FRANCE- Students stop government cuts to Education

Barricades were set up at the entrances to schools across the country, but most of the protests were peaceful.

Protests over the plans -- to revamp the school curriculum, cut classroom hours and slash 13,500 education jobs -- had already turned violent last week, with students clashing with police in several cities.

Early this week the right-wing government, fearing social unrest modelled on the ongoing demonstrations that have engulfed Greece, decided to put the reforms on hold for a year and also to review them.

French high school students blocked train lines and fought with police Thursday, officials said, as they kept up nationwide protests against education reforms despite a government decision to backtrack.

Thirty-eight strikers were arrested after clashes in the city of Lyon -- where a car was burned and several bus shelters smashed up -- that left five police officers and at least one student injured.

Students blocked a high-speed train line in the main station in the nearby city of Dijon, where earlier in the day police arrested about ten youngsters after a bus was stoned and a car overturned.

But high school students were unconvinced that the government would not push through reforms that they see as decimating the education sector.

"Now or in twelve months, we don't want your reform," was a typical slogan on one protestor's banner, many of which called for the resignation of Education Minister Xavier Darcos.

The decision to put the reforms on hold for a year was seen as the government's first major retreat from reform since President Nicolas Sarkozy took office in May 2007 on a platform of sweeping change.

Darcos said this week he had conferred with Sarkozy and that both agreed "this reform project had become a focal point for social movements," and risked snowballing into a political showdown with the government. One Sarkozy knew that he would lose.

ATHENS- Strikers attack Credit firm, Christmas tree, racism

Backed by teachers and unions, the strikers, were joined by immigrant groups, and gathered in central Athens at 1300 GMT.

The march comes as hundreds of schools and several universities remain under occupation by protesters demanding justice for 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos.

The anti-racism demonstration is directed against the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum, a document adopted by European leaders on October 16 that focuses on allowing skilled workers to enter the EU.

It also seeks to make border controls more effective while overhauling asylum policy with refugees increasingly obliged to apply for asylum status from outside the bloc.

The march follows daily protests in Athens and the second city of Thessaloniki over Grigoropoulos' death on December 6 which have regularly degenerated into violence.

Tension was also caused when another teenager, the son of a union leader, was wounded in a mysterious shooting incident on Wednesday night.

In the latest protest on Friday, masked youths smashed up the French cultural institute after students and VoteStrike activists marched in the western district of Peristeri to condemn the second shooting.

Greek Farmers Block Bulgarian Border

The main border checkpoint between Bulgaria and Greece is blocked again, due to protests of Greek farmers 10 kilometers down south, the Bulgarian police from the region of Blagoevgrad announced Saturday.

The border checkpoint has been either blocked or closed for most of the week, as protests in Greece show no signs of calming down. The Greek farmers are protesting against low retail prices and no subsidies in a time when production prices are on the rise.

A group of masked men broke into the building housing the offices of Tiresias SA, a company that keeps records of delinquent debtors and cardholders, and firebombed the company's offices.

In the northern city of Thessaloniki, a small group of self-styled anarchists occupied a movie theater in the city's main square and threw cakes and candy at Mayor Vassilis Papageorgopoulos and one of his deputies. The mayor was attending a Christmas-related event distributing the sweets to children with sickle-cell anemia when the rioters seized the stand and threw its contents at the city officials.

Chanting "One day a year for the sick and the orphaned but billions of euros for the banks".

The Christmas tree protest had been call to action as part of a day of events in Greece and around the world exactly two weeks since Grigoropoulos' shooting.

Police said about 1,000 riot police used pepper spray on the protesters and later charged them and cleared the square. At least three news photographers were injured by police wielding batons. The tree survived the attack.

The square's first Christmas tree was burned to the ground on Dec. 8, the worst day of rioting in Athens' center.

RUSSIA- Riot police beat protestors

Riot police clubbed, kicked and detained dozens in the Pacific port of Vladivostok on Sunday in a violent crackdown on a peaceful protest that was one of dozens across Russia by people outraged over an increase in car import tariffs.

Many Russians say they have a right to buy what they want without paying to support the Russian auto industry.

With unemployment spiking, prices rising and the ruble sliding, the protests over a seemingly mundane tariff appear to be broadening into a wide expression of public discontent--and beginning to present a genuine challenge to the Kremlin.

"The Russian people have started to open their eyes to what's happening in this country," said Andrei Ivanov, a 30-year-old manager who joined about 200 people at a rally in Moscow. "The current regime is not acting on behalf of the welfare of the people, but against the welfare of the people."

The government announced the tariffs on imported automobiles earlier this month to bolster flagging domestic car production and try to head off layoffs or labor unrest among the country's more than 1.5 million car industry workers.

Protests against the tariffs, which are scheduled to go into effect next month, have been most vehement in Russia's largest Pacific port "" Vladivostok.

Strikers rallied in the city Saturday for the second weekend in a row, and demonstrators hoped to rally again Sunday. But authorities refused to authorize the demonstration and hundreds of riot police blocked off the city square where it was planned.

Soon after, several hundred people gathered on Vladivostok's main square--not the planned site of the demonstration. Waiting riot police ordered them to disperse, saying the gathering was illegal. The group refused and began singing and dancing around a traditional Russian New Year's tree on the square.

An Associated Press reporter saw police beat several people with truncheons, throw them to the ground and kick them. Several parents were detained as their children watched.

Vladimir Litvinov, who heads a local rights group, said police behaved "like thugs" and had no right to break up the gathering.

"We support a civilized resolution to all the problems but when they send Moscow riot police to break up a gathering in our city, and they start breaking arms and legs and heads...," he told AP. "People are very, very angry. It's hard to predict what might happen now."

Regional police officials said they were forbidden from saying how many people had been arrested.

Protests over the car tariffs, which take effect next month, were held in more than a dozen cities, with motorists driving in long columns with flags waving. National TV channels, which are state-controlled, ignored the demonstrations.

UTAH STUDENT DISRUPTS GOVERNMENT AUCTION NOW FACES FEDERAL PRISON

University of Utah student Tim DeChristopher explains how he "bought"- 22,000 acres of land in an attempt to save the property from drilling. The sale had been strongly opposed by many environmental groups. Stephen Bloch of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said, "This is the fire sale, the Bush administration's last great gift to the oil and gas industry."-

The Bureau of Land Management held a controversial auction Friday to sell oil and gas drilling rights to nearly 150,000 acres of wilderness in southern Utah.

A coalition of environmental groups opposed to energy development on public lands filed a lawsuit last week to block the auction. The Bureau of Land Management allowed the auction to proceed even though a federal judge won't hear the case for another thirty days.

Actor Robert Redford has been among those speaking out against the sale of these lands.

Tim DeChristopher is a University of Utah economics student. We will follow his case. He goes to court later today. He disrupted Friday’s auction of Utah’s pristine wilderness to oil and gas companies by buying up some of the land himself.

Despite the brutality of criminal governments everywhere futher protest have been called including a 'Stay Home' strike this Friday, 26 December 2008. No work, no school and NO SHOPPING- NO TV, no corporate media. Shut 'em down!!

I created a website www.votestrike.com for you, the voters, because, whichever party you belong to they have failed you. The website has the ambitious goal of ending the two party system & the third party myth. Modeled after the fall of the Berlin wall, the Polish overthrow of the communist government, and the Phillipine removal of Marcos. All of this was accomplished without firing a shot. About the author: I'm uneducated, my opinion means nothing but I know that I'm a real good dancer. 

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www.opednews.com/articles/Strike-updates-for-France-by-chris-rice-081223-323.html