What is the crime of robbing a bank com- pared with the crime of founding one.
– Bertolt Brecht
Banks: financial institutions at the base of the world economic system. It is they that allow the economy to run, in ‘good’ as well as in ‘bad’ times. Does this mean that they are useful to us? Because they are certainly useful, if not indispensable, to those in the high ranks of power, the corporations, the tycoons, arms traders, politicians engaged in electoral campaigns, and so on.
But are they also useful to us, to all those who do not belong to the above mentioned categories? They are not! It is exactly ordinary people who work, buy commodities and borrow money that make it possible for banks to run their dirty business and increase the amount of finance to be dispensed to big companies, which in turn benefit the billionaires and the corporations. It is through bank accounts, debit and credit cards, loans etc that banks operate, financing all sorts of activities that are devastating to life on this planet. They render possible exploitation on a global level, always ready to invest in the lowest labour costs resulting in millions of people toiling like slaves to fill the high street shops and supermarkets with gadgets, sweatshop-produced fashion garments and food exported under the eyes of starving, deliberately indebted populations. They finance predatory projects of eco -devastation in all the corners of the earth, provide arms producers with the means necessary to fabricate deadly weapons (and blackmail impoverished countries into buying them), sustain the looting of natural resources, the list could go on for ever.
In a system based on economic forces and the eternal need to extract profit at whatever cost to life, be it individuals or entire nations, the banks and the stock exchange are major players in provoking famine, desertification, social deprivation, individual suicide and generalized misery. These are simple truths that can easily be seen by everybody, you do not need to be a radical or have subversive ideas in order to clearly see the role of banks in the misery of the majority of people.
The current ‘economic crisis’, which is manifesting itself with increased prices of essential goods and cuts to all social services, is once again weighing on the poorest in society. It is the poorest who are being called upon to make sacrifices
and endure deliberately planned poverty and social isolation to pay for this crisis, which is mainly the result of irresponsible financial transactions (if any ‘responsible’ financial transaction ever existed) operated on a global scale and whose main protagonists are the banks the world over, all of which interact, lending and borrowing their spoils between them and when they fuck up, calling on their henchmen, the State, to extort money from the population to bail them out. There is no such thing as a ‘good’ bank or an ‘ethical bank’. The very existence of a bank is unethical, immoral and anti-life. Over and above that, banks continue to pay out bonuses of hundreds of thousands of pounds to their directors and staff, even if we hear politicians talking of ‘regulation’ of the financial system. There is no such regulation because banks are there to maintain their role as robbers of poor people’s money. Just to make the economy function.
All this considered, to rob a bank is an ethically acceptable and responsible act. Who robs a bank is just taking back (at great risk to his own safety) what has been stolen from him or her. In this respect, if we were all to become bank robbers we would just be taking some of our life back. Social cuts will not take us out of the crisis. If we want to survive the ‘crisis’ and avoid a life of misery and submission we must destroy the banks, refusing to pay when we are asked to.
Most of the population of the planet have been paying for centuries for a world we do not want. The hour has come to destroy the monster that has been generated from what has been stolen from everyone by the thieving mafia known as banks and fight for a life no longer wasted producing and consuming fictitious needs. A world without bosses or slaves, prisons or banks (which are interdependent) in which dull work and exploitation give way to creativity and play. Time is running out. Nothing will grow from the toxic ashes of this death-orientated society. The new world already exists in embryo, in the elsewhere of indiviual or collective acts of life-inspiring devilry.
BANKS ARE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, THOSE WHO MAKE THEM FUNCTION ARE TERRORISTS IN THE TRUE SENSE OF THE WORD
FOR THE SABOTAGE OF THE EXISTENT BY ALL THOSE WHO ARE NOT AFRAID TO REJECT THE DOOM AND GLOOM OF SECURITY AND VENTURE INTO THE UNKNOWN.
On the 4th of November took place the first session of the trial against the anarchist arrested in Amsterdam accused by the prosecution of Aachen of a bank robbery (from 2013).Although at the courthouse there was an abundant presence of cops of all functions and uniforms (riot police in the courtyard and inside the building, an id check for anyone attending the court case, cops controlling some people on the streets, over 30 friends and comrades were present in support.There was a banner outside the court building which demanded immediate release for the comrade.
The session lasted no longer than one hour, just a few formalities, the reading of the charges and the arranging of the schedule for the trial. The next date is Thursday 17th November at 10:30. We remind everyone who wants to be present that they should arrive to the courtroom no later than 9:45, as getting through security takes quite some time.
Today, November 2nd, at 13:30, 30 some comrades showed up at the Circulo Ecuestre located at Balmes 169, to disturb a brunch/talk organised by the German speaking Círculo de Directivos. There, Esperanza Aguirre, the speaker for the Popular Party of Madrid’s city council, was presenting her new book, a book titled as stupidly as it is revealing: “I don’t shut up”
A banner was hung, flyers were thrown inside and around the building and comrades shouted their solidarity with the three anarchist comrades accused of robbing banks in Germany, who are currently in jail.
The intervention lasted just twenty minutes but with that act and our shouts in solidarity we were able to bother the distgusting guests and members of the political-economic elite that perpetuate exploitation and sew misery.
The trial for one of our comrades starts this week, the 4th of November in the city of Aachen.
Freedom for Anarchist Prisoners
Against the State and Capital, … social war!!!
[found on http://barcelona.indymedia.org/newswire/display/507234/index.php]
Grande-Synthe: Molotov cocktails thrown into the courtyard of the police station
Le Phare dunkerquois, 31/10/2016 (excerpt)
Sunday, October 30, Molotov cocktails were thrown into the courtyard of Grande-Synthe police station, shortly before 6 pm, at the level of the truck of the shooting range.
An investigation has been opened. Surveillance cameras could provide valuable assistance to the law enforcement. Nobody was in the police station at that time.
These events are reminiscent of events dating back a few years: a car rammed the barrier of the police structure.
La Rochelle: a petanque ball was thrown at a police vehicle
01/11/2016,
Sunday, around 6 pm, a police vehicle parked in the avenue Roberspierre, in the Villeneuve-les-Salines neighbourhood, hit by a pétanque ball.
It broke the windshield of the car, which was unoccupied at the time. No arrests followed this act because they could not identify the thrower, but the police have opened an investigation.
“From very little, get a lot.” This is the presentation slogan of National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology, its main objective, its calling card. Inaugurated in 1992, this government institution under the Ministry of Justice. Its mission is to analyze, identify and archive suspicious traces and retrace modus operandi. DNA analysis and fingerprinting of all kinds; ballistic analysis and materials used in a crime; forensic expertise of all kinds; in short, science in the service of the police. It is from traces analyzed in these ten laboratories of the INCC that many people have been sent to prison.
A riot at Bedford Prison which saw up to 200 inmates go on the rampage, setting fires and even looting the medical room. The riot came to an end late on Sunday night after riot cops spent more than six hours trying to bring the disorder under control. Scores of prisoners flooded the jail’s gangways in chaotic scenes after the disturbance broke out shortly after 5pm.
The specialist riot cops were deployed at the category B prison in Bedford town centre after the riot broke out on Sunday afternoon, with cops cordoning off an area outside and emergency services on stand-by. The screws were forced to retreat to a “safe place” while large numbers of prisoners ran amok.
Sources say that the riot spread over more than one wing inside the prison, and footage from inside the facility posted online revealed chaotic scenes with scores of prisoners shouting and bellowing in walkways and gangways. At around 11pm, about half an hour before the riot was brought under control, there were reports of loud bangs or explosions coming from inside the prison.
Some reports claim that the riot started because of two prisoners being attacked by screws and due to overcrowded conditions inside the prison.
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It is with great humor that we report that two prisoners at Pentonville prison in London have broken out yesterday night in an escalating series of events in the prison island. The inmates totally fooled the screws on duty that night by using pillows to make mannequins to impersonate themselves, then used a diamond-tipped cutting machine (most likely sneaked in by drone*) to cut the metal bars and scaled the wall by using the classic method of tying bed sheets together to make a rope.
The latest development emerged after a riot at another prison, HMP Bedford, on Sunday, which was put down after a six hour assault by cops. Two hundred prisoners have had to be transferred after they made the prison inhabitable.
THE PASSION FOR FREEDOM IS STRONGER THAN ANY PRISON!
* Remote controlled drones are used to sneak illegal items into prisoners up and down the prison island.
In the morning of Friday 21st October the trial began of what has been named ‘PDI Case’.
Friends, families and people in solidarity gathered near the disgusting centre of justice as the latter was taking a break in its activities; but this didn’t prevent the beginning of the inquisition against our comrades, which was then postponed so we won’t go into details. The postponement to 10th November only prolongs the time of this kidnapping which has been going on for already 15 months, and whose outcome is uncertain. Precisely for this reason we call for the multiplication of the solidarity actions against the blows that the police state wants to give to our comrades!
AMARU, FELIPE, M° PAZ, MANUEL & NATALIA A LA CALLE!
Célula De Propaganda Moica Morada.
Update
In the early hours of Monday 24th October our comrades were once again taken to the disgusting centre of justice for another hearing on the review of the custodial measure. Natalia was granted a change in the terms of her pre-trial custodial measure and she’s now under house arrest. Big waves of happiness went through our hearts but we won’t forget that it’s not over yet. We don’t forget that our comrades have been kidnapped in the San Miguel prison for 15 months, since 2nd July 2015.
Updates will follow.
SOLIDARITY AND ACTION FOR THE PRISONERS OF SOCIAL WAR!
Faced with the repression against anarchist comrades in Italy (Operation Scripta Manent), in the face of our enemies that are the State and capital, we think again and always that the best solidarity is attack. They are paying for acts that belong to anarchists all over the world. We want to send them a sign of our proximity with these acts. Unlike others here and elsewhere who are satisfied with a little rhetoric on their websites.
On the night of 3 to 4 October in rue Candale in Pantin, we burned an Engie utility van, a company that works with the State in confinement (management of prisons and detention centres).
A vehicle of the security company ‘VDH’ was destroyed by fire in Munich. ‘VDH’ work in camps for migrants and makes its profits with imprisonment, harassment and control. Solidarity with all the migrants who struggle and rebel in a self-organized way! Freedom for all!
This was said in the cops dispatch:
Tuesday, October 4 at 2:30 am, a passerby noticed flames escape from a car parked on the Bolivarstraße neighbourhood ‘Neuhausen’. He immediately calls firefighters to extinguish the fire, but when the firefighters arrived on the scene, it was too late: the vehicle was completely engulfed. It would appear that the cost of damage to the car, brand ‘Nissan’, would amount to nearly 15,000 euros.
Summing up the situation of the comrades imprisoned following operation ‘Scripta Manent’…
Alfredo and Anna stopped their hunger strike, which they had been carrying out while a deadly silence reigned outside, after prohibition of meeting between comrades detained in the same prisons was withdrawn. So Alfredo was able to see Nicola again, and Anna was able to see Valentina.
However there’s still prohibition of meeting between the comrades imprisoned in Alessandria, where Sandro and Marco are locked up, and in Terni, where Danilo and Daniele are locked up, even if the latter comrade shouldn’t be under the AS2 regime for the charges of his case.
The comrades receive letters, under censorship, almost regularly (some letters and dispatches of publications containing internet updates are being seized).
I remind you to write to the comrades in order to break the isolation that prison in itself creates. I also remind you to include everything the imprisoned comrades need to write back (envelope, paper and stamp) in your mail, so they are spared some of the expenses they unfortunately have to meet with once a week.
Let’s break isolation!
Solidarity and complicity with Alfredo, Nicola, Anna, Danilo, Valentina, Marco, Sandrone and Daniele!
RadioAzione
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Update [1/11/16]
From croceneranarchica
Following a visit to Alessandro by a relative we learn that the two comrades [Alessandro and Marco] imprisoned in the AS2 unit in Alessandria are still forbidden to meet each other. The reason for the continuation of this measure is due to the fact that Marco hasn’t been questioned by prosecutor Roberto Sparagna yet. So after two months of imprisonment the two comrades are still in solitary confinement as they’re locked up in the AS2 unit and can’t see common prisoners.
Note: Alfredo Cospito and Anna Beniamino are no longer on hunger strike. They had begun the protest on 3rd October and 10th October respectively, and both ended it on 22nd October. This communiqué was received by croceneranarchica.org a few days before the end of the hunger strike, delayed due to prison censorship.
To anarchists
Call for Revolutionary Solidarity
Neo-inquisitor Turin prosecutor Roberto Sparagna wants to take over from Laudi, he is playing the game of annihilation on our skins. Just for a start, against isolation (restriction-torture imposed on us by Sparagna) hunger strike to the end without limitations to the extreme consequences.
I’ll carry on with determination until the isolation ends.
Roberto Sparagna wants to bend us by cutting off all our relations inflicting censorship and isolation aimed at cancelling any glimmer of affection, any chance of resistance.
In the coming weeks I’ll be putting my life at stake.
I don’t deny that it is complicated to reach the goal but I put my trust in the hatred I feel towards any form of power and any prevarication against my anarchist brothers’ and sisters’ revolutionary solidarity – and above all I trust my own willpower.
My strength is a multiform anarchist movement in constant transformation. Only by putting one’s life and safety at stake, day after day. Only by dirtying one’s hands with action (whatever this may be) does one have any bearing on reality, does one make a difference.
‘Hunger strike’ (in my opinion something unthinkable outside) doesn’t involve disdain in the situation I’m in. Desperation or underestimation of my own life. A magnificent and joyful life because it is put at stake, thrown into the fray of the struggle without calculation or opportunism. An attitude that I shall keep until my last breath.
Let’s smash the indifference, the political calculations of an anarchist movement in Italy that is too often static, frozen, that only takes concerted action when there is someone dead, some innocent victim.
On Monday night, (24.10.16) the Blosne police station in Rennes, was covered in tags;
“NO BORDER NO NATION” could be read in huge letters on the front along with some large encircled “A”s, an “ACAB” on the shutters, and “C.R.A.me” (a little message for this cop station, Administrative Retention Centres and all uniforms which, in one way or another, protect the borders. A wink also at a time when the cops are taking to the streets ..).
On the night on the 27th of October at the max-weber-platz 3 bank institutions were smashed and vandalized with paint, in solidarity with the anarchists locked up and racing trial in aachen
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found here: https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/195506]
Banner drop in solidarity with anarchists charged with bank robbery in Aachen
