More clashes with riot police in Greece over gold mine

Hun­dreds of pro­test­ers in Thes­sa­loni­ki have been in involved anoth­er bat­tle with riot police over plans for a gold mine in north­ern Greece’s Halkidi­ki penin­su­la. One police­man and three pro­test­ers were hurt, while 21 pro­test­ers have been detained. Clash­es between protests and local res­i­dents on one side and police and mine work­ers on the oth­er side have become a reg­u­lar occourance since March when plans for the mine were approved. A mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar gold min­ing project in a near­by area was can­celled a decade ago after sim­i­lar protests.

Below is a trans­la­tion of a recent report about the sit­u­a­tion from Indy­media Athens:

In the moun­tains of Halkidi­ki is a huge dis­as­ter at the expense of Moth­er Nature. The Greek state has sold the rights to exploit the gold beneath the pri­mor­dial forests of dark in the com­pa­ny Eldo­ra­do-Greek Gold. That is why the com­pa­ny has already start­ed the despi­ca­ble work: inten­sive defor­esta­tion of 4,000 hectares of for­est and min­er­al pro­cess­ing plant con­struc­tion between vil­lages Olympiad, Stan, Mary and Great Ieris­sos. The state and the com­pa­ny with the work will take away the life of the for­est itself but also by the thou­sands of ani­mals that live in it, clean ground­wa­ter and soil will be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by tox­ic sub­stances such as cyanide. In sim­ple words, a whole liv­ing world would exter­mi­nat­ed for the prof­it of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ment lead­ers, leav­ing behind con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed land and death.

Res­i­dents not com­pla­cent to the dis­as­ter, from pas­sages such as the Olympics and the Great Pana­gia for decades have been strug­gling against min­ing. This year saw the final autho­riza­tion from the gov­ern­ment and the project has now start­ed. From March there have been on going con­flicts with res­i­dents and defend­ers of the for­est on one side and the police and work­ers of the com­pa­ny on the oth­er.

This dom­i­nant behav­ior of cul­ture over nature is a result of the author­i­tar­i­an men­tal­i­ty of anthro­pocen­trism, arbi­trary belief that man is greater than the nat­ur­al ele­ment sur­rounds him. This con­cept is the result of the alien­ation of man from the nat­ur­al world. With the medi­a­tion of the process of civ­i­liza­tion, the build­ing of cities, states and pow­er rela­tions peo­ple ignore the earth-ani­mal-nature, which is direct­ly tied to the exis­tence and devel­op­ment of the nat­ur­al world.

Habi­tats are threat­ened today direct­ly from the mines not only in Halkidi­ki but oth­er parts of north­ern Greece such as Kilkis and Alexan­droupo­lis. But let’s not fool our­selves, the tech­noc­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism in today’s world are expressed through a glob­al sys­tem of strik­ing any part of the world over sea or land. But espe­cial­ly in coun­tries of the so-called third world, plun­der of nature and poor peo­ple is unthink­able. Giant multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions with the help of state and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions extort­ing indige­nous pop­u­la­tions by any means (war, food crises, finan­cial mea­sures) to accept invest­ments and work with them in exchange for a mea­ger salary and a short and mis­er­able life. With mod­ern engines cut forests, dis­em­bow­el the earth, pol­lute the air, water and soil. This hunt for “trea­sure” whether min­er­als such as gold or ener­gy (oil, gas, coal) is total­ly dead­locked and destruc­tive. The so-called progress of civ­i­liza­tion and the ide­ol­o­gy of devel­op­ment only serve the tem­po­rary exis­tence of the world’s author­i­tar­i­an sys­tem that dis­solves cul­tures but tens of thou­sands of years, primeval forests, ani­mal com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems that promis­es dystopia.

The destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world not only in Greece but also at the glob­al lev­el does not leave us time tol­er­ances of this sit­u­a­tion. Needs as liv­ing crea­tures to deny us the sys­tem dom­i­nates and fight for its destruc­tion. To rede­fine our rela­tion­ship with the nat­ur­al world and to resist that pre­vents us from liv­ing in har­mo­ny with it. The state, the indus­tri­al sys­tem and mazopoi­isi cities need to be destroyed to flour­ish in the debris an indomitable life for peo­ple, ani­mals and nature.

AGAINST THE RAPE OF THE NATURAL WORLD
ANYPOCHORITOS STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION AND FOR TOTAL ANARCHY