Pigs - how far they've come

Not very. At all. Fuck. It's from last month, but I've been busy.




It's truly disturbing to watch people choose to end someone's life. It's so arbitrary and final. Judge, jury and executioner all in one spot. In this case, it is particularly troubling, as those making the decision tend to be beyond the law. A bunch of them keep shooting after their clips are empty.

Here's the story as CNN tells it. I'll provide some highlights:

He said after the disturbance started he pulled over his truck and started recording with his cell phone camera, capturing the shooting.

"When he noticed me recording, one of the officers jumped in the truck, put a pistol to my head," he said. "My phone was smashed - he stepped on it, handcuffed me."

Juan Sanchez, a detective with the Miami Beach Police Department, said he could not comment on how officers that night handled eyewitnesses who may have filmed the incident, because the matter could become the subject of an internal investigation or a civil lawsuit....

Benoit's girlfriend, Ericka Davis, was also in the truck at the time.

"They handled us like we were criminals," she said. "The officer came over to the driver's side, on my left, and just put the gun to my head."

"They took everyone's phones and smashed them," she said.

Benoit says the only reason he still has the footage is because it was saved on a tiny memory card, which he removed and hid from the officers, despite being told to hand over his video.

"I took the chip out and put it in my mouth," he said, and kept it there the whole time he was interviewed by police at a nearby mobile command post.

His video shows an officer on a bike approaching his truck and pointing a gun directly into the camera, giving an indecipherable command, and then backing away.

Another officer orders them to stop filming and get out of the truck, and then the video ends....

Herisse was killed, and four bystanders were injured by gunfire, according to [Miami Beach Police Chief Carlos] Noriega.

Benoit and Davis criticized the police for the number of shots they fired, in the presence of numerous bystanders.

"We could have been killed," said Davis. "They were shooting so long, you could hear their guns clicking on empty, but they kept pulling the trigger," she said. "I think that's excessive."

Noriega said it was unclear whether the suspect shot at the officers, but police later recovered a gun from his car.

Here's the video from CNN that shows an overhead view of the pigs killing that man:



They can do whatever they want. What would happen to a civilian who rode up to someone's car and started waving a gun at people? What if that person was caught on video doing so?

We live under martial law. Some of us get by a lot better than others, cause of the color of our skin and where we live. But we all live it.

Israel's latest cowboy adventure

Maybe you know by now about Israel attacking a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid-carrying ship, the Mavi Marmara, in international waters last week and killing nine and injuring dozens of the 700 or so passengers, hailing from a wide array of countries? Well, they did. They invaded it (the only one out of six that they hadn't been able to mechanically disable, a condition they achieved most likely through the use of prop foulers, long ropes/cables designed to wrap around a ship's propeller and seize it) by helicopter, with what seems to be a secretive number of "commandos" rappelling onto the deck at 4am on Monday, May 31st. They were immediately met by a number of people prepared for self-defense, who seemed to use whatever they could find to defend themselves, including pipes, pieces of metal, anything that could be thrown, fists, feet and knives. They tossed at least one overboard, and a few of the Israelis jumped overboard. Watch the Israeli Defense Force-edited video of the people defending their ship against a pirate attack:

There is nothing wrong with how the Israelis were met. They were violently invading a humanitarian aid ship bound for one of the most (deliberately) devastated places in the world right now - Gaza. The Israelis say that these ships were violating their military blockade of Gaza. Technically, that is not true, as they had not approached Gaza, and were in international waters. However, their stated aim was to reach the port in Gaza, yes. They planned to violate their illegal blockade that even the United States does not support. The Israelis say their blockade (including things like coffee, chocolate and cement, as well as nearly all exports) is to punish Hamas and destabilize their rule over Gaza, but these things never work. Look at Iraq. George Bush the First and Bill Clinton's decade-long sanctions against the country, along with their ceaseless bombing campaign, did nothing to touch Saddam Hussein, but did quite a bit to kill 500,000 Iraqi children. All they are succeeding in doing is immiserating the people of Gaza, further radicalizing them, making them hate Israel even more than they already do, making them feel isolated, desperate and hopeless, and making the world view Israel as the heartless wonder that it is. Hamas stands as as strong as it ever has, despite the three-year blockade. Egypt was a part of it as well, but has recently renounced it, as a result of Israel's killings about the ship and typically indignant attitude, and indefinitely reopened its non-industrial border crossing with Gaza.

So back on the ship, Israeli commandos manhandled and beat a ton of people for being on the ship:

"Suddenly from everywhere we saw inflatables coming at us, and within seconds fully equipped commandos came up on the boat," said Greek activist Dimitris Gielalis, who had been aboard the Sfendoni. He was among six Greeks returned home Tuesday.

"They came up and used plastic bullets, we had beatings, we had electric shocks, any method we can think of, they used," he said.

He said the boat's captain was beaten for refusing to leave the wheel, and had sustained non-life-threatening injuries, while a cameraman filming the raid was hit with a rifle butt in the eye, he said.

"Of course we weren't prepared for a situation of war.," he added.

The returning Greeks said those still in custody were refusing to sign papers demanded by Israeli authorities.

"During their interrogation, many of them were badly beaten in front of us," said Aris Papadokostopoulos, who was aboard the Free Mediterranean traveling behind the Turkish ship and carrying mainly Greek and Swedish activists.

A fitting retribution for bring wheelchairs and medicine to deeply impoverished people. This is typical for Israel. They love overpowering people and intimidating the helpless. Read on:

Activists returning to Europe said that the commandos had beaten passengers and used electric shocks during the clashes.

Six Greeks and several others, including a Turkish woman and her 1-year-old baby, were released Tuesday.

Turkish activist Nilufer Cetin, who had hidden with her baby in her cabin's bathroom aboard the Mavi Marmara, told reporters she believed there were 11 dead.

”The ship turned into a lake of blood," Cetin told reporters in Istanbul, having returned after Israeli officials warned that jail would be too harsh for her child.

"We were aware of the possible danger in joining the trip," she said. "But there are thousands of babies in Gaza. If we had reached Gaza we would have played with them and taken them food."

She said Israeli vessels harassed the flotilla for two hours starting around 10 p.m. Sunday, and returned at around 4 a.m. Monday, fired warning shots and told the ships to turn back.

When the Mavi Marmara continued on its course the harassment turned into an attack.

"They used smoke bombs followed by gas canisters. They started to descend onto the ship with helicopters," she said, calling the clashes that then erupted "extremely bad and brutal."

"I was one of the first victims to be released because I had a child," she told reporters, "but they confiscated everything, our telephones, laptops are all gone."

Her husband - the ship's engineer - was still being held by Israeli authorities.

Some 400 Turkish activists were on the six-ship flotilla, along with more than 30 Greeks and people of some 20 other nations including Germany, the U.S. and Russia.

Also typical is that Israel cut all communications aboard the ship, and then kept all seven hundred incommunicado while they were detained:

An Al-Jazeera journalist delivering a report before Israel cut communications said Israel fired at the vessel before boarding it. In one web posting, a Turkish television reporter on the boat cried out, "These savages are killing people here, please help" — a broadcast that ended with a voice shouting in Hebrew, "Everybody shut up!"

Al-Jazeera said that eight staff members were detained while covering the story, and asked for the Israeli government to release them immediately...

Of the hundreds of activists who were detained aboard the ships after they were escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod, 15 were sent to Beer Sheva Prison, according to a spokesman for the Israeli prison authority. Another 25 were slated for deportation and 50 others who refused to identify themselves were being held separately.

Then Israel went on to propagate a bunch of bullshit about how they, the Israeli military, were set up, victims of an ambush. This is amazing. They allege that somehow, through deliberately placing themselves on the deck of a ship, in international waters, armed with guns and authorized to kill, they were the victims in this situation:

Israel's prime minister claimed Sunday that the Turkish activists who battled Israeli naval commandos in a deadly clash last week prepared for the fight ahead of time, before boarding the ship in a different city from the rest of the passengers.

Benjamin Netanyahu's charges highlight Israel's frantic efforts to portray the activists as terrorists and counter a wave of harsh international condemnation that has left the Jewish state isolated and at odds with some of its closest allies...

Netanyahu told his Cabinet that "dozens of thugs" from "an extremist, terrorism-supporting" organization had readied themselves for the arrival of the naval commandos.

"This group boarded separately in a different city, organized separately, equipped itself separately and went on deck under different procedures," he said. "The clear intent of this hostile group was to initiate a violent clash with (Israeli) soldiers..."

On Sunday, the Turkish daily Hurriyet showed new pictures taken by unidentified people of wounded Israeli commandos, including some with bloodied faces. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said the images seemed to corroborate Israel's version of the events.

"It shows that our boarding party in fact did face deadly violence from the hardcore Islamist activists on the boat ... and that our boarding party was forced to respond," he said. "Had they not, they would have been killed."

Boarding party. Did you get that? BOARDING PARTY? Good one, Mark Regev. When you get tired of lying and killing for a living, you should try writing for Saturday Night Live. They could use someone like you.

The head of the IHH, the Islamic Charity organization that sponsored the Freedom Flotilla, as the six aid ships were called, disagrees with Netanyahu and Regev's assertions:

In Turkey, IHH head Bulent Yildirim said all passengers boarded the ship in the Turkish port of Antalya, and rejected suggestions that those who clashed with the soldiers were trained militants.

"Take a look at who was killed. They had pot bellies. They were old. They were young. Who would believe that they received special training?" he said.

Israel says the IHH is a terrorist organization. Again, even the United States says that they aren't.

Overall, I would say that Israel is taking this well, showing a good amount of contrition for its military escapades:

In a sign of Israeli frustration, some hard-liners produced a music video that parodies the events on the raided ship and has received more than a million hits on YouTube. A group of Israeli men and women portray the activists as Arab and Turkish militants with keffiyehs and mimic their accents. At the end, the mock activists wave clubs and knives in the air.

They sing a song with crude lyrics called "We Conned the World" — set to the tune of "We Are The World."

"We'll make the world abandon reason, we'll make them all believe that the Hamas is Mama Theresa," they sing.

The Israeli government press office relayed a link to the video to foreign correspondents on Friday, then recalled the message and apologized.

Nothing like kicking people who are down. That's Israel's specialty though, and what endears them so closely to many throughout the world.

Further displaying their will to do anything it takes to make themselves the victims in every situation, the Israeli government was forced to admit that it edited the invasion tape to include anti-Semitic rhetoric that wasn't really there:

Israel acknowledged Sunday that it edited recordings of what it said were anti-Semitic and anti-American radio calls by pro-Palestinian activists who tried to run the Gaza blockade and that it could not identify the origin of the broadcasts.

The Israeli military released a 26-second recording Friday night in which a warning call to a ship in the flotilla was met with the reply of "Shut up -- go back to Auschwitz." After another voice reports that the convoy has the permission of Palestinian officials to dock in Gaza, a third voice responds, "We are helping Arabs going against the U.S. Don't forget 9/11, guys."

But after the organizers of the aid convoy accused Israeli officials of manipulating the tapes, the Israel Defense Forces reported it had mistakenly identified one of the six ships in the activists' "Freedom Flotilla" as the source of the broadcasts. And it released a nearly six-minute recording of radio traffic that included those calls and several others, along with bursts of static and calls in other languages on the same channel.

Nice. Nothing like a good lie to drum up support for war. It's a classic technique - Vietnam, Iraq, etc.

I would like to conclude with the fact that Israel has not alleged even once that these ships were carrying weapons, nor anything that Hamas could use as such. Accordingly, despite Israel's best attempts to search the cargo looking for them, all they found were medical supplies and construction materials. Again, this was clearly an entirely just response. What a bunch of fucking monsters.

P.S. The Pixies canceled their first-ever show in Israel because of this. AWESOME. Hooray for people still giving a fuck.

Got milk?

Cause this is where it comes from.

The logical and necessary result of viewing life as a commodity.

We can't die off fast enough.

Kops on kamera are scary kops

So here we have an incident of a Chicago area police officer beating a man pretty seriously [concussion, extensive bruising and stitches in his right ear] and shooting another with a Tazer. He said the driver was drunk and resisted arrest. Yeah. Pretty common, right? You know how drunk people act.

There's a problem though - this pig taped all of it, and the only parts that happened were the beating and Tazing. It's pretty indisputable. Watch:

Whoops, pig. Whoops. You went off on a couple of people for the hell of it, and filmed yourself doing it. Fucking brilliant. It seems really stupid, right? Well, I would imagine that it happens all the time. The only reason he got caught - "The incident was discovered when a department official was reviewing the arrests from the previous night and saw a booking photo of Bell [the guy who caught the beating] with his head wrapped in a thick bandage..."

Here are the highlights, from a thorough article:

The seven-minute video released by prosecutors showed that Bell didn't appear to act in a threatening or aggressive manner toward the officer. Instead, he appeared compliant and calm even as the officer used a stun gun on Stalbaum [passenger], who collapsed in a heap on Bell's front porch.

As Bell and Stalbaum got out of the vehicle, Mandarino[pig] can be seen in the video -- which has no audio -- pointing his firearm at them. Bell almost immediately sat back down in the driver's seat, and the officer moved toward Stalbaum as he stood on the front porch of the residence.

Authorities said Mandarino then used a stun gun on Stalbaum. The video shows him collapse. At that point, Bell stood up from the car and placed his hands behind his head. For the next 90 seconds, Bell stood at the side of his vehicle with his hands either in the air or clasped behind his head.

The video showed Mandarino extend a collapsible metal baton as he ordered Bell to the ground. Bell immediately dropped to his knees with his hands behind his head and his face turned downward. Mandarino then pushed Bell forward to his hands and knees and began striking him repeatedly.

Man, he stepped to them right away at gunpoint. Cause the guy spun his tires and then went home. The pig says all he did was spin his tires. That's why he pulled him over.

It's rough watching him take that beating. What can you do though? If you aren't a pacifist, you'll become one real quick once a pig starts dealing on you. Otherwise, you're getting hospitalized at best, and definitely locked up on felony assault charges.

In this case, the filthy pig is getting charged with felonious assault. This is great. I hope they get him. The brother of the guy who really got beaten puts it well:

"We're elated," Stacey Bell said of Mandarino's arrest. The pavement outside the home remains stained from his brother's blood, he said. "We don't feel vindicated yet. If he loses his badge and loses his job and goes to jail, then I'll feel vindicated."

This guy must have done this a lot. I doubt that after fifteen years on the force he just goes haywire one day and starts handing out beatdowns left and right. Fuck these pigs. They're all a bunch of lying trash.

This brings me to another point - the police lie. "Lie" is a noun in this case, not a verb. Of course they do lie, but the police have a particular lie, a scheme to call their own. It is THE police lie. What is this police lie? I will quote extensively from civil liberties lawyer Paul Chevigny's brilliant 1969 work on NYPD police brutality, Police Power:

The worst problem in street-corner incidents is not that of police quarreling with citizens. Most such quarrels, while never admirable, are at least understandable; they are much like quarrels between private citizens. The worst abuse is not even the police hitting people in such quarrels; pugnacious citizens hit others in private disputes every day. The root problem is the abuse of power, the fact that the police not only hit a man but arrest him. Once they have arrested him, of course, lying becomes an inevitable part of the procedure of making the quarrel look like a crime, and thus the lie is the chief abuse with which we must come to grips. If the police simply hit a man and let him go, there would be an abuse of the authority conferred by the uniform and the stick, but not the compound abuse of hitting a man and then dragging him to court on criminal charges, really a more serious injury than a blow. One’s head heals up, after all, but a criminal record never goes away. There is no more embittering experience in the legal system than to be abused by the police and then to be tried and convicted on false evidence...

Despite these obvious repercussions upon community relations, it is rarely that anyone is abused without being criminally charged, not only because of the rationale for such abuses (“he was guilty anyhow”) but because the policeman is likely to get into trouble if he lets an abused person go free. There is nothing to cover a later accusation of abuse if an arrest has not been made...

The can be no doubt that police lying is the most pervasive of all abuses…In the police canon of ethics, the lie is justified in the same way as the arrest: as a vindication of police authority, by proving that defiance of the police is a crime in fact if not in law. A member of a pariah group, or anyone who defies the police, being guilty at heart and sometimes potentially guilty in fact, deserves to be punished out of hand. Besides, the police dislike such people so much that they consider them unworthy of the protection of the law. By lying, the police enforce these folkways of their own, while preserving the shell of due process of law...

…These charges – disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and felonious assault, or all three – together with a story to establish them, constitute the system for covering street abuses.

If you can ever get your hands on the book, or care to, the quotes appear on pages 141 through 143. Nothing I appreciate like someone who will just tell it like it is. Lots of people dislike the police to varying degrees, but precious few will tell it like it is, and it is a rare minority who can do so with such eloquence and measured rationality.

That was in 1969. Here we are today. Same shit, except we've got YouTube. This pig, as all learn to do if they didn't know already, counted on the police lie. It inexplicably failed him. He doesn't seem to have made any effort to cover anything. Why? Because he assumed (almost always correctly) that he didn't need to. Everyone else would do it for him, the rest of the pigs down at the slophouse would do it for him, with him, as that's part of the pig life, and the court almost always takes a pig's word over almost anyone.

This story is a pretty surprising example of someone breaking with that tradition. People very rarely cross that blue line. I'm not sure what persuaded this officer to do so. I wouldn't look at it as any kind of harbinger, but it's nice for now. Hopefully this pig will get fucked. Since the people on whom he went off are white, I believe it is much more likely. I also bet that pig who turned him in is going to catch hell from the rest of the force. They do not take kindly to "betrayal."

Pigs on tape

Some pigs in College Park, Maryland, beat down this (presumably drunk) kid pretty badly. He assaulted them and their horses. Oh wait, no he didn't; in fact all he did was dance like a jerkoff after a basketball game. The whole thing got caught on tape and as usual, the pig fucks were completely lying. Three of them, in riot gear, straight rushed him and beat the shit out of him. Gotta release that pressure and make examples of people, you know? It's all about keeping the rest of us in line.

This won't result in any reform, but I do hope they lose their jobs. Maybe they'll develop drinking problems, if they don't have them already. Chances are whatever lawsuit money he gets will not come out of their pockets, which is a damn shame. I imagine the county will cover it, since they are county police. The kid's lawyer does a pretty good job of damning anyone involved with filing the bullshit report.

And yes, FBI, I would say that a felony was committed here. Holy shit do I hate the police.

I despise your killing and raping...You're...despicable

More war. For nothing. Fight and fight. Attack. Return the attack. Go nowhere. No progress. Just moving sideways. Domination. New masters. Old masters return. No one wins. Same process, new participants. Ad nauseam. Ad annihilation.

Yesterday's deaths involving police

Did you hear about the four police who were shot in Oakland yesterday? Probably. If not, you will. As we've been told, this is an extraordinary, unthinkable tragedy:

The gunman was also killed Saturday, capping a day of violence that the Oakland Police Department said was the worst in its history. Never before had three police officers died in the line of duty on the same day.

"It's in these moments that words are extraordinarily inadequate," said Mayor Ron Dellums at a somber news conference Saturday night...

Grieving officers at the police station hugged and consoled each other. People left four bouquets of white roses under a granite memorial wall inside the building lobby that lists 47 officers killed in the line of duty. The wall shows the last officer killed in Oakland was in January of 1999...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger planned to fly to Oakland on Sunday from Washington, D.C., to meet with police and Mayor Dellums, the governor's office said.

Also, yesterday, a drunk cop in Missouri, driving on the wrong side of the road, plowed into a car carrying five people, killing four of them instantly. Maybe you won't hear about this one. Don't worry though, the driver is in fair condition. Only the passengers died.

That is a profound tragedy - four people dying for nothing, dying because someone had to drink and drive. No provocation, no involvement, just traveling somewhere when they met the fullest force of irresponsibility.

The police who were shot in Oakland will surely be lionized, as you can already see. They are heros, they are servants, they are protectors, they will be names on an eternal wall of honor.

Will the police officer who took four lives and ruined a fifth, not by any accident, be derided as a massive piece of shit? Not by anyone who has a public voice, that's for sure. Just as the police in Oakland console themselves, will the police in Sunset Hills viciously lambast Chrissy Miller for her utter lack of concern for the public she swore to protect? She committed one of the ultimate betrayals of her stated duties, but here we see the police chief defending her.

The people who died in that car, they will be ashes in a wall, caskets in a cemetery. We'll forget them tomorrow.

Touring Israel and Palestine

Not us. No, no, no. I am talking about a band called Hello Bastards. They are a band in England, but none of them is from England. The members are originally from three continents, but all live in London now. They recently toured Israel and Palestine, playing shows and participating in demonstrations against Israeli occupation.

One of the people who accompanied them wrote about it in a couple of myspace blogs. The first one is an account of arriving Israel, initial impressions, playing some shows, and going into Palestinian areas. The second entry is an intense telling of their experiences in Palestinian villages, including a rather extensive recollection of supporting Palestinians in protesting an Israeli wall about to be built through their land.

I don't know of any band who has done this before. I know bands have gone to Israel, but not like this. A lot of this shit is fucking crazy and I get worked up just reading it. That reality seems so far removed from what we live. So scary. But it's millions of people's lives. Every fucking day.

Blackwater out of Iraq

Done. Of course, this is not the end of Blackwater and perhaps will provide the impetus to prove that no one can push them around, but all the same, HAHA. Fuck the people who run that company and everyone who works for them.

Firebombing a Greek police station

is pretty serious. But hey, you get what you give, I guess.

Greek students announced fresh rallies Sunday after a night of violence during which hooded militants firebombed an Athens police station in fresh protests over the police shooting of a teenager.
About a hundred protesters attacked the police station Saturday night, next to the Exarchia district where 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos died from a police bullet eight days ago.

If the police are generally standing down and refraining from wanton violence at all like this corporate news article suggests, I wonder how much longer they will hold off. It seems like these street protests are growing and the country is falling apart while the government removes itself from the situation.

Oh, and destruction of corporate/government property is not violence.

A police source said youths hurled Molotov cocktails and set off fires at three banks near the Polytechnic. Protesters also targetted an environment ministry office, torching two luxury cars and blocking roads with blazing bins.

The fresh violence followed ceremonies marking the moment Grigoropoulos was killed, and signalled a deep-rooted protest movement that has united mainstream and radical youth.

Self-styled reporters continue to comment upon Greece

and construct a twisted reality for the outside world. All I really know is that people are still pissed and acting upon it in Greece and it's pulling pretty much the whole country in, in one way or another. Six days straight now. The capitalist media is really playing up this property destruction bit. That's a distraction. That's not what it's about. Anyway, they say this is what's going on now:

Student protesters pelted 20 police stations with rocks and bottles, overturned cars and blocked streets in central Athens on Thursday. Police responded with tear gas as sporadic violence persisted amid Greece's worst rioting in decades.

Good, go after the pigs. Fuck them. Give them some of what they've been distributing. It won't get too far; they'll almost always win in the end, but it's not about winning. It's about fighting. Still, the police aren't the real enemy. They're just the battlebots in the way of the enemy.

If people were doing this here, they would have been shot. Attacking a police station in the States, let alone doing so without deadly consequences, is nearly unfathomable.

Oh, and the Greek parliament held a moment of silence for the kid the police killed. That seems like a different world. People barely acknowledge that shit here. It doesn't make it past city councils, let alone to the national legislature. The police are so goddamn violent in this country.

In other, related news, demonstrations are spreading through Europe.

In Denmark, protesters pelted riot police with bottles and paint in downtown Copenhagen at a rally late Wednesday. Some 63 people were detained and later released.

And in Spain, angry youths attacked banks, shops and a police station in separate demonstrations in Madrid and Barcelona late Wednesday that each drew about 200 people.

Some of the protesters chanted "police killers" and other slogans. Eleven people — including a Greek girl — were arrested at the two rallies, and two police officers were lightly injured...

Elsewhere in Europe, more than 15 people occupied a Greek consulate in Berlin on Monday, hanging a banner out the window with the dead Greek teenager's name and the words, "Killed by the State." Youths clad in black appeared occasionally at a consulate balcony, exchanging chants with more than 50 protesters gathered on the street below.

About 100 people protested outside the Greek consulate in Frankfurt on Tuesday evening and minor violence was reported on the peripheries of the demonstration, including the breaking of a bank's window.

In Italy, a group of protesters gathered in front of the Greek Embassy in Rome on Wednesday and some turned violent, damaging police vehicles, overturning a car and setting a trash can on fire.

Blackwater mercenaries' violence revealed a bit more

From an Associated Press article:

"WASHINGTON – Blackwater Worldwide security guards opened machine gun fire on innocent, surrendering Iraqis and launched a grenade into a girls' school during a gruesome Baghdad shooting last year, prosecutors said Monday in announcing manslaughter charges against five guards."

Blackwater's got thousands of these guys, armed to the fucking teeth and ready to blow. They use them here too. A bunch of them went to New Orleans when Katrina hit and played war, and who knows where and what else they are up to. It's fucked. Thousands.

Greek radicals don't fuck around

So different from here. Even people in the government are pissed off about this. A couple of ministers tried to resign over it. Seems like Europeans have a different relationship with the police; perhaps they are not so dominated as we are in this country. Then again, no one cares all that much when the police shoot people here.

The Greek police are prohibited from entering universities. Incredible.

Riots in 2 Greek cities after teen killed

By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer Elena Becatoros, Associated Press Writer 18 mins ago

ATHENS, Greece – Hundreds of youths angered by the fatal police shooting of a teenager rampaged through Greece's two largest cities for a second day Sunday in some of the worst rioting the country has seen in years.

Gangs smashed stores, torched cars and erected burning barricades in the streets of Athens and Thessaloniki. Riot police clashed with groups of mostly self-styled anarchists throwing Molotov cocktails, rocks and bottles. Clouds of tear gas hung in the air, sending passers-by scurrying for cover.

Rioting in several cities, including Hania in Crete and cities in northern Greece, began within hours of the death Saturday night of a 15-year-old shot by police in Exarchia. The downtown Athens district of bars, music clubs and restaurants is seen as the anarchists' home base.

Soon stores, banks and cars were ablaze.

The rioting was some of the most severe Greece has seen in years. The last time a teenager was killed in a police shooting — during a demonstration in 1985 — it sparked weeks of rioting. In 1999, a visit to Greece by then U.S. President Bill Clinton sparked violent demonstrations in Athens that left stores smashed and burned.

The two officers involved in Saturday's shooting have been arrested and charged, one with premeditated manslaughter and the illegal use of a weapon, and the other as an accomplice. They are to appear before a court Wednesday. They and the Exarchia precinct police chief have been suspended.

Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos, whose offer to resign was rejected Sunday, has promised a thorough investigation.

"It is inconceivable for there not to be punishment when a person loses their life, particularly when it is a child," he said. "The taking of life is something that is not excusable in a democracy."

Police said the two officers involved claimed they were attacked by a group of youths and, when they confronted the youths, one fired three shots and the other threw a stun grenade.

Violence broke out again Sunday afternoon in Athens and Thessaloniki during demonstrations to protest the shooting. "Cops, pigs, murderers," protesters chanted.

Police said 24 policemen were injured in Athens in overnight riots that started Saturday, and another 13 on Sunday, while seven people were arrested and another 15 were detained.

As night fell, groups of youths, some masked and others wearing motorcycle helmets, set trash cans alight and overturned cars to erect burning barricades on streets around the Athens Polytechnic — which, like all universities, is protected by law from police intrusion. Some could be seen walking on the roof of the Polytechnic, taunting police.

Violence in the capital began to die down late Sunday, after several hours of running battles between police and rioters. In Thessaloniki, a large fire could be seen burning at the city's university.

A blurry video shot by a bystander that purportedly shows the shooting Saturday has been aired on Greek television and posted on the Internet. Two sounds that could be gunshots can be heard, but the image is too blurry and distant to show the events clearly.

Greece has seen frequent and sometimes violent demonstrations recently against the increasingly unpopular conservative government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. The opposition Socialists are now consistently ahead in opinion polls.

Dozens of stores in central Athens went up in flames or saw their storefronts smashed. At least two buildings were destroyed by fire, as was a Ford car dealership. Streets were littered with chunks of paving stones and rocks thrown at riot police, as well as shattered glass from storefronts and banks.

"I understand the anger and the right to demonstrate it," Pavlopoulos said Sunday night. "What is inconceivable is the raw violence that undermines social peace and turns against the property of innocent people."

Violence often breaks out between riot police and anarchists during demonstrations in Greece. Anarchist groups are also blamed for late-night firebombings of targets such as banks and diplomatic vehicles.

The self-styled anarchist movement partly has its roots in the resistance to Greece's 1967-74 military dictatorship. The youths tend to espouse general anti-capitalist and antiestablishment principles, and have long-running animosity toward the police.

New York Police sodomize a 24 year old Brooklyn man

for smoking weed. Weed that he didn't even have when they caught him and brutalized him, ripping his asshole with a nightstick or whatever they used. And then they didn't arrest him, releasing him with a summons. He promptly went to the hospital, and now the Brooklyn District Attorney's office is investigating after internal affairs, of course, cleared all four offending pigs.

Genoa, Italy: July 21st, 2001

I found a lengthy, profoundly disturbing article the Guardian published a few months back detailing how vicious Italian pigs are. In this case, we are talking about how they behaved at the anti-G8 protests in July of 2001. This is obviously not a case of a few bad apples, as so many would like to believe. This goes from the streets to the prisons to the infirmary up to the high government. It's fucked. These pigs are so out of control and so violent that a bunch of them got brought up on federal charges. Seven years later, fifteen of them got convicted, but as it usually goes, they will not be doing a day in jail.

It's strange to see different arms of the state at war with one another like this. That doesn't really happen in this country. Pigs do what they want and never pay. Maybe they aren't as vicious, at least not on a wholesale basis. I know the police are totally fucked here. I know they kill, torture and maim. It's just that I'm not aware of so many of them being so violent for so long in one place at one time. I mean, for fuck's sake, they shot a protester in the face and killed him, ran him over several times, leaving him to die in the street. I don't think there has been mass police violence like this in America since the late 60s, early 70s, when they were going after Black Panthers and other Black Liberation groups. Maybe MOVE in the 80s. Whatever the case, it's fucked.

The pictures above are from someone's flickr account I found randomly.