Bomb damages Athens stock exchange, one hurt

[KurtFF8]

Source (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090902/wl_nm/us_greece_explosion_10)


By Renee Maltezou Renee Maltezou – 2 hrs 3 mins ago
ATHENS (Reuters) – A car bomb blew up outside the Athens stock exchange on Wednesday, damaging the building extensively and slightly wounding one woman, in what police suspect was a new attack by a leftist or anarchist group.
The Athens bourse opened normally despite the blast, which blew out windows on several floors of the building and hurled debris hundreds of meters (yards) away, setting eight nearby vehicles ablaze.
Police said a home-made bomb exploded at the same time outside a government building in the northern city of Thessaloniki, causing minor damage but no injuries. It was not clear if the two attacks were connected.
Leftist and anarchist groups have carried out several attacks on police and businesses since December 2008, when the police shooting of a teenager sparked Greece's worst riots in decades. Police suspect one such group planted the bourse bomb.
"All evidence shows it was a terrorist attack," said police spokesman Panayiotis Stathis, as anti-terrorist police gathered evidence from the cordoned-off area and checked video footage. "We have no claim of responsibility yet."
An anonymous caller warned a Greek newspaper of the attack, whose apparent aim was to damage the building but not people. The injured woman was a cleaner working in a nearby building.
Police said the makeshift time bomb contained about 15 kg (33 lb) of explosive material, planted in a white van on a side street beside the exchange. A nearby car dealership, other businesses and four apartments were also damaged.
Inside the stock exchange, offices were strewn with broken glass and desks covered with debris, Reuters TV images showed.
"It's the biggest amount of explosives planted in a car ever to blow up in Greece," said a police official who declined to be named.
LEFTIST MILITANT GROUP
Police said the bomb resembled those planted by the leftist Revolutionary Struggle, Greece's most militant group, which emerged in September 2003 after the capture of the November 17 group.
In 2007 it fired a grenade at the U.S. embassy, hitting its facade, and earlier this year it shot and seriously wounded a police officer outside the Culture Ministry.
The Athens stock exchange opened at 0730 GMT and stocks were trading down by 1.44 percent at 1345 GMT. Athens and Nicosia share a trading platform.
"The major blast that occurred outside the Athens exchange has hurt the building but that has not affected at all the operation of our market," Athens Stock Exchange Chairman Spyros Kapralos told Reuters.
Leftist and anarchist guerrilla groups have claimed responsibility for several attacks this year on businesses, cars and police, culminating in the assassination of a policeman in his car in June by the Rebel Sect group.
Imitating the November 17 group, which killed 23 Greeks and foreigners in 27 years but avoided hurting bystanders, other Greek guerrilla groups usually strike at night when businesses are closed to avoid alienating the public.


Almost like a mix between WU tactics and the early American Anarchist actions.

[Bitter Ashes]

I just saw this on the news. I'm even more infuriated with the media now.
Theodoros, a leftist demonstrator, was held almost to the point of death and there wasnt even a whisper on the mainstream media. The news was filled with stories about the Lockerbie bomber bieng released instead and thier disgust about over-lax justice systems instead. It wasnt even as if they were ignoring Greece's news over here because they were also reporting on the wildfires "threatening Greek buisnesses".
A bomb goes off and suddenly they're all over it and sooooo eager to tell the world that "leftist or anarchist groups are likely responsible".
GRRRR!!! :cursing:

[OneNamedNameLess]

Thanks for the extra info on this. I spotted a little article on this in the international section of my local paper. It didn't mention any leftist group as the group responsible has not yet been confirmed. Does anyone know if the police have managed to infiltrate this group yet? I have not heard of any arrests of Revolutionary Struggle members yet since December. I imagine they operate with a small number of people.

[KurtFF8]

BBC Article (video of the aftermath on the article):



Investigators scour the bomb site
A bomb has exploded outside the Athens stock exchange, slightly injuring a female passer-by and damaging the building, police say.
The bomb - which set fire to several cars - was hidden in a stolen van.
Another bomb went off outside a government building in Thessaloniki, causing minor damage and no injuries.
The blasts may be the work of a Greek extremists' group, Revolutionary Struggle, says the BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens.
Earlier this year the group claimed responsibility for two bombs aimed at the American Citibank group.
Flying glass
A warning of the Athens explosion was telephoned to a local newspaper, enabling police to seal off the area in the west of Athens before the bomb went off.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46304000/jpg/_46304363_007880629-1.jpg Several cars were set on fire by the explosion

The windows at the bourse were blown out, and a neighbouring car dealership was damaged along with nearby trees and parked cars.
One passing woman was slightly injured by flying glass, but there were no injuries inside the building and the stock exchange opened as normal.
"We know for the moment that there is damage to a number of staff workstations and desks, but the core operations are up and running," a bourse spokesman told AFP.
The bomb in Thessaloniki caused minor damage around the ministry responsible for Greece's two northern provinces of Macedonia and Thrace.
In a letter to a satirical newspaper, Revolutionary Struggle had promised more attacks against economic targets.
It said: "We need to rid ourselves for good of all the scum of economic and political power so that humanity can free itself from these criminals."
Greece has been dogged by unrest since police shot a teenager dead last December.
The death sparked the country's worst riots in decades, leading to clashes between police and protesters in the weeks that followed.
Are you in Greece? Have you been affected by the issues raised in this story? Send us your comments using the form below.
A selection of your comments may be published, displaying your name and location unless you state otherwise in the box below.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8233054.stm

[RadioRaheem84]

Can someone update me on the situation in Greece? Is there an active uprising going on over there or something, or is it just an extreme left wing group that are using terrorist/former-anarchist tactics?

[F9]

Not an active uprising, there are some parades etc, but nothing huge.Those are terrorist actions, which i truly cant understand..Why waste ammunition on useless things that offer nothing beside turn the state against you and let further regulations.?

I can see why they are doing this, what they feel etc, i just think they are active in the wrong way.There are better times to use those guns, and it seems now its not and the best time.

As for media coverage... Pfffft old news...

[RadioRaheem84]

Not an active uprising, there are some parades etc, but nothing huge.Those are terrorist actions, which i truly cant understand..Why waste ammunition on useless things that offer nothing beside turn the state against you and let further regulations.?

I can see why they are doing this, what they feel etc, i just think they are active in the wrong way.There are better times to use those guns, and it seems now its not and the best time.

As for media coverage... Pfffft old news...


But what is going in Greece that requires acts of terrorism? Is the Greek government beyond corrupt at this point? Is it neo-liberal reforms? What?

[Comrade B]

NY Times article on this (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/world/europe/03greece.html?ref=world)


I can see why they are doing this, what they feel etc, i just think they are active in the wrong way.There are better times to use those guns, and it seems now its not and the best time.
I imagine that they got the stock exchange closed for the day, a small move, but it is a nice little slap to capitalism. If they could continue attacks in the area for a while it would be interesting, and have a much more drastic effect.

[n0thing]

Stupid. Bombs are unpredictable, and this sort of terrorism doesn't really work anyway. And is pretty ethically questionable.
Although looking at their history, they seem to have a pretty clean record on civilian casualties. As in they don't have any. This injury appears to be the first civilian injury in their 6 years of operation.

They're supposed to have split off from the Revolutionary Organization 17th November (no civilian casualties there either), which would make them marxists rather than anarchists.

[Eat the Rich]

These guerilla acts, disconnected as they are from the workers movement and organizations can only be dangerous to the movement. After attacks like these, the Greek capitalist state finds excuses for new "anti-terror" laws, that are being enforced against the workers and youth.

I am not against this action from a moral standopoint, but only from the standpoint of the interests of the working class movement. Also the fact that a cleaning worker was injured after this attack, makes me furious against this petit-bourgeois "anarcho-guerilla" group.

[Bitter Ashes]

These guerilla acts, disconnected as they are from the workers movement and organizations can only be dangerous to the movement. After attacks like these, the Greek capitalist state finds excuses for new "anti-terror" laws, that are being enforced against the workers and youth.

That's usualy one of the "objectives" of terrorism. The general idea is to cause the populance to hate the goverment by pushing the goverment's hand to act in an unpopular way and by showing that the goverment is incapable of protecting them. Terrorism isnt usualy about revenge, or vendettas and if that's the motive for an attack it's called something else that my brain cant remember at 5am. Of course, anyone who takes part in any form of assymetrical warfare these days is given the label terrorist, regardless of thier tactics, or motives. If the Vietnam War was going on right now, the NVA, let alone the VC, would probably have been reffered to as terrorists in the media...

[F9]

But what is going in Greece that requires acts of terrorism? Is the Greek government beyond corrupt at this point? Is it neo-liberal reforms? What?


Whats happening?Poverty, immigrants are getting beaten by cops and fascists who dont hesitate to attack small children or anyone.Organized attacks at leftist squads, bars and places with chemicals, tear gasses and everything.Prosecutions on leftists for absolutely anything they can get.Police corruption and "abuse", beating people in jail, rape..
Economy of the country is absolutely shit, half greece is on fire, and there are thoughts that this were done in order to build more places, they didnt managed the fire.
State pushes more and more laws and restrictions against leftists and anyone dares to "protest".
Basically and generally this happens...

[Bitter Ashes]

It's also worth saying that I've been to Greece Islands a few times, mostly away from the tourist resorts (I did stay a couple of days in Laganas once and Skiathos town too once too though) and I can comment that, in my experiance, the Greeks have a much better community consciousness than we have in the UK. Everybody seemed to know everybody else and were very eager to help each other out at a moment's notice. It was a scale that I havent witnessed in even the most rural areas of England or Wales. I can easily imagine that leftist ideals, even if they were unable to name them, would be very popular compared to the UK or USA, where the emphasis seems to be promoting the indivudual, rather than the community.

[Comrade B]

This injury appears to be the first civilian injury in their 6 years of operation.
You consider security guards civilians? Or are you talking about the person that got a bit hurt from the glass... The New York Times doesn't even mention two injuries, I am guessing the person just got some scratches.

This is not a 'terrorist' act as most of you are calling it, it is an act of sabotage. The target was the stock exchange, not a hospital, not a school, not even a business filled with ordinary workers. It was a structure devoted to maintaining capitalism, which the called in to warn about the blast first, as to prevent injuries.
If this is a terrorist act, so is any anti-capitalist action.

[Eat the Rich]

That's usualy one of the "objectives" of terrorism. The general idea is to cause the populance to hate the goverment by pushing the goverment's hand to act in an unpopular way and by showing that the goverment is incapable of protecting them. Terrorism isnt usualy about revenge, or vendettas and if that's the motive for an attack it's called something else that my brain cant remember at 5am. Of course, anyone who takes part in any form of assymetrical warfare these days is given the label terrorist, regardless of thier tactics, or motives. If the Vietnam War was going on right now, the NVA, let alone the VC, would probably have been reffered to as terrorists in the media...

Wrong. These acts of individual terrorism actually gives a point of support for the government, especially with the backward layers of the working class and the petit-bourgeoisie. So these acts create support for such measures such as 'anti-terrorist' laws, which essentialy harm the working class and student movement (through increased repression etc).

Terrorist acts were used many times in the history of resistance against capitalism. What the experience proved is that they are both ineffective and counter-productive, starting with the Narodniks in Czarist Russia, up to the Red Brigades in Italy and 17N in Greece. These 'shortcuts' aimed at creating a mass movement, proved to actually harm the movement by demoralizing, confusing and alienating workers from the revolutionaries.

[Bitter Ashes]

Wrong. These acts of individual terrorism actually gives a point of support for the government, especially with the backward layers of the working class and the petit-bourgeoisie. So these acts create support for such measures such as 'anti-terrorist' laws, which essentialy harm the working class and student movement (through increased repression etc).
That's the point. The intention is for those laws to be passed because whoever passes such laws will become hated. Who do you blame for sus-law in the UK, detention without trial, The Afghan War, Guantanamo Bay, etc? Do you blame Osama Bin Laden, or do you blame the goverment? Before all this anti-terror bull, what was your opinion of Bush? A harmless old baffoon? Certainly not the tyranical image you have in your mind now, or the image that was in the heads of millions of Americans when they abanonded support of the Republican Party in thier droves as a direct result of him.


Terrorist acts were used many times in the history of resistance against capitalism. What the experience proved is that they are both ineffective and counter-productive, starting with the Narodniks in Czarist Russia, up to the Red Brigades in Italy and 17N in Greece. These 'shortcuts' aimed at creating a mass movement, proved to actually harm the movement by demoralizing, confusing and alienating workers from the revolutionaries.
I'm not a big fan of terrorism either tbh, as I dont think that any benefits can justify targetting non-combattants with an attack. As pointed out above though, this isnt a terrorist attack though.

[Kukulofori]

Fuck yes!

We don't need to worry about this populist noise about alienating the working class or whatever. With revolutionary politics, if you're going to alienate someone based on identity politics you don't need them on your side anyway. This is a direct attack on capital, and that is good.