Authored by: 052590 on Saturday, December 06 2008 @ 10:16 PM UTC

This is going to hurt for all parties involved.

Hopefully retribution is swift.

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Authored by: CaseyFord on Saturday, December 06 2008 @ 11:59 PM UTC

A BBC article below. It's actually the number two story on their website right now.

Greek police shooting sparks riot

Youths rioted after the news of the teenager's death was reported

Riots have broken out in several Greek cities after police shot dead a teenager in the capital Athens.

The unrest began in Athens soon after the shooting in Exarchia district, a regular scene of clashes between police and leftist groups.

Youths threw petrol bombs, burned cars and smashed shop windows.

Riots then spread to Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city, to the northern cities of Komotini and Ioannina, and to Crete.

Two officers have been suspended, and an inquiry is under way.

Interior minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos said in a statement: "The government expresses its profound regret over this incident.

"An inquiry on the circumstances of the death has already begun and, if the policemen are found to have been derelict in their duty, the punishment will be exemplary."

Resignation offered

In Athens police fired tear gas at hundreds of stone-throwing youths, who went on a rampage as news of the shooting spread.

After a lull of a couple of hours, rioting resumed shortly after midnight local time (2200 GMT), with some protesters marching through Athens city centre and others fighting police outside the National Technical University of Athens, the Associated Press news agency reported.

In Thessaloniki dozens of youths attacked a police precinct, while others blocked a road near the university campus.

People were being encouraged to join in the protests via some websites, AP said.

An Interior Ministry press officer told Reuters news agency that Mr Pavlopoulos had offered his resignation to Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, but it had been rejected.

Police issued a statement after the shooting, saying a patrol car with two officers inside was attacked by about 30 youths throwing stones.

They were attacked again and responded, with one firing a stun grenade and the other shooting and fatally wounding the boy, AP quoted the statement as saying.

The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens says the shooting and rioting are certain to ramp up clashes between anarchists and police. The Exarchia area is regarded as a fortress by anarchists who frequently lure police into it, then attack them with rocks.

A similar shooting in 1985 led to years of violence.

Residents have recently protested over rising crime and lawlessness, and complain that the police fail to answer emergency calls, staying barricaded in their police stations, our correspondent adds.

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Authored by: g* on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 04:14 AM UTC

A las barricadas
Photos from yesterdays clashes:
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=933717

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Authored by: strangers on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 10:53 AM UTC

This might sound nit-picky, but I don't think it's honest to represent this as murder. At least according to the article, anarchists were throwing fire-bombs at the police when one of them shot back. I mean, I'm on the side of the anarchists in this, but I don't think that that ethically counts as murder. Anarchists attack police, for good reason, but of course the police will fight back.

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Authored by: g* on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 10:56 AM UTC

as you said according to the article which corresponds to the policemen testymony but even the announcement of the police headquarters was more careful and kept its distance from the cops testymony.

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Authored by: Al Ligator on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 11:05 AM UTC

Well, he died, so it was murder. Ethically or not.
Police attack anarchists, but of course we too will fight back.

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Authored by: lawrence on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 12:12 PM UTC

Seriously, does anyone think the cop shot our comrade accidentally? If it was an accident, then it wouldn't be murder. I don't rely on legal categories to formulate opinions on the gravity of killing; if you point a gun at someone you are implicitly intending to kill that person even if you don't shoot. It's not as if the cop fired his gun into the air to get someone's attention. He had live ammunition. It's the same with the cop who killed Carlo.

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Authored by: amoryresistencia on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 12:38 PM UTC

There is info here: www.amoryresistencia.blogspot.com in spanish and english.
Accounts vary wildly as to what happened, most reports from our side say that police responded to taunts and empty cans being thrown with gunfire which killed a young anarchist. The police claim that they fired into the air and the bullet magically managed to ricochet and hit the kid right in his heart.

And you know what, even if there were bricks and molotovs being thrown at the cops (I hope there were) police killing one of us is still murder and the rioting is, of course, justified.
It is this kind of moralistic, liberal thinking that is so detrimental to the anarcho movement in the US.

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Authored by: amoryresistencia on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 12:45 PM UTC

And rioting continues today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7770086.stm
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4B601720081207

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Authored by: strangers on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 04:40 PM UTC

I think I've been misunderstood, or at least I feel misunderstood. I have absolutely no objection to anarchists throwing molotovs or bricks (or bullets) at the police.
Since we're liberal-baiting, I'll say the opposite: my objection to using the phrase "murder" when a cop was (or, as presented by the article, was) defending themselves from violence is because I am sick of a liberal, or at least immature, mindset. To claim that the police "murdered" a youth who was fighting them disenfranchises the justified violence of the anarchist. If you are at war, you don't complain, whine, (be liberal) when your opponent attacks you... you defend yourself.
I am glad that Greece is uprising around the killing, and I don't respect the cops or consider their very existence to be justified. I just don't consider the killing to have been "murder." Or rather, I don't if the person who was killed was in the process of attacking the police with potentially lethal means.

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Authored by: Al Ligator on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 08:55 PM UTC

Have you ever pointed a loaded gun at someone without intending to murder them?
I would never even jokingly point an unloaded gun at someone unless I was thinking of murdering them.
But I think you are claiming that since it was self-defense, then therefore it isn't murder.
A cop's only self-defense is to quit his job.
(And even then I wouldn't trust them)

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Authored by: communitycntrl on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 09:32 PM UTC

murder = killing someone.
whether it is in self-defense, or in cold-blood against a stranger, murder means actively killing someone. if i killed a cop who was about to shoot me in the head, it would still be murder.

so, this killing by police was definitely murder.

solidarity to the greeks. if my friend was murdered, those pigs would be getting just as much vitriol.

fuck the pigs. they kill us or we kill them, there is only 2 choices when the state flexes its muscles against you.

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Authored by: CaseyFord on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 01:01 PM UTC

The point strangers is making is that killing is usually considered "murder" when it is done with malice and isn't justifiable, and if the police were being attacked and their lives were in danger, they are justified in responding with deadly force.

I'd just point out that police are usually well armored enough that mollies and brick arne't gonna do too much. I'm also pretty sure that international law, when used against armored police or military forces, doesn't consider mollies to be deadly weapons.

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Authored by: amoryresistencia on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 01:14 PM UTC

And what respect do you have for international law? How can you say that the police were 'justified' in killing a 15 year old kid? Here is his photo:http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/12/414499.html

What the fuck is wrong with 'anarchists' who use the state's legal codes to justify the police killing one of us?
Even the fucking Greek state is charging these pigs with manslaughter because witnesses at the event say the police lied about what happened....

solidarity with the greek rioters, fuck their laws....

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Authored by: CaseyFord on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 03:33 PM UTC

Read, don't skim. I said the opposite. And besides that, I was responding to someone's question regarding the use of the word "murder."

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Authored by: CaseyFord on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 03:37 PM UTC

And if I had a dollar for every time someone used the phrase "supposed anarchists" or put anarchists in quotes on this website, I'f have enough money to fund the revolution and have anarchists questioning my anarcho-cred cuz of my mad cream.

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Authored by: Al Ligator on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 08:58 PM UTC

How does one 'fund a revolution'?
Do you mean - buy a huge cache of weapons?

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Authored by: CaseyFord on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 10:58 PM UTC

Heh, fair enough.

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Authored by: rechelon on Monday, December 08 2008 @ 08:37 AM UTC

I'm conflicted.

1. Making distinctions between "murder" and "killing" is dangerous for a lot of reasons. Most people effectively equate the term murder to 'non-state actors killing others intentionally and not in self-defense.' The non-state part of the assumption is horrible and helps reinforce the legitimacy of the state, and the self-defense part is a slippery area filled with privilege. BUT

2. I too really hate it when folks in the movement get all shocked and outraged (just outraged!) when one of us gets killed (or murdered!! whatever). Especially when that individual was actively fighting the good fight. It just sounds makes us sound like whiny naive liberals who didn't know what they were getting into. Of course they're going to kill us. We shouldn't be shocked and we shouldn't be wasting time dwelling on it and we shouldn't need to be getting freshly emotional. (Except, obviously, where it's a useful tactic in winning over naive liberals.) We should just continue to do what needs to be done. Greek politics has been shaped for decades by the threat of devastating general insurrection should they actually kill one of us. They've inevitably gone and done so. To preserve the current situation, much less weaken and roll back the Greek State, it's logically up to the Greeks to spend the next week smashing up as much shit as possible to keep that threat alive. Simple. Go team.

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Authored by: awed on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 04:30 PM UTC

these riots will probably bring down the right-wing Greek government. they seem like the most severe, widespread rioting - at least, in a European country - in response to a police killing since France in 2005. comparisons are being made to 1973.

we can only hope that the rage in Athens and other cities will be expressed in revolutionary terms, and not exploited by left-wing political parties.

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Authored by: JBizzle on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 05:05 PM UTC

isn't rioting like this typical for greek anarchists? I seriously doubt anything revolutionary will come from this.
It'll probably slow down in a week or so, and nothing really concrete will come from it all, besides exploitation by left-wing reformist groups.

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Authored by: awed on Sunday, December 07 2008 @ 05:19 PM UTC

clashes between anarchists and police in greece are fairly typical, especially in the Exarchia district of Athens where the youth was murdered, but rioting on this scale and with this level of destruction is definitely not typical.

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Authored by: Al Ligator on Monday, December 08 2008 @ 11:24 AM UTC

There needs to be solidarity for revolt to spread.
As much as 'talking about Greece' may be cliche, perhaps a day will come when the fires there die down and we would have missed our chance in stretching our arms out to that revolt and helping it spread, and most will see it as just another piece of exciting history.
It's a catch 22 I guess, if we talk about them too much we are 'glorifying them', but if we ignore them than they are left on their own.
In which case, wouldn't we want this kind of revolt to be spread everywhere?

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Authored by: nikaki on Tuesday, December 09 2008 @ 02:09 PM UTC

this is another corrupted, incompetent government that steals money from the people to give it to the banks and a police force that is above the law. If this uprising is not an inspiration to us all, then we deserve to start visiting our local banks and giving them our money direct (oh..without an account)

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