On 8/1/14 the Greek government organized festivities for taking over the presidency of the EU. The protest organized by radical left organizations in Athens has been banned by the police on purely political grounds. The organizations of the left that organize the protest have decided to defy the ban and go on with the demonstrations. Several trade unions and political parties of the left denounced the ban.

Pavlos Antonopoulos, a trade unionist from the board of the union of civil servants (ADEDY) and member of the left wing organization ANTARSYA, was arrested and handcuffed for defying the demonstration ban. At Omonia Square in the center of Athens, several hundreds of protesters defied the ban of demonstrations against the festivities for the Greek EU Presidency. They were attacked with tear gas by the riot police. Pavlos Antonopoulos trial will be tomorrow.

The plot

For an unknown reason, counter-terrorism services took over the case of the robbery. Few days later, Tasos Theofilou, an anarcho-communist, got arrested.

Counter-terrorism services claim that they were led to Tasos Theofilou, after an anonymous call they received, during which somebody mentioned that one of the culprits of the armed robbery in Paros was named Tasos, who is involved in terrorism. Additionally, the anonymous caller also mentioned where Tasos Theofilou used to live.

Few days later, counter-terrorism services claimed that they received a new phone call, from the same anonymous person, during which they were told where Tasos Theofilou was at that time. The funny thing about this story, is that counter-terrorism services claim that they don’t have number identification.

Plainclothes policemen detained Tasos Theofilou and in order to justify the violent fingerprinting and DNA sampling, they accused him with vagrancy and resisting arrest

Counter-terrorism services claimed that a hat was dropped from the culprit of the robbery, which had DNA on it that matched Tasos’ DNA. In the last few years, every anarchist that gets arrested, he is accused automatically of being a member in the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.

Usually, the process of DNA matching can only prove the acquittal and not the guilt of someone. As an example, DNA from the skin of a person can only prove that this DNA does not belong to millions of people, but it can’t prove 100% the identity of the person that it came from.

Despite all these, in the case of Tasos Theofilou, it is really strange that fact that

1) no other DNA was found on the hat.

2) a scarf and a cell phone was dropped from the culprit of the robbery, but there wasn’t any DNA of Tasos Theofilou.

3) there wasn’t any fingerprint at the crime scene, despite the fact that the culprit touched objects inside the bank that cannot be moved, without any gloves.

4) counter-terrorism services gave out photos of the robbery, where the culprit appeared on the photos, could match the characteristics of millions of people, but not Tasos Theofilou.

The criminalization of personal relationships

The second section of accusations that Tasos Theofilou is facing, is about his impending participation in the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire, an accusation we see pretty often imputed when it comes to anarchist prisoners.

Counter-terrorism services claimed that Tasos Theofilou looked like a person that could be a member of CCF. So, this accusation is based only in policemen’s guessings.

In other words…

If you are an anarchist, you have guns and you are automatically a member of CCF.

If you are an anarchist and you have friends who are members of CCF then you are a member too.

Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?

The greek Media

Greek media,  started contributing to the lies of the counter-terrorism services by calling Tasos Theofilou a murder and a member of the Conspirancy of Cells of Fire. All these vulgar accusations by the media occured not just before his trial, but even before any charges against him were laid.

In order to creat of a monstrous profile of Tasos Theofilou, media started calling his house a bomb lab and at the same time they kept posting photos of him worn down by insomnia. Greek media also used a blog of T.T where he used to write fiction stories, that were presented like real stories that actually happened.

The case of Tasos Theofilou is being used even politically till now, since he used to have “friends” on his facebook page who “belonged” to the SYRIZA party. Tasos Theofilou during an interview claims that this plot that was set up against him can only be based on media and believes that if media didn’t exist, he wouldn’t even be arrested at the first place.

The trial

After a 5 month postponing, on Monday 11/11/2013  the trial of Tasos Theofilou will take place in Athens, where there will be also a gathering of people in solidarity with T.T. at 09:00

On twitter: Hashtag #Free_TassiosThita   the twitter account of Tasos Theofilou is @TassiosThita

Original article from @_Giant_

The pre-dawn operation by riot police started shortly after 4am local time Thursday. Only a handful of former workers were in the building at the time, authorities said.

The building had been occupied by the protesting ex-employees for the past five months.

The complex is in the northern Athens suburb of Agia Paraskevi.

Greece‘s conservative-led government abruptly closed ERT on 11 June and fired all 2,700 staff, citing the need to cut costs due to the country’s severe financial crisis.

Sacked workers occupied the building for months, producing unauthorised broadcasts.

The government has since opened another broadcaster named EDT.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/nov/07/greek-riot-police-evict-ert

The conservative government of Antonis Samaras claims to be cracking down on “extremism”. But what skeletons does the Prime Minister hide in his closet?

Video by Ross Domoney, Klara Jaya Brekke and Dimitris Dalakoglou for the City at a Time of Crisis research project. Illustration by Latuff.


The Greek Prime Minister, Mr Samaras, is currently visiting the USA. He arrived here in the immediate aftermath of the arrest of the leadership of Golden Dawn, the notorious Greek neo-Nazi party. But what skeletons does Mr Samaras have in his closet?

Mr Samaras’ speech on October 2 at the Peterson Institute in Washington, DC gives us a first answer to that question. There, the Prime Minister claimed that his government crushes extremism, he talked about the leadership of Golden Dawn which had been, at that time, driven to jail. However, later during the Q&A session he also added that his government was not quite done; that he would also deal with the other extreme, the one that talks of leaving the EU and NATO — directly implying the Left opposition.

His statements pose at least three issues. One, Mr Samaras makes clear that his government had accepted the illegal activity of Golden Dawn so far, or that it did not have the will to deal with it. Two, he admits that the government intervenes in the system of justice which supposedly is independent. Three, he promotes once again his plan to crush the Left opposition which disagrees with his government and which protests in public.

The incident that triggered the arrests of Golden Dawn’s most prominent members was the assassination of the antifascist musician Pavlos Fyssas in Nikaia, Athens. Fyssas was the first Greek to be killed by Golden Dawn since the group launched its violent campaign against migrants and — to a lesser extent — against antifascists in 2009. Less than 24 hours after Mr Samaras’ speech at the Peterson Institute, the majority of the arrested Golden Dawn members were released from detention, awaiting trial. On their way out from the court, they kicked and abused journalists under the eyes of the police.

The simplistic theory of the “two extremes” has been promoted by the Greek nexus of power ever since Mr Samaras came to office. On that very same day on September 16, 2012, two of the country’s largest newspapers (the pro-government To Vima and Kathimerini), published two texts by their key editors with very similar titles, making an identical argument. Even if this is a total coincidence, their argument was a dangerous legitimization of the far-right. In sum, the articles suggest that the emergence of Golden Dawn provides an “opportunity” for the state to eliminate the “two extremes” of Greek politics.

According to the opinion of government officials, the antifascists comprised that hypothetical other “extreme”. So the minister of public order, Mr Dendias, as part of Mr Samaras’ government, attacked those who stand up to racism and fascism. In 2012, a political action called the antifascist motorcades began. These were big groups of people on motorbikes riding around the areas of Athens where most attacks against migrants were occurring, aiming to stop them, since police did little to help the victims. In September 2012, DELTA motorbike police attacked the antifascists, arresting, beating and later torturing them.

Allegedly DELTA and the riot police force (MAT) are the two police units with the closest links to Golden Dawn. On the day following the arrests, MAT attacked those who had gathered at Athens’ courthouse to express their solidarity to the antifascists, arresting even more of them. This series of arrests brought to a temporary halt an action that was aimed at stopping what were, by then, daily racist attacks in those parts of the city. From that time on, the lives of several immigrants — and now one local antifascist — have been claimed by neo-Nazis on the streets of the Athens.

A few months later, in December 2012 and January 2013, some of the most prominent social centers in Athens were evicted by police. These had been the physical and cognitive cornerstones of the city’s antifascist struggle. Additionally, they were located in those parts of the city center where Golden Dawn and other neo-Nazi groups systematically attack migrants. Soon after these evictions, similar raids occurred in such antifascist centers throughout the country.

Since Mr Samaras became Prime Minister the city has been subjected to the police operation “Xenios Zeus”. Since its inauguration in August 2012, the operation has seen the detention of over 80.000 migrants, the vast majority having broken no law according to police press releases. Eventually, most of the innocent migrants have been released with the exception of around 5.000 who were imprisoned, mostly due to lack of documents, in new detention centers built across the debt-ridden country.

Targeting a substantial proportion of the population of Greek cities simply due to their skin color marks the adoption of Golden Dawn’s agenda by Mr Samaras’ government. Golden Dawn claims that migrants are dangerous and Mr Samaras’ New Democracy (ND) has followed this logic, detaining innocent migrants in the thousands. In his pre-election campaign, Mr Samaras claimed that illegal migrants have become “the tyrants of society” and that Greeks subsequently have to “liberate our cities from illegal migrants”, once again repeating the Golden Dawn rhetoric.

Mr Samaras’ party in May 2013 made a gift to Golden Dawn by blocking the anti-racist bill, which would criminalize racism and the denial of the Holocaust. Golden Dawn on the other hand provided aid to Mr Samaras’ government on at least two debatable decisions since June 2012: first, when the government shut down overnight the Public Television, and second when it applied further tax exceptions to the Greek ship-owning companies.

Just one week before Fyssas’ assassination in Nikaia, Babis Papadimitriou, a renowned pro-ND journalist, suggested that we need to discuss a conservative coalition government with the participation of a “more serious” version of Golden Dawn. Simultaneously, prominent ND members, including Vyron Polydoras and Failos Kranidiotis, have expressed their positive feelings toward the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn. This may come as little surprise to those familiar with Greek politics. By this point in time, the Greek government is at its furthest right position since the fall of the military dictatorship back in 1974. Note, among others, the inclusion of Adonis Georgiadis or Makis Voridis in the current parliamentary team of New Democracy — both are best described as ultra-right.

Clearly, the assassination of Pavlos Fyssas and the charges brought against the Golden Dawn leadership have dramatically altered the political atmosphere in Greece, indefinitely postponing, one would think, such collaboration. Mr Samaras might portray himself as a combatant against the extremism of Golden Dawn. But how, then, can he explain the very strong ideological and practical links between his own party’s rhetoric and policies, and those of the neo-Nazis?

Dimitris Dalakoglou is member of the crisis-scape.net research team and a member of Occupied London collective.

When you’ve been groped by the TSA, what’s a little NSA spying?

BY DAVID RIEFF

On their face, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s secret mass electronic data surveillance system should have created a political firestorm for the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress. Not only have PRISM and related programs been used systematically to collect information about Americans with the cooperation of most major Internet and telephone companies, but when news of the program leaked, government officials first insisted that the programs had only tangential domestic implications because they targeted foreigners outside the United States — reassurances that were quickly undone by further revelations. In other words, the government outright lied to the public and was caught in its own lies.

Despite anger at Snowden and apocalyptic claims by government officials that he had gravely undermined their ability to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, it turned out that the “secret” he revealed appeared to be one of the most broadly shared secrets in the world. The White House knew, members of the Senate and House intelligence committees knew, and major U.S. allies like Britain and Germany not only knew but in some cases collaborated in the effort. Companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft may not have known everything, but unquestionably they knew something. The only group that did not know about PRISM was the general public.

And yet, apart from some voices from the antiwar left and the libertarian right (on foreign policy there is considerable overlap between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement), the reaction from this deceived public for the most part has been strangely muted. It is not just the somewhat contradictory nature of the polls taken this summer, which have shown the public almost evenly split on whether the seemingly unlimited scope of these surveillance programs was doing more harm than good. It is akso that, unlike on issues such as immigration and abortion, much of the public outrage presupposed by news coverage of the scandal does not, in reality, seem to exist.

It is true that the revelations have caused at least some on the mainstream right, both in Congress and in conservative publications like National Review, to describe the NSA’s activities as a fundamental attack on the rights of American citizens. The trend so worries more hawkish Republicans that one of their leaders, Rep. Peter King of New York, recently warned that “too many Republicans and conservatives have become Michael Moores.” For their part, mainstream Democrats find themselves in the uncomfortable position of either defending what many of them view as indefensible or causing trouble for a beleaguered president who seems increasingly out of his depth on most questions of national security and foreign policy.

The press can certainly be depended on to pursue the story, not least because of a certain “guild” anger over the detention this week of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, by British police at London’s Heathrow Airport, and the British government’s decision to force the Guardian to destroy the disks it had containing Snowden’s data — in the paper’s London office with two officials from CGHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA, looking on. But while the surveillance scandal has both engaged and enraged the elites, when all is said and done, the general public does not seem nearly as concerned.

The question, of course, is, why this is the case? In an age dominated by various kinds of techno-utopianism — the conviction that networking technologies inherently are politically and socially emancipatory and that massive data collection will unleash both efficiency in business and innovation in science — the idea that Big Data might be your enemy and not your friend is antithetical to everything we have been encouraged to believe. A soon-to-be-attained critical mass of algorithms and data has been portrayed as allowing individuals to customize the choices they make throughout their lives. Now, the datasets and algorithms that were supposed to set us free seem instead to have been turned against us. All together, techno-utopianism is looking a bit dented of late, particularly that variant of it that proclaimed social media to be at the heart of the revolutions of the Arab Spring. At the very least, the coup in Egypt seems to suggest that one certainly doesn’t need Twitter to launch a counterrevolution. But while the ideology of technology as liberation may be bloodied, it is as yet unbowed.

The truth is that whether it is in the service of emancipation or repression, most people who have access to the new Internet and other communications technologies can no longer really imagine living without them. They feel — and in many important ways they are — not just pleasurable but empowering. At the same time, except for some hackers and programmers, this pleasure and empowerment comes only at the discretion of governments and those corporations that control the biggest computers in a network. The pioneer of virtual-reality technology turned critic of digital utopianism, Jaron Lanier, put it well when he said that “every time you post a tweet attacking the 1 percent, you enrich some member of the 1 percent.” For most people, privacy, too, has become the “shining artifact of the past” that Leonard Cohen once sang about. Indeed, anyone with a mobile phone understands that everything from their bank records to the products they buy online to the telephone numbers they dial and the addresses to which they send emails are recorded somewhere — whether by a private business, their own employers, or, of course, the government.

Viewed from this perspective, is it the general public’s comparative lack of indignation over the NSA surveillance scandal that is surprising, or is the real shocker that journalists, activists, and politicians feel so outraged? Yes, the U.S. government is indeed the Biggest Brother of them all, but most people go about their daily business being spied on and having their data mined by any number of small- and medium-sized brothers. Of course, someone who is outraged by the attempts to jail the leakers and prosecute and intimidate their journalist and activist colleagues would insist, and rightly so, that these sorts of things should not be permitted in a democracy. But the gap between the outrage of the chattering classes and the public’s apathy — or, more likely, resignation — illuminates the essential difference between the elite’s understanding of the world and everyone else’s. To put it starkly, members of an elite tend to believe they can change things; most everyone else knows that, except in a few rare instances, they cannot. In an essential sense, the real question for members of the elite is not, why isn’t the public outraged, but why are we?

It is important to be clear. Does the public take the revelations of the data-mining scandal as an affront to their liberty? Presumably many, perhaps even most, do. But life is so full of affronts about which one would be an utter fool to imagine that one can do anything. The automated recordings through which one so often has to pay one’s bills, arrange an appointment, or try to get information (even whom to speak with to get that information) are an affront. The endless passwords, PINs, and the like are an affront (and are also, by definition, recorded on corporate databases). The ubiquitous CCTV cameras in city centers, a great many of which were installed well before the Sept. 11 attacks as crime-prevention and traffic-control measures, are an affront. And of course, all the petty and not so petty inconveniences and impositions of the post-9/11 world — from the preposterous demand that one show ID when entering not just a government building but almost any office building in America, to the shameless slovenliness and rudeness of Transportation Security Administration employees at every U.S. airport — are flagrant affronts. Even if the long war against the jihadis were to end tomorrow with total victory for the United States, can anyone seriously suggest that any of these measures would be lessened, let alone canceled?

The great myth of the past 25 years may be empowerment through technology. But the great truth of the past 25 years has been the rise of the surveillance state, which grows stronger every day — both because of technology itself and because of the control that states and huge corporations have over the technology that people depend upon and love. On one level, everyone knows this, but whether it’s because they believe themselves to be immune or because they simply never imagined that the surveillance state had become so all-encompassing, the elites seem to have been particularly surprised and therefore indignant over the scope of the NSA’s spying, the ardor with which governments have defended these practices, and their foaming rage at having to defend them in public at all. “This is the way the world ends,” T. S. Eliot famously wrote in his great poem The Hollow Men, “not with a bang but a whimper.”

Welcome to the post-democratic world. Oh, and by the way, you’ve been living in it for quite some time now.

 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/22/why_nobody_cares_about_the_surveillance_state_nsa?page=0,0

A US military judge has sentenced Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison. Manning faced up to 90 years behind bars, while prosecutors sought to put the whistleblower away for a minimum of six decades.

Manning will be credited with the 1,294 days he spent in pre-trial confinement plus an additional 112 days. He was also dishonorably discharged, saw his rank reduced to private and was forced to forfeit all pay and benefits. No additional fine, however, were levied against him. Manning will have to serve a third of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.

Col. Denise Lind, who on Tuesday began her deliberations in the court-martial case, announced the sentence shortly after 10am local time (14:00 GMT).  Lind read out the sentence succinctly and provided no other statement as a gaggle of journalist’s waited in anticipation. Flanked by his lawyers, Manning, 25, stood at attention and appeared not to react when  Lind announced the punishment, AP reports. He further made no statement after his fate was announced.

Immediately after sentencing, Amnesty International called on President Barack Obama to commute Manning’s sentence to time already served to allow his immediate release.

Manning’s lawyer David E. Coombs had asked the judge for leniency, requesting a sentence that did not “rob him of his youth.” Coombs argued that Manning’s leaks had not endangered the US.

The prosecution had sought a 60-year sentence, arguing the stiff term would deter others from leaking classified information.

“There’s value in deterrence,” prosecutor Capt. Joe Morrow said in his closing argument on Monday.

Protesters with the Bradley Manning Support Network hold a vigil while waiting to hear Manning’s sentence on August 21, 2013 outside the gate of Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. (AFP Photo / T.J. Kirkpatrick)

Last week the 25-year-old Manning apologized for the “unintended consequences” of his actions, saying he believed he was “going to help people, not hurt people.”

He told the court at Fort Meade, Maryland, that “the last three years have been a learning experience for me.”

WikiLeaks responded to Manning’s mea culpa, saying “the only currency this military court will take is Bradley Manning’s humiliation.” The anti-secrecy group continued that Manning’s “forced” apology was done in the hopes of “shaving a decade or more off his sentence.”

The soldier was convicted last month of 20 charges including espionage, theft and violating computer regulations. Manning was found not guilty, however, of the most serious charge – aiding the enemy – which entailed a potential sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Manning faced up to 90 years in prison for passing on more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and State Department diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2010.

He also leaked video of ‘Collateral Murder’ video, which shows a US helicopter attack in Baghdad in which at least nine non-combatants were killed, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.

Manning is entitled to appeal against any verdict handed to him by the court-martial in the Army Court of Criminal Appeal within six months.

Supporters of US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning react after attending his sentencing hearing at a US military court facility at Fort Meade, Maryland on August 21, 2013. (AFP Photo / Saul Loeb)

 

 

http://rt.com/usa/manning-sentence-years-jail-785/

In Greece, a country crippled by debt and years of failed leadership, a young filmmaker went inside the hate-fueled, rebellious political party known as “Golden Dawn” to capture its members’ vocal hostility against immigrants in a society on the brink.

Greece’s ancient cities, where tourists can wander the shadows of the Acropolis and marvel at the origins of democracy and philosophy, are also dotted with shuttered businesses, gutted neighborhoods and vast unemployment — more than 60 percent of young people are without a job — causing widespread public fury.

Out of that vacuum of rage and suspicion marched Golden Dawn from the far-right, looking for someone to blame.

 

Jake Whitman/ABC

PHOTO: “Nightline’s” Bill Weir, left, talks with filmmaker Konstantinos Georgousis

 

“Nightline’s” Bill Weir talked with filmmaker Konstantinos Georgousis, who managed to charm his way into the inner circle of Golden Dawn. Over the course of a month, Georgousis captured unguarded moments of the group’s sheer racist hatred toward Greece’s immigrant community in his film, “The Cleaners.”

“These parasites drink our water, eat our food and breathe our Greek air,” Alekos Plomaritis, who was a Golden Dawn candidate running for office at the time, says in Greek, translated into English, in Georgousis’ film. “They are primitive, miasmas and subhuman. We don’t care about their existence. We are ready to open the ovens. We will turn them into soap, but we may get a rash.”

To the “Golden Dawn” members, their country’s problems lie with anyone with dark skin and foreign blood. As tensions rise, immigrants in Athens are faced with resentment in graffiti on building walls and from the fluttering red and black Golden Dawn flags that feature an ancient Greek geometric-era symbol.

“It kind of resembles the swastika,” Georgousis said.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that analyzes and evaluates migration and refugee policies across the world, analysts believe that between 1 million and 1.3 million immigrants live in Greece, making up as much as 10 percent of the population. However, the institute notes that the nation’s economic crisis and growing xenophobia against immigrants have reduced immigrant registration in recent years.

There were 447,658 registered foreign-born citizens in 2011, according to the Migration Policy Institute, but it is estimated that more than 1 million immigrants arrived in Greece over the past two decades.

While Georgousis’ film sparked outrage among a vast majority of Greeks and prompted an investigation by Greece’s criminal prosecutor, Golden Dawn is considered the country’s third most popular and fastest-growing political party. It won 18 of the 300 seats in parliament during the last election.

“There is a part of the Greek elite that supports the party,” Georgousis said. “Maybe they think that is the future, you know, they will have more power so it’s good to have good relations. I don’t know exactly, but it’s clear that [Golden Dawn has] a partial support from the elite.”

Georgousis said that instead of embracing the thoughtful democratic legacy of Plato and Aristotle, today’s young Greeks are more enamored with the legends of warrior Spartans.

Violent, race-based attacks are becoming more frequent and it’s likely that many go unreported.

Golden Dawn has held marches through the stalls of immigrant merchants, demanding work papers and trashing wares. The party holds “Greek Only” food drives. One ended with riot police and tear gas. The group also offers natives strong-arm “security” to those living among “outsiders.”

Golden Dawn members have been known to bar immigrants from churches and kick immigrant children out of playgrounds.

“Leave now, no more ball game, that’s it, leave the place,” one Golden Dawn member is seen yelling at a group of children on a playground in Georgousis’ film. “The soil has to be replaced because of the filth. If you touch it you will get a rash. The filth of foreigners.”

Recently, Golden Dawn has signaled it would like to go global, and has opened offices in Germany and Australia. A website has appeared claiming to be the hub for the group’s New York City office.

“Nightline’s” repeated email requests for interviews from Golden Dawn members were met with an angry “No.”

“You can blame your fellow mainstream media cohorts for that, who do nothing but shamelessly slander us,” one email response to “Nightline” said.

But as Georgousis’ film shows, Golden Dawn sees the blame for Greece’s woes spreading far beyond its shores. The party claims the economic crisis in Greece is not just caused by immigrants in Athens, but in Chicago and “especially New York,” Georgousis said.

“They keep posting articles that, ‘it’s the Jewish capital that has brought Greece to this point, which is located in New York,’” he said.

Georgousis said not just Americans but “every logical human being” should be worried about Golden Dawn and the party’s negative influence.

“They already have 7 percent [of the population] in Greece. They could get more, but imagine with the 7 percent they already have, they are causing a lot of trouble,” he said.

“I think if you care about democracy, whether you are American, Greek, Israeli, German or whatever, in any place on the planet, we should stop people like them.”

ABC News’ Lauren Effron contributed to this report

 

http://abcnews.go.com/International/greeces-hostile-golden-dawn-party-filmmaker-captures-unguarded/story?id=19948097&singlePage=true

The Greek police has banned public protests in central Athens on Thursday for the duration of the visit of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a decision the main opposition party Syriza described as “fascist and undemocratic”.

More than 4,000 police officers are on duty for the visit, which followsWednesday’s midnight vote in parliament that will allow the government sack public-sector workers for the fist time.

Police placed parliament and Syntagma Square off limits to protesters, in security measures that were more extensive than those reserved for heads of government. The city’s busiest metro stations were also closed for the day (see below), while traffic restrictions were imposed along the route from Athens airport into the centre.

Schaeuble is due to meet Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and other senior government officials on his long-anticipated trip – his first since the crisis broke out in late 2009.

A police statement issued on Wednesday said a cordon would be set up around the city centre in which “public gatherings and rallies” would be banned between 9am and 8pm.

The cordoned area includes parliament and Syntagma Square, focal points of scores of anti-austerity demonstrations.

Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras accused Samaras of trying to help his fellow conservatives in Germany ahead of the federal election in September.

“Mr Samaras is acting like a manager for the [German] Christian Democrat party, as Mr Schaeuble tours the countryside,” Tsipras said in parliament on Wednesday.

“He is coming here to support his catastrophic policies.”

“This action is fascist and undemocratic. It is inconceivable to have a demonstration and to exclude Syntagma Square. It is inconceivable for any European city,” Panos Skourletis, a Syriza spokesman told the AP.

“If we can’t go there, where are we supposed to go? Varkiza?” he added, referring to a seaside resort near Athens.

Schaeuble’s visit follows three days of massive protests against government plans for mass firings and transfers of public servants.

When Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, visited Athens in October 2012, a much smaller security cordon was imposed.

The country’s two largest union federations said they had no plans to demonstrate Thursday, but Skourletis said members of his party would join protests if any take place.

Striking municipal workers are expected to hold an afternoon rally.

Public transport

Schaeuble’s visit will also affect public transport, with the following metro stations closed at these times:

* Syntagma 9.30am till late
* Evangelismos 9.30am till late
* Katehaki 9.30am-12.30pm and 6pm-midnight
* Megaro Mousikis 9.30am-12.30pm and 6pm-midnight

Trains will pass through these stations. In addition, the tram will not stop or depart from Syntama from 9.30am.

Source: http://www.enetenglish.gr/?i=news.en.politics&id=1284

“To victory! Until the end!”