The “Save the homeland of Aristotle and the getaway to the Holy
Mountain” campaign calls for citizens all over the world to raise their
voice in condemnation against the development of mining activities and
the installation of gold extraction heavy industry, chemical byproducts
and toxic waste ponds in the holy land of the philosopher Aristotle,
which is the natural gate to the monastic community of the Holy
mountain.
In this unique environment, the Greek government has allocated 317000
acres of land to mining<!--more--> companies that aim to transform a highly valued
ecological paradise to a huge mining center. Their target is to create
numerous surface and underground mines, set up a sulfuric acid chemical
plant, dig for gold, silver, copper and other metals and use an ancient
forest ecosystem to place their toxic waste ponds.
If we allow this to happen, the result will be a non-reversible, of
the first magnitude economic, ecological and cultural disaster of the
area with our forests and rivers full of toxic waste, our sea
contaminated with heavy metals and the air we breathe fouled by
hazardous airborne particle dust while enormous reserves of water will
be drained...
The Greek women of Skouries in Northern Greece stand up to the rioting police who have been dispatched by the Greek government to attack the local citizens with chemical weapons, beatings and arrests at the behest of a private multinational gold mining company.
Athens: Social Meltdown - Greek subtitles from Ross Domoney on Vimeo.
Dr Dimitris Dalakoglou explains the social meltdown which took place in Greece between May 2010 & June 2012 that is on going. This film contains videos and photos shot on the streets, often containing violence and paints a portrait of widespread economic hardship endured by a cities inhabitants. This film is part of an ongoing research project, which looks at the rapid structural changes which Greece is undergoing.
Produced & Directed by Ross Domoney
Interview: Dimitris Dalakoglou
Filmed, Photographed & Edited by Ross Domoney
aletheiaphotos.com
ΚΑΛΕΣΜΑ ΓΙΑ ΑΛΛΗΛΕΓΓΎΗ ΕΝΑΝΤΙΑ ΣΤΟ ΚΛΕΙΣΙΜΟ ΤΗΣ ΟΙΚΟΚΟΙΝΟΤΗΤΑΣ CAN PIELLA ΣΤΗΝ ΒΑΡΚΕΛΩΝΗ. ΥΠΟΓΡΑΨΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΔΙΑΔΩΣΤΕ ΕΔΏ (http://bit.ly/SygwGf ΚΑΙ http://bit.ly/T5U5Ct)
THE SQUAT FARMHOUSE CAN PIELLA COULD BE EVICTED NEXT WEEK...
Can
Piella is a squat, a XVII century farmhouse located in the Barcelona
outskirts, occupied for 3 years, after being abandoned and inhabited
during the last 10 years. Tha farmhouse has been then rehabilited and the sourrounding field are now tilled.
Can Piella wants to build and to spread - by autonomy, collective
work, self-management - alternatives to the present model of
society, in order to contribute to the social change that will lead us
to a "better world, more altruistic, sustainable, ecological and
solidary with a a clear restatement of consumption and where relations
of domination will be a small imperfections and not the general trend".
As
we can read in their web site : "the project integrates the residents
of nearby towns, who wanted to start working the land collectively,
groups of critical thinking, research initiatives in alternative energy
systems, dens and leisure, among others". Can Piella is actually a space
for reflection, debate and community work.
Now this place
suffers an eviction threat: the Court has ordered that the occupies
leave the farmhouse October 15th, even if the owner is not going to give
any use to it. In this case the procedure to evict Can Paiella has
been started by an entreprise of the Real
Estate Group Alcazar. His former owner has been protagonist during
decades of several corruption investigations and accusation, and the
actual one - his first-born - seem do not have any idea of what Can
Piella is.
At the same time two petitions have started to stop the eviction. Everyone could sign it in the web site of Can Piella (http://www.canpiella.cat/ )
"The
problem recalls the evacuation Can Piella is a global problem in our
society that constantly confronts the myth of progress with a social
degenerates, in favor of a purely economistic"
Fifteen people arrested in Athens says they were subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation
Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in
Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn
have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate
(GADA) – the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard – and subjected to what
their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation.
Members
of a second group of 25 who were arrested after demonstrating in
support of their fellow anti-fascists the next day said they were beaten
and made to strip naked and bend over in front of officers and other
protesters inside the same police station. A protester shows his injuriesSeveral
of the protesters arrested after the first demonstration on Sunday 30
September told the Guardian they were slapped and hit by a police
officer while five or six others watched, were spat on and "used as
ashtrays" because they "stank", and were kept awake all night with
torches and lasers being shone in their eyes. Bruising on the protester's legSome
said they were burned on the arms with a cigarette lighter, and they
said police officers videoed them on their mobile phones and threatened
to post the pictures on the internet and give their home addresses to
Golden Dawn, which has a track record of political violence.
Golden
Dawn's popularity has surged since the June election, when it won 18
seats in parliament; it recently came third in several opinion polls,
behind the conservative New Democracy and the leftwing party Syriza.
Last month the Guardian reported
that victims of crime have been told by police officers to seek help
from Golden Dawn, who then felt obliged to make donations to the group.
One
of the two women among them said the officers used crude sexual insults
and pulled her head back by the hair when she tried to avoid being
filmed. The protesters said they were denied drinking water and access
to lawyers for 19 hours. "We were so thirsty we drank water from the
toilets," she said.
One man with a bleeding head wound and a
broken arm that he said had been sustained during his arrest alleged the
police continued to beat him in GADA and refused him medical treatment
until the next morning. Another said the police forced his legs apart
and kicked him in the testicles during the arrest.
"They spat on me and said we would die like our grandfathers in the civil war," he said.
A
third said he was hit on the spine with a Taser as he tried to run
away; the burn mark is still visible. "It's like an electric shock," he
said. "My legs were paralysed for a few minutes and I fell. They
handcuffed me behind my back and started hitting and kicking me in the
ribs and the head. Then they told me to stand up, but I couldn't, so
they pulled me up by the chain while standing on my shin. They kept
kicking and punching me for five blocks to the patrol car."
The protesters asked that their names not be published, for fear of reprisals from the police or Golden Dawn.
A
second group of protesters also said they were "tortured" at GADA. "We
all had to go past an officer who made us strip naked in the corridor,
bend over and open our back passage in front of everyone else who was
there," one of them told the Guardian. "He did whatever he wanted with
us – slapped us, hit us, told us not to look at him, not to sit
cross-legged. Other officers who came by did nothing.
"All we
could do was look at each other out of the corners of our eyes to give
each other courage. He had us there for more than two hours. He would
take phone calls on his mobile and say, 'I'm at work and I'm fucking
them, I'm fucking them up well'. In the end only four of us were
charged, with resisting arrest. It was a day out of the past, out of the
colonels' junta."
In response to the allegations, Christos
Manouras, press spokesman for the Hellenic police, said: "There was no
use of force by police officers against anyone in GADA. The Greek police
examine and investigate in depth every single report regarding the use
of violence by police officers; if there are any responsibilities
arising, the police take the imposed disciplinary action against the
officers responsible. There is no doubt that the Greek police always
respect human rights and don't use violence."
Sunday's protest was
called after a Tanzanian community centre was vandalised by a group of
80-100 people in a central Athens neighbourhood near Aghios Panteleimon,
a stronghold of Golden Dawn where there have been many violent attacks
on immigrants.
According to protesters, about 150 people rode
through the neighbourhood on motorcycles handing out leaflets. They said
the front of the parade encountered two or three men in black Golden
Dawn T-shirts, and a fight broke out. A large number of police
immediately swooped on them from the surrounding streets.
According
to Manouras: "During the motorcycle protest there were clashes between
demonstrators and local residents. The police intervened to prevent the
situation from deteriorating and restore public order. There might have
been some minor injuries, during the clashes between residents,
protesters and police."
Marina Daliani, a lawyer for one of the
Athens 15, said they had been charged with "disturbing the peace with
covered faces" (because they were wearing motorcycle helmets), and with
grievous bodily harm against two people. But, she said, no evidence of
such harm had so far been submitted. They have now been released on bail
of €3,000 (£2,400) each.
According to Charis Ladis, a lawyer for
another of the protesters, the sustained mistreatment of Greeks in
police custody has been rare until this year: "This case shows that a
page has been turned. Until now there was an assumption that someone who
was arrested, even violently, would be safe in custody. But these young
people have all said they lived through an interminable dark night.
Dimitris
Katsaris, a lawyer for four of the protesters, said his clients had
suffered Abu Ghraib-style humiliation, referring to the detention centre
where Iraqi detainees were tortured by US soldiers during the Iraq war.
"This is not just a case of police brutality of the kind you hear about
now and then in every European country. This is happening daily. We
have the pictures, we have the evidence of what happens to people
getting arrested protesting against the rise of the neo-Nazi party in
Greece. This is the new face of the police, with the collaboration of
the justice system."
One of the arrested protesters, a quiet man
in his 30s standing by himself, said: "Journalists here don't report
these things. You have to tell them what's happening here, in this
country that suffered so much from Nazism. No one will pay attention
unless you report these things abroad."the guardian:
Explore
a global timelapse of our planet, constructed from Landsat satellite
imagery. The Amazon rainforest is shrinking at a rapid rate to provide
land for farming and raising cattle. Each frame of the timelapse map is
constructed from a year of Landsat satellite data, constituting an
annual 1.7-terapixel snapshot of the Earth at 30-meter resolution. The
Landsat program, managed by the USGS, has been acquiring images of the
Earth's surface since 1972. Landsat provides critical scientific
information about our changing planet.
