Xanthi, Greece: Solidarity Is Our Weapon – trial of 2 antifascists from Kavala (14.11.16)

Posted on October 31, 2016 by

antifatrial

NO PROSECUTION AGAINST THE TWO ANTIFASCISTS OF KAVALA

The so-called Imia crisis, which took place in 1996, served the fascist para-state that for years has been exploiting this particular incident, setting up celebrations of hate. Since 2011 the Patriotic Movement of Kavala, similar to the nazist gang of the Golden Dawn, organizes annually a nationwide call to the town. A failed fascist fest, which deflates year by year, like the ‘famous’ national sentiment of the fascists.

One day before the fascist gathering on 26/01/2014 and after a clash had taken place between fascists and a group of people, the contemporary nazi-collaborators of Kavala broke the store-front of the store that belongs to a comrade of ours, targeted for his antifascist action and they then attempted to set fire in its interior, thereby endangering the lives of the building’s occupants.

Our comrade is compelled to get to the local police department, as arson attempt is a prosecutable ex-officio criminal offense (therefore some formalities were required by him) and after a 3-hour wait, he finds out he is arrested because members of the patriotic movement had filed a lawsuitagainst him.

With one comrade already held in custody for two days after the ridiculous lawsuit against him by members of the patriotic movement, in the afternoon of Monday 27 January 2014, the second comrade (who is the brother of the first) -also targeted for his antifascist action- is informed that a lawsuit is pending against him as well by the same coward fascists, and he appears voluntarily at the police department of Kavala. Cops and fascists cooked up the case, resulting in our comrades being charged with criminal organization (gang), breach of the public peace (hood law), incitement to cause grievous bodily harm, aggravated damages, carrying and use of weapons, explosion and possession of explosive bombs.

On Friday, 31/01/2014, after appearing before an investigating judge and a prosecutor, our two comrades were released on the following bail conditions: they are banned from leaving the country, they have to appear at the local police department each month and were obliged to pay a financial guarantee. The first trial, which was set for the 10/06/2015, was postponed due to the absence of their defending lawyers, while the next ones were postponed due to the nationwide lawyers’ strike.

Since the first trial the fascists have been provoking with their behavior; they have been threatening people and writing disgusting nationalist and nazi slogans (referring by name to our persecuted comrades) throughout the town, as well as in the area where our comrades reside. Right here we need to stress that all this time no fascist has been called for an investigation or has been prosecuted for the destruction and the arson attempt of the store of our persecuted comrade. Could it be that the case has been «forgotten» and filed? If this is not a cover-up and a cooperation with the law enforcement and repressive authorities, then what is!

But the town’s neo-nazis didn’t stop there. They have tried to set up a scene of hate and violence, targeting and beating underage students, while last May they smashed the car of a female antifascist and defense witness at our comrades’ trial, thereby clearly showing their cowardly intentions. The next day the same invertebrates beat a female antifascist in the area of the town’s port (a central spot and crowded at that time of the year) and while the one of the two nazis was fleeing, he took out a gun and shot in the air, threatening the antifascists who were on the spot. Of course, no-one has bothered them and no action has been taken against them. On the other hand, the one of the two targeted comrades is expecting yet another fake lawsuit against him by these fascists. More recently, through a security company, some of them took part in attacks against striking workers of the Phosphoric Fertilizers Industry; moreover, through a committee of indignant citizens they created, they tried to provoke pogroms and reactions -with the blessings of the city council- against the refugees «hosted» in Kavala. Naturally, during all these incidents, the cops remain plain observers, attempting to equate the two «extremes» in order to appear productive to the society.

The continuous open anti-fascist action and our comrades’ presence in the town has led to the isolation of those feeling nostalgic for the military junta. It is no coincidence that Patriotic movements, L.E.P.E.N. members (new fascist Greek party), Golden Dawners, Roupakiases (Roupakias is the nazi murderer of Pavlos Fyssas) and non-aligned nationalists (AME), in their effort to «regenerate» through their ashes, operate together as a team under the new name of the Popular Movement of Kavala Citizens – PHOENIX.

We do not want any more of those that miss junta and nazism. Fascists get back to your holes.

WE CALL ALL PEOPLE IN SOLIDARITY TO THE COURTHOUSE OF XANTHI ON 14/11/2016 AT 9:00am.

LET’S ALL BE THERE!

NO COMRADE ALONE IN THE HANDS OF THE STATE! SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON!

Autonomous Collective of Kavala
Vironos 3 Squat

(via Mpalothia)

Posted in Antifa, Antifa Trial, Antifascism, Autonomous Collective of Kavala, Greece, Repression, Vironos 3 Squat, Xanthi | Leave a comment

Greece: Text from CCF members for the US Prison Strike and anarchist prisoners in Italy

Posted on October 30, 2016 by

ccf

NON SERVIAM – I WILL NOT SERVE YOU

“Worse than enslavement is getting used to it…”

Life in the modern civilized world comprises false representations, false patterns, and false formalities. Formalities that determine our upbringing within a family, our education, our professional career, our relationships, our emotions, our smiles or tears. Patterns that castrate the scope of our perception so that our thoughts are directed onto a moving walkway going only one direction. Representations that disguise the system’s functions and pathogenies so that we see life unfold only on stage, and never wonder what’s hidden backstage. So, the thousands of suicides of desperate debtors is just another statistic among the unpleasant consequences of the economic crisis, the impoverishment of the so-called third world is just an unfortunate fact, and its wounds will heal by charity organizations, the countless dead of modern crusades, the unfortunate victims of the absurdity of war, and the convict slaves in American prisons are simply antisocial elements that provide social services to Democracy.

Prison itself is exile from life; a non-place and non-time behind the screen of a decent society, to make the ugliness that bothers the eyes of reputable citizens unseeable. Prisons are a proof of the perverse intelligence of authoritarian minds. They’re built onto walls echoing the screaming and weeping of thousands of people who’ve learned to sleep with anguish and despair. Prison is the country of captivity, the country where one learns to kneel before the “Forbidden”, a landfill for the disposal of human waste, an industrial dump where the social machine’s hazardous waste ends up. For most people, however, for all those who never learned to doubt, to question, to look beyond the obvious, prison is a security wall necessary to protect their peaceful and quiet life.

It’s certainly hypocritical on the part of a society to display the supremacy of its democratic civilization, its humanitarian values and social sensitivities so vulgarly, when those deemed unfit to exist within the same society are piled up in souls’ warehouses. But it’s infinitely more hypocritical, and infuriating at the same time, to turn these imprisoned existences, these living dead, into a marketable value through a modern and sophisticated slave trade.

Yet this is the reality for nearly 2.5 million inmates in US prisons, whom the modern Empire has turned into slaves. These prisoners-slaves are the lowest caste of social margins. They don’t only experience the cruelty of captivity, but are condemned to lose their human beingness altogether; to become slaves in the modern galleys of American hellholes to the financial benefit of privatized prisons and multinationals that, using part of this dirty money, support election campaigns of various politicians who promise order and security to their voters. In turn, the voters—predefined coefficients in a rigged equation—fulfill their role, and the solution is always obedience. That’s exactly why the happiest slaves are the greatest enemies of freedom.

But there are other slaves who aren’t so happy. They are the “fallen angels” in a society whose authoritarian perversion treats humans as cogs. But these human cogs are slowly turning against this very society. Throughout the US and the prisons in that territory, an increasingly growing whisper starts to spread. On September 9th, this whisper is transformed into an angry cry of freedom, screaming in the face of the almighty corrections system the ancient cry of rebellion: “Non serviam – I will not serve.”

September 9th is a landmark day for inmates in American prisons because 45 years ago, on September 9th 1971, the fire of Attica prison was lit. Nearly 1,500 prisoners rioted, took jailers hostage, and put forward a series of radical demands. Power replied with zero tolerance: four days later, on September 13th 1971, New York state troops stormed and retook the prison. The crackdown took a heavy toll, killing almost 40 (about 30 inmates and 10 hostages) and wounding 89 others. Because of this exact symbolic character, September 9th is a landmark day for the new coordinated prisoner mobilization, too.

Struggles as this one, despite their intermediary nature, are qualitatively upgraded—compared, for example, to strictly personal claims or unionist demands. Because this particular struggle concerns the total abolition of an institution that’s a pillar of repression and economy, social control and the security doctrine policy. Moreover, prisoners are waging a struggle under extreme and multifaceted oppression, so even calling it an intermediate struggle is something that may not eventually apply to the situation. Because forced labor in prisons is an institution that serves the system in many parallel ways. This is precisely the institution that defines a gray-zone status of millions of slaves for a limited or lifetime tenure. The fact that these are humans designated criminals one way or another, legitimizes this gray zone in the eyes of the rest of society, that don’t care to express some moral or values-related objection and, worse still, benefit from its existence. A struggle for the abolition and the denial of such an institution, a fight which also includes a form of sabotage against the interests served by this very institution, is nothing but a barricade of the most basic dignity against the cruelest face of Power. Certainly, this struggle alone will not determine the entirety of the repression policies that domination may adopt. Regardless of its outcome though, this struggle can be a civil disobedience beacon against the system, and the fact that this beacon will owe its strength to all the damned, the outcast, the socially disinherited—who nowadays receive “revolutionary” anathemas on some occasions—has its own special meaning.

Of course, we don’t seek to make any idealization or embellishment of the entirety of prisoners. Being exiled in the country of captivity for several years already, we’ve seen the composition of a prison population up close, and we don’t harbor any illusion whatsoever that they’re deterministically some kind of revolutionary subjects. In most cases, in fact, an abyss of values separates us from other inmates because of their choices or contradictions over the course of their lives. However, being captives ourselves, we cannot but feel the agony of all those prisoners in the US.

Beyond all this, it’s also a lucid political composure that allows us to put aside any differences we feel we may have with the subject of detainees, as these differences are not enough to make us stand indifferent and unmoved in front of the size, the moral implications, the stakes, the historical and political legacy of such a struggle. In other words, our solidarity reflexes haven’t been activated by emotional and experiential criteria only, but also originate in a political consistency. For all these reasons, we feel the need to express our support to the concerted campaign that began inside the US prisons from September 9th onward, during which prisoners deny the role of the slave imposed upon them by the democratic society, and factually demonstrate defiance and disobedience. And, as has been said: “Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.”

The internationalization of this struggle through call outs of prisoners themselves, who ask support from every solidarity initiative, enhances the dynamics of international solidarity in total, making it, even coincidentally, another piece in the mosaic of international solidarity calls such as June 11th or the International Solidarity Week every August. But, for us, it’s not about limiting solidarity to dates marked on the calendar; instead, it’s about highlighting the beauty and authenticity of an informal anarchist coordination. That’s why we’ve endorsed the proposal of ABC Anarchist Solidarity Cell, to coordinate solidarity gestures on an International Solidarity Day (October 1st), as we believe their call out contributes to this direction.

Finally, we want to send our warm greetings to all anarchists and all politicized prisoners willing to be part of this struggle, regardless of their reasons for doing so.

PS: Words are sometimes not enough to capture all the intensity of one’s emotions in certain circumstances. The truth is we were struck at the news that the filth of the Italian counter-terrorism unit (DIGOS) launched yet another anti-anarchist attack against comrades in Italy, under the imaginative name “Scripta Manent” (written words remain). Raids, house searches, persecutions, suspect lists, arrests, pretrial detentions…

Once again the target of repression is the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), but now they remembered to dig up cases concerning the placement of explosive devices back in 2006 and 2007. Anna Beniamino, Marco Bisesti, Emiliano Danilo Cremonese, Valentina Speziale and Alessandro Mercogliano passed the prison threshold, while a new detention order was issued against our incarcerated brothers Alfredo Cospito and Nicola Gai, members of FAI’s Olga Cell (that claimed responsibility for the shooting of Roberto Adinolfi, the chief executive of Ansaldo Nucleare). In a separate investigation, during a house search where police found an electrician’s manual and some batteries, another comrade, Daniele Cortelli, who’s active in Croce Nera Anarchica (Italian Anarchist Black Cross), was charged with possessing materials for potential manufacture of explosive devices, and then sent to custody, too. We may be familiar with the notion of captivity, but we will never be able to accept the bad news of comrades’ arrest, no matter how far they are, without feeling tightness in our heart. Our thoughts are with them and everyone else who’ve abruptly entered into a new chapter in their life—the prison chapter.

Finally, we send our warmest salute to our brother Alfredo Cospito. On August 30th 2016, with complete disregard for any consequences, he smashed the glass partition window of the visitations room in the security wing of Ferrara prison in solidarity with the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire in Greece, after the 115-year prison sentence that was recently imposed on all of its imprisoned members.

Comrade, your act brightened our hearts and filled us with emotion. Such fraternal gestures prove the real beauty of authentic anarchist solidarity. We wish you strength to go through whatever might come next.

The Conspiracy of Cells of Fire members:
Haris Hadtzimihelakis
Theofilos Mavropoulos
Damianos Bolano
Panagiotis Argirou
Giorgos Nikolopoulos
Michalis Nikolopoulos

September 12th 2016
Korydallos prison (Athens, Greece)

(via Contra Info)

Posted in Against Prison Slavery: Nationwide Prisoner Strike Sept 9, 2016, Alessandro Mercogliano, Alfredo Cospito, Anna Beniamino, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF), Damianos Bolano, Daniele, Emiliano Danilo Cremonese, Giorgos Nikolopoulos, Haris Hatzimihelakis, Marco Biseti, Michalis Nikolopoulos, Operation Scripta Manent, Panagiotis Argirou, Prison Strike, Theofilos Mavropoulos, Valentina Spaziale | Leave a comment

Greece: Statement from CCF Urban Guerrilla Cell in solidarity with the US Prison Strike

Posted on October 30, 2016 by

CCF

“Gentlemen, the Dragon Will Fly Out”
In Support of September 9th Mobilization in US Prisons

“Gentlemen, the dragon will fly out” is a saying attributed to prisoner George Jackson. On August 21st 1971, holding a pistol, he opened all the cells in an adjustment unit, taking jailers hostage. George Jackson was killed in his attempt to escape…

Since September 9th, prisoners in the United States have called for action against slavery.

A multitude of “invisible” slaves (there are about 2.5 million prisoners in the United States) are condemned to forced labor, or as jailers of their own selves (internal work in prisons, cleaning, repairs, technical operations), or as cheap meat in the service of corporate behemoths (Honda, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, and many others). Besides, the 13th amendment to the US constitution clearly states: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…” To put it simply, detainees are considered slaves as part of their punishment.

Prisons in America—and not just there–aren’t only bars, walls, surveillance cameras or lock downs. They’re also an enormous lucrative business. Prisons are a dirty dealing for continuously supplied shackled labor force without name and without voice. They represent a modern slave trade, making billion-dollar profit, that not only supplies the companies-caretakers but also the industry of lawyers, judges, cops, corrections officers, private prisons.

Not long ago yet another judicial scandal, the “kids for cash” case, was revealed. President Judge Mark Ciavarella convicted juveniles (from 10 to 18 years of age) for the slightest offense, taking million-dollar kickbacks from the owners of private prisons Powell and Mericle with the purpose of supplying them with thousands of children prison slaves.

In Greece, incarceration is much more “velvet”, but it doesn’t cease to be incarceration. Greek prisons may not supply multinational companies with slaves, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a well-staged business operation. Not only do prisons fund an army of leeches (lawyers, cops, corrections officers, judges), but they make big business with construction companies (through overpriced contracts), pharmaceutical companies (after Greek hospitals, Greek prisons are the second best customer of the pharmaceutical industry, since handfuls of psychiatric drugs are administered to prisoners to keep them asleep), and large supermarket chains (always making sure to overprice items sold to prisoners).

Throughout America, massive arrests of suspects—that include humiliations, beatings, and shootings in the back—do not just serve “the restoration of the law”, but are a modern slave hunt for exploitation.

“Let the crops rot in the plantation fields,” write the prisoners in their call out against slavery, recalling the history of slaves in America; because sometimes, to move forward, you must go back to the roots, into the past. For every story of slaves there’s a story of a Spartacus.

Prisoners didn’t randomly choose the date of September 9th to begin their struggle. Forty five years ago, on September 9th 1971, a unique day was written in the calendar of dignity and struggle. It was on the fourth day of Attica riots that 1,000 cops stormed the prison, leaving behind 43 dead, including 33 inmates and 10 hostages (corrections officers and civilian employees), and 250 wounded. Back then, prisoners demanded amnesty, the release of political prisoners, and an end to torture. Now, they want to stop being slaves.

The Attica prison rebellion wasn’t a firework but the culmination of a decision taken by prisoners, expressed through slogans like: “If we cannot live as human beings, we will at least try to die as humans.” With so much blood already shed in a tide of events and acts, they had ruled out any possibility of making a return to prison normalcy.

Prisoners George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette, known as the “Soledad Brothers”, were accused of killing a prison guard at Soledad prison on January 16th 1970, in retaliation for the murder of three fellow prisoners by a corrections officer during a fight between inmates three days prior.

On August 7th 1970, George Jackson’s brother, Jonathan, stormed the Marin County courthouse armed with a shotgun and revolvers and alongside three prisoners, who attended a trial inside, took the Judge, the District Attorney and three jurors hostage. Jonathan and the prisoners demanded the release of the “Soledad Brothers”. The court was surrounded, and a shootout with cops and jailers ensued. Two of the prisoners, Jonathan Jackson and the judge held hostage were gunned down.

On August 21st 1971, George Jackson was shot to death by a guard at San Quentin prison. Jackson was carrying a gun and intended to escape. A disturbance in the prison occurred just before the killing, when three guards and two inmates-snitches were executed.

All these individual acts of rebellion were not detached from the collective power that the prisoners had begun to develop. These actions exceeded the prison walls and nurtured, and were nurtured by, the rebellions of blacks against racism and the movement against the Vietnam War at the time. Nowadays, the struggle of prisoners in the US against slavery is also tied to the movement in protest of police violence and shootings against black people.

Naturally, such struggles are closer to civil rights movements rather than total liberation movements. However, the prisoners themselves state: “We are not making demands or requests of our captors.”

Oftentimes in these struggles, such as we’ve experienced in Greek prisons, there’s a large portion of the prison population who insist on non-violence and “negotiating unionism” logic that leads to wire-pulling and emergence of representatives with personal ambitions. We therefore don’t want to falsify the characteristics of an intermediate struggle to make it appear as anarchic.

Anarchist prisoner Michael Kimble, apparently designated as a “ringleader” of rebellions, has criticized the pacifism that lurks in such mobilizations, stating: “I struggle within F.A.M. (Free Alabama Movement) not because I believe in the system, but because it causes pain to the state, but in no way do I think F.A.M. or any of the Freedom movements are going to topple the state.”

Intermediate struggles, when restricted in sectional demands, maim any total liberation perspective. The interest of an anarchist towards intermediate struggles is, through their intervention, to turn them into the accelerator of insurgency and revolution. There were plenty of moments when instances of prison struggle and armed urban guerrilla experiences mutually fed into one another. In the US, the Weather Underground organization attacked courts (Marin County courthouse, Long Island courthouse, and corrections offices) in solidarity with rebellious prisoners. In Germany, the RAF attacked several judicial officers and prosecutors in retaliation for the isolation of their imprisoned comrades, while in 1993 they literally blew up the Weiterstadt prison. In Italy, the Red Brigades, NAP (organization originating within prison walls), Prima Linea and many more armed cells organized escapes and kidnappings to release their comrades, and executed judges. On October 2nd 1979, political prisoners revolted and set fire to the Asinara maximum security prison. In Spain, GRAPO targeted prison governors and prison doctors.

In Greece, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire blew up the Thessaloniki courthouse and the Athens administrative court of first instance, placed a bomb outside Koridallos prison in 2010, and in cooperation with the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) attacked interrogating judges, prison directors and corrections officers.

In every part of the Earth, prisons are a monument of people’s enslavement. Prisons are the most concentrated form of tyranny; the face of Power, without any makeup; the punitive nature of democracy; the vengeful sense of its justice. Every attack, every act of rebellion, every mobilization that disturbs the operation of prisons is a kick in the guts of oppression. It challenges its omnipotence, within its own walls. Certainly, the September 9th mobilization against slavery in US prisons may not be the anarchic utopia of freedom we wish for, but it can be a pebble in the pond that creates small ripples in the water. And oftentimes these ripples precede the outbreak of an enormous tide…

The Return
For nine months before the state police came
and opened fire at Attica penitentiary
prison doctors said to sick Puerto Ricans
who understood only Spanish
“First learn English, then you can come back.”
It’s difficult to learn English when you’re dead
but they will come back for sure…
(Erich Fried, “The Return: Attica State Prison”)

Conspiracy of Cells of Fire / Urban Guerrilla Cell
FAI/FRI
Gerasimos Tsakalos
Christos Tsakalos
Giorgos Polydoros
Olga Economidou

September 9th 2016
Korydallos prisons (Athens, Greece)

(via Contra Info)

Posted in Against Prison Slavery: Nationwide Prisoner Strike Sept 9, 2016, Anarchist Prisoners, CCF Urban Guerrilla Cell, Christos Polidoros, Christos Tsakalos, Conspiracy of Cells of Fire (CCF), Free Alabama Movement, Gerasimos Tsakalos, Greece, Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), International Revolutionary Front (FRI), International Solidarity, Korydallos Prison, Michael Kimble, Olga Economidou, Prison Strike, USA | Leave a comment

Czech Republic: Message from anarchist prisoner Lukáš Borl in solidarity with the US Prison Strike

Posted on October 30, 2016 by

Hello. My name is Lukáš Borl. I am 34 years old and recently I am held in custody prison in Czech republic – Europe. I am an anarchist and I express my solidarity with all oppressed and exploited people around the World regardless of their origin, sexual orientation or gender. From this perspective I decided to send a few words of solidarity to the prisoners in USA where, according to the information available to me, a general strike of working prisoners began on 9.9.2016. Regardless what they’ve done, regardless how the Criminal Procedure is categorizing it, I want to express my support to every striking person in prisons around USA.

Every person without exception has a right to respect and human dignity. All prisons trample this right in different ways. For example, a person whose dignity was taken away by prison is additionally exposed to exploitation by working there. As prisoners, you labor hard under hard conditions and often in danger to your own health. Time spent at work is managed by bosses, and the products of this work are taken by capitalists. On one side, there is the growing wealth of corporations, and on the other, you: the humiliated and exploited people who create the profit produced by their work. The implacable antagonism of these two worlds is obvious. If you decided to go on strike, then, it is a legitimate form of a struggle for ending exploitation. I understand this struggle and I support it. I want to let you know that your struggle is also mine. We share the same reality as human beings suffering under the control of the capital and state. We meet in struggles to eliminate this dictatorship. A dictatorship that we can feel everywhere: in prisons and outside of them, in work and unemployment. Exploitation and the oppression permeate our lives all the time. Your strike is an important effort to change this situation.

I wish for you and for myself also that the strike will grow and resist the repression. I wish for you and for myself also to be able to connect it with other important struggles in prisons and outside of them. I wish for you and for myself also that the strike is not misled to fall into the mud of social-democratic politics and the social peace with the exploiters. Because the way to freedom is not through reforming exploitation but only through abolishing it. I wish for you and for myself also that the strike will go further than reformist demands for changing the prison regime and for better working conditions. All the prisons of the world and all the paid and unpaid work in those prisons and outside them are all part of the dictatorship of capital. Let’s struggle to abolish it, not to reform these prisons and forms of exploitation. Let’s not ask for anything. Lets take what belongs to us. Our lives and human dignity. Prisons, states, and capitalism—all must fall.

To all the imprisoned ones in USA: I am in the struggle with you. I will spread information about it and call on anarchistic groups to support it.

In solidarity, from the custody jail in Litoměřice, Czech Republic,

Lukáš Borl,

10.9.2016

address:
Lukáš Borl 1.3.1982
vazební věznice Litoměřice
Veitova 1
412 81 Litoměřice
Czech Republic – Europe

(via Anti-Fenix & Contra Info)

Posted in Against Prison Slavery: Nationwide Prisoner Strike Sept 9, 2016, Anarchist Prisoners, Czech Republic, International Solidarity, Lukáš Borl, Prison Strike, USA | 1 Comment

Ferrara prison, Italy: Letter from anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito

Posted on October 30, 2016 by

Genova - processo ai due anarchici accusati del ferimento del ma

Note: This text was written by Alfredo during his recent hunger-strike which began on October 3rd and ended on October 25th when prison authorities released him from isolation.

Valentina, Danilo, Anna, Marco, Sandro, Daniele, Nicola  – friends, brothers, sisters, comrades, were arrested and rearrested.

I should narrate the same old story about another fabrication. Instead, I want to talk about the reason why they were arrested. The brothers and sisters were arrested because they attacked, they were tired of waiting, they ignored the decisions of the majority and took action.

I remain optimistic and in high spirits because the logic of ‘1 + 1 = 2’ tells me that the comrades who struck are still free, therefore they are able to strike again.

The power does not repress randomly. Today it wants to isolate and to annihilate part of the anarchist movement, as ‘small’ as it may be it was able to break the chains that tied it to the old ‘social anarchy’.

A social anarchism that in a suicidal and compulsive way looks for ‘consensus at all costs’. Diluting continuously its aspirations.

This vision that ‘never goes beyond’ is very convenient for power, on the contrary it fears those anarchists who refuse to let ‘consensus’ tie their hands, because they believe that only out of the action (not made of abstract theories or searching-pursuing of ‘people’) can the strategy be born, the path to follow.

I don’t want to  comment on the ‘charges’ and so-called ‘evidences’. The only thing I would say is that the brothers and sisters of FAI-FRI have always claimed with heads held high, in front of black-robed pigs, their own merits, their own actions, taking full responsibility, spitting in the pigs’ faces, as we did in Genoa.

My main priority is not to get out of prison at all costs, but to get out with head held high without having denied anything of what I was, and I am.

I will get out by hook or by crook, it will all depend on my strength, on my abilities, on the strength of my brothers and sisters outside, but definitely I will get out with head held high.

My ideal complicity goes to the brothers and sisters of the “Cooperativa Artigiana Fuoco ed Affini”- FAI, to brothers and sisters of FAI-RAT (Rivolta Anonima Tremenda) and to brothers and sisters of Narodnaja Volja – FAI, whoever they are, wherever they are.

My ideal complicity goes to anarchism of praxis, which in new forms is rising in most of the world, after a long hibernation.

Forward, without fear.

The future is ours.

Thought and Dynamite

Alfredo Cospito

(via Traces Of Fire)

Posted in Alessandro Mercogliano, Alfredo Cospito, Anna Beniamino, Daniele, Emiliano Danilo Cremonese, FAI/Cooperativa Artigiana Fuoco e Affini-occasionalmente spettacolare, FAI/Narodnaja Volja, FAI/RAT-Rivolta Anonima e Tremenda, Ferrara Prison, Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), Nicola Recci, Operation Scripta Manent, Valentina Spaziale | Leave a comment

Greece: Anarchists occupy the headquarters of Attica Bank in Athens

Posted on October 28, 2016 by

On Thursday 13 October 2016 anarchists from Anarchist Collective Rouvikonas and the Anarchist Collective of New Philadelphia occupied the corporate headquarters of Attica Bank in Kolonaki, Athens. While for the last 7 years since the outbreak of the capitalist crisis millions of people in Greece can’t meet basic needs, more than 40% of Greeks still live under the poverty line, 45% of pensioners that have worked all their lives get pensions under 665 euros (ie. under the poverty line), 52% of households survive on the pension of somebody in the family, whilst 23,2% of the population is unemployed, Greece receives huge loans from creditors, that instead of being invested into people or the deteriorated health system, vast sums of money are constantly being given to banks so that they will be able to provide loans. Meaning that the Greek people have paid for the capitalist crisis with their blood (and will keep on paying for the decades to come), so that banks will keep on having profits.

The fact that banks constitute a structural part of the capitalist system is understood by everyone. The fact that banks are merely another instrument in the arsenal of the economic and political system which uses them to squeeze the lower classes dry, does not come as a surprise to anyone.

We will never be surprised as to how many ways they can find to serve their own interests. With an economy in crisis that’s been closely monitored for years, the oxymoron term ”non-systemic bank” was invented to assist the upper class and the political system to continue their business as usual  while the rest of society is financially asphyxiated. The bank is growing and funding certain people and although it was created and used by the previous governments, when Syriza took over, it quickly realized it’s potential  in creating its very own economic and political status quo. If Syriza disagrees with the aforementioned analysis, then let’s hear how, when and why:

* It prompted the Insurance Fund of Engineers to invest millions of euro in Attica Bank despite the investment having lost over 95% of its value today. Obviously the minister of infrastructures who is closely connected to the IFE does not know nor has he heard anything.

*What was the role of Dragasakis in Attica bank for 3 years (2010-2012) , if not to pave the way for what followed?

*Who urged all state-owned companies to invest their reserved funds to Attica Bank?

*How were loans given to businessmen without any guarantees, knowingly that those loans would never be paid off?

*Why did the government try to save Attica Bank in every possible way, by having even forced the company behind the International Airport to invest in it?

*How were the 1.5 billion damages in the first trimester of 2015, reduced to 300 million by the second semester of the same year?

And since these are well known issues, the government must answer this:  based on what logic and for what purpose did the board of directors of Attica Bank loan money to certain businessmen in order to buy the banks’ shares?

We provide a list comprised of company names that received loans in order to increase the equity funds of the bank (behind those companies there are names such as Kokkalis, Bobolas and other ”reputable capitalists”)

Intracom: received 1.252 mllion euro and invested 2.252 million euro in AMK
Intrasoft: received 1 million euro and invested the exact amount
J&P Avax: received 12 million euro and invested the same amount
Silaver Investments Ltd: received 8 million and invested the same amount
PAP Energy Wild Energy Parks S.A. : received 6 million euro and invested the same amount
Anatoli S.A. : received 4.2 million euro and invested the same amount
Ionis Development SA : received 4 million euro and invested the exact amount
Aktes Kritis SA: received 1.8 million and invested the same amount
Hellenic Plastic SA: received 2 million euro and invested the same amount
Mouchalis SA : received 2 million euro and invested the exact same amount
Themeli construction company: received 2 million euro and invested 1.5 million
Personal care: received 1 million euro and invested the same amount
Perseus SA: received 3 million euro and invested the same amount
FG Europe: received 7.9 million euro and invested the same amount
Staff SA : received 900 thousand euro and invested the same amount
Ergodynamiki Patron Technical SA :  received 300 thousand euro and invested the same amount

The cycle is obvious and unending, memorandums are followed by loans which are either used to pay off previous debt or given to bankers under the pretense of bail outs. In tracing the flow of capital we see a new faucet being opened by the government for obvious reasons. At the same time when people’s income gets once again reduced, those in power are faced by no dilemma and  shamelessly and scandalously support their own bank.

But we have no dilemma with systemic or non-systemic banks since those institutions constitute the pillars of capitalism and exist for the financial support of the capitalist system, exploitation and ploys. As Bertolt Brecht said ‘What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?’

NOT A STEP BACK!

Anarchist Collective Rouvikonas
Anarchist Collective New Philadelphia

atticabankoccupation

(via Athens Indymedia, translated by BlackCat)

Posted in Anarchist Collective New Philadelphia, Anarchist Collective Rouvikonas, Athens, Direct Action, Greece | 1 Comment

Denver, USA: Starbucks attacked in solidarity with the Prison Strike

Posted on October 26, 2016 by

starbucksfucked

On the night of Monday October 24th we attacked a Starbucks on Colfax Ave here in Denver, CO because of their use of prison slavery. We smashed out almost all of the windows and glass doors, including those of the drive-thru window and painted graffiti reading “#PRISONSTRIKE” and “END PRISON SLAVERY” on the building and also painted the drive-thru menu board.

We did this in solidarity with all those held captive in the prisons and jails who have been fighting so fiercely and bravely as part of the ongoing prison strike that started on September 9th. Your resistance and strength has been both inspirational and beautiful to us and we hope in turn this action inspires you to keep fighting and taking action on the inside.

A match has been lit; we are realizing our collective strength; the fire is spreading; our resistance is growing stronger and larger every day. Let’s continue to fan the flames of this fire until it burns down every prison and jail and this entire society built on systems of exploitation and domination!

LONG LIVE THE STRIKE!

VICTORY TO THE PRISON REBELS!

Solidarity means ATTACK!

With love and solidarity – some Denver anarchists

UPDATE:

The next morning it came to our knowledge that the Starbucks had been closed down for the day because of our actions. It should also be noted that aside from a sign in front of the store stating an apology for the closure that there was also a large banner draped over the “END PRISON SLAVERY” tag in an effort to conceal it… FUCK STARBUCKS!

(via It’s Going Down)

Posted in Against Prison Slavery: Nationwide Prisoner Strike Sept 9, 2016, Colarado, Denver, Direct Action, Prison Strike, USA | 2 Comments