Author: pavlos

Here is a brief roundup of the news from Greece this weekend:
George Roupakias, the accused murderer of Pavlos Fyssas appeared in court Saturday morning and is being held in jail while the investigation continues. The investigation at this point is focused on who did Roupakias talk with both immediately before and after the murder. There is a lot of speculation (including reports who claim to have inside information but no actual proof) as to who called on him to go to the site of the murder and what he was told to do. So far the investigator in charge has not lifted the “secrecy” laws that protect the other cell phones Roupakias was in touch with so that they can be analyzed (with a lot of criticism for not having done so in some media sources and a lot of speculation as to why there is such a delay).
Dendias, the minister of public disorder, has announced multiple measures as part of the government’s “crackdown” on Golden Dawn: police protection for the Golden Dawn members of parliament has been withdrawn, parliamentary funding for GD has been cut off and a file with 32 outstanding criminal cases involving GD members has been turned over to the Anti-terrorist division of the police for investigation (some of those cases are over a year old, prompting a lot of criticism of why the government has been sitting on them for so long). The prosecutor of the Supreme Court (the greek legal system is quite different from that of the US) has ordered a speedy investigation on those 32 cases.
There have been multiple reported raids in GD offices, and arrests of 8 GD members for weapons violations.
University professors continue with their strike Monday and Tuesday. School teachers will vote today on joining them. Municipal workers will walk out Monday and Tuesday. Public employees are planning a strike for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Over the past few years I have been posting occasional news, reports and updates about the situation in Greece. Not that Greece is any more (or less) important than any other corner of the world, but it just happens to be the corner of the world I come from. A lot of times I will post about strikes, fascist and racist attacks, unemployment figures, police brutality and torture, but also about community responses to the crisis, examples of resistance and mutual aid, people organizing in the face of hopelessness. And some times I will post about “little stories,” about the lives, and sometimes deaths, of regular people. Because all too often when we get to watch or read the news, they are about the “big news” such as major government crackdowns, plane crashes, submarine explosions, government surveillance, crises, disasters, etc., items that have been deemed by someone in an editorial room to be “newsworthy.” Yet in the midst, or the shadows, of all the “big news” there are always ordinary people, not much different than you and me, who are confronted with limited choices in apparently overwhelming circumstances and who make decisions that might seem the best at the moment but are almost always tragic.
In today’s news from Greece: A 19-year old is caught without a ticket on a trolley bus and in order to escape paying the fine he jumps out of the moving vehicle, hits his head on the fall and dies hours later. A 20-year-old mother and a 44-year-old grandmother are arrested after the body of the two-day-old infant of the mother was found dead in a local landfill. Two men are found dead near Iraklio Crete, one hanged, the other shot, both apparent, and unrelated, suicides.
It isn’t that these stories and lives matter more than the stories and lives out of Egypt, India, Alabama, Los Angeles, etc. It is just that these stories and lives matter. Because we should never forget that behind the “news” are people, most of whom often want nothing more than to live an ordinary, happy, quiet life.

http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.article&id=1367

One year ago today Golden Dawn stormed into the political scene of Greece by getting almost 7% of the vote. The initial response was one of incredulity and a dismissal that the vote was a protest vote, that people didn’t really understand who GD truly is, etc. One year later Golden Dawn’s real face should be obvious to everyone, yet GD holds steady as the third political party in polls with 10-12%. The reality that one million Greeks are consciously supportive of a fascist and neo-nazi political agenda and practice is at times unfathomable but also undeniable.
I have been posting a lot during the last year about the rise of fascism in Greece, the brutal attacks of Golden Dawn and sympathizers, the collusion of police forces, the complicity of the government, and its outright suppression of dissent. I have lost count on the number of mornings that I have woken up to read the news or talk with friends and comrades back home and find myself bursting into tears or rage (or both) at what is going on.
Yet, there is more here than just bad news. Of the 1 million or so Greeks who support Golden Dawn only a thousand or two are really the thugs on the ground. At the same time tens of thousands of Greeks from all walks of life have taken an increasingly active role in formulating an organized popular resistance. Whereas for a long time it has been only the anarchists and the organized anti-fascist and anti-racist activists who physically stood in the way of fascist violence and fought back, we now see broader coalitions emerging and many syndicalists and leftists joining in direct action against Golden Dawn. While most political parties are simply issuing statements of condemnation, more and more Greeks are no longer satisfied with just talk and are putting their bodies on the line to defend immigrants and to fight for a Greece and a world that has no tolerance for fascism.
I want to take a moment and acknowledge all the friends and comrades back home, old and new, known and unknown, who have stood up for what we believe in, who have perceived an attack on one as an attack on all, who have braved beatings, jails and torture to show us all that solidarity is not a noun but a verb, not just a word but a way to live. We still have a long way to go but because of you I have more moments of hope than despair.