photos: Alexandros Michailidis text: Dina Batzia Conflicts, arrests and injuries was the scenery of the protest in Skouries yesterday,   where hundreds residents and supporters gathered to protest gold mining activity. From the morning yesterday committees struggle against the gold mines in Halkidiki started protest and 6 km march to Skouries. Several hundreds of residents of the nearby village of Ierissos, ...

A new letter was sent today signed by more than 20 organizations that belong to the European Water Movement to Commissioner Olli Rehn and the European Commission after the very late response of his directorate (over a year!) on their first letter. Our concerns are shamelessly confirmed since in this text, it is clearly stated that the Commission policy is indeed to impose the privatization of water services ...

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece was facing its second general strike in a month Thursday as workers protested over another batch of austerity measures that are designed to prevent the bankruptcy of the country. The strike was taking place as European leaders headed to Brussels for a summit in which Greece's economic fate will likely feature large. The strike grounded flights, shut down public services, closed ...

Greece's far-right party, Golden Dawn, won 18 parliamentary seats in the June election with a campaign openly hostile to illegal immigrants and there are now allegations that some Greek police are supporting the party. "There is already civil war," says Ilias Panagiotaros. If so, the shop he owns is set to do a roaring trade. It sells camouflage gear, police riot gloves, face masks and T-shirts extolling fo ...

Athens (Reuters) - The governor of the Bank of Greece was given a severance payment of 3.4 million euros when he left his former employer, a major bank that he now regulates, documents seen by Reuters show. George Provopoulos was awarded the sum when he stepped down as vice-chairman of Piraeus Bank to become governor of Greece's central bank and a member of the board of the European Central Bank in 2008. Th ...

Fifteen people arrested in Athens says they were subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation. The 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 A ...

Police fired tear gas as angry protesters clashed with officers in Athens as thousands rallied in the Greek capital in protest against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit. Merkel is in Athens for austerity talks with the country's Prime Minister.   ­Angry protesters picked stones from the cracked pavement and hurled them at police. AFP estimated that at least 100,000 people turned out to express th ...

Over the past few months, as Greece has sunk deeper into crisis, racist attacks against immigrants have risen sharply. Unsatisfied with the police’s response to this violence, residents of Athens have taken to patrolling a neighbourhood where thugs are known to beat up immigrants and cause damage to their shops. They call themselves “anti-fascists”. Their sworn enemy: Golden Dawn and its sympathisers. The f ...

Tomorrow, Tuesday 9 October when German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be arriving in Greece, Athens will look like an occupied city in which martial law is in force. In the wider area of the city centre, demonstrations are not allowed, traffic and public transport is banned and the subway is closed. Even schools located in this area are informally ordered to remain closed. We as Greeks living in the Netherl ...

A couple of years ago a Swiss whistleblower smuggled out of the country a CD ROM containing the names and account numbers of thousands of European citizens with secret accounts at Swiss banks. The German tax authorities paid a lot of money to get their hands on this CD and used it to recoup tens of millions of Euros in unpaid tax. They let people know that they had the list and offered tax evaders good term ...