Global protest camps and Greek General Strike.

I just mentioned the popular camp of Hong-Kong but there is much more going on right now all around the world.

For example European citizens (less so Belgians, it seems) have camped in Brussels and attempted to do so in the EU district  (but kept off by police). Another hotspot in Europe is Madrid, which is shown as short documentary film by Lucille Caballero and Marta Arias (English subtitles but no talk anyhow).

Some other places (examples, not exhaustive) with reported camps or recent large protests are Barcelona (massive), Frankfurt, London or Berlin (a longer list of O-15 protests can be found in my Sunday's review).

Greek General Strike

But the real hotspot in Europe is Greece, where the class war is way beyond the camps and marches but rather total and extreme. In the Mediterranean country today is the first of two general strike journeys, which can be followed in English partly via Contra Info.

Among these it is the occupation of the Prefecture of Rethymnon (Crete) by the Assembly of Workers. In principle, when we reach the boiling point of real revolution, this is what should happen everywhere: Popular Assemblies taking over the obsolete bourgeois non-representative and delegitimized institutions. So this takeover of Crete is really, I hope, a hail to the near future.

Rise up!, say the People of Crete.

In Heraklion, the regional capital of the island, two TV stations were occupied by the workers at central hours, forcing the emission of pro-strike messages, as you can see in this one and this other videos (in Greek).

In Kavalas, Macedonia, the Labor Center is also occupied.

Athens dawned today occupied by 10,000 police agents. That was also the number (10,0000) that the demo in the second Greek city, Thessaloniki, gathered... and also in the Thessalian cities of Volos and Larissa, as well as in Heraklion. 5000 were reported in Patras and Kavala, 3000 in Agrinio and Kerkyra (Corfu), more than a thousand in Lesvos and Serres.

No numbers are reported for Athens other than "huge", "unprecedented". Clashes were reported in the afternoon, not just between police and demonstrators but also with alleged football hooligans (Nazis) and between Stalinists (who gathered very large numbers) and other protesters.

Athens today

Clashes have also been reported in Thessaloniki and other cities. The Labor Center of Thessaloniki is also under popular occupation.

Mainstream media ignores what is happening.

Update: some very impressive BBC and RT videos of the concentration and clashes in Syntagma Square, Athens, with the Parliament nearing storming. They agree that is the largest number concentrated in the plaza they have witnessed.

Italy and North America

But the situation is also hot in Italy where discredited far-right PM and corporate monopolist Silvio Berlusconi has gone in rampage against activists all around Italy breaking the legal limitations on the pretext of the recent clashes. No detentions were performed but illegal home searches happened all around the country ··> Contra Info.

In the USA, the Occupy movement continues as well, with many arrested in a protest before Bank of America, also 19 arrested in Raleigh, North Carolina, dozens in Phoenix, Arizona, popular actor Danny Glover addressing the participants in Oakland, California, and massive protests reported (among other places) in Los Angeles, New York City, etc.