Greek protesters Dec. 13 attacked a police station and ministry building as well as shops and banks in Athens with petrol bombs in an eighth day of protests following the killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos by police. Several hundred protesters set up burning barricades and attacked police with rocks and flares. The Exarchia district, where the police station was fire-bombed, and the area around Athens Polytechnic University remained the centers of street-fighting. Hundreds of stores have been smashed and looted, and more than 200 people have been arrested in the unrest so far.

Protests against the killing of a youth by police in Athens spread across Europe Dec. 11, as street-fighting in Greece entered its sixth day. At least 30 were arrested in Copenhagen, as masked youth hurled bottles and paint bombs at buildings, police cars and officers. Eleven were arrested, and police officers reportedly injured, in clashes in Madrid and Barcelona. In Moscow and Rome, protesters threw petrol bombs at the Greek embassies. In neighbouring Istanbul, protesters splashed red paint over the facade of the Greek consulate. And in Athens and Thessaloniki, protesters and police continued to trade hurled rocks and tear-gas cannisters, with more shops and banks damaged and windows smashed. The major Greek trade unions have taken up the issue, calling for "the democratization of the police and an end to violent and arbitrary acts by state organs." (The Telegraph, London Times, AFP, Dec. 11)

Critical Mass scores a win over Scotland Yard. From The Telegraph, Dec. 2:

Critical mass can carry on cycling
There is no need for the organisers of a mass cycle ride to give the police notice of their planned destination when there are no organisers and the destination is unplanned, the law lords ruled today.

Last weekend, presumed neo-Nazis firebombed the Cyclops autonomous social center in the Stockholm district of Högdalen, burning the building down. Two days later, on Dec. 1, presumed right-wing militants poured in gasoline through the mail slot into the apartment of a young couple and their child, and set it on fire. The couple are active in the anarcho-syndicalist Swedish Central Workers' Organization (Sveriges Arbetares Central Organisation-SAC), and had recently been "exposed" on the Swedish neo-Nazi website Info-14. All three survived, by climbing down from the balcony of their thrid-floor apartment. (Anarkisterna, Stockholm, Dec. 3)

 AA youth uprising spread in Greece for a second day Dec. 7, with thousands battling police in Athens and Thessaloniki, despite the arrest of two officers over the killing of a 15-year-old boy. At least 34 have been injured and 13 detained in street clashes. Protests erupted after Alexandros Grigoropoulos was shot in Athens' left-wing enclave of Exarchia after the boy allegedly tried to throw a firebomb at a patrol car. As soon as news of his death in a local hospital was confirmed, hundreds of youths in Exarchia began attacking police cars with stones and firebombs, burning dozens of cars and smashing shop windows. Police responded with tear gas, but the uprising quickly spread to Thessaloniki and the resort islands of Crete and Corfu. Tourist zones have been evacuated and streets closed to all traffic. (AlJazeera, Dec. 8)

Several thousand protesters took to the streets of Pristina, Kosova's capital, Dec. 2 to oppose the planned deployment of a European Union judicial mission that many Albanians fear will partition the country. The 2,000-strong mission would be deployed under a plan approved last week by the UN Security Council and accepted by Kosova's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. Critics say the mission violates Kosova's sovereignty and fear that separate chains of command planned for Albanian and Serb police forces would entrench the country's partition along ethnic lines. (NYT, Dec. 3)

Czech Green Party MP Olga Zubová wrote an open letter to US President-elect Barack Obama, asking him to review the US commitment to the planned military radar base on Czech soil for the proposed "missile shield." "For the Czech Republic you as the new president of the United States are bringing hope to three quarters of the Czech population who, in recent polls, have repeatedly stated their disagreement with the intended bilateral missile denfence treaty to station the radar base on Czech soil, which is to be ratified in the near future by Czech parliament," says Zubová in her letter.

On Nov. 11, Poland's Independence Day, the extreme right group National Radical Camp (Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny-ONR) marched in Warsaw, in its second public show of strength this year. ONR also marched in June to commemorate the 1936 anti-Jewish pogrom in Myslenic. Warsaw anti-fascists mobilized to oppose the Independence Day march, launching a 150-strong blockade of the street, with banners reading: "NO PASARAN" and "WARSAW FREE OF FASCISTS." Police brought out a helicopter and a water gun to break the blockade. Protected by the police, the ONR continued their march on a different route. Nobody was arrested, but police took the ID of the anti-fas surrounded by the cordon. (Centrum Informacji Anarchistycnej-CIA, Nov. 11)