Greek Activists

Protests in Greece have gone from violent to incendiary and violent.

Back story: a cop shot a 15-year-old kid dead. The police did nothing. Now thousands of angry anarchists are torching the city, hanging banners from the Acropolis.

Protesters hung two giant banners off the Acropolis on Wednesday, with slogans calling for mass demonstrations across Europe and "resistance," after days of violent protests sparked by the fatal police shooting of a teenager in Athens.

About a dozen protesters held the pink banners over the walls of the ancient citadel, Greece's most famous monument, one bearing the word "Resistance" written in large black letters in four languages: Greek, English, Spanish and German. The other called for mass demonstrations across Europe on Thursday.

The banners were taken down after two hours.

"There can be no justification for this action. This hurts the image of our country abroad ... it is unacceptable," government spokesman Evangelos Antonaros said.

Student demonstrations are already planned in Athens and Greece's second largest city of Thessaloniki on Thursday to protest the Dec. 6 police killing of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

The riots that followed the teenager's death are the worst Greece has seen in decades, feeding off widespread dissatisfaction with the unpopular conservative government and anger over social inequality and economic hardship.

Hundreds of shops and banks were smashed, torched or looted as gangs of masked and hooded youths rampaged through cities night after night, setting up burning barricades in the streets and clashing with riot police who fired large amounts of tear gas. Retailers say the damage will cost them euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) in lost income.

More than 300 people were detained or arrested in the rioting.

Some of those protestors took off their shirts and did a little submission ritual. Mm. I like the guy with a flower in his hair.

It's amazing; all that money lost on the Olympics, and now things are even worse. It really is chaotic there. to be fair, there were and continue to be peaceful protests. but violence and burning giant Christmas trees are a bit more photogenic.

more photos HERE. Update and video HERE.