Occupied London

greek original

We steal a couple of words from the cells of the detention centre where we are held hostage, in order to state our aims and our intentions and to clear up the air regarding the recent events.

As Anarchists, we deem the choice of a bank robbery as a conscious act of resistance. Our act did not aim at the creation of personal wealth. The attack against the temples of capital is part of our revolutionary activity as a whole.

Regarding our torturing by the forces of repression, we do not want this to comprise a point for our victimisation. We expected nothing less from the enemies of freedom. Let’s not forget how many people have been crushed inside their police stations and their prisons. Let the marks of our torturing comprise yet another occasion for rage to turn into action.

Against the institutional representatives of justice, our position shall be irreconcilable and tenacious.

WE DON’T COOPERATE – WE DON’T APOLOGISE

LONG LIVE ANARCHY

The Anarchists

Nikos Romanos

Andreas-Dimitris Bourzoukos

Giannis Michailidis

PS. A longer statement by all four of us will follow, regarding our case.

A poster in relation to the events of Kozani

One word only: dignity

What charge is more beautiful than the robbery of a bank?
And yet the comrades were not beaten for “breaking the law”.
They were beaten for their conscious attack against the state monopoly of violence.

And they stood up against the mechanisms and their violence, just like it is fitting for every revolted person.

Not a word to the pigs, swearwords to the judges and the journalists

Let the oppressors realise this.

Neither the torturing,
nor the pillorying,
Cannot discipline all those who resist their commands.
They cannot dry the lust for a free life

Cops, judges, politicians
you have no reason to sleep in peace
Solidarity to the 4 charged for the robbery of the bank in Kozani

anarchists for individual and social emancipation

via candiaalternativa

Solidarity with squats, stekia (hangouts),
self-organized/self-managed spaces and those who struggle…
………………………………………………………….

Perhaps the day is approaching
when flags will be waving to the rhythm of the wind
when the wind will whistle to the liberation’s beat.

Perhaps the day is approaching
when we’ll smell the ashes of all the peoples’ prison cells.

And as soon as time reads zero, it will be the time for the raving mad
those who moved against logic, against what smiling killers used to call moral.

And the dead will come (those who were never gone)
to show us the way, to shout at us
those who were human, drawing a circle around the upper-case A…

poem from the collection ‘Antinous — You whispered rebellion to me,
and I heard freedom’ (March 2012)

*

(((●))) Candia :: Alternativa – http://candiaalternativa.info
Independent alternative space of counter-information in Crete, Greece
February 2013

translated by Contra Info in the context of the campaign for a Black February

via the NYT Examiner

By Costas Panayotakis:

In an article that reports on a number of bombings in Greece in recent weeks, Liz Alderman presents contrasting interpretations of these developments and what precipitated them but, in subtle ways, ends up acting as a megaphone for the dubious claims made by Greece’s ruling coalition. (i) The article provides some of the context for the bombings by pointing out that the government has in recent weeks targeted occupations of public buildings that had long been abandoned before they were taken over by young people who turned them into residences and cultural and political centers. The police raids have been carried out in the name of restoring ‘order’ and combating lawlessness, as the article mentions. What the article does not mention is that, as many of the occupations’ neighbors would attest, the occupations in question were not a source of disorder since, on the contrary, they restored buildings that were crumbling and that had been in the past loci of criminal and drug trade activity. The occupations were also centers of anti-fascist activity, fighting back against a form of violence that has already led to the death of a number of immigrants but has not attracted as much attention by the government as the recent bombings, which, as the New York Times article points out, have not produced any victims since they “seemed intended more for effect than harm.”

In this respect, the Greek government’s appeal to ‘law and order’ is a highly selective one. When it comes to murderous attacks on immigrants by sympathizers of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, the government does not show zero tolerance. For example, even though there is a provision in Greek law that makes punishments for crimes much more steep when these are racially or religiously motivated hate crimes, this provision has never been used even in cases of assaults against immigrants that led to their deaths. On the contrary, the largest party of the coalition, the Conservatives, has been flirting with the neo-Nazi agenda, using war-like metaphors to describe immigration-related problems in Greece. When cabinet ministers claim that Greece is being ‘invaded’ by immigrants, that this invasion is a greater crisis than the economic crisis that has devastated the living conditions of the vast majority of Greek citizens, and that cities need to be reconquered from immigrants and lawless elements, they are fueling the kind of scapegoating of immigrants that the neo-Nazis are thriving on. Instead of learning from the past and trying to defuse the dangerous social dynamic that can fuel fascism in times of deep economic crisis, the government in effect chooses to send the message to Greek society that Greeks are at war with immigrants, with all that this implies.

The article also quotes a representative of Syriza (Coalition of Radical Left), which is the main opposition party in Greece and whose popularity has, in recent months, grown rapidly in Greece as a result of its opposition to the austerity policies that have brought the country to its knees. According to the Syriza representative, the government’s ‘law and order’ campaign is meant as a diversion from a scandal in which pro-austerity parties in the ruling coalition failed to use a list of rich Greeks with deposits in HSBC bank in Switzerland to combat tax evasion. While the Syriza representative’s assessment is correct, it’s worth adding here that the scandal in question is yet another example of the selectiveness of the pro-austerity coalition’s law and order agenda. This agenda does not bear witness to an unconditional allegiance to the law in the abstract but is an integral part of the class war against working people and ordinary citizens that is currently being waged in Greece (and beyond). The law is sacred when legality can be used to smash any form of resistance to the ongoing project of immiserating the mass of Greek society, while the law is simply ignored when that suits the economic oligarchy in Greece that controls the pro-austerity political elites. The class dimension of this ‘law and order’ campaign also becomes revealed in the NYT article when an unnamed government official admits that the raids on occupied buildings in Athens are meant “to demonstrate that the government will be willing to move forcefully against other groups – including militant trade unions that might stand in the way of [the Greek Prime Minister’s] efforts to carry out painful economic reforms and unpopular plans to privatize state assets to meet … demands by Greece’s lenders.”

Here the real motivation behind the Greek government’s propaganda war regarding law and order becomes clear. Part of this propaganda war is to identify forces of the anti-austerity left, such as Syriza, with lawlessness and terrorism, thus resurrecting the kind of rhetoric that the right wing used in the aftermath of the Greek civil war in the 1940s. The period that followed the Greek civil war was one of unrelenting persecution of left-wing citizens and has left a deep scar on Greek society and its political culture to this day. It is, therefore, unfortunate (though not surprising) that the New York Times would play into this propaganda by entitling the article in question ‘Bomb Attacks in Greece Raise Fear of Radicalism.’ This title obviously criminalizes anyone (and that’s a big portion of the population in Greece) who thinks that fundamental changes in the structure of Greek society are necessary. It would be more accurate to say not that these attacks raise the fear of radicalism but that they are skillfully used by pro-austerity political and economic forces to discredit any radical challenge to their destructive rule.

This title also confuses the level of political goals (which is what makes someone a ‘radical’) with that of the means that one uses to achieve these goals (for example, violence). This confusion, so pervasive in mainstream media, is far from innocent because it obscures the great violence on people inflicted by the injustices of existing capitalist society, while attaching the label of violence on anyone who argues for fundamental social change. Indeed, given the fact that the current Greek government has been very tolerant of racist violence and even of police torture of anti-fascist protesters, this kind of confusion would justify an article entitled ‘Racist Violence and Police Torture in Greece Raise Fear of Conservatism.’ But (for obvious reasons) we are unlikely to see any such article in The New York Times.

Costas Panayotakis is Associate Professor of Sociology at the New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York and author of Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy (Pluto Press).

Notes:

(i) See Liz Alderman, ‘Bomb Attacks in Greece Raise Fear of Radicalism,’ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/world/europe/bomb-attacks-in-greece-raise-fear-of-revived-radicalism.html?_r=0 .

via borderline reports

Greek original via Unfollow Magazine

UNFOLLOW magazine reporter receives threats by man self-identified as oil magnate Dimitris Melissanidis of Aegean Oil, after publishing a report that implicates the company in an oil smuggling scandal.

On January 31st, the latest -14th- issue of UNFOLLOW magazine hit the newsstands all over Greece. Among other reports, we published one on oil smuggling in Greece – specifically the practice of oil carrier companies to buy oil at reduced-tax rates and channel it back into the market at the normal price.

We also published two reports by the 7th Piraeus Customs Authority, with detailed findings on how two major oil companies engaged in this practice. One is ELPE (Hellenic Petroleum), where the principal shareholders are the Greek state and Spiros Latsis. The other is Aegean Oil, which is run by Dimitris Melissanidis – albeit without an official position, though his brother, Iakovos, holds a post on the board. Finally, in our report we pointed out that although Aegean Oil officials have been charged with smuggling and forgery, their trial has been postponed four times already, while the state attorneys were absent on all four occasions.

Aegean Oil is truly colossal. Among other things, it supplies the American navy, and one of its associated companies trades in the New York stock exchange. A new trial regarding the smuggling and forgery charges is set for February 12th. Media attention in Greece has been, unsurprisingly, non-existent.

ELPE is set to be fully privatized soon, according to the privatization program imposed on Greece by the troika. The front-runner to acquire state owned shares is Spiros Latsis. At the same time, Dimitris Melissanidis is poised to buy the also soon to be privatized OPAP, the state company that holds a monopoly on gambling.

A full translation of the report on oil smuggling in Greece is forthcoming here on Borderline Reports.

On the day following the publication of UNFOLLOW 14, February 1st, there was a phone call to the office of UNFOLLOW. The number was +30 210 4586000, the caller asked for reporter Lefteris Charalampopoulos, who has written the report, and identified himself as Dimitris Melissanidis.

Our reporter talked to the caller on speaker, with two other UNFOLLOW reporters also present. The man self-identified as Dimitris Melissanidis threatened the magazine with legal action, and our reporter replied that he should of course proceed as he sees fit.

Following that, despite our reporter’s best efforts to converse in a courteous manner, the caller threatened his life repeatedly. Of the 20 minute phonecall, about ten minutes were spent on threats to our reporter.

Part of what was said by the man self-identified as Dimitris Melissanidis, which was taken down by our reporter, follows:

“I could have you killed without having warned you. But I am a man and I’m gonna have you blown up in your sleep. I’ll have you killed, you, your wife, your children, everything you’ve got”.

When our reporter told the caller that he would alert the authorities, he replied:

“Screw you and the authorities. I don’t understand anything, I am Melissanidis. You will not be able to sleep. You will not be able to go out, I’ll be your nightmare. Fear of me will haunt you. They will come to your house and blow you up in your sleep. I am used to talking to big journalists. I looked you up and I will tear you down”.

When our reporter asked if by “big journalists” the caller meant those who play his game, the caller replied:

“I want you to tell me that with a gun to your head”.

An online search for the phone number that called our office returned:

AEGEAN OIL SA (Melissanidis Dimitrios) Oil Industry and Supply – Main Office.

According to phone company listings, the number is also registered with a number of associated companies, such as AEGEAN AGENCY, AEGEAN BUNKERING SERVICES, AEGEAN MARINE PETROLEUM, AEGEAN OIL, and AEGEAN SHIPPING MANAGEMENT – all based at the same address, 10 Akti Kondyli, Pireaus, 18545.

UNFOLLOW magazine issued a Press release last night, where points out the following:

“First, UNFOLLOW will not be shaken off its course.

Second, after the unprecedented threats on our reporter’s life, we declare that for anything that might from now on endanger the life of our reporter, any of our other reporters, or their families, we will hold the caller self-identified as Dimitris Melissanidis responsible.

Third, we call on the authorities to do their duty.

Fourth, we ask for the support of any journalist with a consciense.

Fifth, we call on Press Unions to take a public position on the event, and do what is necessary, so that journalism in Greece is not stifled.”

Read more on Cheikh’s story here. Cheikh had two children.

The photos below were passed on to us by his friends in Thiseio, Athens.

For the blatant attempt by the police to hide their torturing of the four arrested anarchists see this article.

english original, via athens indymedia

After contacting the parents of Bourzoukos Andreas-Dimitris, we wanted to inform you about the following:

All the detainees have been moved to the General Police Headquarters of Attica since Saturday February 2nd (very late in the evening).

In the morning the parents managed to get in contact with their children, as did their lawyers. Until then, the police denied all their requests.

They were given only 15 minutes at the 12th floor of the General Police Headquarters of Attica.

Andreas-Dimitris Bourzoukos was handcuffed to the chair during the whole time.

He informed us that in the cells where he was detained in Kozani he was handcuffed with his hands behind his waist. They placed a hood on his face, made him kneel and beat him for four hours on his head, his face and his stomach, and his hair was pulled out by force. This happened without any resistance from his part. They also threatened him and insulted him in a vulgar way. The consequences of these tortures were the following: blood in the urine, severe dizziness, headaches, swellings on his whole face, contusions on both eyes, bruises and ecchymoses everywhere.

His parents report that his face was non-recognizable and his voice altered from all the beatings at his jaw.

During the last three days he has only drunk bottled water, while his parents were not allowed to give him packaged food and juices.

All the above are not published in order to victimize the detainees, but in order to publicize the tortures and the “legal” violence of the state apparatus.

Despite everything, Andreas-Dimitris Bourzoukos is strong, has kept his dignity and his morale is not shaken.

Power to the detainees.

In the late hours of February 2nd, following an annual commemorative demonstration by the neo-nazis of the Golden Dawn, a small number of the motorbikes that were guarding the neonazi demonstration headed toward the self-organised social space Villa Zografou. There, they were repelled by the anti-fascists inside and in the ensuing clashes, four of the attackers were injured. Of them, one of them was an serving police officer, as he was treated for his injuries at the 401 Hospital in Athens, which only admits serving members of the army and the police.

Below is the inverted image of one of the photographs the Greek police have published (and many of the country’s media have reproduced) of four anarchists that were arrested and charged with two robberies in the village of Velvento, near the city of Kozani in NE Greece.

All other photos show that the arrested were clearly tortured (bruised eyes etc). It seems that the police have tried to very hastily conceal this by digitally altering the images. According to their metadata, at least three of the photos published by the police were altered in Photoshop CS4.

In the early hours (approximately 01:00) of February 2nd, Cheikh Ndiaye died on the metro tracks at the Thiseio stop of the ISAP line in Athens. Cheikh, a street vendor from Senegal, was being chased by municipal police when he landed in the tracks. It is still unclear whether he was pushed to his death or whether he lost his balance and fell.

Moments later, friends of Cheikh gathered at the point of his death only to be dispersed and chased by riot police who arrived at the spot. Meanwhile, as reported on Athens Indymedia, the metro carriages were playing an announcement that the metro route was being altered due to an “obstacle” in the tracks.

photo via dal_ikeris

via the antifaleague

We are inviting everyone who loves real football -the spectacular street football, detached from purposefulness- and wants to support the movement to contact us and apply with their team at antifaleague@espiv.net until 10/02. In this way it will become a reality the 1st ANTIFA league 5×5 in Athens!

January 28, 2013. Nikolas Dertilis, the last colonel of the Junta (1967-1974) has died in Athens. Dertilis spent the past 38 years in prison.

November 18, 1973. Colonel Dertilis is in a military jeep, outside the destroyed gate of the Polytechnic. On the opposite side of the road, at the corner of Patision and Stournari street, police-men are beating up a young student. Momentarily, he escapes. Dertilis pulls a handgun and shoots. “The young man fell down like a chicken”, testifies Dertilis’ driver, then 21-year old Antonis Agritelis, one year later – and he continues: “after the member, Dertilis re-entered the jeep as if nothing had happened and, patting me on the back, he told me: “what do you say, eh? A 45-year old man, and I got him in the head, with one bullet!”… (Michail Mirogiannis, greek original)

Part of the constant flow of solidarity demonstrations with squats that happen on a near-daily basis across the entire country.

Demonstration in solidarity with K-Vox [the occupied anarchist social centre by Exarcheia square]. Hands off occupations. Saturday Feb 2, noon, Exarcheia square.

Signed by the K-Vox solidarity innitiative