Meanwhile on the streets

The news piece below is from Reuters. On <www.indymedia.org> you can find 
more information. Estimates of protester range from 60,000 to 100,000 
depending on who you are listening to.

Sabri Oncu

**********************

Thousands Protest EU Summit
European Leaders Meet To Chart Future

By Tom Heneghan
Reuters

NICE, France, Dec. 7 (Reuters) - Thousands of demonstrators failed to halt a 
European Union summit from opening on Thursday, but tear gas used by police 
against them wafted into the fortress-like conference centre to the 
discomfort of delegates. 

The anti-globalisation protesters set a bank ablaze, trashed an estate 
agent's office and pelted riot police with rocks and bottles during three 
hours of unrest that turned the streets around the conference centre into a 
battlefield. 

Hundreds of riot police fired repeated tear gas volleys and lobbed deafening 
stun grenades to disperse the 4,000 or so protesters, mostly French, Italian 
and Spanish but including many Basque separatists who repeatedly attacked the 
police. 

"These acts are contrary to the democratic traditions of our European 
countries," French President Jacques Chirac, the summit host, told 
journalists after the violence had died down. 

Both Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin were seen wincing and blowing 
their noses inside the conference centre as a whiff of tear gas hit them as 
they prepared for the "family photograph" of all leaders of the 15-member EU. 

About 200 activists later drove to the nearby border with Monaco to shower 
riot police with coins and flowers in protest against alleged money 
laundering there. The playboy principality denies it is a safe haven for hot 
money. 

"We want to block the summit," declared one masked protester in a side street 
littered with spent tear gas canisters and placards in several languages 
dropped by fleeing protesters. 

"Europe is not a piece of merchandise," he said. 

BIG CITY VIOLENCE IN RIVIERA RESORT 

Officials said about 20 police were slightly injured in the clashes and 45 
protesters arrested.  Around 25 leftists also scuffled with 100 supporters of 
the far-right National Front who also tried to stage a protest against 
globalisation. 

Around a dozen people were also injured in the Italian border town of 
Ventimiglia, where police battled about 1,000 activists who had tried to 
march on the French consulate after being barred from entering France. 

In the worst violence in Nice, protesters set ablaze a Banque Nationale de 
Paris office a few hundred metres (yards) from the summit, sending clouds of 
thick black smoke high into the sky, and attacked firemen arriving to put it 
out. 

The firemen retreated, returning only after riot police dispersed the crowd 
with tear gas and stun grenades. 

On the bank's facade, the protesters scrawled slogans in Basque, French and 
Italian, reading "Long Live ETA," "Death to Money" and "Fascism=Capitalism."  
Other protesters brandished banners in English, German, Danish and Spanish. 

Several other banks and a France Telecom office nearby were daubed with 
slogans. Protesters smashed the windows of an estate agent's office across 
the street, sending the owner and an employee scrambling to the back 
courtyard for safety. 

"I feel discouraged and disgusted," said owner Luc Mercier as he surveyed the 
damage just after the protesters dispersed. 

"Mostly you see this in Paris or other big cities -- never in Nice," 
commented his assistant Thierry Cirrito. 

PROTESTS NOW PART OF SUMMIT ROUTINE 

While the anarchist "autonomous groups" roamed the back streets of Nice, the 
protesters who left for Monaco were mostly non-violent campaigners demanding 
a tax on world money movements and a crackdown on tax havens around the 
globe. 

"European governments aren't doing much about this, because all big companies 
use Luxembourg or Monaco (to launder funds)," said Susan George, deputy head 
of the ATTAC campaign group. 

Anti-globalisation protests have become a routine part of international 
summits after protesters succeeded in upsetting the World Trade Organisation 
summit in Seattle last year. 

Since then, diverse protest groups have created havoc at an International 
Monetary Fund meeting in Prague, an informal EU summit in Biarritz and an 
Asian-European summit in Seoul. 

The Nice crowds, which confronted police at several points around the summit 
venue, grouped revolutionaries, anarchists, trades unionists and campaigners 
for more social justice through taxes on worldwide financial transactions.