below) has emerged showing brutal Italian cops smashing their way into a bar in search of No Tav protesters.

The police decided not to use the normal door to the establishment, but a locked side entrance not normally in use, and when the proprietor couldn't find the key in time they simply shattered the glass in a show of fascistic force.

People inside the bar, including youngsters, are clearly scared stiff by the brutal raid.



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Neoliberals panic over workfare revolt

BRITAIN's neoliberal slavemasters are panicking over the public rejection of their workfare scam.

They are calling on police to "clamp down" on protests ahead of a national day of action on Saturday March 3.

And they are using right-wing newspapers like the Mail and the Telegraph to launch a McCatheyite smear campaign against activists and journalists who exposed the scandal.

The establishment clearly thought it had got away with bringing in 'work experience' schemes which amount to providing state-backed slave labour for private business.

But massive disgust and anger has spread across the country in the last week or two and a swathe of firms have pulled out of the arrangements in the face of public opinion.

The response of the British government, denying there is any real public opposition and calling for its police thugs to physically attack dissidents, confirms the convergence between capitalism and totalitarianism which is now being dubbed 'plutofascism' - rule by the rich imposed by force.

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