Greek New [sic?] Dawn's Ilias Kasidiaris Sues Women Over TV Row
BBC: The spokesman for Greece's far-right Golden Dawn, who slapped a left-wing politician and threw water over another on a TV debate, is suing his victims.

Ilias Kasidiaris went to an Athens court to announce he would sue the women for defamation.

Mr Kasidiaris is also suing the TV station, Antenna, for illegal detention after staff tried to stop him leaving following the incident last Thursday.

Golden Dawn will be contesting a critical Greek election this Sunday.

Mr Kasidiaris avoided an arrest warrant for the attack, lying low until it expired.

Under Greek law, the arrest warrant for a minor crime must be carried out by midnight the day after the incident took place for an immediate trial - otherwise it goes to judicial procedure and a much later trial date is set. » | Monday, June 11, 2012

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A Slap to the Golden Dawn's Popularity
A politician from Greece's neo-Nazi party is now a fugitive after assaulting a colleague on a television talk show. Prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for Ilias Kasidiaris, the spokesman for the far-right Golden Dawn party. The attack shocked Greeks who are just days away from elections which will determine their future in the Eurozone. From Athens, John Psaropoulos reports.

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Greeks Protest against Violent Neo-Nazi MP On the Run
THE GUARDIAN: Golden Dawn spokesman who assaulted leftwing politicians evades arrest as protesters denounce fascism

Protesters across Greece poured on to the streets of cities Friday night, denouncing the "dark force" of fascism as the spokesman of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party continued to elude arrest more than 24 hours after his extraordinary on-screen assault of two female leftwing politicians.

Nine days before fresh general elections, the fault lines in Greek society are deepening.

And late on Friday, as a police manhunt for Ilias Kasidiaris [F] showed little sign of yielding a positive result, the divisions were on full display.

While anti-fascist demonstrators descended on public squares, supporters of Golden Dawn crammed into a hotel in Athens to hear the party's leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, rail against immigrant "scum" and the corrupt and crooked system that had brought the crisis-hit country to such a "dark place".

"There is growing polarisation. People are becoming increasingly radicalised thanks to all the rhetoric in the EU and here against the anti-austerity leftist majority and that is opening the door for Golden Dawn," said veteran activist Petros Constantinou. "We are demonstrating not only against the rise of the far right but against those who have enabled fascism to take root." » | Helena Smith in Athens | Friday, June 08, 2012

Griechische Politikerin holt zum Gegenschlag aus

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Far-Right Golden Dawn Spokesman Hits Two Female MPs on Greek Talk Show
An arrest warrant has been issued for the spokesman for Ilias Kasidiaris, Greece's far-Right Golden Dawn party after he physically assaulted two female left-wing MPs on live television during a morning political show.

Read the article here | Source: AP | Thursday, July 07, 2012

Troubled Greece: Fears of 'First Domino' to Fall as Austerity Is Counted a Failure

THE GUARDIAN: Greek's leftist party Syriza says recovery depends on a renegotiated bail-out and access to European structural funds

The soup kitchen opens at noon but long before then the queues start to form in the hot Athens sun. A couple of streets away from where sardines, red mullet and squid are piled high in the fish market, those down on their luck line up. While elsewhere life goes on seemingly as normal, students, jobless people, single parents and pensioners swallow their pride and wait patiently. They get two meals a day, at midday and 5pm. This is what a depression looks like.

At first blush, Greece seems no different from any other developed country. People sit in the city centre cafes sipping their iced coffees; yellow taxis cruise the streets; the shops are open for business. But different it is, and it is not hard to spot the signs that this is an economy that has contracted by 20% since the downturn began three years ago and that it is still falling.

You don't need to know that spending in the shops is down by a sixth over the past year; it is obvious from the empty cabs and those shops open but with no customers. You don't need to know that the official unemployment rate is well above 20% and youth unemployment is nudging 50%: it's obvious from the young men idling on street corners and openly dealing drugs.

Greece is broke and close to being broken. It is a country where children are fainting in school because they are hungry, where 20,000 Athenians are scavenging through waste tips for food, and where the lifeblood of a modern economy – credit – is fast drying up.

It is a country where the fascists and the anarchists battle for control of the streets, where immigrants fear to go out at night and where a woman whispers "it's like the Weimar republic [sic]" as a motorcycle cavalcade from the Golden Dawn party, devotees of Adolf Hitler, cruises past the parliament building. Graffiti says: "Foreigners get out of Greece. Greece is for the Greeks. I will vote for Golden Dawn to remove the filth from the country." » | Larry Elliott, economics editor | Thursday, May 31, 2012

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