First published in German on hambacherforst.blogsport.de on February 7th, 2015. This translation wasn’t yet revised by the author or a native speaker. Guess, it’ll work anyway…

Gold mining in Greece

With my backpack shouldered I slowly drag myself up the street. A police patrol drives past me, then a car from a security firm. Then the patrol comes back. And yet another security car. This is how it’s been going on all the time, since I took the way up the Kakavos mountain in Greece.

It didn’t take me two hours by bus and hitchhiking from Thessaloniki to the 3,000-strong village Megali Panagia, which is located in the east of the Halkidiki peninsula. But from there on there was no alternative to walking. What fuels me? Maybe the beautiful nature, the forest, the mountains, the rivers, the ocean? – In a way, yes. However, in a rather less beautiful way: What brings me here is the clear-cutting of forests, blowing up of the mountain, the poisoning of oceans, rivers and groundwater. On the Kakavos Mountain one of the many planned gold mines in northern Greece is being developed: Skouries. The catastrophic impacts of this project are going to be beyond imagination, and it is already way further than the starting blocks.

Today and tomorrow (24th/ 25th February) once again representatives from a variety of police structures, from the companies arming them and from politics will meet in order to optimize the European police work. Press is strongly resricted (source in German). Some of the topics of this police state’s meeting are going to be the cooperation of public and private security agencies, standards for foreign assignments, armament, data evaluation, expansion of CCTV in public spaces, preventive policing and counterinsurgency (congress programme).