It is very strange to stand on top on the Acropolis this morning and look out to the pristine, white glowing city of Athens and see smoke rising. The tour guide with a group of American tourists tried to explain it but she didn’t get to the point. “Anarchists,” she said. Though she wasn’t sure if the fire breaking out was their work.

**if you look closely at 3 o’clock, there’s a building darkened by fire

Since Saturday night, since cops shot a youth throwing molotov cocktail and stones when they were reportedly surrounded by some 30 youths and the youth was shot in the chest several times, the kids, all teens with cell phones, texted their friends, several neighborhoods had their Paris like riot ala 2005 which left cars burning, neighorbhood in smoke, and the city and country (several other cities followed suit) tearing its hair out.

Whether or not the youth – known now by the local media as “anarchists” (though this seems to me a little redundant) – were trying to have a rebellion or just expressing themselves remain to be seen.

What is clear is that immigrant children born in Greece are not automatically citizens. According to Athens news, the INE (Labour Institute) survey “finds that 70 percent of the immigrants feel the state is doing very little, if anything, to assist them to integrate into society. More than half (52 percent) said they are thinking about leaving the country to seek a better life elsewhere.”

Moreover: “Of the 1,064 immigrants polled in Athens last year, only half said they feel they are a part of Greek society. The rest said they feel unwelcome. This is mainly due to the country’s ever-changing and horrendously bureaucratic system of issuing residence and work permits beset by a lack of state coordination.”

I cannot say for sure. I am here only on my second day after 22 years (I was a backpacker then and loved the country, esp. its islands)... and only to attend a global journalist conference known as the Global Forum for Media Development, but last night, walking the neighborhood at the foothill of the Acropolis, there were many young people gathering at dark corners talking, shooting the breeze. It wasn’t clear whether on not they were planning a rebellion (as anarchists) or they were planning their next party, but they ignored me, the tourist, and were eying their cell phones as they talked -which seems now such a global gesture.

Tonight a greek journalist warned the rest of us at the conference where not to go, and to be careful even at touristy places. “They strike and disappear. Strike and disappear.” then he noted, “I hope that the authorities bring justice to the shooting [of the youth], and bring back calm to the city.”

It is strange indeed, to look out the hotel window and see tonight a glowing Parthenon in flood light amidst a brightly lit city and to worry at the same time if the riot will come near your hotel and you might have to evacuate.

It is stranger still and very moving to have visited the museum of the Agora and see the birthplace of modern democracy, with a stone block full of slots for voting slots, no hanging chads please, with names of voters millenia past in metal pieces, hand-written.

Protesters have a right but no right to violence, no more than police have the right to abuse its powers.

The process goes on….

For Andrew Lam’s story: go to Letter From Athens: Greek Tragedies and the News Media in the Age of Twitter