Category: Uncategorized

Friday, October 8, 2010

6 octomber

DEMO to Koridalos Prisons Tuesday 19/10/2010 Athens Greece

NOT A STEP BACK

to the terrorism of the state, IMF and the media.

On the 14^th of october the 6 fighters imprisoned for the Revolutionary Struggle are called by the committee of appeals judges where it will be decided if they will remain imprisoned or not since the 6 month period has passed.

SOLIDARITY to K.Gournas, N.Maziotis, P.Roupa who have taken the political responsibility for their participation in R.S.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE – NO PERSECUTION to Ch.Kortesis, S.Nikitopoulos, V.Stathopoulos who deny the charges and are persecuted for their comrade relations and their political action.

GATHERING at Monastiraki Square Saturday 16/10/10 at 12.00pm

DEMO to Koridalos Prisons Tuesday 19/10/2010

(pre-gathering: Eleutherias square 18.00)

Solidarity Assembly

translation actforfreedomnow!

athens 6-7th of october

solidarity to anarchist comrades in greece the text of the action in english can be found here:
/athens.indymedia.org/local/webcast/uploads/file0001evpist.pdf

On 27th of September an occupation took place in the building of the foreign press association of greece. The purpose was the counter-information about the case of the anarchists fighters prisoners accused of being members of the revolutionary organization ‘Revolutionary Struggle’.
The banners above read:
‘No prosecution for Nikotopoulos, Kortesis, Stathopoulos’ (3 of the anarchist prisoners that have not accepted of being members of the group)
‘Solidarity to the members of Revolutionary Struggle’
‘The state is the only terrorist. Solidarity is our weapon’

Se ha ocupado la Asociacion Internacional de Prensa de Atenas para solidarizarse con los miembros de Lucha Revolucionaria y para exigir la liberacion de los tres acusados de pertenencia a la misma organizacion.

POR EL DERRIBO TOTAL DEL CAPITALISMO

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

On April 10, 2010, the Anti-terrorist Department of the Greek Police arrested six people in Athens: Nikos Maziotis, Panagiota “Pola” Roupa, Kostas Gournas, Vaggelis Stathopoulos, Sarandos Nikitopoulos, and Christoforos Kortesis. All were known for their long presence in the anarchist/anti-authoritarian movement. Two weeks later, Maziotis, Roupa, and Gournas admitted to participating in the organization known as Revolutionary Struggle (Epanastatikos Agonas). Stathopoulos, Nikitopoulos, and Kortesis denied the charges and stated that they were being persecuted for their years of anarchist activity and their comradely political relationships with the others.
The following is the complete declaration of the Revolutionary Struggle Three:

We are taking responsibility for our participation in Revolutionary Struggle. We declare that comrade Lambros Foundas, who died in Dafni on March 10, 2010 after a battle with the police, also participated in Revolutionary Struggle. The battle was part of the subversive project decided on collectively by Revolutionary Struggle. It was a battle for revolution and freedom.
We also declare that we are very proud of our Revolutionary Struggle organization. We are proud of our history and of each moment of our political activity. We are proud of our comrade, whom we honor and will always honor.
And if the mechanisms of repression believe that imprisoning us will finish us off politically, they are wrong. Whether inside or outside prison, for us the struggle is and will continue to be a question of honor and dignity.
And if the terrorists Papandreou and Chrysohoidis are laughing (in vain) about our arrests; if they believe they have thus guaranteed the necessary security for their social-fascist party to easily continue imposing their criminal projects on society, wagging their tails to please their American masters; if they are hoping they have eliminated a serious threat to their regime, we assure them that it will not be so easy to do away with us.
While we live and breathe, we will do everything possible to cause trouble for their antisocial, criminal projects.
And if our persecutors and this country’s political establishment believe they have all of society on their side, if they believe most people see us as a “social threat,” then they are wrong. To the majority, the social threat is represented by the government, which passes one package of antisocial measures after another according to the recommendations of the “vultures” of Capital, who “grease” the State machinery so it functions smoothly. Terrorism is the neoliberal policy imposed for years by the parties in power and supported or tolerated by the smaller parties. Terrorism is the application of the “stability program.” Significant parts of the population—until now paralyzed by fear—are watching an unprecedented attack being launched against them, an attack still in its development phase.
Terrorism is not having the basics for survival. It’s having your wages and your pension cut. It’s having your house seized by some bank. It’s being surrounded by deadly pollution. Terrorism is living under a regime of daily fear for your survival.
To most of society, the terrorists and criminals are those who govern: the regime’s politicians, the rich, and the privileged castes, who exploit the workers and prosper by simply participating in the economic and political establishment. The enemies of society are those who—after years of stealing, getting rich, and taking advantage of a barbaric and grossly unjust system—are asking us to donate our blood in order to save the life of the regime’s putrid corpse now that the system is going through the biggest crisis in its history.
When the social-fascists in power claim to have the popular mandate to apply these policies, they provoke even more social indignation. In addition, they have already lost their legitimacy because no one has forgotten how PASOK extensively cheated broad strata of society during its election campaign. This is the same PASOK that took power by pure deception during the last election; lied about the so-called “redistribution policy” it supposedly wanted to apply, which was to benefit the poor; and lied when it promised salary and pension increases and a way out of the crisis, quickly and without undue aggravation.
They lied without knowing the country’s real financial situation, they lied about the state of the economy and its potential, and they lied in order to supposedly obtain the needed funds from privileged people. They stole power like liars, like vermin, like frauds. If they had revealed even the smallest part of their project before the election, they would now not only be out of the government but also out of parliament. The social consensus they are calling for is a monstrous lie provoking fierce social rage.
Right after the election, but still before PASOK revealed its true intentions, we as Revolutionary Struggle were already saying that the most brutal neoliberal offensive was on its way and would be launched in the name of “confronting the crisis and financial problems.” This has now been confirmed.
Additionally, we talked about the Papandreou government’s imminent political failure, which we expect to see shortly, because this is very much about a perishable government quickly nearing its expiration date.
Their criminal faces revealed, the keepers of political power nevertheless continue to deceive and trifle with us while insisting that what they are doing is “for everyone’s benefit.” Papandreou and his collaborators make us laugh when they call for patriotism, when they refer to the harsh measures they are imposing as “measures dictated by the national interest,” and when they talk about “saving the country.” And the culmination of this synchronized mockery comes when they say their efforts to ward off bankruptcy are for the benefit of the disadvantaged.
It’s “a matter of national emergency” when they drive large portions of the population into poverty and misery in order to “steady the markets” (“markets” mean “savage beasts created by transnational economic elites”), stop speculation with Greek debt, and finally lower public sector interest rates.
In fact, they have no interest in protecting either the country or the breakdown’s public sector. Most people are already worn out by the savage policies being applied to them, and their bankruptcy is a preliminary condition for the maintenance of privileged social strata. Pensions and salaries are being reduced or eliminated; hundreds of thousands of people are being laid off or will be laid off in the near future; tax audits are increasing; social security funds—after years of plundering, negligent policies by the State—are being allowed to disintegrate; and health services are being decimated while public hospitals fail and are left to deteriorate until they close, thus delivering the coup de grâce to any part of the public health system still left standing.
This situation is not something temporary that will improve in two to three years, like the powerful proclaim in order to reassure society, but something that will progressively worsen given the continuing efforts by the political elite to “get the country out of the crisis”—in other words, to save the economic and political ruling class.
After all the monstrous lies told by the government, we heard a number of quite earnest statements (for example, from Economic Minister Katseli) to the effect that “the crisis in Greece provides a great opportunity to apply the changes needed for global economic restructuring.” Of course, that means “the only opportunity to pass all the neoliberal reforms,” which previous governments didn’t even think of proposing due to the feared political cost of the social responses to such reforms.
They are talking about their only opportunity to quickly do away with every achievement and social gain once and for all, privatize benefits and the health sector, drastically reduce the cost of labor, and transform Greece into an exploitation paradise for Capital, with a large quantity of cheap labor devoid of all rights. They are talking about their only opportunity to bring about the cruelest redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top.
They are not interested in saving the disadvantaged, whom these policies condemn to a slow economic and social death. They want to save Greek capitalists, banks, big business, and arms manufacturers. They want to protect investors and every greedy opportunist who gambles with Greek debt and has thus far turned a profit. They want to protect themselves and the rest of the country’s political elite from the fall of the regime, which will also mean the dismantling of the state machinery. They want to protect themselves and the privileged people who relish taking part in the system.
The disadvantaged, who are simply disposable material to be used for the survival of the powerful, are now guaranteed the most profound economic and social collapse the country has seen since German occupation. PASOK is handing over land and sea to big capital; it is selling the entire country in order to save the skin of the local political and economic elite.
If only the lies would stop. Who are they hoping to fool when they say the financial collapse will mainly affect the poor, when they try to convince us that it’s in our own interest to “help overcome the crisis”? Anyway, by the time the country “has been saved,” all of us will already be dead. There will be no work, poverty will infect everyone like the plague, people will get sick and die without being able to do a thing about it, and the standard of living will be like that of a country at war. Because we are now at war. This has nothing to do with the war referred to by the lying Papandreou. The government didn’t declare any war on the markets and the speculators, like they say. The ridiculous statements we’ve been hearing all this time, especially from the mouth of the aforementioned actor who now manages the country’s destruction, only serve to confuse society.
We are facing a social and class war of an unprecedented level of intensity. The privileged social strata are synchronizing and coordinating their forces in order to launch an attack against our class, an attack of dimensions never before seen in these parts. This is a war that the capitalists, with help from the government, have declared against the workers. This is a war of the powerful against those who struggle.
We are facing a unique social situation in which the social and economic links between the privileged and the disadvantaged are breaking, one after another. An enormous social rupture is looming, along with an unprecedented political antithesis between the elite and the social base, and that has explosive potential.
In this situation of a never-before-seen terrorist attack launched by capital and the state, and while the overwhelming majority of people are experiencing a previously unimaginable state of fear and insecurity, it would be truly ridiculous to assert—like the authorities do—that our arrests have something to do with “confronting a social threat” and that the objective of Revolutionary Struggle was to “seriously frighten the population,” as the charges state.
We are certain that most do not perceive the lengthy, consistent political presence of Revolutionary Struggle as a “threat to society,” but rather as a political presence always with the oppressed and against the political and economic elite, on the side of those who live under the yoke of Power and against those who exercise it.
Despite the ideological counteroffensive unleashed against us by the government and mass media, most of the population understands that the war against us is a war against those who want to forcefully resist; it is an instrument of intimidation and terror to be used against those who are thinking about rising up in defiance of the criminal policies of power.
Anyone who looked closely at the trajectory of Revolutionary Struggle would understand the obsolescence of the assertions by the political establishment and its henchmen in the media about how our actions “constitute a threat to all of society.” Which of our actions terrorized society or were directed against it? Was it the attacks against the Economic and Labor Ministries, which are hated by the majority, and where the most antisocial policies are approved and decreed?
Was it the attacks against riot police, who terrorize the streets every day, who beat demonstrators, and whose sole mission is the violent repression of social struggles? Does it have something to do with our attacks against police stations, which give shelter to the regime’s trained killers, and where those who fall into the hands of the pigs are tortured, beaten, and murdered on a daily basis?
Did the attack against Voulgarakis—who was personally implicated in two huge scandals (wiretapping and the abduction of Pakistanis), and who used his ministerial seat to increase his family fortune through public land deals (the Vatopedi case—terrorize society? Most people who live in this country would very much like to see him, as well as all those mixed up in similar cases of insatiable theft of government property, hung in Syntagma Square.
Was the attack against the U.S. Embassy an act of terrorism against society? Don’t our persecutors and their superiors know that this attack was contentedly received by a large portion of Greek society, which is not especially friendly toward the United States?
Did the attack against the multinational Shell—which for decades has plundered the natural resources of many countries, exploited entire peoples, and contributed to the destruction of the planet—terrorize the population?
Or was it the attack against Citibank, one of the main gangs of international financial terrorists, which for decades has played an important role in the process of capital accumulation by stealing the wealth of innumerable countries via speculation with their national debts, thus bringing them to often irreversible economic and social ruin? Was attacking this multinational economic criminal, which is the ringleader of those who created the crisis we are now going through, an antisocial act?
Or was the attack against the Stock Exchange—that Temple of money, and one of the main channels for the plundering of social wealth and its transfer from the social base to the economic elite—an act of terrorism against society?
The only ones who were terrorized by these political actions were the political and economic authorities. The criminals are the capitalists, who are concerned about their “investments” and simply afraid of not being able to effortlessly cross the borders of their own modern dictatorship. If these attacks constitute a threat to anyone, it’s only to those who are enjoying the economic and social power derived from the current regime and from social slavery.
Therefore, our imprisonment is not a solution to the problem of public safety, but exactly the reverse: It is the attempted answer to a political threat to the regime, which allows capital and the state to most reliably exercise mass terror against the most people. Our persecutors’ objective is to eliminate an element capable of waking up society politically. Their objective is to erase a revolutionary threat.
For much of the international political and economic elite (including the IMF vultures as well), the global economic crisis is already over, and the economic recovery has now haltingly taken its place. Prospects look good, while the crisis in Greece is nothing more than the result of poor management by previous governments. The economic and political system’s defenders and apologists only identified “the crisis” with the shake-up in the international financial system, and since that seems rescued thanks to generous cash loans offered by the governments, they are now talking about an end to the system’s problems and the beginning of a perhaps grueling and none-too-short economic recovery process, but only on the condition that governments apply the necessary austerity measures.
The regime’s analysts also view the Greek crisis with the same superficial focus, which divides it into several separate (and for many, also independent) dimensions. To them, the economic crisis is simply a consequence of poor management of the system, which with some specific adjustments will return to its previous harmonious functioning.
To those who take part in the system’s leadership, the financial crisis in Greece is nothing but a secondary effect of the global economic crisis. It’s a problem that stems from poor management of public funds by previous governments. Of course, we won’t question the fact that all those different governments systematically and without exception plundered public funds. With wealth siphoned from the social base by the state, every administrator’s gang—bar none—was getting rich and living off of squandered public funds. Every now and then, they would perhaps throw out a few crusts of bread for the remainder of the population in an attempt to gain votes. The big party thieves amassed enormous fortunes, built mansions, bought yachts, and secured a life of luxury for themselves while the majority are living in a state of economic terror imposed by the state and capital. However, when the IMF and European Union vultures accuse previous governments of wasting public money, they aren’t referring to what we’ve mentioned, nor are they referring to the billions of euros those governments gave away to capitalists of every nationality operating in Greece. Instead, they are accusing previous governments of wasting public money on salaries and pensions, squandering it on public health and the education sector, and being too reluctant to tax the social base.
The Greek state has been bankrupt for a long time, whether the government admits it or not. The support mechanism constituted by the IMF, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank has already taken the reins of power, and its mission is to lend Greece cash in order to pay off those who took loans out of Greek public funds in the form of bonds. The trade-off for this “economic salvation” will be the cruelest pillaging of society by transnational capital.
Greece’s financial problems (apart from the plundering of public funds for personal benefit by those in charge) stem from the dominant model of development adopted during the past few years, as well as the link represented by Greece in the chain of the global production process. Greece’s role in Europe has always been that of a market for European products. And while the expensive euro was preventing European products from competing with the much cheaper products manufactured outside the European Union, the small Greek market was obligated to consume as many products from “eurozone” countries as it possibly could.
The assertion that “Europe is offering economic security to Greece” is nothing but a monstrous lie. From the beginning, the imperative of Europe’s economic strategy for Greece was to dismantle the previous production model and force the Greek state to stimulate consumption via loans. Greek governments continued to offer loans to finance the investments of EU companies in the Greek market, and simultaneously helped out Greek capitalists.
Moreover, after incessant propaganda from the banking groups, Greek society entered the loan labyrinth, which is exactly where a large portion now finds itself trapped.
Even in the midst of the crisis, with public as well as private Greek debt having already reached the amount of 1 trillion euros, President Trichet of the European Central Bank enthusiastically declared that “the Greeks still have a margin for new loans.” In other words: Keep consuming in order to support crisis-weakened European growth and the continuing profitability of the banks and corporations.
Illusory prosperity and high growth rates never correspond to the true economic situation; rather, they reflect the huge profits of capital. Plus, we had already pointed this out in 2005, at a time when everyone was still talking about the “strong Greek economy.” Even then we had predicted big economic problems and a real risk of insolvency, which Greece will face in the event a crisis of global dimensions explodes.
To all kinds of speculators/managers and owners of big capital, the crisis leaves no margin for the high profitability of the traditional sectors of the economy. Even many Stock Exchanges aren’t offering sufficient returns to satisfy the greedy capitalists, nor are the raw materials and foodstuff markets (despite the fact that prices are too high given the global decrease in demand) offering—at least for the moment—the possibility of an increase similar to that of 2008. And all this is going on despite investors doing everything possible to expand the bubble now present on certain Stock Exchanges.
On the other hand, national debts represent the best opportunity for transnational capital to extract—in the midst of crisis!—enormous profits. The international debt bubble in the main capitalist countries is now very large, but speculators of all kinds don’t want it to stop. They want just the opposite: to continue exploiting it until the end. The derailment of public debt in the central countries is a function of the enormous financial aid packages dispensed by their governments in order to save the global financial system. In short, for most people in the central countries, the financial crisis has been overcome, at least for now. The governments of these countries are going to systematically default, depositing public wealth into the black-hole accounts of the same big financial groups that created the crisis.
The gigantic dimensions of the financial sector (in 2006, before the crisis, the world GDP reached $47 trillion, the total value of all shares of stock exceeded $50 trillion, the value of all bonds was around $70 trillion, while the value of all derivatives exceeded $470 trillion—in other words, an amount ten times greater than the world GDP) is quite disproportionate to the number of people involved in it as well the size of the economies of the most developed capitalist countries. The efforts of governments to carry the debts of these banking and investment monstrosities on their shoulders is going to bankrupt many of these economies, even those that have been strong until now.
The entire planet’s economic elite contributes to all this while continuing to gamble with international debts. A large portion of the cash frozen by the crisis was viewed as a profitable way out of public debt, thus nourishing the bubble, which was highly destructive to the population and whose cracks that same population will be forced to pay for.
The game of great speculative attacks against national debts began with Greece, which due to its poor public finances and enormous debt appeared to be “the perfect client” for the markets. High interest rates, which according to “investors” reflect economic insecurity and an increase in potential indebtedness, yielded huge profits for everyone who “gambled” with Greek debt, until now. In case after case, increased market volatility always corresponds to higher profitability.
All the world’s economic elite took part in the creation of the debt bubble, once again believing they could siphon enormous profits from public debts. After all, according to the statements of their spokespeople, “countries will not be allowed to fall into bankruptcy.” This is the same notion that emerged during the previous debt crisis involving the peripheral countries in the ’80s. As much then as now, the big capitalists were of the opinion that “sovereign nations do not go bankrupt.” Along those lines of thought, Greece managed to get into debt with interest rates that exceeded 9% (and sometimes reached 15%), and the government fell into the arms of the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank “rescue mission,” which will now officially save the Greek state from economic ruin.
The capitalists’ statement that “sovereign nations do not go bankrupt” indirectly expresses the pressure those same capitalists are applying in order to take control of the international mechanisms “saving” the indebted countries. That way, they won’t risk the capital they’ve invested in debt, and they can peacefully continue to profit. Still, the greed of transnational capitalists is growing so quickly that even “rescue” mechanisms like the IMF can’t cope with it.
In Greece, there is lots of insulting talk about “speculators,” but it’s never specified who they are. It certainly isn’t just a question of the white-collar youth employed by the transnational investment firms, “seated in front of their computers while they gamble with the country’s debt,” like Papandreou said recently. It’s about the entire economic elite. A large portion of Greek debt is in the hands of Greek banks, and through them the “cream” of the Greek plutocracy and all respectable businessmen command the respect of the country’s political elite.
And let’s not forget the scandalous process by which Greek banks are raising money at almost zero interest from the European Central Bank, offering as collateral public sector bonds they obtained for free via the 28-billion-euro aid package (approved by the previous government). They then offer loans to the state at the market’s highest interest rate. And all this is taking place after they’ve already put away billions in cash in their vaults, thus ensuring their own liquidity while the government—which under the current circumstances is selling off the country for loans—is calling on them to make use of the “unofficial” remainder of the aid package.
The famous “gun,” usually invoked by the ridiculous Papandreou whenever he receives some verbal support from his “fellow” higher-ups in Europe, isn’t pointing at any speculator. The weapon does exist, but it is pointing at most of this country’s population, making them submit to the threats of the government and the saviors of the Greek political system. Papandreou, like a modern Tsolakoglou, has now ushered the country into a new era of occupation—this time by transnational capital, with the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank supervising the austerity and reform programs under the slogan of “saving the country,” all in order to finance regular payments to the Greek State’s creditors.
All the promises about the “credible role of the IMF” and other attempts to positively portray events—made as much by the government as by the IMF lackeys themselves—aren’t worth much. We know that every country the IMF touches suffers devastating consequences. In Africa, Asia, and South America, the IMF has been responsible for the destruction of economies, systems, and production models that weren’t profitable to the vultures of transnational capital it serves. In many cases, these “beneficial” interventions resulted in famine, disease, civil war, social catastrophe, and irreparable damage to the environment.
It also sounds like a bad joke when, after decades of IMF activity always yielding the same disastrous results, many—primarily leftists and social-democrats—continue to describe the IMF’s brutal neoliberal formulas as merely “strategic errors.” They can’t possibly believe it’s simply a question of a few incompetents. They know exactly what they’re doing, and their interests are very specific.
Debt that a country is incapable of paying represents an opportunity for the economic elite, through the IMF, to bring that country to its knees, annihilate it, and conquer it. After bleeding it dry, they lead it into bankruptcy. Then come the vultures of Capital, who—for breadcrumbs—buy up everything valuable in order to later exploit it until said country becomes a paradise for capitalist exploitation, where inhuman working conditions finally prevail. This is the IMF plan for Greece: a plan that quickly leads to the hyper-accumulation of economic and social power in even fewer hands, and drives the people into misery.
If we allow the regime’s criminals to continue these policies, it means that we are surrendering to the most disgraceful slavery of all, feeding the country and our children’s future to the shark’s teeth of big capital, and accepting a life of constant terror from the international economic and political oligarchy.
No free person can accept such treatment. No dignified person can give up without resisting. While the system itself is burning the bridges that connect it to the social majority and taking an openly hostile position against that majority, it would be a serious mistake to try to rebuild those connections from below. In one way or another, the leftist parties that participate in the political system will attempt to weaken social conflict and do everything possible to avoid the imminent social explosions. And even though they may gnash their teeth over the government’s decisions, in no way will they break with the system.
On the other side, the disadvantaged await a new political force, independent of any political motive or desire to manipulate; a force capable of creating the political ground on which they can plant their feet and fight the brutal conditions imposed on them by modern life. This new political force can’t be anything other than a broad radical movement—without inhibitions or reluctance, without a guilt complex or illusions about whether or not total confrontation with the regime is necessary—capable of outlining a project for the destruction of the system and inspiring as many of the oppressed as possible toward a liberatory direction.
Today, when we find ourselves living under the pure, harsh Dictatorship of the markets, anyone who still keeps shouting that “the objective conditions are premature” is someone who isn’t willing to practice subversion.
The objective conditions are more than ideal.
Let’s also create the subjective conditions needed to bring about the revolution. This is our chance.

—Pola Roupa
—Nikos Maziotis
—Kostas Gournas

Occupation of Creta TV – Solidarity actions spread across the country

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Last night, during the evening news, 70 anarchists occupied the TV station ‘Creta TV’ in Heraclion, Crete. Above is the video of the action, and has english subtitles.
Police madness in Athens has taken proportions unseen since the collapse of the junta:
This afternoon three boys and the mother of one of them were arrested as members of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire for having unused Easter firecrackers in their homes.
The incident took place in Athens on Wednesday afternoon and was initially believed to be a common anti-hooligan detention case. But the paranoia of the Greek police has reached such heights that it would make even the colonels’ junta pale in shame.
According to the official police announcement, anti-terrorist police agents intercepted a call of one of the boys to his mother to hide some “gourounes”, i.e. firecrackers massively used by teens and children during Greek Easter whose festivities ended last week. The police arrested the boy his 52 year old mother and two more boys claiming that the powder in the fire-crackers is similar to the one used in a series kettle-bomb attacks performed by the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire last fall. The argument runs counter to any trace of common sense which says that if that comprises evidence then hundreds of thousands of teens using similar festive devices should be arrested as urban guerrillas.
The latest arrests indicate that the situation in Greece is critical. The State seems to be unfolding an operation of mass repression with no concern even for the most basic bourgeois judiciary procedures. It is indicative that the first three of the 6 arrested of last Saturday have been put on remand although not one single piece of not controversial evidence was presented to the court by the anti-terrorist authorities, despite this evidence being openly doubted even in the mainstream media.
More than 200 gathered, handed out texts and hang a banner reading: “Zero tolerance to state repres
More than 200 gathered, handed out texts and hang a banner reading: “Zero tolerance to state repres
ANOTHER VIDEO OF THE FUCKING BASTARDS COPS ARRESTING A COMRADE OUTSIDE THE COURT..
Posted by SEVERRINO at 16:01 0 comments Links to this post

“Mixing me up in the Revolutionary Struggle case is a consequence of my political convictions. I do not condemn any type or method of struggle. My political activity has always taken place in broad daylight.” 12/4/10 Greece

From 10/4/2010 I am accused, together with comrades that I know through my journey in social struggles, by the infamous antiterrorist in regime of violence and psychological war.
My arrest was made like in the movies in Viktwria area by 10-15 people aiming their guns on me, while in fear of any reaction on my part they also mobilized the special forces in the surrounding area. Heavily armed against unarmed.
Of course it wasnt hard to immediately recognize them because of the experience I have gained over the years from the usual followings and harassements that I had at my father’s house in Nikaia as well the house I stayed at in Peukakia. So I didn’t give any importance to it considering it another usual scare tactic of the authorities to cut off the antiregime action of the fighters.
A tactic known and used constantly by the opressive mechanisms of the ruling class, especially in times of social unrest. I did not know obviously what the authorities had cooked me up yet another time.
I, along with other comrades, have been in the dock of the ridiculous courts of the anthropoids of the State many times, without evidence or with made up accusations and methods.
In all these cases I was found innocent since even the cops couldn’t back up their own stories.
I stayed waiting for trial and was controlled by the authorities for seven years. Seven years of constant surveillance in an attempt to stigmatise my action, criminalising my personal relations, my ideas and my political opinions which I have freely expressed openly many times.
And here’s one more time. I’m an anarchist and I fight with all my power for the social revolution. After my arrest and after I met the “cool guys” of the antiterrorism they took me to the “kitchen of stupidity”, the 12th floor of g.a.d.a. [Athens police headquarters], there where at one office they check your details and you leave the next one with made up heavy charges. The “cool guys”, problably taught by their colleagues, the torturers of the junta, beat me and other comrades while our hands were still in cuffs while the swearing and the threats kept the rythm. Then I experienced the simple procedure, by the interrogators and prosecutors, the cop method and my life was wrapped in a piece of some official document, my case was tied up and imprisoned in Trikala prisons.
Its not at all accidental that they chose E wing for my “stay”, since it’s the most controlled.
I don’t have to mention with detail the disgusting living conditions in the “modern” hellholes of democracy.
All I have to say is that water cuts are a something more than a usual thing [many thanks to Themis constructors]!!! It’s a constant tactic of the State with the media as its allie, to defame and criminalise the social stuggles and also the personal relationships of the fighters. And its not the first time something like this has happened but this time I felt under my skin this incredible brutality, that has as its purpose to criminalize my life, by slandering not only me and my actions, but also my comrades, friends and family and the whole subversive movement which I actively participate in.
In this attempt my house is baptised a “safe house” and a small fence of straw, which was there when I got there, was enough to transform my personal space into a dangerous base of operations.
The fact that nothing was found in this house I guess means nothing!!! The continuous fake leaks and the vulgar misinformation was added to this cannibalism, revealing once more the vengeful mania of the mechanisms and the journalists against every resistanse.
And this is just one aspect of the organised violence of the mechanisms and the lawful crimes of the state and the bosses in our lives.
Naturally, neither the penalization of the struggles, neither the criminalisation of those who deny that the regime is something new and unusual.
All those who fight know it well by now. Besides, even if someone gets arrested for sticking up a poster he’s persecuted for pollution and not for their subversive ideas, which is the substance of their prosecution. Towards the fairytale of legality, and the made up limits of innocence and guilty, I declare myself an enemy of the regime and unrepentant adversary of the state and capital. Besides, my statement to the interrogator that “I do not renounce any form of struggle against state and authority” is the only reason why I’m in prison and not their made up charges. If they expected statements of repentance and loyalty from me they thought wrong.
In my life I havent learned to crawl left and right like a snitch and informer, I havent learned to betray my friends and comrades, to abandon them, to denounce them in front of my persecutors to save my save myself. In my life I’ve learned to keep my head up high, to be a proud person and not to crawl even if that has a cost. If some people have learned to live like that, I really feel ashamed for them.
In this economic situation where the bankrupt Greek state under the umbrella of the I.M.F. trys to terrorise and supress every subversive attempt afraid of the “Decembers” that will come, it is our duty to fight for its total inversion.
I will continue to fight against the policing and control over our lives, for the destruction of prisons. For the social revolution and for freedom. Because in this life freedom is not given to you, you fight for it and win it.

TERRORISTS CRIMINALS AND ROBBERS

ARE THE STATE AND CAPITAL

HONOUR TO ARMED GUERILLA LAMBROS FOUNTAS

FREEDOM TO ALL THE COMRADES THAT ARE IN JAIL FOR THEIR SUBVERSIVE ACTIONS

VAGGELIS STATHOPOULOS

TRIKALA PRISON 10/5/2010

…boubourAs translations…

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

On April 10, 2010 I was brought (sic)-kidnapped by the anti-terrorism department of the Greek Police. After an unnecessary show attended and conducted by numerous riot squads, undercover cops, emergency patrol, prosecutors, etc., who broke doors (although I surrendered my keys) and found funny ‘finds’ in my home such as anti-authoritarian printed material, romans, political books and many movies, I was sent to the police headquarters in Athens, where for several hours several masked men passed in front of me without answering my question on what I was prosecuted or arrested for, without allowing any communication with my lawyer, and without asking me anything at all. Late in the evening on April 11th, I was notified by the arrest report that I was accused for participating in the organization of Revolutionary Struggle and I was charged with nothing less than the entire criminal code. For the record, although I was arrested, I was not allowed again to contact my lawyers.
All subsequent days, unfolded a spiral of lies based on a shameful reproduction of the climate being cultivated by the police through alleged journalist working as the ‘press office’ of the anti-terrorism department, uncritically reproducing rumors from anonymous police sources, press releases, the police and what is needed anyway for creating a burdensome and ultimately condemnatory climate against any “alleged” … This time it was me. The so called “key man”, “leading member”, “link”, “who escaped the gunfight in Daphne, “the intellectual”, “rebellious, tough” etc. The only thing I was not called is “the mysterious woman”. Journalists worth their wages. A continuation of Goebbels, but sorry I forgot he was a fascist, while now we have “democracy with an iron fist” in the Declaration of our American prime minister Pre-Po.

THOSE GROUNDS TO OTHERS

From the first moment I denied the charges, including my alleged participation in the organization EA. What I do not deny, and is essentially what led to the plight that I am in today (an underground prison in a state of near isolation and a field more than 20 meters long) is my participation in the so called anarchist-antiauthoritarian sphere, my participation in a whole range of ongoing activities, and I think my constant involvement in social struggles of the political sphere to which I belong as a historical integral part. This is not to deny the comradely civil and social relationship I had with the dead militant Lambros Foundas as well as with some of my co-defendants. After being active in the anarchist-antiauthoritarian sphere and social struggles for many years, it is not strange that I am familiar with hundreds of comrades if not thousands of people, some of whom I am socially connected. Unfortunately I feel on my skin the new “luminary” doctrine of repression, the criminalization of political, social and social relations.

We live in a country where the tradition of struggle has deep roots that are soaked in blood of fighters on the mountains, in cities, on the “new Parthenon Makronissos” and other islets, in prisons. The country has also a long tradition of state terrorism. Times are changing however the substance remains the same: two worlds in conflict, the world of murderous capitalist interests and the world of social resistance. In this conflict, I have chosen sides, defending the “roadblock” in which I stand. I have no intention of signing a certificate of social conscience nor any statement of repentance and renunciation of my engagement and activist background, which I am proud of. In times when the attack of the state and capital to society is getting sharper and clearer than ever with the presence of the IMF in Greece, I remember that 10 years ago in Prague, along with thousands of activists from around the world, the meeting paused after violent conflicts against this criminal scheme, I remember the year after in Genoa where the capitalist criminals responded with the only language they know (violence) by murdering CARLO JULIANI. I remember when we declared war to criminal Tony Blair who entitled us as a “traveling circus of anarchists “, I remember other times when we were the “troublemakers who creep and denigrate”, the “apolitical hooligans”, sometimes in other “fringe of Exarchia” Mr. t.l.

The truth is different of course. The truth is that we are a political space in which the cause and the effect exists and interacts with society, as seen in the outbreak of December 2008! the truth is that we are a political space that resists the accidents of permanent human sacrifice on the altar of the capitalists, resist the permanent crime of prison with almost 400 deaths in the last 10 years, stand in solidarity with immigrants who are murdered daily in land and maritime borders of the country, tortured and humiliated in police stations but in modern concentration camps (eg, Pagani and others) We are a political space that stands in solidarity with political prisoners, resists to the destruction of the environment and participates in different kinds of social events. We are a space that questions state monopoly to violence and attempts to measure the forces to join social mound constant attack on the state and capital, showing forth solidarity, self-organization, and selflessness.

We are therefore targeted by repression that does not hesitate to kill a 15 year old children, to demonize entire regions (which the residents of Exarchia in Athens know well), to criminalize political, personal and social relationships and even build indictments for temporary political expediency, as in the case of anarchist meeting place Resalto in Keratsini, Pireaus ‘baptizing it into a “terrorist” organization in December 2009, in the case of a student with green shoes in Thessaloniki some years ago, as in the case of Aristotle square again in December 2009 when the “praetors protection of citizens” loaded Molotovs on to a passersby man, as in the case of protester Simon Chapman in Thessaloniki again in 2003, as in the flower boxes in which the popular saying “and pelts and cuckold”, as in the case of demonstrator Marios G. who carried shampoo and a bathrobe in his backpack but the police baptized them weapons, as in the case … and how much we do not know?

In a country that injustice dominates and politicians in charge are more interested in the abolition of university asylum law while themselves, protected by parliamentary immunity, behave like modern mafia and plead innocent for all major scandals (such as SIEMENS, Vatopedi, BONDS, wiretapping, C4I )… In a country where the state has declared war on society, as evidenced by the motorcycle police gangs occupying the streets, dedicated to preventing and breaking social events. In a country that is now officially under the dictatorship of the IMF, in a country where the words lose their meaning and nine bullets in the body of young Albanian Nicola Toddy are translated into “sense of security”. In a country where to bend your head and accept austerity measures that annul rights and privileges that have been gained with the blood and sacrifices to the benefit of capitalists is called “patriotic duty”… in a country where the arrogance, the audacity and double standards of authoritarians does not allow them to admit that it was their policies that led Greece to this tragic economic situation and not some “vague” and “faceless” speculators.

In this country, therefore resistance to the plans of capitalists is an one-way task. Resistance through self-organized and non-hierarchical projects, based on freedom, dignity and social justice. As for me, I will continue to struggle. I will continue to deny the accusations attributed to me, but in no way my political identity, belonging and action.

The state is the only terrorist! Lambros lives in the heart of every fighter

The “accused”, for I do not know what, Sarantos Nikitopoulos
F Wing
Korydallos prison,
Athens

PS. 1 The special law on hoods is not applicable for those who “kidnapped” me and drove me from the police headquarters in Athens to the Cadet and vice versa showing me as a trophy in front of cameras?

PS. 2 A big ‘thanks’ to those who in any way express/ed their solidarity.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Kostas Gournas The prosecutor: “What do you say in your defense? Do you accept or deny the charges?” Kostas: “I am not going to answer. I do not recognize these proceedings. Since the age of 20, I have been a worker and have taken part in the social and class struggle in Greece. I am against the regime, the political system, and the economic system. I am not a terrorist. The terrorists are the ones on the 12th floor of police headquarters who gave me a beating and threatened to kill my children.”

Trikala Prison

10/4/10 about 10 in the evening. A Rapid Response [Amesi Drasi] patrol approaches me on the street in Nea Philadelphia. Two cops point their guns and put handcuffs on me. I the next minute a member of the antiterrorism unit arrives in a “Freewind” and, clearly relieved, shouts “That’s him.” After a wild ride, with the cops anxious and the “anti[terrorist]” calming them down, we reach GADA (the central police headquarters for Attica). The lift takes us to the 12th floor. The door opens and three masked men get to work. With the first blows of my greeting they tell me to undress. Many questions follow and my stance of refusal enrages them. The threats begin: “Take him to Hymettus. Go bring his kids here and let’s kill them in front of him.”At the same time, the beating continues with fists, knees etc., with special preference for the body and not the face. Of course, my continued stance of refusal “enflames” also some fists to the face (the bruises on my face were visible in my appearance before the prosecutor). Suddenly I notice that a lot of them have gathered together. Their fury to learn facts from me before my arrest is publicized makes them forget their masks. There were about seven individuals now in the room. Now they start the more “professional” methods of interrogation. A headlock until I lose consciousness, intense pressure on my face, and all these things while I’m naked. There were some pauses in between, of course, for me to stare at the wall and think things over. The questions continued together with the resumption of knees to the groin. Things get out of hand. Time is passing and the “anti” have lost control. I keep falling to protect myself from the blows and they keep lifting me up. The pauses stop. Seven or eight individuals, masked and not, all beat me with batons. A strong blow to the back of my head, with the result that I nearly lose consciousness, puts and end to the torture.
When I regain my senses a little, I become aware that my body is in a very bad state. My extremities have grown completely numb and swollen. The strain of my condition has caused difficulty breathing, and due to low blood circulation (a mark of Thalassemia) I feel that my blood pressure is low. I understand that this condition will continue until morning, in definitely worse circumstances. I suffer some kind of crisis and collapse. The masked men seem uneasy, but they wait. They make me sit down and throw water in my face. They are not yet convinced, but my symptoms intensify. They ask me if I take medicine and I utter for them the word “anemia.” They don’t seem convinced, but, for good or ill, they call for the director of the Antiterrorism Unit. Finally, clearly uneasy, they call a doctor who examines me and they bring me to the hospital, not wanting to risk that I suffer something inside GADA (police headquarters). There, after some time, I start recovering, and in a poor condition they bring me to my cell. The whole procedure must have taken about three hours (I say “must” because I had lost my sense of time because of the physical and mental effort I had expended), but a detailed description of the torture has been omitted. Honestly, I can no longer remember the faces of my torturers.
On the following morning, a more “friendly” method of interrogation begins. The temporal duration of this “approach” lasted right up to evening before my preventive custody in Trikala Prison. Three high ranking cadre in the anti-terrorism unit had the role as protagonists. As if nothing had happened on the prior evening (“Come on, kid, you’ve had a couple of slaps”) the offers were luxurious. Cigarettes, water, refreshments, sandwich, coffee and … a little whiskey with fries were always at my disposal. This “friendly” approach contained the same questions which they had put to me during my torture, as well as some different ones. It was all quite theatrical. CD’s with telephone conversations, photographs, antiterrorists in the role of barista with disc in hand!!!
All this because I was “the cultivated one, with a wife and kids,” whereas the others were “perverted, crazy” and many other things. From the beginning they were betting on the fact that I am a father of young children and would cooperate. “Aren’t you thinking about your children, how they will grow up? Talk to us and we’ll make sure you get out of prison in a few years.” They even offered me money a little before I made my “defense” in the arraignment. “Talk to us and we’ll give you 50 thousand to give your wife. No one will know about it.” The following days passed with the same ordeal continuing every 3-4 hours. They deployed of course also a younger cadre, about my age, in the hope that he might have better luck. So passed the days until 4/17 when I was brought, together with B. Stathopoulos, to Trikala prison. The fact that I DID NOT COLLABORATE was surely rewarded with my preventive detention at such a great distance in kilometers, which deprives me substantially of the capacity to see my wife and children. Out of there, surely. Their basic goal is to make my communication with my comrades P. Roupa and N. Maziotes difficult.
To make matters clear … I chose to publicize my torture by the vile members of the antiterrorism unit after the “Political Letter to Society ” for very definite reasons. First of all, I assign my torture, but also the “friendly approach,” to the exact same procedure: INTERROGATION. The basic goal of the torture was not revenge, but the extraction of information. I want it to become fully understood that I am writing these letters now, after taking responsibility for my participation in Revolutionary Struggle, in order to declare that I AM NOT A VICTIM OF STATE REPRESSION. The publication of these facts does not constitute in any case a charge of torture. My goal is to demonstrate the antiquated and ineffective methods of interrogation and to contribute my experience as a moment of struggle in the condition of imprisonment.
I declare that my determined stance follows the proud, revolutionary tradition of all those who have found themselves prisoners of the state.
I feel proud of my participation in Revolutionary Struggle, the path it carved out and its significant interventions in social-class war. Neither torture nor psychological war nor the annihilating punishments which they are preparing for us will bring me to my knees. I am stronger than ever and I owe this to my immovable faith in the struggle and in revolution. Now I can look my children in the eyes and with pride. Besides, their birth on December 6 2008 gives me an obligation to continue to struggle. Finally, with this text I want to honor my comrade Lambros Foundas who was murdered by the state. The battle that this beautiful fighter gave will always remain engraved in the hearts of all of us.
NOTHING IS ENDED – EVERYTHING CONTINUES TOWARD REVOLUTION
Kostas Gournas
Trikala Prison
Wing E1

Monday, July 19, 2010

7/05/10 letter from the 3 members comrades from the revolutionary stuggle athens.

The coalition government PASOK – Troika (Eur.Committee, International Monetary Fund, European Social Fund) has succeeded in a short space of time – and with the consent of the Mass Media – in ripping out what had been conquered through long and frequently bloody, social and class struggles to impose an unprecedented, ferocious exploitation of the social majority by a shameful minority composed of the economic elite. The recent measures of Loverthos for labour and pensions are in the same direction and will not be the last.
Already Greece is steadily transforming itself into a paradise for bosses and hell for the workers.
This new intense class attack is for economic and political authority “an essential condition in order to overcome the crisis”, since – according to the neoliberal economic analysis – decreasing labour costs ensures the conditions for competitiveness, and the bosses can hope for new profits for capital, wounded by the economic crisis. With the prospect of an increase in profits, the productive process will come to life again, growth will get an impulse and the road to get out of the crisis will open, a fact that will help the country get over its severe budgetary problems. In reality, and despite whatever arguments of the decriers of neoliberalism, about how unorthodox and a “no way out” economic model the above is (it’s sure that the conclusion of such a plan is an even deeper recession and intensity of the crisis), what the state wants is the biggest possible exploitation of the deep economic crisis in order to impose the new class and social terms of oppression
and exploitation.
The formation of this new dictatorship of capital and state presupposes that large parts of society will fall into complete indigence, will be marginalized so that they can become easy prey for the callous exploitation that the bosses envisage imposing. For the pigs of plutocracy, from now on human life will be worth as much as the crumbs they give for wages while, according to their plans, there will be many waiting in line to have all their production squeezed out of them and be thrown away when they aren’t needed anymore.
In order to ensure that the lenders to the Greek state can be paid back, Papandreou and his government have imposed austerity measures of unprecedented ferocity, with continuous cuts
in wages and pensions, in state expenditure for hospitals and social benefits, leading hospitals and pension funds to their final collapse, imposing the privatisation of the pension system and health services, while at the same time they sell off cheap anything remaining the property of the state.
The measures of “budgetary discipline” that, according to the government, will lead to the “country’s exit from the budgetary crisis”, in reality – and combined with the labour measures – will lead with mathematical precision to a greater budgetary dead-end for the country that sooner or later will have to call for a pay suspension or, in the best case, to re-negotiate the Greek debt.
Besides all this, the specific, wild neoliberal policies that are imposed by the economic and political elite of the planet are not some “wrong economic choices”, neither
can some changes in the direction of economic policy reverse the climate of deep crisis the system is going through. The main issue for the economic and political power that controls the planet is that the given systemic crisis be exploited for the redevelopment of the conditions of life and work everywhere, but also for the redefinition of correlations of power on the planet, with the supernational economic and political elite gaining more and more force and power in their hands, the markets to imposing their increasingly energetic role in the configuration and exercise of political power and the co-governing of countries takes a more tatalitarian character. Consequently, on the grounds of the crisis and, mainly, the crisis of countries in debt, a new totalitarian form of political and economic authority is imported and imposed on one country after another, and with the collaboration of governments, a new fascism, that makes older forms of oppression and exploitation seem lenient.
A main element of this new international dictatorship is the exploitation of countries’ debts in order to pass the social wealth of the country into the hands of the economic oligarchy. The ravens of supernational capital are ready to dash and devour anything valuable in Greece, when the government will be unable to cope with the demanding lending obligations imposed by the loansharks of the debt. The way for this new occupation via the confiscation of the public wealth of the country
was opened by Papandreou with the relative memo towards the lenders, according to which “neither the borrower nor his possessions have immunity because of national sovereignty”.
In other words, the IMF, E.Committee, ESF and the states of the European Union that lent to the Greek state can, from the moment the payments of the loans are delayed, proceed to the confiscation of public assets and of the social wealth of the country, while the borrower (the borrower is obviously considered the totality of the Greek society, irrelevant of the fact that the loan is not intended for the majority) goes into a state of literal occupation by the lenders.

* * * * *
Against this new fascist state they are forming, whichever form of mobilisation limited to a fight in the “trenches” to maintain any labour, political and social vested interests is condemned to defeat.
Thats why they constitute a mockery, not only the painless protests that the great trade unions desire but also the ridiculous leondarisms of the governmental Left that participates in parliament, which not only has no
intention of making a rupture with the governmental political order – a rupture that, amongst other things, would harm the political and economic privileges of their representatives in parliament- but does whatever it can to deter society from expressing its rage and even reaches the point of going against majoritarian parts of society when they are expressing themselves against the totality of the political system. Hence, for the governmental left – and for the Media- expressions
used now by majoritarian areats of society, such as “they are all the same”, meaning all the politicians that participate in the parliament, are fascist.
Fascist is, also, the chant “burn the brothel Parliament” that thousands of demonstrators shouted in the mobilisation of May 5th outside the parliament, while the attempt to invade the Parliament by the demonstrators was “an attempt to abolish democracy that would open the way for the imposition
of a coup d’etat”. For the KKE (Communist Party of Greece), those who attempted to invade the parliament were, also, fascists and provocateurs.
Finally, none of those who participate in the parties of the governmental Left considers the policy of government-troika and the new totalitarian
state that is being formed fascist. What they want is to succeed in leading social mobilisations and in containing them within the limits that are ordered by state legality so that they do not threaten the state and its representatives. We believe it’s pointless to think they will succeed.
Everything shows that social reactions will receive more and more intense characteristics of rupture and conflict with the state and the parties of the Left incorporated in the system, not only will not manage to reap the fruits of social dissatisfaction but will be marginalized more and more and they will
follow the governing parties in their downfall and in social contempt.
Our fight should be a fight of attack against the totality of the state political order and its representatives and not only to be against certain persons and a limited number of political choices. Besides, the deep economic crisis into which the country is sinking in this period is not simply the result of the bad handling of previous governments. The crisis in Greece is a result of the world crisis of the system that is rotting and is trying to stay alive by sucking the blood of societies.
In this crisis everyone that participates in the system of representative democracy has contributed in their own way,
a democracy which we also owe with our struggle to abolish.
We shall not allow our fight to degenerste with proposals and policies that aim for the exit from the economic crisis, with the excuse that this is in the interest of the social base. Each such proposal will seek to restrain struggles to within the limits of the state and will prevent every genuinely liberatory proposal for the future from being proposed socially and being tried in practice. It is a given that no solution that wants Greece to remain inside the system of the market economy and representative democracy will remove us from the systemic crises which are payed with the blood of the social majority of the non-privileged. As radical as some proposals might sound (exit from the E.M.U. or even the E.U, returning to the
drachma, nationalization of enterprises such as the banks, increase of tax imposition on the rich in order to pay the debt, etc.), do not guarantee anything more
than a leap into the void that, sooner or later, will lead us back, to the same state of exploitation and oppression. The only real exit from the crisis that can ensure the social survival of the non privileged and can prevent the destruction that the political and economic authorities have in store for us, is the complete exit from the system of capitalism, the market economy and representative democracy. We are not speaking of anything less than a social revolution, which has become an imperative
need from now on, not only for reasons of value, moral and social rightiousness, but for reasons concerning the survival of all of us. Either way, it’s the political and economic order itself that puts us on a daily basis in the dilemma “us or them”. We live in the historical moment where the privileged political and
economic castes cannot coexist with the big majorities of the non-privileged. Our fight has to be a fight of conflict and rupture with every privleged individual or group of individuals that looks at the current crisis and the wild attack against workers as an oppurtunity to get rich. It must be a fight against everyone that sees the budgetary problem of this country as a occasion to seize the social wealth that belongs to all of us. The time has come to completely get rid of all these amoralists and adventurers, the thieves and criminals. The time has come to teach a lesson to all the privileged.
Our fight should be a fight to take back what they have stolen from us and belongs to us. It should be a fight to abolish every form of slavery, a fight for the freedom of all people. So that there are no social and class segregations ever again, no rich and poor ever again, so that there’s no exploitation of person by person.
So that there’s no organised power, state, oppression and lack of freedom. Our fight should be a fight for economic equality and the political freedom of all.
It should be nothing less than a radical inversion, a social revolution. Such a revolution’s prelude could be the attempt of storming parliament that was attempted and was not completed on May 5th. A storm that will not simply be satisfied in just bringing down the current government, but will be a decisive moment of the fight for liberation from the parliamentary junta whose only prospect will be to not allow any dominating political formation – wheather it comes from the
parliament or not- to take power into its hands and perpetuate the rotten state. We should not allow the various defenders of the system, wearing the mask of the “liberator”,
to seek and gain the trust of society so that they can climb to power and rescue the state. The social base itself should define,
with values such as equality and the refusal of every form of organised power, the organisational structure that will manage and determine the political and economic life of the country. An organisational structure with a horizontal character, without representation and professionals of politics, without guidance.
With such a political organisation we can leave this parliamentary dictatorship behind us once and for all. All society that lives under the new junta of the markets and state should move forward to a sweeping expropriation of all wealth that is in the hands of the economic oligarchy and give to to society, to pass it in its entirety into the hands of collective social organs that will manage it. Expropriate all the church’s fortune.
All social wealth that at this moment is in the possession of local political and economic power should be passed into the hands of the social base and we should expropriate all financial wealth that the multinationals and part of the foreign economic elite that act in Greece have in their possession. We should take in our hands all means of production and the productive units and socialize them. The working assemblies themselves should determine what will be produced and for who, in collaboration with the local assemblies in the communities, the cities, the neighborhoods. Outside of any logic of competition and growth, outside of the morals and values of the market economy, far from any logic of concentration of wealth, the new economic organisation and productive process should be determined by the social base with the main values being economic equality, horizontal management, quality in work and production, protection of the environment, the quality of all produced products and the discovery of new technologies that will suit our revolutionary undertaking and will finally leave behind the technologies of mass production of capitalism that only suits a centralized economic model. All this cannot fail to be but matters that will concern a revolutionary society that will
decide for itself. The communities, the small cities, the neighborhoods should become the core of the new social organisation, the holder of social wealth and the main
pillar of decisions, economical and political. We ourselves should take over every economic and social activity, we should at last, take life in our own hands. If we do not rebel
now against the modern dictatorship of market, capital and state, if we do not fling off the shackles of slavery immediately, if we do not raise our head high today, there will be no future for us and we will have condemned future generations to live in the darkest social and economic conditions of human history.
The only solution we have in our hands to get out of this dead end, to get rid of modern fascism once and for all, is social revolution.

The members of Revolutionary Struggle Kostas Gournas, Pola Roupa, Nikos Maziotis

…boubourAs translations… actforfreedomnow…

Monday, July 19, 2010

Hunger strike against vengeance.

The treatment that the state reserves for captive rebels and its political enemies is a given. Vengeance, sadism, physical and psychological violence, disrespect for human dignity, indifference about their health, their physical wellbeing, for human life itself.
For the security of the state and power, the deprivation of freedom is above everything, above life itself or “human rights”.
For the officials of the state, the political and economic elite and the rich, “human rights” only concern themselves and those of the same class.
They are not concerned about the people, the poor, the workers, the unemployed, the veterans of work, the immigrants, those who search in the garbage of the local markets to eat.
Neither are they concerned about prisoners – social prisoners, of which the overwhelming majority come from the poor social strata and whose life is worth absolutely nothing to the system-.
And they are not concerned of course about the revolutionaries and political prisoners, for which the system has always pursued their physical and moral annihilation.
In this framework, my companion, comrade and co-fighter Panagiota Roupa and I, who are members of Revolutionary Struggle, are deprived of the right of visiting each other thanks to the public prosecutor of Koridallos prisons, who has rejected for “reasons of security” my transfer to the maternity clinic “Alexandra” in order to visit my comrade who will bring our son into the world, the youngest political prisoner of Greek “democracy”.
Also he has rejected, for the same “security reasons”, my application to visit the female section of Koridallos because, due to her condition my comrade is unable to visit
the male prison as would normally happen.
Requiring, therefore, the “obvious” as a comrade and as a father to visit my comrade-cofighter and our son, I’m going on hunger strike from the 15th of July in order to satisfy the two following demands:
1. My transfer to visit the maternity clinic “Alexandra” on July 25th to see my companion Panagiota Roupa and our son, since the birth has been scheduled by caesarean section for July 24th and she will remain hospitalised there for a few days and
2. My transfer to visit the female prison for the first period after the birth because my comrade and our son will inevitably be too weak to be moved.

If the repressive mechanisms believe that by putting us jail they’ll get rid of us politically, they are wrong.

From outside or from inside the prisons the struggle for us is a question of honour and dignity, it will continue.

The revolutionary struggle continues.

NIKOS MAZIOTIS

translate bourbouras… actforfreedomnow…

Sunday, July 25, 2010

 A couple  of hours ago today ,25 july the hunger strike of comrades Nikos  Maziotis and Kostas Gournas and the abstinence from

prison food of about 90 prisoners across the country in solidarity with Nikos Maziotis to see his newborn child, all ended.

Nikos was moved this morning to Alexandra hospital to see  his partner Panagiota  Roupa who gave birth to their son yesterday with

PROPER CARE  from their doctors and WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF ANTI-TERRORISM COPS AT ANY STAGE. Almost certainly the

satisfaction of the second request, to visit Pola at Korydallos women’s prison, is being considered. The mobilization succeeded. The

hunger strike and abstension from prison food  is finished.

Our best wishes to the baby!!
Solidarity to all the comrades!

Letter from the comrade Pola Roupa of July 9, 2010

I am in prison for involvement in Revolutionary Struggle, for which I assume political responsibility. I said in a joint letter with my comrades Nikos Maziotis and Kostas Gourna and I still say we will not stop struggling against the economic and political State even within the prison. I know that my political choice to join Revolutionary Struggle and my attitude from inside jail classifies me as a registered political enemy of the system, a fact which not only I don’t deny but is my choice and honours me.

As it is known to my political opponents that no “special treatment” or form of pressure is going to bend me, the revenge is directed against the life of my unborn child, who suffers the consequences of this “special treatment” from the repressive mechanisms and is now treated as a political prisoner.

Let me explain:

From the first moment of my arrest I was not given the slightest careful treatment because of my pregnancy by the “anti-terrorists” and the E.K.A.M. (special forces) that held me and were in charge of my transport. I was subjected to the “special treatment” of total isolation in one of the airless cells 1 × 2,5 m on the 12th floor, (meaning G.A.D.A.’s 12th floor of the “antiterrorist” police) with the light on 24 hours (actually it is a method of psychological torture) for five days, transported to the prosecutor and investigator with my hands cuffed behind my back for hours, transported to jail in Thebes with my hands tied in the same way (no pregnant woman wears handcuffs when transported, let alone in the way they were put on me), and to violent treatment during my transport to the office of the investigating prosecutor, which ultimately resulted in my injury. After my insistence and after they feared I was going to lose the baby in the “anti-terrorist” office, they eventually took me to the hospital for tests.

During the two months I was held in the prison in Thebes, and while there was evidence from previous medical examinations that I might be suffering from severe complications of pregnancy which, if not treated immediately, could create very serious problems, my examination to confirm this complication was completed one and a half months late after I reacted strongly to the criminal indifference of the prison and bureaucracy concerning my health, and thus the health and life of my child.

It is, of course, a given that prisoners who need medical care are most often treated as prisoners first and as patients second. A characteristic phrase is that of the obstetrician in Thebes who said I cannot expect to do all the tests and with the frequency that I would if I was not in prison, a phrase that reveals the racist treatment that the prisoners-patients get in certain medical services of at least some prisons, which often puts their very lives at risk.

“Special security measures”

In my case, the “medical care” of the prison led to my staying for one and a half months with a health problem, not undergoing the necessary tests, which the doctor in charge considered to be of minor importance, constantly creating problems so I couldn’t do them, although I myself asked for them several times. After finally being taken to the hospital in Livadia where this complication was confirmed, I still did not to have the opportunity to face the problem, waiting for minister of justice  Kastanidis and Chrisochoïdis to decide when to transfer me to Korydallos prison where I could face the problems more effectively.

The first image of “special security measures” that would be imposed by the ‘ministry to protect the regime'[*](former public order ministry) for each of my transfers to the hospital was in Livadia, which “took” several dozen uniformed and non-uniformed cops from various regions of Central Greece and Athens, involving of course the “antiterrorists” and the E.K.A.M., who were escorting me and were stationed everywhere at the hospital. Please note that during my transport to this hospital I was also handcuffed.

And if the delay in transferring me to the hospital in Livadia for the necessary tests was due to the indifference of the prison medical staff of Thebes and the bureaucracy, the delay in transferring me to Athens was merely the brutal revenge of Chrisochoïdis, which was covered up behind the “special security measures” which he imposed on every one of my transfers and transports. This finding is not merely an estimate, since from the moment it became known to the authorities of Thebes prison that
I face a serious complication in my pregnancy, which was by now threatened, they began to put pressure not only on the Ministry of Justice and Public Order but also on Kastanidis and Chrisochoïdis personally for my immediate transfer to Athens. Nevertheless, they delayed my transfer for one and a half weeks, without in the meanwhile providing any medical care for the problem that I faced, a delay thanks to the “special security measures”.

Delays due to the measures ordered by Chrisochoïdis for me did not stop here. The day after my arrival in Korydallos, an emergency situation demanded my immediate transfer to the hospital. While in any other case, the transfer would be very fast, I had to wait hours for the “special forces” and E.K.A.M. to gather. Of course at  Tzaneio hospital where they took me, I was constantly surrounded by armed E.K.A.M. who, naturally, caused panic in the corridors of the emergency rooms. The same image prevailed at Alexandra clinic, which I was referred to by the doctors of Tzaneio due to the jurisdiction of the hospital.
A key issue for me is that, because of these “special security measures” that are taken for each of my transfers to hospital, the danger for the health and life of my child is increasing.

“In Alexandra hospital”

But these pressures and the vindictiveness of my political opponents, did not stop here. This peculiar war continued with the conditions during my 5day stay at Alexandra Hospital. There I was in a stifling ring of cops and in a state of isolation. The guards outside the room-cell in which I was held constantly harassed me with continuous monitoring, – even at very private moments in which I was forced to yell and make gestures to make them leave.
This practice can only be described as brutal psychological warfare. Please note that I was alone and constantly locked in a small room on the 1st floor, with bars and without any contact with other people other than medical and nursing staff. This perverse practice that they were preforming, on the orders of their superiors, male and female cops, constantly watching me from the window of the locked door, stopped largely after my intense intervention and after adding additional forces outside the window of the room-cell where I was.

All the days I was hospitalized in Alexandra they forbade me to have relatives visit – other than one a week for about half an hour – and phone calls – but one phone call a day for a minute and just one person (relative or lawyer) -, minimized the time spent with lawyers, of whom they kept all personal belongings (bags, phones, etc.) and imposed the constant presence of the guard in any medical and hospital visit.

The consequence of this is that all medical and hospital visiting and examination was always under police supervision and was circumventing any notion of medical confidentiality as all the details of my medical history were known to any cop who happened to be there.

The continuous monitoring of each review, any discussion with doctors and nurses was no longer just about me but it was a blatant intrusion in the work of the doctors, which they treated as another “possible threat to security”.

The presentation of the patient-doctor relationship in a regime of continuous monitoring by the repressive mechanisms and their political bosses, who are informed in detail about any medical development, undermines the special relationship and inevitably harrasses the smooth operation and medical treatment.
Eventually the whole process of treatment is converted into a perversion of control by organized power, which alienates it.

These “special conditions of detention”, applied to me during my stay in hospital are not legalized by any law. The treatment of each patient-prisoner depends on the “risk” that he is for “security” and the “chances he has to escape”. Therefore, every security measure (presence of cops during examinations, surgeries, etc.) is determined either by the political leaders of the cops or from the operationals and sometimes left to the discretion of those who form the prisoner’s guard. Thus, we have cases where police attend a birth on the grounds that the prisoner can escape.
I have never called for and never will call for humanitarianism from my political opponent. I do not believe that any kind of authoritarian is interested in the survival or health of my child, let alone mine. Instead, I think if they could, without taking into account the political cost, I would be left in total abandonment and it’s likely that I would – based on many factors and my high risk, according to the opinion of the doctors, pregnancy – not be able to make it and my child would not survive. It is no exaggeration to say that this would be the wish of my persecutors and would be the best revenge for them.

It is also true that whatever proper medical care I receive at this moment is due to the doctors of Alexandra Hospital, which because of the emergency that happened to me took the situation into their own hands, completed a full medical diagnosis and put in proper order the way my problems will be treated from now on.

“Natural right”

I do not believe in any de facto respect of human and political rights by the regime, since both are covered and defined by the conditions and intensity of the social and class war which in each historical period it is conducted.

For those who make up the economic and political elite, humanity and value of human life is not for anyone other than class peers and their families.
It does not concern the proletarians, the poor, those who have nothing, who get sick and die in the increasingly squalid and inhuman living conditions that apply to the low social and class backgrounds.

The poor are undernourished and have to eat poison, do not have basic medical care, have to die on the stretchers of the decaying public hospitals.
Concerning the above facts, over the last few decades the social conditions are becoming more brutal because of the deep economic crisis that the system has plunged into, resulting in a growing number of social groups going into the category of the excluded, being condemned to a slow death, while the -for years now- substandard public hospitals are collapsing under the weight of public spending cuts imposed by the government and the Troika (Eur.Committee, International Monetary Fund, European Social Fund) which completely controls the business operation of the country and public funds.

The natural right of every single human to nutrition, housing, health, life, is already being abused in increasingly large parts of the population, while the regime steals wages, pensions and public money in order to preserve the economic and political elite and to ensure the perpetuation of power.

Their humanitarianism does not concern the prisoners stacked in prison-soul warehouse, who are treated as third-class people by the regime and the value of their lives is priced according to the space their death will fill in a newspaper column.

Their humanitarianism does not concern the enemies of the system, which, in reality and despite the ridiculous assertions by the Government to respect human rights, wants their physical extermination. If anything prevents it, as I said, it is only the political cost.

The fighter Simos Seisidis, who the regime has classified, using a range of police scenarios and assumptions, in their list of enemies, is an example. Seisidis, after being seriously injured by a cop’s bullet and risked losing his life, faced throughout the duration of hospitalization all available means of psychological torture and revenge by his persecutors, and wannabe killers: isolation, presence of cops in the ICU, continuous harassment, obstruction of medical and nursing staff – which reached the point
of police surveillance being imposed even during the amputation of his leg.

This brutal behavior of the mechanisms of repression against Simos Seisidis ended with the decision to remand him in custody while his health is in this very bad situation.

“They Seek revenge”

The invocation of any human and civil rights is an outdated practice and refers to the remains of an era in which a series of social and class compromises coordinate the balance between oppressor and oppressed, allowing the maintenance of the regimes normalcy and peace. These balances are of the past, the class and social compromises have been invalidated by the system itself, which is attacking society more and more viciously, while the regime’s peace hangs by a thread.

Within the current historical period it is known that the system, political and economic power and those who compose it, are creating public outcry continuously at all levels. On the other hand, rebel forces, such as Revolutionary Struggle, are finding a wider and wider social base.

Despite the regime’s efforts to discredit us as political figures and discredit the activities of Revolutionary Struggle, our organization receives the political acceptance of a large segment of society, which will eventually turn into options and practices of rupture and violent conflict with the system of representative democracy, capitalism and market economy.

In this historical context, where the rulers are expressing extreme vindictive fury against those who are fighting the dilapidated system, the attitude of law enforcement mechanisms can be interpreted in political terms, and that of Chrisochoïdis personally, towards me, since after seeking revenge for Revolutionary Struggle and for my political stance they are constantly threatening the health and life of my child with every available means.

Because for all the time that I’ve been in prison nothing has been given to me and any medical care was granted by a struggle on my part, I declare I will continue to pursue the necessary medical and pharmaceutical care and I will fight for his life and health.
To do so, I demand:

-No repeat of delay in transferring me to hospital, whether for scheduled appointments for medical examinations or in an emergency, with the justification of the maintenance of “special security measures”. Particularly in the latter case, any delay can in fact be crucial for the survival of my child.
I’d like to emphasize that I do not care how many and what kind of armed ones accompany me in my transport or my stay in hospital. What interests me is that the time that these forces take to assemble works against the life of my son which is continually compromised.

-There shall not be any interference by government entities and repressive mechanisms on where to nurse me again, for reasons of “security.” It would be another brutal act of revenge.

-Not to repeat the petty status of isolation and continuous control that is imposed on me in Alexandra Hospital, which can only cause problems to the successful completion of my hospitalization, and can affect  the birth in the most negative way as well.

-No guard shall attend my examinations, visits of doctors, the nurses’ care and, of course, no cop –  including a female cop – should be in the room where I deliver, a practice which is the greatest insult to the dignity of female prisoners. Also, not only will I not tolerate my medical history, my personal information associated with it and my body being under the perverse control of the repressive mechanisms, but I consider this whole process to be a practice of war, punishment and revenge by my political opponents imposing it on me.
-To also stop the vindictive regime of isolation, allow me to get visits and be able to communicate by telephone. Also, to have the 24-hour care of my relatives, which is absolutely necessary.

Because until now, since I’ve been taken over by the ministry of the regime and the anti-terrorists, I have constantly faced problems that have threatened the health and life of my son, i declare that, if they do not respect the above basic requirements to have a safe delivery, this would mean that not only my political opponents have no intention to stop targeting my child, but want to persist and intensify the war.

Any bad course of my pregnancy under these hostile and vengeful conditions, any new threat to the life of my son would be a blatant attempt to politically murder my unborn child, who of course is not a prisoner even if he is treated as a hostage of war. I charge this attempted assassination in advance to Chrisochoïdis personally.

But to blame will also be his political and operational officers, Papandreou and the entire government.

Pola Roupa

Koridallos Prisons

[*]it’s actually now called ‘the ministry for the protection of the citizen’

…boubourAs translations… actforfreedomnow…