boubourAs translation for actforfreedomno
22 December 2010
Since the 29th of November, we the three political prisoners of the underground special wing 6 of Koridallos, defendants for the case of Revolutionary Struggle, participated in the mobilizations of the prisoners of all prisons who either with prison food abstention, or with hunger strikes are fighting for the improvement of certain provisions of the C.C. (Correctional Code) regarding the leave days, the probations and disciplinary matters, decent treatment and improvement of the conditions of detention, the abolition of certain draconian penal provisions, special detainment conditions, reduction of the life sentence as well as the release of disabled prisoners and cancer patients.
In the frames of these demands it is also claimed that the special antiterrorist legislations that occasionally have been voted are abolished, with the most recent that passed in August which the “progressive” Kastanidis passed secretly and where it's allowed for anonymous witnesses to testify in trials of cases of armed revolutionary organizations and “organized crime” as well as the penalization of violent action of demonstrators in mass mobilizations as “terrorist actions”.
The situation in which they passed these two provisions is not accidental since the present minister of “Justice” Kastanidis participates in a government of traitors of the Greek people that executes the commands of the lenders of the international economic elite.
It is natural that along with the application of the Memorandum, there is State repression for the defense of the regime since they await social explosions that can put at risk its very existence.
Also among the demands of the prisoners is the abolishment of the special regime of detention of political prisoners whether it's the special wing in the F.P.K. (female prisons of Koridallos) where those sentenced for the 17N (17November organization) are detained, or the basement of the 6th wing.
The 6th wing is an isolated small wing and the basement in which we are kept has 8 cells of 2 people.
The 6th was a building - warehouse which was transformed into a detainment space in 2002 when the 17N arrests happened.
For many months, the arrested of the 17N experienced a regime of isolation where they were locked in the cells 23 hours a day, without free access to information and correspondence, while to the courtyard - grave 20 x 10 meters that sees only to the sky through a barbwire, they came out 1 hour 2 people at a time escorted by a prison guard.
Even though this special regime was abolished, the basement of the 6th continues to function despite all the insufficiencies of the building infrastructure in air, lighting and the great lack of space since outside the cells there is only a narrow corridor 10 x 2,5 m for the prisoners to walk.
As anyone can realize we have the same space that the domestic animals have in a cage or in a pen.
To the basement of the 6th, the prison authorities sends either prisoners like us political, with the decision of the Ministry, or prisoners that are branded dangerous (e.g. could escape) and are sent here for isolation, or prisoners who have problems with other prisoners from other wings.
Despite all this, recently, the prison authorities have crammed 20 detainees into the basement of the 6th, putting a third person in the cells of two, who slept on the floor, while the maximum capacity is 16 individuals in such a narrow space.
On Friday the 10th of December in the afternoon, some of us protested this situation to the sergeant on shift who although justified us regarding that this situation offends human dignity, declared to us he cannot do anything because there is no other space to put the extra prisoners.
After few hours and just before the prison closed, we were informed that the minister of “Justice” of the troika, Kastanidis, was visiting the prisons of Koridallos to “discuss” with a “delegation” of detainees the demands which have been placed with the mobilizations that are taking place all over Greece in all prisons.
Then we decided the 19 prisoners of the basement, in common defiance, to refuse to enter the cells at 8.00pm in the evening as is the regulation of the prison and demanded that the minister himself to come and visit the basement of the 6th and see the situation for himself.
Since we realize that the minister came to Koridallos in order to make another political “communication funfair” meeting with a non-existent “elected self-organized committee of struggle”, we refused as it was proposed to us by the prison authorities that 2 individuals go as representatives of the basement of the 6th and we insisted that he should come down to the basement and that we would not enter the cells if he did not come. We had no intention of “discussing” with someone that, because of his political identity, the fake promises and the “I will” of his profession, e.g. he had promised when he was in the opposition to abolish the “hoodlaw” (law which says that if you cause damage while wearing a hood or mask, it's a terrorist action) while now as minister of the troika of the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank. and the E.U. applies even more draconian laws.
Naturally our demand that the minister comes to the basement of the 6th was not accepted either because the “honorable” minister denied, or because the sergeant denied to transmit our demand.
We then decided that we are not going to enter the cells all night if the basement of the 6th is not relieved of the overcrowding, which means the transport of the extra prisoners, something that finally happened at 11.30 at night.
Nothing of course guarantees that we will not have similar situations in the future.
The obvious that we demand is dignity and this consists of the abolishment of the Basement of the 6th wing, the abolishment of the special division where they keep the sentenced of the 17N, the abolishment of every special regime of detainment for any category of prisoners, while we support all the demands of our fellow prisoners that are participating in the mobilizations.
The most and real criminals are not behind the prison walls. The real robbers and murderers, those that rob the Greek people, that plunder the wages and the pensions, those that deprive care and health, are in the “Megaro Maximou” (Maximou mansion, the Greek equivalent of the White House, in the ministerial offices, in the seats of parliament, in the bourgeois districts, in the villas and in the luxurious offices of the bankers, the businessmen and the shipowners.
K. Gournas, S. Nikitopoulos, N. Maziotis
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
9 December. Revolutionary StruggIe: International call for solidarity
actforfreedomnow!
9 December 2010
INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SOLIDARITY
Comrades,
We are three political prisoners, members of the armed group Revolutionary Struggle [Epanastatikos Agonas], and we send you militant greetings from the Greek prisons.
We were arrested in April 2010 along with other three comrades who are being accused of involvement in the organization. Since then, we have been on pretrial detention [under the terrorism act], waiting to be referred to a trial in the first months of 2011.
In an open political letter to society, the three of us claimed political responsibility for our participation in the organization of Revolutionary Struggle. In this way, we defended our actions which were directed against the Capital and the State, and contributed through practice and speech towards the overthrowal of the State and capitalism, aiming at social revolution, at a non-statist, anti-authoritarian, communal and communist society, in which assemblies and councils of the people will undertake social, political and economic operation and management.
By claiming political responsibility, we also want to defend armed struggle, and to highlight its timelessness and importance within the broader struggle for overthrowal and social revolution. Most importantly, we want to highlight its relevance and necessity for our times. It is our belief that the appropriate objective conditions for the overthrowal of capitalism have developed in this era of global economic crisis more than in any other time since the Second World War.
Also, by undertaking political responsibility we wanted to restore the memory and honour of our comrade Lambros Foundas, who was a member of the Revolutionary Struggle and was killed in an armed clash with cops in March 2010 during an attempted expropriation of a car – a preparatory action of a wider action plan of our organization.
The political, economic and social environment in which the Revolutionary Struggle was formed and has developed its action is very different from that of the Western-European urban guerrilla groups, which were active from the 1970s and 1980s up until the early 1990s. Back then the bipolar, the competition between the US-USSR and their political-economic systems were dominant. It was the time when the model of Keynesianism was sinking into crisis and political devaluation, as Capital regained its strength against the proletariat, governments of Western countries one after the other abandoned state intervention in the economy – the so-called ‘economics of demand’ – and replaced them with ‘economics of supply’, while the States began the assault on labor and social gains, defending the interests of the economically powerful and imposing the neoliberal financial and political model of governance.
The economic and political environment in which Revolutionary Struggle was formed was set by the USA monocracy, economic globalization, neoliberalism and the fight against terrorism, which is the peak of political-military globalization. Because, for us, both the “fight against terrorism” and the totalitarianism of the markets are two sides of the same coin; they are the political and economic nature of globalization. Whenever and wherever globalization is not able to be imposed by the weapons of the capitalists and international financial institutions (IMF, WB, WTO, ECB, FED), by the financial tools of international stock markets, by poverty, hunger and marginalization, it is imposed by the sharpening of state violence and power, by repression, war and military incursions, by fire and iron.
The period from 2003, when the Revolutionary Struggle started its action, up to 2007, while the growing social crisis was creating strong social dissatisfaction, the neoliberal consensus was strong, due to the fact that capitalist development was continued ‘smoothly’ using bank loans, as a global scale bubble growing against the successive financial crises that were shaking the planet (Southeast Asia crisis, economic collapse in Argentina, Dot.com crisis in the US).
Since 2007, year of the first ‘bursting of the bubble’ of the residential mortgage loans in the US, which gave the onset of the global financial crisis, the failure of the neoliberal consensus started, leading to deeper and deeper political and social scorn for the regime.
During its first period Revolutionary Struggle set as cutting-edge issues the ‘fight against terrorism’ with the military operations of the US and their Western allies to the countries of the region, and with the intensity of state violence, repression and terrorism in the countries of the capitalist centre and the semi-periphery, in which substantially Greece belongs (rocket attack against the US Embassy, attack against the former minister of Public Order, against police targets and courts), the neoliberal invasion, the marketization of all the economic and social functions left, the attack of Capital against labor gains (bomb attacks against Ministries of Employment and Economy).
Then, since 2008, the global financial crisis was a true challenge for us in order to upgrade our action, making attacks against economic structures and institutions such as the stock market, Citibank and Eurobank. Our ambition was to hurt the vulnerable – due to the crisis – system as long as possible, to strongly sabotage the political choices of the Greek government and the ‘rescue-of-the-country’ plans imposed by the troika (IMF, EU, ECB).
This was the reason that PASOK government was so afraid of Revolutionary Struggle, since – according to the statements of a member of the government – the organization ‘could blow up the financial measures.’ That’s why our arrests, which took place a few days before the IMF, the EU and the ECB entirely take the reins of power in Greece, were characterized by the Greek government and other European and American political factors as a great success.
For us, the financial crisis we live today is the first truly global crisis in history and the only one since the Great Depression of the early 1930s that affects so intensely all the countries of the capitalist centre, while its character is systemic; it concerns the nature of capitalism itself and the nature of the market economy, and it is multi-dimensional, because other than financial it is political, social and environmental.
On the occasion of the current crisis, both economic and political elites around the world are conducting a frontal attack against societies; former achievements of the labor movement are permanently buried in the name of competitiveness, the welfare state is long past, while institutions of the system such as the nation state lose their importance, concepts such as sovereignty have no real meaning, and representative democracy in many countries such as Greece, which come under the supervision of the transnational elite and economic institutions (IMF, Central banks, etc.) is humiliated, since in fact a series of constitutional provisions are cancelled, and it becomes the vehicle for the establishment of a globalized totalitarianism, that of markets, multinationals, bankers and their political institutions.
Against this charge of the political and economical elites there is no room for the implementation of Keynesian experiments and reforms. This has been obvious by the governments’ respond to the crisis, by unleashing their wildest neoliberal attack against the middle and lower classes, against the willing of the majority of people. On the occasion of the financial crisis, they forward the greatest robbery and looting in human history and the greatest transaction of wealth from the basis to the top of the social hierarchy, driving more and more people to hunger, impoverishment and death.
For vast parts of the societies both of the periphery and the centre of the capitalist world, the neoliberal model of development has bankrupt alongside the general economic regime. Next in line to fall is the political system of representative democracy.
The lack of social consent doesn’t stop the European governments from a series of political coup d’état with the excuse of over-passing the crisis while supported only by minorities. In this way, they provoke the rage and exasperation of the social majorities, which quite often are expressed in violent ways on the streets of European cities (of France, England, Greece, Ireland, Italy…).
All the above record a series of political and social conditions that, for us, are the most appropriate in order to put into practice the international proletarian counterattack, to accomplish the overthrowal of capitalism and the State, to undertake the revolution. Because today the dilemma of the fighters but also the people repressed is one: social revolution or total submission and death.
Our obligation is to create the subjective circumstances, namely to contribute to the creation of a polymorphic revolutionary movement at national and international level that will form the conditions for the realization of the social revolution.
Within this political and social situation, the armed struggle can be of particular importance and may hold a central role, as it may reflect the overall political conflict with the regime, to herald the armed proletarian counterattack of peoples and to propagandize in the most dynamic way the overthrowal and social revolution.
We want our trial to be a political step to express in public these political positions; we want it to be registered in history as a moment of the struggle for freedom. To highlight the importance of the social revolution as the only answer to the crisis that condemns the largest parts of society to economic and social devastation.
[We want our trial] to become a public condemnation of the system and all its collaborationists no matter their political accession. To highlight that the armed struggle, despite the attacks by the system, is vivid and well-timed but also important in our days in order to promote the revolutionary process. We want to speak out the need for the formation of revolutionary movements everywhere, which will persuade the accomplishment of the social revolution.
In such a trial we believe that the best ‘witnesses of defense’ are the comrades who have chosen their dynamic clash with the system. These are the fighters who have been members of guerilla groups and have remained immovable and impenitent in their choices, by defending their struggles, their comrades who died in prison, those who were imprisoned for many years.
With their political statement in court, they will testify their own experiences, their own struggles as these were expressed through different social and economical conditions. They will speak about the timelessness and historical continuity of the social and class struggle that will be waged until the total destruction of the capitalist system. They will also speak about the struggle that is continued inside prison cells by the prisoners of this war. Because we do not choose the path of struggle to accept the conditions of imprisonment imposed by our enemy in order to morally defeat us and lead us to political or even physical extermination.
For us, that would be the best expression of solidarity; to make this trial a cry for freedom.
Pola Rupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas
9 December 2010
INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SOLIDARITY
Comrades,
We are three political prisoners, members of the armed group Revolutionary Struggle [Epanastatikos Agonas], and we send you militant greetings from the Greek prisons.
We were arrested in April 2010 along with other three comrades who are being accused of involvement in the organization. Since then, we have been on pretrial detention [under the terrorism act], waiting to be referred to a trial in the first months of 2011.
In an open political letter to society, the three of us claimed political responsibility for our participation in the organization of Revolutionary Struggle. In this way, we defended our actions which were directed against the Capital and the State, and contributed through practice and speech towards the overthrowal of the State and capitalism, aiming at social revolution, at a non-statist, anti-authoritarian, communal and communist society, in which assemblies and councils of the people will undertake social, political and economic operation and management.
By claiming political responsibility, we also want to defend armed struggle, and to highlight its timelessness and importance within the broader struggle for overthrowal and social revolution. Most importantly, we want to highlight its relevance and necessity for our times. It is our belief that the appropriate objective conditions for the overthrowal of capitalism have developed in this era of global economic crisis more than in any other time since the Second World War.
Also, by undertaking political responsibility we wanted to restore the memory and honour of our comrade Lambros Foundas, who was a member of the Revolutionary Struggle and was killed in an armed clash with cops in March 2010 during an attempted expropriation of a car – a preparatory action of a wider action plan of our organization.
The political, economic and social environment in which the Revolutionary Struggle was formed and has developed its action is very different from that of the Western-European urban guerrilla groups, which were active from the 1970s and 1980s up until the early 1990s. Back then the bipolar, the competition between the US-USSR and their political-economic systems were dominant. It was the time when the model of Keynesianism was sinking into crisis and political devaluation, as Capital regained its strength against the proletariat, governments of Western countries one after the other abandoned state intervention in the economy – the so-called ‘economics of demand’ – and replaced them with ‘economics of supply’, while the States began the assault on labor and social gains, defending the interests of the economically powerful and imposing the neoliberal financial and political model of governance.
The economic and political environment in which Revolutionary Struggle was formed was set by the USA monocracy, economic globalization, neoliberalism and the fight against terrorism, which is the peak of political-military globalization. Because, for us, both the “fight against terrorism” and the totalitarianism of the markets are two sides of the same coin; they are the political and economic nature of globalization. Whenever and wherever globalization is not able to be imposed by the weapons of the capitalists and international financial institutions (IMF, WB, WTO, ECB, FED), by the financial tools of international stock markets, by poverty, hunger and marginalization, it is imposed by the sharpening of state violence and power, by repression, war and military incursions, by fire and iron.
The period from 2003, when the Revolutionary Struggle started its action, up to 2007, while the growing social crisis was creating strong social dissatisfaction, the neoliberal consensus was strong, due to the fact that capitalist development was continued ‘smoothly’ using bank loans, as a global scale bubble growing against the successive financial crises that were shaking the planet (Southeast Asia crisis, economic collapse in Argentina, Dot.com crisis in the US).
Since 2007, year of the first ‘bursting of the bubble’ of the residential mortgage loans in the US, which gave the onset of the global financial crisis, the failure of the neoliberal consensus started, leading to deeper and deeper political and social scorn for the regime.
During its first period Revolutionary Struggle set as cutting-edge issues the ‘fight against terrorism’ with the military operations of the US and their Western allies to the countries of the region, and with the intensity of state violence, repression and terrorism in the countries of the capitalist centre and the semi-periphery, in which substantially Greece belongs (rocket attack against the US Embassy, attack against the former minister of Public Order, against police targets and courts), the neoliberal invasion, the marketization of all the economic and social functions left, the attack of Capital against labor gains (bomb attacks against Ministries of Employment and Economy).
Then, since 2008, the global financial crisis was a true challenge for us in order to upgrade our action, making attacks against economic structures and institutions such as the stock market, Citibank and Eurobank. Our ambition was to hurt the vulnerable – due to the crisis – system as long as possible, to strongly sabotage the political choices of the Greek government and the ‘rescue-of-the-country’ plans imposed by the troika (IMF, EU, ECB).
This was the reason that PASOK government was so afraid of Revolutionary Struggle, since – according to the statements of a member of the government – the organization ‘could blow up the financial measures.’ That’s why our arrests, which took place a few days before the IMF, the EU and the ECB entirely take the reins of power in Greece, were characterized by the Greek government and other European and American political factors as a great success.
For us, the financial crisis we live today is the first truly global crisis in history and the only one since the Great Depression of the early 1930s that affects so intensely all the countries of the capitalist centre, while its character is systemic; it concerns the nature of capitalism itself and the nature of the market economy, and it is multi-dimensional, because other than financial it is political, social and environmental.
On the occasion of the current crisis, both economic and political elites around the world are conducting a frontal attack against societies; former achievements of the labor movement are permanently buried in the name of competitiveness, the welfare state is long past, while institutions of the system such as the nation state lose their importance, concepts such as sovereignty have no real meaning, and representative democracy in many countries such as Greece, which come under the supervision of the transnational elite and economic institutions (IMF, Central banks, etc.) is humiliated, since in fact a series of constitutional provisions are cancelled, and it becomes the vehicle for the establishment of a globalized totalitarianism, that of markets, multinationals, bankers and their political institutions.
Against this charge of the political and economical elites there is no room for the implementation of Keynesian experiments and reforms. This has been obvious by the governments’ respond to the crisis, by unleashing their wildest neoliberal attack against the middle and lower classes, against the willing of the majority of people. On the occasion of the financial crisis, they forward the greatest robbery and looting in human history and the greatest transaction of wealth from the basis to the top of the social hierarchy, driving more and more people to hunger, impoverishment and death.
For vast parts of the societies both of the periphery and the centre of the capitalist world, the neoliberal model of development has bankrupt alongside the general economic regime. Next in line to fall is the political system of representative democracy.
The lack of social consent doesn’t stop the European governments from a series of political coup d’état with the excuse of over-passing the crisis while supported only by minorities. In this way, they provoke the rage and exasperation of the social majorities, which quite often are expressed in violent ways on the streets of European cities (of France, England, Greece, Ireland, Italy…).
All the above record a series of political and social conditions that, for us, are the most appropriate in order to put into practice the international proletarian counterattack, to accomplish the overthrowal of capitalism and the State, to undertake the revolution. Because today the dilemma of the fighters but also the people repressed is one: social revolution or total submission and death.
Our obligation is to create the subjective circumstances, namely to contribute to the creation of a polymorphic revolutionary movement at national and international level that will form the conditions for the realization of the social revolution.
Within this political and social situation, the armed struggle can be of particular importance and may hold a central role, as it may reflect the overall political conflict with the regime, to herald the armed proletarian counterattack of peoples and to propagandize in the most dynamic way the overthrowal and social revolution.
We want our trial to be a political step to express in public these political positions; we want it to be registered in history as a moment of the struggle for freedom. To highlight the importance of the social revolution as the only answer to the crisis that condemns the largest parts of society to economic and social devastation.
[We want our trial] to become a public condemnation of the system and all its collaborationists no matter their political accession. To highlight that the armed struggle, despite the attacks by the system, is vivid and well-timed but also important in our days in order to promote the revolutionary process. We want to speak out the need for the formation of revolutionary movements everywhere, which will persuade the accomplishment of the social revolution.
In such a trial we believe that the best ‘witnesses of defense’ are the comrades who have chosen their dynamic clash with the system. These are the fighters who have been members of guerilla groups and have remained immovable and impenitent in their choices, by defending their struggles, their comrades who died in prison, those who were imprisoned for many years.
With their political statement in court, they will testify their own experiences, their own struggles as these were expressed through different social and economical conditions. They will speak about the timelessness and historical continuity of the social and class struggle that will be waged until the total destruction of the capitalist system. They will also speak about the struggle that is continued inside prison cells by the prisoners of this war. Because we do not choose the path of struggle to accept the conditions of imprisonment imposed by our enemy in order to morally defeat us and lead us to political or even physical extermination.
For us, that would be the best expression of solidarity; to make this trial a cry for freedom.
Pola Rupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas
Sunday, 5 December 2010
FOR DECEMBER. Giannis Dimitrakis
FOR DECEMBER
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Memories that need to be recalled, emotions and images. All of them exiled and buried deep in the depths of the soul and the mind. It’s a painful procedure to describe how you experienced a situation in which you weren’t present but your whole being raged to be there.
The murder of a child and the fragile and hollow social balance tumbles down like a house made of cards. The mass media are late to realize the magnitude of the chain reactions that the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos will unleash and the first clashes with the pigs in uniform on the dawn of December 7th are considered the beginning and the end of a small and anticipated protest. The next hours and days will prove otherwise.
In the background of an insurrection and around it, a different and parallel reality, in its own space/time, exists and takes breaths. It listens carefully to the beats of a society that is awake from its slumber and desperately seeks to join it, in a common course. It is my own, personal, individual reality. Wrapped in a shroud for the last three years, “protected” by bars, walls and CCTV, and although it has had its own small insurrections-breaks of illegality and of abolition of everyday normality behind the prison walls nonetheless it lusts for freer, more comradely, more incendiary moments to clash with the existent.
My operational inability in transferring the external reality to the prison body, infecting it with the insurrectional virus tuning in also other individuals to the rhythm of a generalized clash against those who hold life tied in chains, creates disappointment and sadness. The apparent, personal defeat against the prison, the communication bridges with the fellow prisoners that are already dissolving or have already long ago crumbled, the emotional charge with everything that is happening out there leads me with mathematical precision to complete isolation.
Confined within the confined, the evening of December 7th I lay empty and breathless in the detention cell of some prison, trying to understand how I ended up thrown away in a wet and filthy dungeon as a hunger striker demanding my transfer to another hellhole(!) while outside the walls all my friends, acquaintances, comrades are living days of unparalleled magic. The magic that life has when you arm yourself and together with others you attempt the impossible, the ideal, the oneiric. When you allow a rush of emotions to overflow which are then transformed into energy and action.
Four walls, a disciplinary cell, dark and cold, with two squalid mattresses thrown on the filthy floor, without natural light and with a yellow lamp that is slowly frying the last of your brain functions. And, as a topping off to the ill-favored and martyric scenery the endless and unbearable irony of getting a television in the middle of the cell, with the “possibility” it provides to observe from nearly a breath away the fires, the street clashes and everything taking place, a friendly nearly comradely being that commands the mind and the soul to a one and only duty. To stare with absolute devotion at every image it projects and to listen to every upstart screaming like a hysteric about the ordeals and the end of the world possibly coming after the days of December or every wishy-washy attempting to find a psychological alibi for the insurgents in order to demonstrate his philanthropic understanding but of course also his disagreement with acts of “blind violence”.
It is certain that if my punishment for transgressing the laws and moral codes of this society could have a metaphysical texture, this would have been my own individual eternal hell. The posthumous cauldron deriving from a fictitious christian inspiration in which I will stew in repayment for my mortal sin. The sin of walking in streets of liberation. Streets of self-knowledge and self-consciousness.
To be bound down to a standstill by the weight of personal and other bonds, to adopt the role of a spectator without having a choice, at the same time that you would sell your soul to the devil to be free, participating in an endless festival of fire, is a torture that is difficult to match even if it does not entail physical pain.
A knot in the throat, a tight feeling in the stomach and a tidal wave of emotions shaking me violently whenever I share the ecstasy, the joy, the intensity and the anguish of comrades who in those days were a part of this insurrection. Moments immersed in contradiction. The deceptive feeling of living the lives of others is completely stripped naked and I am brought back to the harsh reality, where action defines life.
Every memory from those days an open wound and the pain festers in silence. It’s been years now that my eyes can’t shed any tears, only black clouds shadow my face every time that like a castaway on a desert island I look into the distant horizon at another ship passing me by.
With comradely greetings
Yiannis Dimitrakis
8/5/09
A communication from the Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
It's been more than four years since the morning of January 16th 2006, when the anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis was arrested, heavily wounded by police fire, after a robbery at a branch of the National Bank in the center of Athens.
From the very first moment a storm of constructed information broke out, systematically supplied by the police and readily carried out by the mass media. The police constructed "the gang of robbers in black," so that other comrades could be named as members, to which was attributed a string of robberies but also a close association to armed revolutionary groups, and then it was proclaimed that the whole of the anarchist- anti-authoritarian movement is closely connected to organized crime !!
Gianni's arrest, the slander and the manhunt unleashed against his three supposed accomplices (which were later on declared wanted for astronomic rewards) - four comrades known for their many years of political activity - on the one hand aims for their legal annihilation and on the other, promotes a holistic plan of stripping of meaning and criminalization of anarchists, anti-authoritarians and class struggle. Because of his political identity, the state moved with rage against him from the first moment.
Parallel to the crescendo of misinformation and impression creating by the media, the district attorney tried to interrogate him in the emergency room while he was bedridden and under pharmaceutical influence. The charges against him were based on the "anti-terror" law and enriched with six unsolved robberies, attempted manslaughter and money laundering. He was probably the first man in custody to be held at Malandrino maximum security prison, which is intended to hold convicts only, while attacks by prison guards, vindictive transfers and disciplinary sentences, the exhausting sentence of the first trial (an unheard of for a robbery sentence of 35 years) and the provocative deprivation of basic rights for the preparation of his defense at the court of appeals supplement the oppressive aggressiveness against him.
In these extreme conditions, the comrade defended from the beginning his choice to expropriate a bank, without statements of remorse and with clarity as towards his motives and intentions. He gave meaning to his act as a moment in his critique and action against the system of wage slavery and exploitation, against the antisocial role of the banks and as a part of the polymorphic social struggle.
urthermore, in the wretched reality of the prisons, he stood dynamically and with dignity from the beginning. He participated in all of the prisoner's struggles happening the past years in Greece. Advancing to hunger strikes and abstinence from the prison meals - despite the permanent health problems given him by the cop's bullets - showing his solidarity for his fellow prisoners and fighting for the terms of his survival and existence in the difficult position of imprisonment. Along with other imprisoned anti-authoritarians he was an interactive channel of communication with the grandiose prisoner's movements in the fall of 2008.
All these reasons - and because Giannis Dimitrakis and the other three anarchists are some of us, comrades and co fighters in the diversity of the struggles for freedom - fired off a mass of actions of solidarity and political defense for them in many cities in Greece. From the posters, texts and brochures to the flyers, banners and slogans on walls and from the attack actions against banks, other economic targets or government vehicles to the massive presence of people at the public events in the amphitheaters, the march in the center of Athens and the demonstrations outside of the prisons of Malandrino, Koridallos, Neapolis and Alikarnasso, the anarchists and anti-authoritarians made clear the way in which they respond to their comrades being held hostage by the state.
For active solidarity to Giannis Dimitrakis!
With comradely greetings,
Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
Yiannis Dimitrakis
Memories that need to be recalled, emotions and images. All of them exiled and buried deep in the depths of the soul and the mind. It’s a painful procedure to describe how you experienced a situation in which you weren’t present but your whole being raged to be there.
The murder of a child and the fragile and hollow social balance tumbles down like a house made of cards. The mass media are late to realize the magnitude of the chain reactions that the death of Alexandros Grigoropoulos will unleash and the first clashes with the pigs in uniform on the dawn of December 7th are considered the beginning and the end of a small and anticipated protest. The next hours and days will prove otherwise.
In the background of an insurrection and around it, a different and parallel reality, in its own space/time, exists and takes breaths. It listens carefully to the beats of a society that is awake from its slumber and desperately seeks to join it, in a common course. It is my own, personal, individual reality. Wrapped in a shroud for the last three years, “protected” by bars, walls and CCTV, and although it has had its own small insurrections-breaks of illegality and of abolition of everyday normality behind the prison walls nonetheless it lusts for freer, more comradely, more incendiary moments to clash with the existent.
My operational inability in transferring the external reality to the prison body, infecting it with the insurrectional virus tuning in also other individuals to the rhythm of a generalized clash against those who hold life tied in chains, creates disappointment and sadness. The apparent, personal defeat against the prison, the communication bridges with the fellow prisoners that are already dissolving or have already long ago crumbled, the emotional charge with everything that is happening out there leads me with mathematical precision to complete isolation.
Confined within the confined, the evening of December 7th I lay empty and breathless in the detention cell of some prison, trying to understand how I ended up thrown away in a wet and filthy dungeon as a hunger striker demanding my transfer to another hellhole(!) while outside the walls all my friends, acquaintances, comrades are living days of unparalleled magic. The magic that life has when you arm yourself and together with others you attempt the impossible, the ideal, the oneiric. When you allow a rush of emotions to overflow which are then transformed into energy and action.
Four walls, a disciplinary cell, dark and cold, with two squalid mattresses thrown on the filthy floor, without natural light and with a yellow lamp that is slowly frying the last of your brain functions. And, as a topping off to the ill-favored and martyric scenery the endless and unbearable irony of getting a television in the middle of the cell, with the “possibility” it provides to observe from nearly a breath away the fires, the street clashes and everything taking place, a friendly nearly comradely being that commands the mind and the soul to a one and only duty. To stare with absolute devotion at every image it projects and to listen to every upstart screaming like a hysteric about the ordeals and the end of the world possibly coming after the days of December or every wishy-washy attempting to find a psychological alibi for the insurgents in order to demonstrate his philanthropic understanding but of course also his disagreement with acts of “blind violence”.
It is certain that if my punishment for transgressing the laws and moral codes of this society could have a metaphysical texture, this would have been my own individual eternal hell. The posthumous cauldron deriving from a fictitious christian inspiration in which I will stew in repayment for my mortal sin. The sin of walking in streets of liberation. Streets of self-knowledge and self-consciousness.
To be bound down to a standstill by the weight of personal and other bonds, to adopt the role of a spectator without having a choice, at the same time that you would sell your soul to the devil to be free, participating in an endless festival of fire, is a torture that is difficult to match even if it does not entail physical pain.
A knot in the throat, a tight feeling in the stomach and a tidal wave of emotions shaking me violently whenever I share the ecstasy, the joy, the intensity and the anguish of comrades who in those days were a part of this insurrection. Moments immersed in contradiction. The deceptive feeling of living the lives of others is completely stripped naked and I am brought back to the harsh reality, where action defines life.
Every memory from those days an open wound and the pain festers in silence. It’s been years now that my eyes can’t shed any tears, only black clouds shadow my face every time that like a castaway on a desert island I look into the distant horizon at another ship passing me by.
With comradely greetings
Yiannis Dimitrakis
8/5/09
A communication from the Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
It's been more than four years since the morning of January 16th 2006, when the anarchist Giannis Dimitrakis was arrested, heavily wounded by police fire, after a robbery at a branch of the National Bank in the center of Athens.
From the very first moment a storm of constructed information broke out, systematically supplied by the police and readily carried out by the mass media. The police constructed "the gang of robbers in black," so that other comrades could be named as members, to which was attributed a string of robberies but also a close association to armed revolutionary groups, and then it was proclaimed that the whole of the anarchist- anti-authoritarian movement is closely connected to organized crime !!
Gianni's arrest, the slander and the manhunt unleashed against his three supposed accomplices (which were later on declared wanted for astronomic rewards) - four comrades known for their many years of political activity - on the one hand aims for their legal annihilation and on the other, promotes a holistic plan of stripping of meaning and criminalization of anarchists, anti-authoritarians and class struggle. Because of his political identity, the state moved with rage against him from the first moment.
Parallel to the crescendo of misinformation and impression creating by the media, the district attorney tried to interrogate him in the emergency room while he was bedridden and under pharmaceutical influence. The charges against him were based on the "anti-terror" law and enriched with six unsolved robberies, attempted manslaughter and money laundering. He was probably the first man in custody to be held at Malandrino maximum security prison, which is intended to hold convicts only, while attacks by prison guards, vindictive transfers and disciplinary sentences, the exhausting sentence of the first trial (an unheard of for a robbery sentence of 35 years) and the provocative deprivation of basic rights for the preparation of his defense at the court of appeals supplement the oppressive aggressiveness against him.
In these extreme conditions, the comrade defended from the beginning his choice to expropriate a bank, without statements of remorse and with clarity as towards his motives and intentions. He gave meaning to his act as a moment in his critique and action against the system of wage slavery and exploitation, against the antisocial role of the banks and as a part of the polymorphic social struggle.
urthermore, in the wretched reality of the prisons, he stood dynamically and with dignity from the beginning. He participated in all of the prisoner's struggles happening the past years in Greece. Advancing to hunger strikes and abstinence from the prison meals - despite the permanent health problems given him by the cop's bullets - showing his solidarity for his fellow prisoners and fighting for the terms of his survival and existence in the difficult position of imprisonment. Along with other imprisoned anti-authoritarians he was an interactive channel of communication with the grandiose prisoner's movements in the fall of 2008.
All these reasons - and because Giannis Dimitrakis and the other three anarchists are some of us, comrades and co fighters in the diversity of the struggles for freedom - fired off a mass of actions of solidarity and political defense for them in many cities in Greece. From the posters, texts and brochures to the flyers, banners and slogans on walls and from the attack actions against banks, other economic targets or government vehicles to the massive presence of people at the public events in the amphitheaters, the march in the center of Athens and the demonstrations outside of the prisons of Malandrino, Koridallos, Neapolis and Alikarnasso, the anarchists and anti-authoritarians made clear the way in which they respond to their comrades being held hostage by the state.
For active solidarity to Giannis Dimitrakis!
With comradely greetings,
Assembly for Solidarity (Athens)
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Sofoklis Nigdelis, roommate of Vangelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information from the Greek prison.
actforfreedomnow!
Sofoklis Nigdelis, room-mate of Vaggelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information.
The situation of the great fighter Vaggelis Pallis remains crucial but steady.
As for the slaves of the system that have as a profession journalism, I have a message for some of them: Fascists and servants of the rotten state mechanism that you recycle and like goats re-chew false and forged news, stop the unofficial, unconfirmed, provocative announcements that you put out against Vaggelis Pallis, because don't forget that human-wolves are hungry and one morning while your going to work, which is none other than to promote imaginary stories to fit the mold of your snitching boss.. that a wolf will jump on you and will start eating you starting from the tongue. You, the specific snitches, remember that wolves are always hungry. My warm hello to your colleague Sokratis Giolias and his family. Solidarity and comrade collectiveness are some of our destructive weapons.
Regards and strength to the comrades in solidarity with Vaggelis Pallis, inside and outside the walls.
Sofoklis Nigdelis 30/8/10
Grevena prisons.
Sofoklis Nigdelis, room-mate of Vaggelis Pallis for many years, answers to the monstrosity of the regime's information.
The situation of the great fighter Vaggelis Pallis remains crucial but steady.
As for the slaves of the system that have as a profession journalism, I have a message for some of them: Fascists and servants of the rotten state mechanism that you recycle and like goats re-chew false and forged news, stop the unofficial, unconfirmed, provocative announcements that you put out against Vaggelis Pallis, because don't forget that human-wolves are hungry and one morning while your going to work, which is none other than to promote imaginary stories to fit the mold of your snitching boss.. that a wolf will jump on you and will start eating you starting from the tongue. You, the specific snitches, remember that wolves are always hungry. My warm hello to your colleague Sokratis Giolias and his family. Solidarity and comrade collectiveness are some of our destructive weapons.
Regards and strength to the comrades in solidarity with Vaggelis Pallis, inside and outside the walls.
Sofoklis Nigdelis 30/8/10
Grevena prisons.
ANOTHER PRISONER INJURY IN GREECE
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29 August, 2010 - The injury of another prisoner in Grevena prisons has caused riot today. Prisoners burnt their mattresses demanding better living conditions, more leave days etc. The conditions in most of democracy s hell holes are inhuman.
FIRE TO THE PRISONS
29 August, 2010 - The injury of another prisoner in Grevena prisons has caused riot today. Prisoners burnt their mattresses demanding better living conditions, more leave days etc. The conditions in most of democracy s hell holes are inhuman.
FIRE TO THE PRISONS
Vangelis Pallis (49 years old), aka ‘Apache’, seriously injured inside Trikala’s jail Saturday, August 28, 2010
actforfreedomnow!
28 Αugust - 2010 - This morning, at 9 o’ clock, Vangelis Pallis was found in his cell seriously injured in the neck by a piece of glass. The headquarters of the jail said that he did it by himself. The advocate ordered his cell to be sealed for further investigation.
Vangelis Pallis is now in intensive care, hospitalized in a very serious situation.
Vangelis Pallis has many times in the past participated in riots inside the jail. In the big riot in the jails in November 2008, as he was a member of the steering committee, he was on a hunger strike for a long time. People that know him say that there is not even one chance in a million that he injured himself with his own will. As you understand, he is fighting against the cruel conditions of the jail. Therefore, our suspicions about what really happened are not unrealistic. Updates soon.
28 Αugust - 2010 - This morning, at 9 o’ clock, Vangelis Pallis was found in his cell seriously injured in the neck by a piece of glass. The headquarters of the jail said that he did it by himself. The advocate ordered his cell to be sealed for further investigation.
Vangelis Pallis is now in intensive care, hospitalized in a very serious situation.
Vangelis Pallis has many times in the past participated in riots inside the jail. In the big riot in the jails in November 2008, as he was a member of the steering committee, he was on a hunger strike for a long time. People that know him say that there is not even one chance in a million that he injured himself with his own will. As you understand, he is fighting against the cruel conditions of the jail. Therefore, our suspicions about what really happened are not unrealistic. Updates soon.
Prisons in Greece. Stories of Shame and Horror.
actforfreedomnow!
1 August, 2010 - After good morning, take of your underwear, sit down, turn around, bend, cough, the ultimate humiliation.
Prisoner D. Proestos describes how they search for the smuggling of drugs into Greek prisons.
Shame and horror ...He first went to prison in 1984, came out in 1994 and returned in 1995, where he has been held until now with a life sentence. Overall, this man has served nine years in the diciplinary section: "Diciplinary, pissed dirty mattress, you don't eat, you don't get to drink water, no smoking. They have you in a concrete cage, handcuffed", he recalls."They tore out my soul" Diavata Prison. Thessaloniki. There "I was tied up in the diciplinary for six weeks. I got beat up a lot. I pissed and I shat on the mattress I slept on. It was so bad I got sick with hepatitis.
Sergeant Mitsios and Director Eftihidou, after they had severely beaten me, I remember them begging me to leave the diciplinary cell and go to the Infection hospital in Thessaloniki, so I don't die."For Proestos there are incidents that have "torn" his soul, as he says. "Extreme events only with some staff are in my mind and occurred where there was no "third eye"... solitary cells, dungeons, tie-downs, cross, torture and humiliation "...Another prisoner, G. Makis, reveals: "Faced with eight members of the prison staff I had been asked to lean over and cough (naked). Irefused to because I felt that my dignity was being insulted and undermined. Based on the penal code it's any inmate's right to refuse anything that lowers and undermines his dignity. " Small print for some ...Many are the letters we've received from prisoners in prisons all over the country. Human stories scattered on four sheets of paper ith a blue pen.
People who for whatever reason were sentenced and today are in custody. But it seems that the blaming stops with the sound of the prison door opening.
Then there is no blaming but on the prisoner. And when the balance is not kept, given that many social services are broken down, the game becomes dangerous and he comes back seeking revenge on society itself. So this is why the issue of prisons should concern us all. Several of our prisoners complain that even the benefit of wages provided is only "to serve some particular balance within the prison."Indeed, in some cases, the internal mechanism of each prison goes beyond even the power of the appropriate ministry. "The Secretariat of the prison affects even the Appeal Council in the manner that they present the cases and all this creates a strange and often lawless behaviour and relationship," he says. It seems that even a transfer to a prison farm is considered a "buyable benefit". Literally an impossible dream for some. While most prisons are overcrowded, there are prison farms that are 'empty' and could accept prisoners."And this situation continues because no Minister of Justice until now, even if he has the will - which is rare - has had the power to go against the establishment of prisons" says a prisoner, whose data is available to the newspaper.
translated by boubourAs for Actforfreedomnow...
1 August, 2010 - After good morning, take of your underwear, sit down, turn around, bend, cough, the ultimate humiliation.
Prisoner D. Proestos describes how they search for the smuggling of drugs into Greek prisons.
Shame and horror ...He first went to prison in 1984, came out in 1994 and returned in 1995, where he has been held until now with a life sentence. Overall, this man has served nine years in the diciplinary section: "Diciplinary, pissed dirty mattress, you don't eat, you don't get to drink water, no smoking. They have you in a concrete cage, handcuffed", he recalls."They tore out my soul" Diavata Prison. Thessaloniki. There "I was tied up in the diciplinary for six weeks. I got beat up a lot. I pissed and I shat on the mattress I slept on. It was so bad I got sick with hepatitis.
Sergeant Mitsios and Director Eftihidou, after they had severely beaten me, I remember them begging me to leave the diciplinary cell and go to the Infection hospital in Thessaloniki, so I don't die."For Proestos there are incidents that have "torn" his soul, as he says. "Extreme events only with some staff are in my mind and occurred where there was no "third eye"... solitary cells, dungeons, tie-downs, cross, torture and humiliation "...Another prisoner, G. Makis, reveals: "Faced with eight members of the prison staff I had been asked to lean over and cough (naked). Irefused to because I felt that my dignity was being insulted and undermined. Based on the penal code it's any inmate's right to refuse anything that lowers and undermines his dignity. " Small print for some ...Many are the letters we've received from prisoners in prisons all over the country. Human stories scattered on four sheets of paper ith a blue pen.
People who for whatever reason were sentenced and today are in custody. But it seems that the blaming stops with the sound of the prison door opening.
Then there is no blaming but on the prisoner. And when the balance is not kept, given that many social services are broken down, the game becomes dangerous and he comes back seeking revenge on society itself. So this is why the issue of prisons should concern us all. Several of our prisoners complain that even the benefit of wages provided is only "to serve some particular balance within the prison."Indeed, in some cases, the internal mechanism of each prison goes beyond even the power of the appropriate ministry. "The Secretariat of the prison affects even the Appeal Council in the manner that they present the cases and all this creates a strange and often lawless behaviour and relationship," he says. It seems that even a transfer to a prison farm is considered a "buyable benefit". Literally an impossible dream for some. While most prisons are overcrowded, there are prison farms that are 'empty' and could accept prisoners."And this situation continues because no Minister of Justice until now, even if he has the will - which is rare - has had the power to go against the establishment of prisons" says a prisoner, whose data is available to the newspaper.
translated by boubourAs for Actforfreedomnow...
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