INTERNATIONAL LABOUR:

POLICE INVADE OCCUPIED MINE IN SONORA MEXICO:

For years now miners at the Cananea Mine in Sonora Mexico have been on strike and have occupied the mine worksite. Last Sunday the Mexican State acted on behalf of the mine owners to clear the site of strikers. Here's the story from the Upside Down World website.

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Mexican Police Attack Cananea Mine, Beating and Arresting Striking Miners
Written by Dan La Botz
Source: Labor Notes

As many as 2,000 Mexican Federal Police and Sonora State Police, supported by helicopters, invaded the Cananea copper mine Sunday night around 10 p.m., firing tear gas and attacking and beating miners who were defending the mine, according to news reports.

With the police having cleared the mine, managers from Grupo Mexico, the mine owner, took control of the facilities. The company reported that it had 2,000 “contractors” ready to go to work as soon as it was safe to do so.

A small fire broke out in a building on company property. The government says there were no injuries. An eyewitness report states that police fired guns and that one member of Local 65 of the Mexican miners union was wounded. No miners had any weapons, according to the report. The eyewitness adds that after the police took the mine, a meeting of the local union was immediately called, during which a Steelworkers member was speaking when police entered, breaking windows and firing tear gas without regard to the men, women, and children present. The USW, a U.S. and Canadian union, has supported the Cananea struggle for years.

The Mexican Miners and Metal Workers Union (SNTMMRM) has had control of the mine since it went on strike three years ago over health and safety issues. A Mexican court ruled in February that the strike was over and that miners had to leave the mine, but for four months they have refused to do so.

Police had reportedly went to the mine to execute arrest warrants against union leaders, among them Sergio Tolano Lizarraga, general secretary of Local 65, and Juan Gutierrez Ballesteros, delegate to the National Executive Committee of the union.

The strike at the Cananea mine, which once produced 40 percent of Mexico’s copper, has reportedly cost the company $1.35 billion. The strike forms part of a larger struggle between the independent-minded and militant Mexican Mine Workers Union on the one hand and Grupo Mexico and the Mexican government on the other.

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As might be expected a group of people who have occupied their workplace for three years don't give up easily. Here's a report from Reuters about how the miners have regrouped and are trying to prevent scabs from entering the mine.

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UPDATE 1-Mexican police and miners clash at Cananea mine
MEXICO CITY June 10 (Reuters) - Mexican miners clashed briefly with federal police on Thursday at the Cananea copper mine, raising tensions which could complicate owner Grupo Mexico's efforts to reopen the pit after a nearly 3-year-long strike was broken.

Two people were injured during the scuffle, which began when unionized miners tried to block contract workers from entering the mine to start repairs, the union said in a statement. A spokeswoman for the Federal Police said one policeman had teeth knocked out in the clash but denied any miners were hurt.

"There were three large buses of scabs (the company) was bringing into the property and there was a confrontation between the miners and the federal police," Manny Armenta, a visiting representative of the United Steelworkers union, said. The U.S. union has backed the miners.

Television images of the clash showed miners throwing rocks at police in riot gear and security forces responding by shooting tear gas guns at the workers on a road near the mine.

Federal Police took control of the mine in a late Sunday night raid after the union lost a long series of legal battles and a court ruled Grupo Mexico (GMEXICOB.MX) could fire the workers and reopen the copper mine, Mexico's largest.

The company has said the mine in northern Mexico near the U.S.-Mexico border could be running again as soon as the end of this year. [ID:nN09174805]

Cananea once produced 40 percent of Mexico's copper but has been closed since July 2007 when the strike began over health and safety concerns.

Grupo Mexico is planning to invest $3.8 billion in expanding Cananea to increase production there from 190,000 tonnes to 460,000 tonnes a year.

INTERNATIONAL POLITICS-GREECE:

UNREST PERSISTS IN GREECE:

Unrest continues to persist in Greece. This week Greek farmers have been staging protests and road blockages over the low price of their products. At the same time fresh clashes have broken out between anarchists and the police in Athens. Here's what's presently happening with the farmers' protests via the AFP news.

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Greek farmers pledge to maintain highway blockades:
ATHENS, Greece (AFP) — Thousands of Greek farmers on Saturday hunkered down for a fifth day of highway blockades in an ongoing tug-of-war with the government over the low price of produce.

The farmers, who are demanding higher prices for cotton, corn and wheat than those set by the European Union, threatened to escalate their protest despite a 500-million-euro (646-million-dollar) package offered by the state last week.

"We're not leaving unless the government clarifies how the money will be divided per crop," a farmer union member told state TV channel NET at a roadblock in Promachonas near the Greek-Bulgarian border.

Hundreds of tractors continue to occupy key junctions on the Athens-Thessaloniki highway and other roads in northern Greece, effectively slicing the country in two.

The disruption is expected to spread to the Peloponnese on Monday where farmers intend to block the bridge over the Isthmus of Corinth, one of the two road access points to the southern peninsula.

The farmers have also blocked border routes to Bulgaria and Turkey where freight traffic has slowed to a trickle, with the protesters only making exceptions for perishable goods and medical emergencies.

The Bulgarian government on Friday formally protested to the Greek embassy in Sofia, noting that the blockade compromises free travel and trade principles enshrined in the two countries' common European Union membership.

On Friday night, a group of Greek farmers attempted to cross the border into Bulgaria for unspecified reasons but were blocked by Bulgarian police, the semi-state Athens News Agency (ANA) reported.

A similar farmer protest cut Greece in half in 1997 for several weeks, forcing the government to sabotage the tractors, puncturing their tyres at night to get traffic running normally across highways.

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Meanwhile in Athens and Patras anarchists and others continue to clash with police. Here's the story of today's events from the Reuters news agency.

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Anarchists clash with Greek police in Athens march:
ATHENS (Reuters) - Anarchists threw fire bombs and clashed with Greek police in Athens on Saturday during a march to parliament by more than 1,000 demonstrators protesting over the police killing of a teenager last month.

"About 150 anarchists who broke away from the rally threw rocks at the police who responded with teargas," said a police official, who declined to be named. "Later, they threw fire bombs at the offices of the defense minister."

The anarchists set on fire a newspaper kiosk and a bus station and caused minor damages to four banks in the center of the Greek capital. Police chased small groups of youths around the city center and detained at least two people.

Protests also took place in the southwestern Greek port of Patras, where three newspapers' buildings, a journalists union and three banks suffered slight damage.

Greece witnessed the worst riots in decades in December, triggered by the fatal police shooting of a 15-year-old boy and fueled by anger at economic hardships and government scandals.
On Thursday, a protest march against an acid attack on an immigrant cleaner, who was a union activist, caused vandalism by groups of anarchists, who clashed with police.

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Here's another take on the story from the British libertarian communist site LibCom.

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Protests resume in Athens:
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Protesters and riot police have clashed in central Athens today during a protest calling for the release of prisoners arrested during last month's riots, as farmers continued a week-long road blockade over prices.

The clashes occurred outside the University of Athens, as police charged with batons and pepper spray, while protesters used sticks and stones. Several hundred people were involved in the protests, and around 300 continued a march through the town centre. The International Herald Tribune reported that most participants were anarchists.

Also this week, around ten thousand farmers have been blocking major highways and border crossings with tractors over prices, after government talks broke down. Protests at Greece's third largest airport in Crete finished earlier this week, after the runway was blockaded by tractors and burning tires on Tuesday.