Police in Thessaloniki yesterday were seeking the perpetrators behind three bomb attacks, two on unionists and one on the home of a policeman, none of which caused injuries. A homemade explosive device planted outside the eighth-floor apartment of Sotiris Zarianopoulos, the general secretary of a local labor union, near the city center, detonated shortly before 2 a.m. At around the same time, a similar device went off outside the home of a policeman in the district of Ambelokipi. Shortly after 11 a.m. another homemade bomb went off outside the home of a former unionist in central Thessaloniki. The target of the attack was Dimitris Gousidis, the former head of the union representing journalists in Macedonia and Thrace. All three attacks caused limited damage but led to no injuries.
Prisoners will be given 12 months to quit cigarettes, with a smoking ban in prisons to kick in next July.
Corrections Minister Judith Collins announced the policy today, saying smokefree prisons will be safer and healthier.
Prisoners would be given information, education and support over 12 months to help them quit, Ms Collins said.
"The high level of smoking in our prisons poses a serious health risk to staff and prisoners. Studies of air quality in US prisons show that staff and prisoners can be exposed to 12 times the levels of second hand smoke than in the home of an indoor smoker," she said.
Lighters would also be taken away, she said.
"Lighters are used to melt toothbrushes and plastic utensils into dangerous weapons.
"Prisoners also light balls of toilet paper to throw at Corrections staff and set fire to Corrections property. Staff shouldn't have to put up with it."
Meanwhile, a Northland mayor has said the ban could lead to a reduction in crime, amid warnings that guards and inmates would face added pressures and need more resources to cope.
Prime Minister John Key said that prisoners' access to lighters and second-hand smoke were major reasons to impose a ban.
There were concerns prison guards and other inmates could take legal action claiming second-hand smoke made them sick, he said.
Whangarei Mayor Stan Semenoff, who has been advocating smokefree prisons since March, said crime rates could drop as a result of the policy.
A smoking ban at a prison on Britain's Isle of Man had become a deterrent for reforming criminals who couldn't face prison terms without smoking, Mr Semenoff said.
The drop in crime has been reported by British media, including the Telegraph, which said the crime rate on the island had fallen by 14 per cent and burglary by 35 per cent.
"It's a standing joke now that when we nick someone we remind them that if they get sent down they'll have to come off the cigarettes - their faces are a picture," a police source told the newspaper in December.
"It's like they are more scared about giving up smoking than a criminal record and some time in the nick."
Many, however, have warned of the added pressures a ban would place on guards and inmates.
Green Party corrections spokesman David Clendon told Newstalk ZB that such a policy would have to be implemented carefully with extra help for inmates to quit.
Prisoners will be given 12 months to quit cigarettes, with a smoking ban in prisons to kick in next July.
Corrections Minister Judith Collins announced the policy today, saying smokefree prisons will be safer and healthier.
Prisoners would be given information, education and support over 12 months to help them quit, Ms Collins said.
"The high level of smoking in our prisons poses a serious health risk to staff and prisoners. Studies of air quality in US prisons show that staff and prisoners can be exposed to 12 times the levels of second hand smoke than in the home of an indoor smoker," she said.
Lighters would also be taken away, she said.
"Lighters are used to melt toothbrushes and plastic utensils into dangerous weapons.
"Prisoners also light balls of toilet paper to throw at Corrections staff and set fire to Corrections property. Staff shouldn't have to put up with it."
Meanwhile, a Northland mayor has said the ban could lead to a reduction in crime, amid warnings that guards and inmates would face added pressures and need more resources to cope.
Prime Minister John Key said that prisoners' access to lighters and second-hand smoke were major reasons to impose a ban.
There were concerns prison guards and other inmates could take legal action claiming second-hand smoke made them sick, he said.
Whangarei Mayor Stan Semenoff, who has been advocating smokefree prisons since March, said crime rates could drop as a result of the policy.
A smoking ban at a prison on Britain's Isle of Man had become a deterrent for reforming criminals who couldn't face prison terms without smoking, Mr Semenoff said.
The drop in crime has been reported by British media, including the Telegraph, which said the crime rate on the island had fallen by 14 per cent and burglary by 35 per cent.
"It's a standing joke now that when we nick someone we remind them that if they get sent down they'll have to come off the cigarettes - their faces are a picture," a police source told the newspaper in December.
"It's like they are more scared about giving up smoking than a criminal record and some time in the nick."
Many, however, have warned of the added pressures a ban would place on guards and inmates.
Green Party corrections spokesman David Clendon told Newstalk ZB that such a policy would have to be implemented carefully with extra help for inmates to quit.
Editorial
June 27, 2010
We live in a political and economic system based on constant violence; exploitation of workers, destruction of the environment, war, racist police killings, hunger and homelessness in an environment of plenty, denial of land and self-government to indigenous peoples, plundering of the resources of the Third World and the arming of repressive regimes. This weekend, this quiet violence continued within the G8 and G20 summits. G20 leaders agreed to halve national deficits by 2013; The expected cuts to educational, social services and healthcare programmes will no doubt continue to be carried out on the backs of workers and poor people.
On the streets of Toronto, the police reminded us of the state's willingness to use blatant violence. Protesters sitting in the streets this morning at a jail solidarity rally were subjected to violent baton attacks, snatch squads and rubber bullets by the Police. Others were boxed in by riot cops and arrested, while being told they had to leave. Sleeping people have been pulled from their homes at gunpoint in the middle of the night.
As of today, well over 600 people have been arrested. Many have been beaten. People who have been arrested have been strip-searched and held in cages, facing long delays in obtaining legal support, including one deaf man who was denied an ASL interpreter. People arrested have included both corporate and independent journalists as well as approximately 200 people, many local residents, who were surrounded by police and held in the pouring rain over four hours. This is how the state responds to anyone who shows dissent.
Common Cause stands in solidarity with everyone who was arrested or assaulted by the police. As anarchist communists, we oppose all state violence. While the violence on the street may dissipate after this weekend, the police will not be going away; they will be remaining in Toronto, or returning to Hamilton, Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary.
We will continue to resist austerity measures and other policies that exploit and oppress us in our daily lives. Although the street violence today was directed at us in Toronto, the violence of the state continues around the world. The violence of the capitalist state will not stop with the end of the G20 summit; neither will our resistance. We are with those arrested in Toronto, with those who protested, and with those around the world who will continue to fight for our collective liberation.
Free the Toronto 600!
Build the General Strike!
Unidentified arsonists used homemade explosive devices comprising gas canisters to hit two union and one government targets in Thessaloniki early yesterday afternoon, causing damage but no injuries.
Two of the bombs detonated almost simultaneously at the offices of the local doctors’ union and the home of a senior regional official for the health service.
The third device, which had been planted outside the local offices of the Health Ministry, did not detonate. Earlier yesterday a similar explosive device, also made of gas canisters, detonated outside a bank in Kalamaria, near Thessaloniki, causing damage but no injuries.
A prisoner solidarity protest in downtown Toronto today faced an unprompted attack by police forces.
Over 100 people gathered at Jimmie Simpson Park in east Toronto at 10am this morning, quickly moving onto the streets, for a high energy protest to support over 500 social justice activists arrested in the past 24 hours during protests against the Toronto G20 summit.
As people approached the G20 protest jail, a film studio warehouse building converted into a prison, people began clapping in unison, chanting "Free our Prisoners!" outside the jail gate flaked by armed police.
As hundreds gathered at the intersection facing the prison doors, the protest mood was spirited; one person played rhythms on a guitar while people chanted along to the music.
Organizers from Toronto G20 Community Mobilization Network appealed to people gathered at the intersection to stay calm, leading solidarity chants for the hundreds of jailed activists on the street.
Quickly without warning police lines moved in on the protest. Both heavily armed riot police and undercover agents charged at the people gathered, trampling over some protest participants who sat on the road chanting in unison. Quickly police swung baton blows randomly into the crowd and pushed the solidarity gathering away from the warehouse jail.
Police also carried out snatch squad arrests, rushing into the crowd and violently tackling people to the ground, including an accredited member of the G20 Alternative Media Centre. Faces hit the hard pavement as police in full riot gear randomly arrested participants in the jail solidarity rally.
After numerous arrests the police fully charged the protest pushing it to the north. Demonstrators moved away from the police line, some running. As people ran north gun shot sounds rang out in the air, white smoke filled the air as riot police ran towards the protest swinging batons.
As G20 leaders meet behind the multi layered security perimeter that has turned downtown Toronto into a fortress, the shocking security budget, now totalling well over $1 billion, illustrates the chilling face of a systematic affront on public dissent in Toronto as world leaders speak rhetorically about global cooperation.
 | ||
|  MOSCOW, June 27 (Itar-Tass) - Three cash collectors were shot and killed in an armoured car in downtown Moscow. Several sacks possibly with cash were found in the car with gunned-down cash collectors, but this can be said exactly only after their inspection, Itar-Tass learnt from head of the Moscow branch of the Russian Investigation Committee Anatoly Bagmet. “Indeed, the bodies of three cash collectors were found inside the car with gunshot wounds. According to preliminary data, shots were made inside the car. A cash collectors’ company says that it was an armoured car,” Bagmet added. The investigation established that “unidentified people made over ten shots supposedly from two pistols at the cash collectors in the area of the Shmitovsky By-Street on Sunday at 05.04. The car belongs to Rosbank,” the Russian Investigation Committee reported. As a result, the car driver and two collectors died on the spot. The attackers escaped. In turn, the head of the Moscow investigation branch did not preclude a chance that an outsider could be inside the armoured car. “Small doubt that people who committed this dangerous and audacious crime, were inside the car,” Bagmet added. A criminal case was instituted in connected with the murder case under the articles “Assassination of two or more people” and “Brigandage”. |
On the streets of Toronto, where the world leaders are meeting, thousands of people were out to demonstrate against the event. However, what started off as a peaceful rally, transformed into ugly scenes as anarchists, dressed in black, broke away from the main group.
At least two police cars were set on fire, one in the financial district of the city.
Shop fronts were destroyed, as people wearing masks continued to cause havoc, moving to just blocks away from the three meter fence around the summit site.
Police in riot gear made a number of arrests, and some streets leading to the downtown part of the city were sealed off.
The city’s mayor condemned the violence, saying a relatively small group are intent on damaging property and breaking the law.
Canadian authorities have been taking security very seriously during the summits, spending almost eight hundred million euros.
DAMAGE caused by vandalism in west London in causing major disruption to Rail services between Oxfordshire and the capital.
First Great Western is warning passengers that problems are likely to continue until late this evening after signal equipment was damaged at West Drayton and is advising passengers leaving London to travel from Marylebone station, using Chiltern Railways services to Oxforshire, or from Waterloo station, using South West Trains services to Reading, where they will be able to change for onward services to Didcot and Oxford.
Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry Trains and South West Trains are accepting FGW tickets on all reasonable routes. from signalfire blog
Investigators are probing whether the rash of Eastside arsons is connected to recent suspicious car fires on the Westside and in Aptos.
Sunday's fires, reported between 2:50 and 3:30 a.m., destroyed BMW, Jaguar and Acura sedans, a Honda Passport and a Toyota pickup, police said. The vehicles were parked on Market Street, Grunewald Court, Branciforte Drive and Grant Street.
On Branciforte Drive, flames from the Acura leapt into a tree feet away from a propane tank. And on Market Street, a fire in the Passport came within about 9 feet of the home, police said.
"This is an unusual act of vandalism," Capt. Steve Clark said. "And it's very frightening to have someone light your car on fire in front of your house. Not only is there the costly damage to the car, but the potential for residual damage and injury."
![Terminal 119 & Cafe Morgenland [ June / 2010]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj65nKic05H8HvMcKnCZtjCK9fVVT2gf2EJpxtOqEz6K3ePhKaPpMBozgY8lgQZYnL1YqkozDsjwQUoICOwBN4NkDu1wATLLXTv3yRaBhDt5LBfkXMlNqim9YMLGLkSUXEC7k_2pyBImdY/s398/Cosmic_Vision.jpg)
Tuesday 23 June 2009
All the versions of this article: [English] [français]
Coming back from a not very country walk, we went into the Belleville quartier in Paris. Hours earlier, a demonstration had started to denounce, in the words of the organizers: "The chronic abuse suffered by the Chinese community". The reason: Bags snatched, assault, etc. A demonstration with quite reactionary overtones, as evidenced by the slogans shouted and inscribed on the banners and placards: "Safety for Everyone", "Long live citizenship", "stop crime", French flags, Chinese and European anthems. It is not clear what violence they are talking about (having been more accustomed to the phenomena of violence within the community which will be discussed later), but we will understand later what was behind this event.
After the official end of the demonstration, the atmosphere is very hot there, people are flocking, trucks of cops arrive en masse. On all sides we hear the sound of fighting, then a torrent of violence is unleashed on the cops attacked in a melee by hundreds of unarmed people, they throw eggs, stones and glass bottles. Cars are overturned, CRS [anti-riot cops] are charged and are forced to retreat. Faced with this explosion of anti-cop violence, we almost enter the dance, but wait, out of "ethical prudence".
All of a sudden people start running. We believe that everyone is fleeing yet another load of cops, but we realize very quickly that it is something else. Demonstrators are chasing kids, that they are calling "blacks and Arabs", by throwing glass bottles. One of the kids falls down, and tries to hide under the porch of a doorway. Running to their side, we have to calm the fury of the lynch mob. They let go this time. We understand, listening to conversations: that "the cops don’t do their job, leaving thieves at large, the protesters have decided to take matters in hand and avenge themselves." We also understand that everything started from the theft of the handbag of a demonstrator by a kid in the neighborhood, then the attempt by protesters to deliver the kid to the cops, who did not want him. It is from here that the demonstrators unchained their violence against the cops. Unrestrained violence, such as one was not used to seeing. Violence to punish the cops for not doing their job well enough.
The cops decide to retreat, flooding the place under a thick cloud of teargas fired into the crowd. More than fifty cop vehicles disappear in the blink of an eye, just as the violence was beginning to reach a peak.
Clearly, the cops decided to abandon the place to let the inter-community violence unfold, while an hour earlier it was against the cops that everyone was insisting. This then led to a ballet between three to four hundred members of the Chinese community and some black and Arab kids, sometimes beaten to the ground by dozens of people and accused in a rush of being thieves, in front of thirsty journacops having smelt the smell of blood and large-titles, good scavengers that they are. But at the time of writing, nothing definite has yet emerged in the media about what really happened. We have seen some sort of makeshift militias, bringing together over a hundred Asians, to the neighbouring estate to beat up black and Arab people in a man-hunt reminiscent of the pogroms.
During the riots, we felt in Chinese rioters a fierce hatred against the "thieves". For example, after an unmarked police car was overturned, and its lights broken off, people began searching the trunk, immediately taken to task and being lynched, accused of being thieves by the very people who had upturned car. Suffice it to say that we didn’t understand anything at this point.
This hot afternoon, and the events that marked it, seem to foreshadow a civil war scenario that is developing here and there, in these times of "crisis". The attitude of the police reinforces this impression, they left the scene when they felt the anger against them was being replaced with ethnic hatred between people. We can imagine that for the prefect a good racist riot is preferable to a riot directed against the cops and other State symbols and capital (banks and McDonald’s are intact). Basically what need is there for a police presence in a riot against "offenders"? Note that every week, Chinese people are round up in dozens by the cops, to general indifference, without a single demonstration being called. Similarly, we never hear any of protest against the exploitation of Chinese people by other Chinese. That violence there, exploitation, is never denounced. Powerless and sad in the face of this shameful spectacle, we still want to express some clear positions.
This day showed that not all riots are good, despite what some a few hooligans and nihilists still believe, by their advocacy of civil war. In addition, we believe it is necessary to abandon the war between the poor, between ethnic groups and between all imagined communities, between all equally imaginary social roles "honest Chinese workers" against "Arab thieves".
The social war is not war of all against all, but the war of who has always opposed power over all those who are against it.
Again and again, we will have to fight against nationalist, ethnic, communal, religious and political cancers.
Anarchists.
| Yesterday morning the police arrested 3 people in Ottawa, saying that they are our dear ones, the FFFC. Yesterday evening, we broke windows and wrote our solidarity on the wall of the RBC on Sherbrooke, corner Victoria. Innocent or guilty, we are in solidarity with the arresteds. Fuck the banks. Fuck the police. Fuck the prisons. No repression without response. Solidarity means attack. -The Support Committee – Night Tendency |
Hier matin la police a arrêté 3 gens à Ottawa, disant qu’ils sonts nos chéris, le FFFC.
Hier soir, on a cassé des vitres et écrit notre solidarité sur le mur du RBC sur Sherbrooke, coin Victoria.
Innocents ou coupables, on est solidaire avec les arrêtés.
Fuck les banques. Fuck la police. Fuck les prisons.
Aucun répression sans réponse.
La solidarité, ca va dire l’attaque.
-Le comité de soutien – Tendance de la nuit
We haven’t forgiven the death of Carlo Giuliani; an Italian activist born in 1978, he was one of millions of protesters who participated in the Genoa’s demos against the G8 leaders’ violence. Comrades had witnessed his assassination by Italian riot police’s Carabinieri in 20 July 2001.
After nine years, still no justice is served. Just this year, 2010, the case ‘Giuliani and Gaggio v. Italy’ was referred to the Court’s Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights. If you follow the link above, you’ll read the outraging summary description of so-called ‘Principal facts’, including: ‘As to the officer who had fired the fatal shot, the judge took the view that he had fired into the air without intent to kill and that he had in any event acted in self-defense in response to the violent attack on him and his colleagues’ (sequence of photos of the Giuliani’s mord here).
What does this remind us of? Statements made from Greek authorities in regard of the assassination of Alexis Grigoropoulos, which led to December 2008 Uprising in Greece. Alexis Kougias, the lawyer defending Epaminondas Korkoneas, the police special guard who shot dead the teenager in Exarchia, central Athens, in 6 December 2008, argued in court that the fatal bullet was fired into the air and not toward the victim.
Manchester and Salford’s immigration reporting centre for people seeking asylum was attacked in the early hours of this morning by protestors. A group broke into the car park at Dallas Court where they sabotaged the vehicles used by the UK Border Agency’s notorious ’snatch squads’.
image by stephenbroadhurst on flickr
According to reports, the vans were immobilised and defaced with spray paint, while the access gate to the car park was also put out of action. Stickers reading “This vehicle has been tampered with” were left at the scene to notify staff.
In a statement the group said: “The action was taken in solidarity with detainee resistance. In the past months media reports have covered the hunger strikes in Yarl’s Wood, protests in Harmondsworth and struggles against chartered deportation flights. These are acts of resistance against an arbitrary system of control and surveillance policed by the UK Home Office and European immigration authorities.”
Dallas Court is home to officials from the UK Border Agency. The snatch squads which operate from the centre often head out in blacked-out vans early in the morning to detain those asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected. They are known for kicking in doors before the children go to school in order to catch the entire family at once. Asylum seekers are also made to sign in at Dallas Court at regular intervals, not knowing whether or not they will be detained on the spot.
When arrested, detainees are taken to detention centres such as nearby Pennine House, the holding facility at Manchester Airport, where they wait indefinitely until their cases are resolved. After long periods of incarceration, despite having committed no crime and having had no trial or sentence, most detainees can expect deportation back to the countries from which they fled.
This is the second time in recent years that Dallas Court has been targeted by campaigners seeking to obstruct dawn raids and disrupt the centre’s day-to-day activities, which today’s protestors described as a symbol of the “constant uncertainty and fear” that asylum seekers and migrants live under.
They said: “Every person has the right to fight against these conditions irrespective of circumstance, and as long as these policies exist people will struggle against them. New arbitrary controls such as the immigration cap proposed by the new government will only intensify resistance. Such resistance will centre on the frontline of border security at sites like Dallas Court and Pennine House.”
Video de la prensa argentina:
Video de la prensa chilena:
U.S.A 20/6
POUGHKEEPSIE – Five students have been charged by Poughkeepsie City Police with rioting following a melee near Poughkeepsie High School on Thursday.
Four boys and one girl, ages 13 to 15, were charges after police were called to the scene of a fight in the roadway at Fox Terrace and Edgar Street. When officers tried to arrest one boy who had refused to disperse and was inciting the crowd, he and other youths began attacking the officers.
The five taken into custody were arrested on charges ranging from riot to resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration, attempted assault on a police officer and attempting to take an officer’s weapon. One had a box cutter on him.
All five were taken to Family Court. Two youths were sent to secure detention, but because of limited space, the other three were sent to a non-secure facility.
About 30 anarchists with helmets and hoods went into the supermarketnear the university of Saloniki and destroyed the security system! They took the foodstuff from the shelves and also took the moneyfrom the cash desk and burnt it outside the supermarket!nobody arrested!!